THE CINCINNATI MYTH by Eliana Johnson Saturday Night Massacre, and IRS Discrimination Wasn’T Just the Work of Rogue Agents

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July 1, 2013 $4.99 JAY NORDLINGER: The Left’s Racial Putdowns KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON ON RAND AND STEINBECK JOHN J. MILLER HENRY OLSEN: IS RAND PAUL THE ANSWER? ON HARRY JAFFA

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JULY 1, 2013 | VOLUME LXV, NO. 12 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 16

The Cincinnati Myth John J. Miller on Harry V. Jaffa p. 32 Two Cincinnati employees have told the House Oversight Committee that BOOKS, ARTS they were taking orders from Washington. One of those employees told & MANNERS the committee he began singling out tea- 41 LINCOLN’S PATH, STILL Jay Winik reviews Lincoln party applications at the request of a Unbound: How an Ambitious supervisor who told him “Washington, Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream—And D.C., wanted some cases.” Eliana Johnson How We Can Do It Again, by Rich Lowry.

COVER: ROMAN GENN 42 GREATNESS IN A DARK TIME ARTICLES Charles J. Cooper reviews Saving Justice: Watergate, the 16 THE CINCINNATI MYTH by Eliana Johnson Saturday Night Massacre, and IRS discrimination wasn’t just the work of rogue agents. Other Adventures of a Solicitor General, by Robert H. Bork. 18 ONE-PARTY TAXMEN by Daniel Foster Is it time to un-reform the civil service? 45 EPIC OF A NATION Daniel Johnson reviews Flight of 21 BUREAUCRATIC ROT by Rob Long the Eagle: The Grand Strategies A government, like a fish, decays from its guts. That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World 22 RAND PAUL’S PARTY by Henry Olsen Leadership, by Conrad Black. It wouldn’t offer much to conservatives. 46 GENIUS FOR FRIENDSHIP 24 FEDERALISM.COM by Ramesh Ponnuru John Avlon discusses the friendship An Internet sales tax should foster competition among states. between William F. Buckley Jr. and Murray Kempton. 26 UNCLES, FRUITS, AND NUTS by Jay Nordlinger A look at some American slurs. 51 FILM: NO GREEN LIGHT Ross Douthat reviews The Bling Ring. FEATURES 29 MEN’S RISING EARNINGS by Scott Winship SECTIONS Tales of decline rely on flawed methodology. 2 Letters to the Editor 32 THE HOUSE OF JAFFA by John J. Miller 4 The Week The remarkable career of a scholar still at work. 39 Athwart ...... James Lileks 40 The Long View ...... Rob Long 35 THE GRAPES OF RAND by Kevin D. Williamson 50 Poetry ...... Jennifer Reeser Ayn Rand’s God and John Steinbeck’s capitalism. 52 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

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JULY 1 ISSUE; PRINTED JUNE 13

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors The Thousand Years’ Twilight Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Victor Davis Hanson has added intriguing and refreshing historical references Literary Editor Michael Potemra to the pages of NR for a number of years. As Michael Knox Beran implies at the Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Robert Costa conclusion of “Wisdom in Command” (June 3), his review of Mr. Hanson’s Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson latest book, The Savior Generals, there is not much new under the sun, and we National Correspondent John J. Miller Art Director Luba Kolomytseva would do well to study history in order to better understand our current chal- Deputy Managing Editors Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz lenges. Robert VerBruggen I look forward to reading The Savior Generals, but I have a small bone to pick Production Editor Katie Hosmer Editorial Associate Katherine Connell with the review. Mr. Beran paints a picture of the Eastern Roman Empire as a Research Associate Scott Reitmeier decaying, near-failed state, with General Belisarius fighting nobly to salvage Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace Rome’s past glory as twilight descends upon its ragged and cash-strapped Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat remains. Although there is much to criticize and dislike about Roman imperial Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty culture (both eastern and western), the end was not even close for the eastern Jonah Goldberg / Florence King Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin regime in the middle of the sixth century. In fact, Belisarius and his fellow gen- Yuval Levin / Rob Long erals aggressively reasserted control, in the name of Justinian I, over Rome Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Kate O’Beirne / Reihan Salam itself, Italy, and much of the Mediterranean rim across North Africa and into the

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Iberian Peninsula. This does not seem like a technocratic repairing of the Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez breaches in Byzantium’s defenses, as Mr. Beran portrays it. Managing Editor Edward John Craig National Affairs Columnist John Fund The fortunes of the Roman Empire, under its eastern rulers, waxed and waned News Editor Daniel Foster several times in the ensuing centuries, until the empire met its final end in Media Editor Eliana Johnson Political Reporters Andrew Stiles / Jonathan Strong Constantinople in the middle of the 15th century, 900 years after Belisarius and Reporter Katrina Trinko Justinian and a few short years before Columbus arrived on our shores. Quite a Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke Editorial Associate Molly Powell lengthy twilight! Technical Services Russell Jenkins Web Developer Wendy Weihs Jerry K. Seelen EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Hingham, Mass. NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Patrick Brennan / Betsy Woodruff Contributors Confederate Hypocrisy Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. Rich Lowry’s “Defending Lincoln” (June 17) was both thorough and powerful. Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Here are two more examples of note that underscore the hypocrisy of both Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler Confederate defenders and Lincoln critics. David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak First, the Confederacy passed the first of its three conscription acts a year Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons before the Union did the same, leading Georgia governor Joseph E. Brown to Terry Teachout / Vin Weber state, as noted in Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville, that Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman no “act of the Government of the United States prior to the secession of Georgia Accountant Zofia Baraniak struck a blow at constitutional liberty so fell as has been struck by the conscrip- Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Lucy Zepeda tion act.” Circulation Manager Jason Ng Second, as Foote wrote, “five days after the inaugural in which he excoriated Assistant to the Publisher Kate Murdock WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com Lincoln for doing the same thing,” Confederate president Jefferson Davis MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 suspended habeas corpus in Norfolk, Va., then did the same two days later in SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 Richmond. Davis also suspended it in East Tennessee. The provision to suspend ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 habeas corpus in the Confederate constitution (Section 9.3) exactly matches the Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler phrasing in our constitution (Article 1, Section 9). So to charge one president as Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet a dictator is to charge the other. Associate Publisher Paul Olivett Director of Development Heyward Smith Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell Greg Buete PUBLISHER Ellenton, Fla. Jack Fowler

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

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n The good news: The NSA doesn’t know you’re reading this. The bad news: The IRS does.

n The latest Republican fashion on immigration is to declare broad support for the Senate bill while also saying that it needs stronger border-security provisions. Senator Marco Ru bio of Florida, who helped write the thing, has taken this tack, and now so has Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. Senator John Cornyn of Texas has not declared his support for the bill, exactly, but has couched his proposal to amend the bill in similar terms. None of them shows any signs of being willing or able to fix the basic security defect of the bill, which is that illegal immigrants would get legal status before the security provisions are in place. None of them even acknowl- edges this defect. Cornyn’s amendment does nothing to touch it. Nor do any of them express the slightest concern about other questionable provisions of the bill, such as its increase in the flow of low-skilled immigrants to our country. Instead of being amended, this bill needs to be rewritten—or junked.

n Interviews by House investigators confirm that the IRS scandal reaches beyond its Cincinnati office back to IRS headquarters in Washington. As reported by Johnson on page 16 of this issue, the Cincinnati agents who put the tax- exemption applications of tea-party groups through a strainer used letters developed and reviewed by the Technical Unit in the nation’s capital (the D.C.-approved letters asked tea-party groups for lists of reading materials and volunteers, and print- outs of their Facebook pages). Washington “wanted some cases,” one Cincinnati employee told the House Oversight Committee; “I had no autonomy or authority to act” without damaging attack. The scandal of a politicized IRS may be D.C. input, another testified. Three Washington-based IRS offi- even worse than we thought. cials have retired or been kicked upstairs (in addition to former commissioner Steven Miller—resigned—and director of the n Warren Harding famously complained that it was not his Exempt Organizations division Lois Lerner—placed on admin- enemies but his “God-damned friends” who kept him awake istrative leave). The lower-downs are starting to look out for nights. Yet presidents in their second terms typically cocoon number one; time to use them to get to the higher-ups. themselves with friends. It’s a result of attrition in the ranks, and mental and moral exhaustion at the top. President Oba ma’s n As part of the investigation, National Organization for appointments of Susan Rice as national-security adviser and Marriage chairman John Eastman gave some eye-opening Samantha Power as ambassador to the United Nations con- testimony. In March 2012, NOM discovered that confiden- firm the pattern. Rice took the hit on Benghazi, losing thereby tial tax forms listing its top donors had been leaked to its her chance to be secretary of state, so this is a consolation. principal political opponent. NOM’s digital forensic analyst Power is an old Obamaite from his first presidential cam- was able to uncover, under apparent redactions, markings paign. Power temporarily left the team in 2008 when she that suggest that the documents were leaked from the IRS. called Hillary Clinton “a monster.” In 2003 she wrote that the The Treasury inspector general’s office began an investiga- United States should apologize for Cold War policies just as tion into NOM’s claims a year ago; since then, NOM has Willy Brandt had apologized for the Holocaust. Her diplo- heard nothing and has been stonewalled in its attempts to get matic incompetence suits her for this administration, and her more information. The case is a watershed: NOM is not one moral idiocy for the U.N. of the dozens or hundreds of conservative groups whose applications for tax-exempt status led to harassment; rather, n Senator Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.) died at the tail end of

ROMAN GENN it was an already-established nonprofit singled out for a his fifth term in the Senate. In his first race, in 1982, he beat

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THE WEEK Representative Millicent Fenwick, whose “fitness” for the job could cause retardation.) Still, she had a talent for cutting to the he questioned on account of her 72 years; he was 89 when he heart of matters, as when she said that we should “legalize passed. His vacant seat presented Governor Chris Christie, who American energy.” Still in her mid 50s, Bachmann has plenty is up for reelection this year, with a choice: tap a capable mod- of time for another act or two. She and her husband have five erate Republican, such as Tom Kean Jr., who might be able to children, and before she ran for office they served as foster hold the seat in November even though he would be running parents to 23 more. Michele Bachmann did more good before against Newark mayor and liberal dreamboat Cory Booker; or she entered politics than most people ever do. pick some placeholder and schedule a quick special election in October, which would send Booker and Christie to the polls on n Some years ago, Representative Charlie Rangel said that different days, allowing the governor a smashing reelection tax cuts were racist—or rather, that tax-cutters were. The way free of crossover Booker supporters. Christie chose the latter he put it was, “It’s not ‘spic’ or ‘nigger’ anymore. They say, course. Christie is an often-interesting renegade in a blue state; ‘Let’s cut taxes.’” In more recent days, Martin Bashir, an Lautenberg was a dogged hack. But both men placed a high MSNBC host, said that “IRS” was the new “N-word.” “Three value on winning, by whatever means. letters that sound so innocent, but we know what you mean.” Maybe we could agree that everything is racist, including n At the end of the 2012 presidential campaign, Christie an - “and” and “the,” and be done with it? gered some of his fellow Republicans, who thought he was too chummy with President Obama. This was in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Recently on CNBC, Larry Kudlow asked n Representative John Dingell Jr., age 86, has be come Mitt Romney whether he harbored any ill will toward Christie. the longest-serving member of Congress, with 57 years None, said Romney. “He helped me during my campaign and 177 days under his belt and counting. What is wrong immeasurably, raised money, got endorsements, went out on with this picture? This unremarkable rust-belt liberal has the trail, and he did what he thought was best for the people of warmed his seat longer than Clay, Webster, or Calhoun New Jersey. That’s why he’s so popular there.” How about (all of whom took breaks to serve as secretary of state). Christie and Obama, bonding in New Jersey? “A governor is N.B.: The previous occupant of Dingell’s House seat going to welcome in the president, and he welcomed in the was John Dingell Sr., his father. Admittedly the years president. Let’s not worry about that.” The sheer class of Mitt have allowed our current Dingell to see a lot, even as age Romney—and that has nothing to do with money—would permits him now and then to com- have been welcome in the White House. ment on it. Surveying the eleven presidents alongside whom n Because President Obama made John Kerry secretary of he has served, Dingell said state, Massachusetts needs a new senator. There will be an of Obama: “He had the election on June 25. The Democratic nominee is Ed Markey, a smallest Rolodex ever House lifer and a classic Massachusetts liberal. He is almost when he hit town. And out of a parody. The Republican nominee is Gabriel Gomez, a he moved so fast he businessman and former Navy SEAL. Gomez is not an NR never had any chance to conservative (such a creature would have a very hard time win- build scar tissue, to learn ning a Senate seat in Massachusetts). But he would be infi- politics, to be hurt—because nitely better than Markey, for a country sorely in need of better you’ve got to be hurt in officeholders. Right-leaning people should do all they can to this business so that elect him. you’ll toughen.” Tell Jona than Al - n Michele Bachmann is a ter when he be - conservative spark plug and gins the next spitfire. She has represented hagio graphy. the sixth district of Minne - sota for four terms; she has announced she will not seek n In 2004, NR earnestly pled with the Democrats to nominate reelection in 2014. After her Howard Dean for president. Showing a dismaying lack of loy- announcement, the leading alty, Dean repaid this favor recently by saying on television, Demo cratic contender for the “The National Review is just silly. Who’s going to take them CARLOS OSORIO seat bowed out too: It is a seriously?” We had made him unhappy by criticizing him for / AP safely Republican district minimizing the Benghazi scandal. He went on to say, in refer- :

made competitive only by ence to the administration’s investigations of reporters, “I like DINGELL ; the controversy surrounding to stick it to the press because they’re so thin-skinned and MEARA her—controversy she brought sanctimonious.” It’s mutual, Howard. ’

on in good ways and bad. (A CHRIS O / AP

low point was her baseless n Back in March, during a Senate Intelligence Committee hear- : claim, while running for pre - ing, Senator Ron Wyden asked the director of national intelli-

sident, that the HPV vaccine gence, James Clapper, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at BACHMANN

6 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/10/2013 11:02 AM Page 1

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THE WEEK

E Pluribus Tyranny

F people can’t trust not only the executive branch which bars the discouragement of military recruiting. A ‘I but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust feder- Wilson-appointed judge, perhaps holding a grudge be - al judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the cause his name was Benjamin Franklin Bledsoe, sen- Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re tenced him to ten years in prison. The verdict was upheld going to have some problems here.” on appeal, though Goldstein spent “only” three years in Thus Barack Obama defended the NSA’s data-mining prison before Wilson commuted the sentence when the operation. And, of course, he has a point. Under President war was over. Bush—now more popular than President Obama, which is What’s the point? Well, the Espionage Act was passed entirely irrelevant but fun to point out—the controversy on a bipartisan basis at the urging of the president (in his about similar programs was that they were “warrantless” State of the Union address, he begged for the power to or even “rogue.” Now all three branches of government “crush” domestic enemies) and upheld by the courts. have bought in (or been co-opted), When you think about it, American his- which in a democracy should, and tory is full of examples of all three does, count for something. branches of government—and both But it’s also worth remembering parties—coming together to do ill- that it’s precisely when all three advised or tyrannical things. Slavery, of branches of government—or both course, comes to mind, as does the political parties—rally around a policy internment of Jap a nese Americans. But that the country is most likely to go off so does the jailing of Jacob Maged— the rails. The best the Founders could the man who charged 35 cents to press promise about the checks and bal- a suit when the New Deal codes said ances inherent to the Constitution was that they would he had to charge 40 cents (that story will undoubtedly res- make tyranny less likely, not that they would make it onate more as Obamacare unfolds). Whatever you make impossible. of the McCarthy era, it’s always worth remembering how Just ask Robert Goldstein. He was the filmmaker behind bipartisan many of its excesses were. The Spirit of ’76, an over-the-top, big-budget movie (by Now, I don’t necessarily think the NSA story will join 1917 standards) about the American Revolution. It should this list of acknowledged government mistakes, but if it have been a huge hit. Inspired by the success of Woodrow doesn’t, it won’t be because so many branches of gov- Wilson’s favorite film, Birth of a Nation, Goldstein hoped ernment signed off on it. The Spirit of ’76 would inspire the whole country. Alas, his There’s a larger point here. President Obama has spent timing was miserable. America was going to war, and his entire presidency hectoring, cajoling, and imploring Congress had just passed the Espionage Act (the same Americans to trust government. (Proving yet again that law Eric Holder used to target Fox News’s James Rosen). God has a sense of humor, shortly before the IRS, DOJ, Authorities were outraged that Goldstein had cast the and NSA controversies erupted, the president mocked British—our allies in the war to end all wars—in such a those who warn that tyranny might be around the corner.) negative light, especially since there was already strong More important, he has insisted time and again that what anti-British sentiment among Americans of German and the country needs most is unity. If only we all work together, Irish descent. At the behest of the Department of Justice, if only we all follow his lead, if only we all march in step, Lucullus Cicero Funkhouser, the head of the Chicago there’s nothing government can’t do! Police Censorship Board (and contender for best name As the Founders would be the first to acknowledge, the ever), confiscated the film. Goldstein agreed to edit out greater the unity, the more likely tyranny becomes. It’s not some offending material, including a scene where King an iron rule, of course. Sometimes unity is necessary to George III punches Ben Franklin in the face. fight tyranny. But in our system, unity is absolutely neces- But when Goldstein debuted the film in Los Angeles, to sary to impose it as well. positive reviews from the Los Angeles Times, the authorities prosecuted him under Section 3 of the Espionage Act, —JONAH GOLDBERG CONTINENTAL PRODUCING COMPANY

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THE WEEK all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Without The Obama care law specifies that certain subsidies may be so much as pausing, Clapper responded, “No, sir,” adding that at given, and certain punitive taxes collected, only when states least it did not do so “wittingly.” It turns out that the NSA has in have established health-insurance exchanges. Most states truth been collecting data about the telephone use of millions or have refused to establish those ex changes, an unforeseen hundreds of millions of Americans. Nor was Clapper taken off development, and so the administration has an nounced that it guard by the question: Wyden says he told him in advance that plans to have the IRS proceed as though the states had done so. he would ask it. Caught in the untruth, Clapper struggled to Pruitt’s case is legally com pel ling and politically attractive: keep his story straight. First, he claimed that “what I said was, States have nothing to lose by protecting their residents and ‘the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ their residents’ employers from punitive taxation under e-mails.’ I stand by that.” When this proved unconvincing, he Obama care. The 29 other Republican governors should take told Andrea Mitchell bluntly that he had responded in the “least note. untruthful manner” available. In an area where trust is essential, Clapper has deceived the public, and quite wittingly. n Arizona governor Jan Brewer’s eagerness to help the Oba - ma administration expand Medicaid has gone from unwise n The College Republican National Committee has issued a to unseemly: She is threatening to veto all bills until the leg- report on the youth vote, based on extensive surveys and focus islature satisfies her. She is calling her gambit a “mora - groups with the under-30 set that delivered the election to Pres - torium” on legislation, and she already has vetoed five bills i dent Obama. A major challenge, the report confirms, is simply unrelated to Medicaid. This is conduct unbecoming of a reaching Millennials with the small-government message, mak- chief executive. The expansion of Medicaid is in itself un - ing it past their Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert information wise: It is a bad program that provides few benefits to the sentries. Other news is better. Majorities of Millennials oppose poor and imposes great costs, two defects that ought to be of abortion in most circumstances and favor stricter border control, concern to a Republican governor. But there is a larger point for instance. And though they find President Obama more cred- that the governor fails to appreciate: We have multiple ible than his opponents on their immediate economic concerns branches of government and divided powers for a reason; (jobs and education debt), they don’t necessarily think he has she is the governor of Arizona, not its viceroy. Executives succeeded in addressing them, and they remain worried about are entrusted with veto power to ensure that defective bills the future of the welfare state. To reach them, though, Repub li - do not become law, not to hold the entire legislative process cans will have to do more than just wait for them to grow older hostage until they get their way. Stumping for Obama’s and wiser. Medicaid agenda is bad enough, but flamboyantly abusing her executive powers while doing so places Governor Brewer n The IRS scandal has some Republican politicians talking in a special class. about “abolishing the IRS.” Conservatives should demand spe - cif ics before applauding. A large federal bureaucracy would be n After years of treating the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals necessary to enforce even a pure flat tax or a national sales tax. with a casual indifference, President Obama suddenly an - Either reform would be compatible with the favoritism and nounced three nominees to it—and urged the Senate to ap - abuse that the IRS has shown—unless Congress were to declare prove them quickly. The president’s newfound interest in the that no organizations, not even churches, would be exempt from D.C. circuit is puzzling, considering he waited nearly two the reformed tax system. Extracting enough resources from our years after taking office to make any nomination to the court economy to fund a government of the current size will inevitably whatever. And the urgency he now says is required to fill be intrusive, and airy promises about getting rid of the IRS do these vacancies is belied at turns by the facts (the most re - nothing to shrink it. cent vacancy is barely three months old) and his own past behavior (the oldest vacancy is so old that Senator Obama n Governors and attor- availed himself of the opportunity to block President Bush’s neys general across the nominee to fill it). So what is motivating the White House? country should stand As Doug Kendall, leftist legal advocate and president of the with Oklahoma attor- opaquely named Constitutional Accountability Center, put ney general Scott Pruitt, it: “With legislative priorities gridlocked in Congress, the who has found an inge- president’s best hope for advancing his agenda is through nious way to call a halt executive action, and that runs through the D.C. circuit.” The to the Obamacare pro- good news is that there is plenty of room for the Senate to ject: hold the federal honorably discharge its constitutional duty to advise and government to the letter consent on judicial nominees, while at the same time cooling of that misbegotten law. the president’s ambitions. Oklahoma is standing largely alone today as it n Congress held hearings on the problem of sexual assault challenges the adminis- in the military, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) is tration’s plans to use the saying that the decision whether to bring cases to military IRS to collect taxes that courts should be taken away from commanders and given to it has not been autho- JAG lawyers. Yet the evidence that the system is failing is SUE OGROCKI /

rized by law to collect. weak. Claims that the military is rife with abuse and cover- AP

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ups rely on reports of the incidence of “unwanted contact,” n “U.S. Women on the Rise as Family Breadwinner” was the a vague catch-all term. It is not clear that abuse is more com- headline under which the New York Times reported the results mon in the military than in other places with large numbers of a Pew Research Center analysis finding that women are of young men and women (and, frequently, alcohol), such as the primary earners in 40 percent of households with children college campuses. One step that would improve the mili- under 18. But the story turns out not to be about the triumph tary’s handling of these cases would be to build up a spe cial - of the high-earning career woman, but about the disappear- ized corps of sex-abuse prosecutors rather than relying on ance of fathers: Nearly two-thirds of these “breadwinner the military’s usual rotation of lawyers in and out of the moms” are single, and they have little in common with their field. Unlike Gillibrand’s idea, that wouldn’t weaken the married counterparts. Unmarried mothers—and increasingly command structure. that means never-married mothers—are younger, much poorer, and less educated than married mothers. Women may be “on n The Supreme Court ruled that police may take a DNA the rise” as breadwinners, but that seems to be mostly be - sample from anyone they have arrested. The usual oppo- cause marriage is on the decline. nents are making the usual overheated cries of “Police state!”—just as The New Republic did in 1936, when n Richard Windsor, an employee of the Environ mental Pro - Berkeley, Calif., instituted a fingerprinting program and tec tion Agency, took the Obama administration’s famed de - TNR’s editors wrote: “There seems no doubt that the insti- vo tion to transparency to new heights by not existing. gators of the Berkeley fingerprinting jamboree are in fact “Windsor” is the e-mail alias that former EPA administrator people with strong fascist leanings.” In fact, taking a DNA cheek swab is a trivial inconvenience—much less bother- some than handcuffing—that can pay off greatly in tracking arrestees and tying them to other crimes. The Maryland leg- islature weighed the pros and cons and decided to allow police to take a DNA sample while also placing restrictions on the practice. It was a reasonable decision, as was the Court’s deferring to it.

n The Obama administration has capitulated in its legal battle to preserve some restrictions on Plan B and similar emergency contraceptive drugs against a U.S. district judge’s mandate that they all be dropped. The drugs are currently available to girls under age 17 only by prescription. In 2011, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled an advisory panel’s recommendation that the drugs Lisa Jackson used to correspond with environmental activists be sold over the counter in pharmacies to women and girls of and senior Obama-administration officials, among others. all ages, and, in a statement endorsing her decision at the Windsor, as it turns out, was an employee of significant time, the president expressed his discomfort with the idea of achievement. Docu ments released by the agency to the Com - adolescent girls’ being able to purchase Plan B in drug stores pet i tive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner reveal that, for “alongside bubble gum or batteries.” Judge Edward Korman three years running, the EPA has honored him as a “scholar took it upon himself to overrule the secretary, declaring that of ethical behavior,” presenting him with Latinate certificates she had bowed to “political pressure.” Now the executive recognizing him as a “scholasticus decentia.” The non - branch has bowed to Korman. existent Windsor has also helped to keep terrorists at bay, earning certifications in cyber-security awareness and a n Sarah Murnaghan is a ten-year-old girl with cystic fibro- counterterror initiative that urges federal employees to report sis, a genetic disease that will soon end her life if she doesn’t suspicious activity to law-enforcement authorities. Both receive a lung transplant. But within the federal govern- Jackson and the EPA call her use of the alias e-mail address ment’s transplant network, children under twelve are eligi- “standard practice,” merely a means of managing e-mail ble for lungs only from other children, and not from the traffic. Perhaps in the Obama administration. At the very least, much larger adult list. So her family, as any would, has the agency has a sense of irony: It also awarded Windsor a cer- fought to have the federal government make an exception for tification in e-mail-records management. Sarah, winning the support of some members of Con gress and drawing a re sponse from HHS secretary Kathleen Se be - n Congress has mandated that expenses associated with a li us. She has adamantly refused to make an exception, but Freedom of Information Act request should be waived for has agreed to review the policy (as HHS has done for other groups that use the information to educate the public about organs). Organ transplants are basically a zero-sum game, government functions. The Competitive Enterprise Institute making tragic trade-offs necessary, but those trade-offs reviewed 1,200 pages of EPA correspondence and found that should not be made by political appointees responding to 92 percent of liberal groups’ fee-waiver requests were ap - pressure. On this rare occasion when Sebelius has rejected proved while 73 percent of conservative groups’ requests were political meddling with health care, she should not be criti- denied. Furthermore, several right-leaning organizations told cized. NATIONAL REvIEW that even when they do receive public infor-

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THE WEEK mation from the EPA, it often arrives late and heavily redacted. “hooliganism,” a vague czarist-era infraction that the state The EPA responded to these allegations, albeit misleadingly, used as a pretext to disappear its political enemies. We have noting that many conservative groups eventually got their fees long been admirers of both congressmen, but we wish they had waived, too. But the agency didn’t mention that it yielded, in been better ambassadors for American principles. some instances, only after conservatives brought suit, forcing it to follow the law. The EPA appears to be one of those organ- n After being banned for a century, garden gnomes were isms that prefer the darkness. finally permitted at this year’s posh Chelsea Flower Show. The decision is significant, because every news article n Turkey has blown up in the face of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the garish figurines seems to describe them as its prime minister. In office these past ten years, he’s been mov- “naff” (i.e., not even close to posh); when trans- ing the country away from its quite special secular democracy lated into American terms, they would appear and marching it toward Islamism. Ever-increasing authori - to fall somewhere between pink flamingos tarianism has earned him the nickname of “The Caliph.” On and lawn jockeys. But a recent set of Ikea trumped-up charges, he has purged the army, the judiciary, and commercials that showed garden gnomes the media: More journalists and senior members of the armed being destroyed in various ways in - forces are in prison in Turkey than anywhere else in the world. spired what one newspaper called a Having initially supported the Assad regime in Syria, he is “furious backlash”; they might as well now itching to go to war against it. Restrictions in the name of have strangled teddy bears, as the Islam on alcohol and women’s rights are unpopular. His bleak Scandinavian ano mie was lost recent proposal to abandon parliamentary rule in favor of on phlegmatic Britons. A gnome manu- presidential rule seems intended to make him a real facturer boasts that since 2008, “de- caliph. The announcement that a park in central Istanbul is mand has just grown consistently to be redeveloped into a shopping mall, a mosque, and a year on year,” and in the wake barracks led to a small, peaceful protest. Whether out of of Ikea’s ill-advised cam- arrogance or insecurity, Erdogan sent in the police, called paign, gnome sales at one the protesters looters, extremists, and possible foreign garden chain more than dou- agents, and himself left on an official tour to North Africa. bled. Meanwhile, crowds of Riots in some 70 towns and cities immediately brought to visitors throng the Gnome Re - a head the various resentments and fears that Erdogan has pro- serve in Devon. voked. Three people have been killed, 5,000 injured, and nearly 1,000 arrested. What’s different from other upheavals in the n “Is cursive dead?” When the New York Times put this ques- Muslim Middle East is that those injured and arrested aren’t try- tion to four debaters in late April, two—an education professor ing to introduce democracy against the odds but defending an and a handwriting expert—proclaimed that cursive, if it was already democratic state, also against the odds. not dead already, should be allowed to die. The third, an occu- pational therapist, asserted that cursive should be taught, but n On a recent trip to Russia, reporters asked Republican con- with an emphasis on “simplicity and function.” Only one, an gressmen Dana Rohrabacher of California and Steve King of archivist, made the case that cursive handwriting is a tradition Iowa what they thought of the jailing of Pussy Riot, the aes- worth preserving, for its artistry and for its use in historical thetically dubious but politically audacious punk band sen- documents. North Carolina, it seems, did not get the memo tenced to two years in prison for a minute-long protest staged from cursive’s undertakers. House Bill 146, nicknamed the inside a Moscow cathedral. As it turns out, neither showed “Back to Basics” bill, was given final approval by the N.C. signs of having thought about the affair at all. Congressman state senate in late May. It requires public elementary schools to instruct students in cursive writing so that kids can “create readable documents through legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade.” While the handwriting expert interviewed by the Times argued that “mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring,” it appears that some Americans are not ready to cast off craftsmanship for the plainness and uniformity of the machine age.

n Rachel Abrams was a writer and artist. She was the wife of Elliott Abrams, the daughter of Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, the sister of, among others, John Podhoretz, and the mother of three children. Her view of the world was sharp and clear. She had an especially keen understanding of two coun- King, in particular, said he found it “hard to find sympathy for” tries, America and Israel. She knew what it takes to keep a the group, considering their “desecration” of the church. But country free—and, in the case of Israel, extant. She wrote with Pussy Riot were not imprisoned for vandalism of either the glorious abandon in her blog Bad Rachel. This lady was noth- physical or the spiritual variety. They were imprisoned for ing but good. She has died at 62. R.I.P.

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THE WEEK n Father Andrew Greeley, priest, pundit, sociologist, and low- might pay Chinese gangsters to kill him. No fatalities have yet end novelist, ap peared on a talk show years ago with Zsa Zsa been reported.) It is a mark against federal surveillance pro- Gabor. Said she: “I sink priests should hear confession, say grams that they placed a person of such questionable judgment Mess, and not write feel - in a position of power. thy books.” His novels The programs themselves appear to be compatible with the were titillations, in the Constitution, and to offer potential help in preventing terrorist genre of Cath-porn; they atrocities. Yet they also raise questions. PRISM reportedly made him a fortune, much allows people to be targeted for further scrutiny when the data of which he passed on to suggest there is a 51 percent chance that they are foreigners, charity. His sociology and which seems like a very low threshold. The information being his punditry—the two handed over by Verizon (and probably other phone companies) were joined at the hip— may seem to be limited, since it does not include the content of were most reliably in the conversations, but modern technology allows a lot of inferences service of intra-Catholic to be drawn from that information. contumacy. Some times The phone surveillance has also taken place at a level of his points were question- se cre cy that is hard to justify. Telling the public that the “enve- able—most Catholics use lope” information for all phone calls was being tracked would the pill, so the Church not have tipped off any terrorist that he was being watched, pre- should agree with most cisely because the program casts a wide net; nor would it have Catholics. Sometimes they were right on target, as when divulged operational details about the program. And the pro- Greeley flayed the hierarchy for hushing up child-abuse scan- gram is authorized under what appears to be a very expansive dals. There were other occasions, though, when Greeley sided interpretation of a provision of the PATRIOT Act. We do not with his church against critics and cultured despisers: when he know for sure what that interpretation is, since the surveillance- defended Catholic schools; when he argued that secularization court decision that cleared the program is itself secret. was not an inevitable consequence of modernization. Dead at The PRISM leak, on the other hand, may have compromised 85. R.I.P. the program by informing terrorists about the vulnerability of some of the networks they use. The government will be entirely n Jean Stapleton had the long c.v. of a career actress, but she in the right if it prosecutes this leak. made her mark as Edith Bunker, wife of Carroll O’Connor’s Libertarian-minded Republicans should resist the temptation Archie, in the Seventies sitcom All in the Family. The show was to speak ominously of Big Brother or hyperbolize to the effect a hymn of hate directed against conservatives, depicted in the that the feds are listening to everyone’s phone calls. What is person of Archie Bunker as tempestuous, ignorant bigots (Edith needed here instead is oversight and open debate to make sure was as benighted as her husband, but the decency that accrued the right protections are in place: from deadly terrorists, from to her as a repressed woman was allowed to shine through). And overweening government, and from irresponsible leakers. yet the skill of her and O’Connor’s characterizations made the show a hit. Stapleton believed the premise of the show; so did liberals in the Seventies; so do liberals in the Teens (the laughter of liberals often conforms to Henri Bergson’s definition: a human bark). Dead at 90. R.I.P.

AT WAR Looking Out, Looking In

SERIES of leaks revealed that the government’s conduct of the war on terrorism has involved surveillance of A communications more extensive than had been previously suspected. The government has for years collected information about phone calls to and from Verizon customers: what phone numbers they called and were called from, when, and for how long they talked. It is widely assumed that other phone companies are also handing over their information. The government has also operated a program, called PRISM, that moni - tors networks such as Facebook and attempts to zero in on suspicious behavior by foreigners. Edward Snowden, an employee of a federal contractor, has taken credit for the leaks and fled to China. It is a dubious perch from which to speak on behalf of transparent government and free speech, and his statements have been tinged with grandiosity and paranoia. (He suggested that journalists who worked with him might be killed and that the U.S. government Edward Snowden

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scrutinized, but the IRS itself, which had been falsely accused. “There might have been some smart people working who were concerned that there were a lot of new 501(c)(4) filings in this country,” she said. “Maybe somebody over there at IRS was actually doing their job.” One Democratic congressman is satisfied with what we know already about the origins of the discrimination against conservative groups—that is, very little. Maryland’s elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, told Cnn’s Candy Crowley, “Based upon everything I’ve seen, the case is solved. If it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on, to be frank with you.” He added, “I think we’re in great shape.” The House Oversight Committee is conducting a full-fledged investigation to The Cincinnati Myth discover where the orders to target con- IRS discrimination wasn’t just the work of rogue agents servative groups originated, and committee investigators are interviewing IRS BY ELIANA JOHNSON employees based in both Cincinnati and Washington. Cummings, who has been Hen news broke that the officials knew about the targeting of con- present at interviews conducted thus far, Internal Revenue Service servative groups, it continued unabated also claims, “no witnesses who have had, over the course of near- until the inspector general’s report was appeared before the committee have iden- W ly two years, actively dis- published in mid May—at which point tified any IRS official in Washington, criminated against conservative groups those very officials pointed the finger at a D.C., who directed employees in Cinci n- applying for tax exemption, subjecting couple of folks in the Midwest. nati to use ‘tea party’ or similar terms to them to intrusive questions and extraordi- Straight out of the gate, the inspector screen applicants for extra scrutiny.” nary delays in processing their applica- general, J. Russell George, fingered “first- Cummings chose his words carefully. tions, top officials in Washington were line management in Cincinnati, Ohio”; The testimony of the Cincinnati-based quick to offer an explanation. A couple of they were guilty of “insufficient over- employees indicates that the inappro- rogue agents in the IRS’s Cincinnati sight” because they had devised a special priate “lookout” list created in their office, you see, had somehow managed to set of screening criteria that included office, which included the terms “Tea pull off a highly orchestrated effort to “references to the Tea Party.” Before the Party,” “9/12 Project,” “Patriot,” and fetter tea-party groups in advance of the IRS’s director of exempt organizations, “make America a better place to live,” 2012 presidential election. Lois Lerner, invoked her Fifth Amend - was likely drawn up in response to re - This explanation, intended to let the ment right not to testify before Congress, quests for tea-party files coming from agency’s top brass and the Obama admin- she cast the blame on “our line people in Washington, D.C. istration off the hook, has never passed Cincinnati,” who had made a “not so Two Cincinnati employees have told muster. IRS officials in Washington be - fine” effort to streamline a supposed the Oversight Committee that they were came aware of the discrimination against influx of tea-party applications. taking orders from Washington. One of conservative groups long before the Democratic politicians, too, from the those employees, Gary Muthert, told the Treasury Department inspector general’s Obama administration on down, have committee he began singling out tea-party report made it public. The IRS itself taken this line. Carney told reporters, applications at the request of a supervisor conducted an internal investigation that “There were line employees at the IRS who told him “Washington, D.C., wanted reached similar conclusions in May 2012, who improperly targeted conservative some cases.” Muthert, sources say, was a after which top officials failed to inform groups.” Washington congressman Jim member of the group that screened all Congress of the investigation’s findings. McDermott explained, “This small group applications for tax exemption and passed The lawyers in the office of the agency’s of people in the Cincinnati office screwed those identified as tea-party applications chief counsel, according to the inspector up.” along to specialists for extra scrutiny. He general’s report, were briefed on the mat- But it was Representative Marcy Kap- sent seven tea-party applications to ter in August 2011; White House press tur who took the cake. The Ohio con- Washington in May 2010, according to secretary Jay Carney claims they did not gresswoman, in a hearing of the House interview transcripts, because his manag- inform the chief counsel himself, William Appropriations Committee, went so far er told him “Washington, D.C., wanted Wilkins, one of two political appointees at as to suggest that the victims were not the seven.”

the IRS. Somehow, while many top IRS tea-party groups that had been unfairly If employees in Washington ordered ROMAN GENN

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agents in Cincinnati to flag the applica- exemption for over three years. “We tions of tea-party groups, that would never knew who in D.C. was calling the explain the need for those Cincinnati shots,” she says, but she was told by an One-Party employees to devise a means of screening IRS agent that “the application was being for such applications, and the subsequent reviewed in Washington.” Taxmen screening for the objectionable keywords. So we can officially dispense with the It is the means of screening for which notion that the targeting of tea-party Cincinnati employees have been pilloried groups began when a couple of rogue Is it time to un-reform by the inspector general, their bosses in agents in the Internal Revenue Service’s the civil service? D.C., and the Obama administration Cincinnati office set out to streamline alike. The focus should instead be on the their work. BY DANIEL FOSTER initial request for tea-party applications The testimonies offered by Muthert, that necessitated those means, and the Hofacre, and Mitchell perhaps help to testimony of the IRS employees indicates explain why the five IRS officials to leave HAT if I were to tell you that that this request—and further oversight— the agency or lose their positions in the the IRS tea-party-targeting came from Washington, D.C.. wake of the scandal are all based in scandal all started with Around the same time that Muthert Washington, D.C. W the great 19th-century rail- sent applications to Washington, another There is tax lawyer Carter Hull, who is roads? Or with the conscience of a large- Cincinnati employee, Liz Hofacre, began accused of micromanaging the processing ly inconsequential, ornately mustachioed managing a group of specialists handling of tea-party cases, and who, according to Gilded Age president? Or with a de - tea-party cases. “I was taking all my IRS sources, requested his retirement ranged petty thief from Illinois who direction from EO Technical,” she told package in March. thought he ought to be the consul to the Oversight Committee, referring to the There is Joseph Grant, the man who France? group of tax lawyers who closely moni- oversaw the agency’s entire Tax Exempt Let me explain. In 1883, President tored Cincinnati’s handling of the tea- and Government Entities division, in Chester A. Arthur signed the Pendleton party cases. So upset did she become which the targeting of conservative groups Act, doing away with the “spoils system” with Washington’s micromanagement occurred, who retired in early June— of political patronage for government that she began looking for another job in eight days after he was promoted. jobs that had been in place since Andrew July 2010. “It was something that I didn’t There is former acting IRS commis- Jackson had perfected it, and replacing it want to be associated with,” she testified. sioner Steven Miller, who resigned days with a nominally merit-based civil service “I didn’t want my name in the paper for after news of the scandal broke in mid resembling the one we have today. Arthur being this rogue agent for a project I had May. President Obama has claimed that had previously been a “Stalwart”—a de - no control over.” he asked for Miller’s resignation. In a note fender of the Republican party’s pa - It was also Washington’s involvement, to colleagues, though, Miller told a differ- tronage system against the moderate according to the inspector general’s report, ent story, explaining that he was departing “Half-Breeds,” who advocated reform— that caused the delays in the processing of the agency “with regret” be cause his “act- and was himself a past beneficiary of the tea-party applications. The timeline ap- ing assignment ends in early June.” machine, having secured in 1871 what the pended to the report indicates that in May There is Holly Paz, the director of rul- New York Times some years later called 2010—when Muthert sent tea-party appli- ings and agreements, who was replaced. “the prize plum of Federal patronage” cations to Washington—tax lawyers in According to an IRS source, the memo jobs as collector for the Port of New York. D.C. “began reviewing additional infor- announcing her replacement gave no But shortly after Arthur saw his predeces- mation request letters prepared by agents word on whether Paz was transferred to sor, James Garfield, die of complications in Cincinnati.” Washington not only ap - another position, put on leave, or fired. from the .44-caliber bullet lodged in him proved the letters containing the intrusive Finally, there is Lois Lerner, the direc- by the mentally deformed would-be con- questionnaires sent to tea-party groups, tor of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations sul, Charles Guiteau, he had a change of but also wrote many of the questions. It division and the Washington official most heart. was apparently a slow process: At one closely connected with the scandal. Ler - Arthur may have thought the act, point, the inspector general’s report notes, ner was placed on something of a vaca- which over time came to cover 90 percent a Cincinnati employee “did not work on tion—administrative leave with pay and of federal employees, would save him the [tea-party] cases while waiting for full benefits—after refusing to tender her from a similar fate. But it also meant guidance from the Technical Unit.” resignation. he would have to work without a net. Cleta Mitchell, a Washington-based Having exploded the myth that rogue Having angered the very machine politi- attorney who represents several tea-party employees at the IRS’s Cincinnati outpost cians who had affixed him to the Garfield groups that have been the subject of the orchestrated the discrimination against ticket in 1880, Arthur failed to secure the IRS’s discrimination, says that her clients conservative groups, congressional inves- Republican nomination in 1884, and he suffered the consequences of the bottle- tigators should now zero in on the real and his muttonchops faded into obscuri- neck that occurred when tea-party cases source of the targeting. Perhaps the next ty. By contrast, the Pendleton Act and its piled up in Washington. She tells me that IRS agent to announce his retirement will successor, the Civil Service Reform Act one of her clients has been waiting for the be the one who asked Cincinnati for those of 1978, remain the law of the land. But IRS to approve an application for tax tea-party applications in the first place. “civil service” “reform” did not succeed

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in getting politics out of government waxed and waned over the years, of PACs, spends vast sums to get Democrats employment. It merely coated their nexus course. FDR, for instance, used the De - elected. with a patina of plausible deniability and pression as an excuse to get around merit- This includes the IRS, and even the rigged the game forever in favor of Big hiring requirements and saw the number low-level IRS agents we are assured were Government. of government employees hired out- responsible for the tea-party targeting. Why? Because the end of the patron- side Pendleton more than double, from Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner age era basically coincided with the in- 110,000 in 1932 to 230,000 by the end of followed the money: vention of the modern regulatory state his first term. This cut out the middleman In the past three election cycles, the and the beginning of a century-long in the patronage process (FDR and his Center for Responsive Politics’ database ratcheting up of the federal government’s fixers often simply parceled out jobs, shows about $474,000 in political dona- powers. Conservatives plausibly peg along with fistfuls of relief money, to the tions by individuals listing “IRS” or the New Deal, or perhaps the passage of districts he needed to carry in 1936) and “Internal Revenue Service” as their the Sixteenth Amendment (which estab- upset civil servants. Likewise, the de - employer. . . . lished the legality of the income tax), as regulatory fugue of the 1980s saw the The Cincinnati office where the the watershed moment for Big Govern - bureaucratic state lose ground. But in the political targeting took place is much ment. But one can make a compelling long run, the arc of post–Gilded Age his- more partisan, judging by FEC filings. The end of the patronage era basically coincided with the invention of the modern regulatory state and the beginning of a century-long ratcheting up of the federal government’s powers.

argument that Leviathan was born way tory has bent toward a federal bureaucracy More than 75 percent of the campaign back in 1887, just four years after that is ever bigger and more powerful, contributions from that office in the Pendleton, when Congress moved to and toward civil servants who are better past three elections went to Democrats. implement price controls on the railroad paid, and much harder to fire, than their In 2012, every donation traceable to employees at that office went to either industry via the passage of the Interstate private-sector counterparts. President Obama or liberal Democratic Commerce Act and the creation of the Thank Providence, we still live in a Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Interstate Commerce Commission. The country where it is roughly as easy for a ICC was the first major “independent” politician to get elected for vowing to Zoom out a bit more and you see that, federal regulatory body, and its ambit shrink the government as for vowing to as NATIONAL REvIEW’s Andrew Stiles would grow over the next century even as expand it. But the bureaucracy can’t tol- has reported, the National Treasury it became the avatar of the arbitrary and erate a similar diversity of opinions and Employees Union, which represents amorphous power of the “fourth branch.” survive. To the bureaucracy, support for 150,000 federal employees across 31 The ICC was just the beginning, of smaller government, deregulation, con- agencies (including the Internal Reve - course, and the regulatory state wouldn’t solidation, and budget cuts portends nue Service), spent millions through its go into high gear until the fecund years death. Under the current American polit- PACs—more than 96 percent of it to of FDR’s “alphabet soup” regime. But ical configuration, electing Democrats is help elect Democrats. Zoom out further the near simultaneity of civil-service the surest way to avoid all that. And so still and you find that the American reform and the Interstate Commerce Act most bureaucrats lean Democratic (40 Federation of Government Employees, is none theless striking: At the same time percent of unionized federal employees, with 650,000 members the largest civil- as the government created a new class of as opposed to just 27 percent who lean ian federal-employee union, spent 93 bureaucratic administrators who were Republican, according to Gallup), and percent of its money last cycle on by design largely beyond the checks of the bureaucracy, through its unions and Democrats. democratic politics, it began investing This—and not some connection to the this class with great power. White House that may or may not exist— Over time the relationship between the is why the IRS targeting of conservative elected and bureaucratic Washingtons groups is such a big deal. Presidents have started to look like old-fashioned patron- term limits, and their appointees can be age. The bureaucrats—as both a newly fired, or pressured to resign, or im- formed voting bloc and, after they orga- peached, in the regular course of con- nized, a major source of campaign contri- tentious politics. But try getting rid of butions—helped elect politicians friendly Lois Lerner, the IRS middle manager to the regulatory state, and those politi- who oversaw the targeting, and who has cians protected and entrenched the bu - a history of going after conservatives that reaucracy. “It’s from the Federal Department of Diversity—we dates back decades, to her years at the The bureaucrats’ political power has have to stop birds of a feather from flocking together.” FCC. Lerner is protected by civil-service

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laws, and is currently on paid leave while today our magnificent president un - her superiors contemplate the potentially leashed a campaign against our domes- years-long process of firing her. Bureaucratic tic enemies! It was soooooo Game of The phrase is now well worn, but the Thrones!!!!!!” “real scandal” of Lois Lerner, the real Rot So, to follow the currently fashion- scandal of the IRS, is that we are in large able political analogy to its conclusion, part governed by a politically insulated if the fish rots from the head down, the fourth branch of government peopled by A government, like a fish, strategy is simple: Go for the head. The expansionary statists in war and peace, decays from its guts bureaucrats at the IRS and the De - boom and recession, no matter who con- partment of Justice must have received trols the Congress, the Courts, or the orders from somewhere, right? Why BY ROB LONG White house. not scour the top for signs of rot? This So what’s the answer? Some conserva- could really work for us. We could tives have talked about abolishing the he fish rots from the head finally get this guy! IRS and starting from scratch. But that down” is a popular saying here’s the problem: Fish do not rot won’t solve the problem; as long as there these days, mostly among from the head down. The fish head, in is a Sixteenth Amendment and a govern- ‘T people who do not fish fact, is mostly bone, and its two glassy ment hungry enough to use it, there will and who, apparently, have never met a eyes are often the best way to tell if it’s need to be a massive, and intrusive, tax- fish. fresh or not. A fresh fish on the ice in collecting apparatus staffed according “The fish rots from the head down,” the market has clear eyes, shiny and to the existing civil-service rules. That’s say folks on television and in agitated odor-free skin, and lips clamped to - why the real solution might be repealing blog posts about the recent cascade of gether in a slightly confused smile. A the Pendleton Act altogether. scandals that have beset the Obama little like certain presidents I could But won’t that bring back the bad old administration. The scandals are all of mention these days, in fact. A really days of nepotism, cronyism, and rascal- a sneaky piece, too: lying, spying, fresh fish should look like you just ism in federal hiring? Won’t it give presi- cover-upping, political strong-arming. woke it up. dents the power to dole out every Podunk They all have been minimized by a A fish, when it rots, rots from the clerkship and entry-level analyst job as in- lickspittle press that looks the other guts. Which is why—as any amateur or kind payment? The short answer is that way, and at least two of them—the professional fisherman will tell you— the same inter-branch gotcha-ism that ani- flagrant persecution of conservative pretty much the first thing you’ve got mates the Darrell Issas of the world— political groups by the IRS and the to do when you catch a fish is take a motivated by a healthy mix of official ePA—manage a kind of paranoid’s very sharp knife, slide it along the duty and partisan opportunism—would trifecta: They involve powerful and underside of the fish’s belly, make a no doubt check executives from the worst unregulated government agencies act- slit about the length of the entire body, abuses. And the sheer, awesome size of ing on the implicit orders of a furiously and yank out the guts in a mess of the federal bureaucracy, along with the partisan White house against a collec- blood and maw and organ and intes- need to fill many jobs with technically tion of citizen-activists who already tine. proficient specialists (such as lawyers think the government is out to get So while Republicans watch the and accountants), would disincentivize them. tick-tock of Obama’s softening popu- executives from micromanaging where Turns out, they’re right! larity with glee, and while congress- there is little hope for political return. Nor So you don’t have to be part of the men puff and posture for the 2014 would undoing Pendleton expose govern- totally-off-your-meds crowd to imag- midterms—in other words, while they ment employees to some hobbesian state ine a meeting in the Oval Office with focus on the milky-eyed head of the of nature, for the just-stated reasons, and all of that lefty eye-rolling and sneering fish—the guts of the federal bureau- because they would still be protected by at the wingnuts—Sure, audit the homo- cracy just get ranker. And larger. And the employment-largely-at-will laws that phobes! Wiretap those Fox Newsies! more powerful. Americans working in the private sector Lie on the Sunday talk shows!—and The steaming and stinking guts of the currently enjoy. then, probably, an eruption of evil federal bureaucracy—take your pick: On the other hand, the upside is real. In cackles and President Obama slowly IRS thugs, ePA investigators, DOJ a world without Pendleton, Lois Lerner’s stroking a white cat, Bond-villain lawyers—are more powerful than who- cubicle would be cleared. There would be style. ever sits at the head. Looking for some actual turnover, and perhaps even a little “The fish rots from the head down” kind of actionable directive from the dynamism, in the federal work force, is what a lot of folks on our side are Oval Office is a classic Republican instead of the kind of job security that saying, hoping that an e-mail or direc- fever dream. Republicans think that even means you’re more likely to die than get tive will turn up in the president’s after 60 years of unbridled growth of the fired in some cabinet departments. And, handwriting—“Need to wiretap James federal regulatory state it still really not least, the effective one-party rule Rosen ASAP. Must intimidate press. matters who sits in the Oval Office. that has prevailed in the bureaucracy Also: Tell IRS no more Tea Party! They think that if they swap heads, the for decades—even centuries—would be Thnx. BO”—or that some young intern fish won’t rot. ended at last. kept a detailed diary—“Dear Diary, That’s the problem with Republicans:

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They’re so . . . Republican. They read where GOP presidential nominees got books about management and Six creamed. Sigma; they talk to CEOs and business- Rand Paul’s The story then comes to the present men; they think that if you put the right day. Look around you, they say. You all guy in charge, good things will happen. Party know people just like yourselves: edu- The other side knows that’s nonsense. cated; hard workers; makers, not tak- They know that the trick isn’t to manage It wouldn’t offer much ers. They like low taxes and smaller the fish. The trick is to let it get huge. government. But your friends think Let the guts expand and grow and be- to conservatives conservatives are weird. Why? Be- come an unmanageable tangle. And cause they are turned off by the GOP’s when you’re standing on the edge of the BY HENRY OLSEN fondness for foreign military adventure pier with a handful of fish entrails, it’s and disagreements on gay marriage. pretty clear that’s a winning strategy, Re move those barriers and—voilà!— because you’re never really sure you n The Lord of the Rings, Boromir, an instant new voting bloc appears, just got it all. heir to the forces of the ancient as it did for the blue-state GOP gover- Barack Obama may have accelerat- land of Gondor, urges his allies to nors. ed the Bigfoot behavior of certain fed- I use the One Ring to smite the evil It’s true that in deep-blue states, eral agencies, of course. A federal Sauron. Apparently Rand Paul, heir to virtually every Republican who wins bureaucracy such as the IRS or the the ancient forces of Ron Paul, is famil- state wide is pro-choice and socially mod- EPA, both of which are stocked with iar with this tale. He has made news erate—although new Jersey’s Chris partisan Democrats, is a lot more likely recently by urging his allies to use what Christie stands out as a counter - to abuse its power with a friendly par- he considers to be the political equiva- example. But it is also true that in the tisan in the White House. But the fed- lent of the One Ring, which, like its swing “purple” states, pro-life Re pub li - eral reach has grown pretty much fantasy cousin, will bring certain vic- cans often win for governor. Iowa, unchecked since, say, the Great So- tory. Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Penn - ciety movement of Lyndon Johnson, That Ring is “libertarian Re pub li can - syl va nia are all currently run by social- which began in 1964. After a brief— ism.” If only conservatives were more ly conservative GOP governors, and and, arguably, inconsequential—slow- tolerant on social issues and less sup- the most recent GOP governors of Col - down during the Reagan years, it portive of U.S. military involvement o ra do, Minne sota, and new Hampshire picked up its usual pace. Those of us overseas, Paul argues, they could win held similar views. Returns from the on the right who clutch desperately to elections in blue states and nationwide. last three presidential elections show past victories—the Reagan adminis- “I don’t think we need to dilute our that it will be much easier to win these tration, the 1994 House Republican message of low taxes, less regulation, purple states than the deep-blue ones. takeover—keep mistaking the head and balanced budgets to win in Cal i for- So doesn’t it make more sense to copy for the guts. We talk about “cuts” that nia,” he recently said at the Reagan Li- the winning strategies of their gover- aren’t cuts and make allowances for bra ry. nors? this or that new regulatory function. In LOTR, the reader knows Boromir More important from a libertarian- We add complexity to the tax code. We is offering his friends a fatal temptation. Republican perspective, none of the allow intelligence-gathering outfits to But those who listen to Paul have no deep-blue-state governors was a model collect reams of data. And then, when such advance knowledge regarding his of the libertarian fiscal policy preferred the tiny agents within the complicated advice. Is he right, or is this too good to by Paul and his backers. Romney and overgrown innards of those be true? pushed through Romneycare; Schwarz - departments go rogue—with audits or Let’s begin with the case that liber- en eg ger turned to the left after two EPA investigations or data leaks or tarian Republicans make, a tale that years in office, going so far as to hire whatever—we treat it like it’s a politi- often starts with blue-state governors. the former executive director of the cal problem. Like it’s a leadership They remind us that states well outside state’s Democratic party to be his chief issue. the reach of GOP presidential candi- of staff. Pataki, Romney, Schwarz en eg - The other side never makes that mis- dates have in the last decade elected ger, and others championed regional take. Rain or shine, whichever head is pro-choice Republicans as governors. greenhouse-gas-limitation pacts to on the fish, Reagan or Obama, the guts Re publicans such as Arnold Schwarz - combat global warming. none cut gov- of the federal fish keep growing. More en eg ger, George Pataki, Mitt Romney, ernment by anywhere near as much as lawyers, more regulators, more audi- and Linda Lingle have won statewide Senator Paul suggests in his proposed tors—more laws, more regulations, in California, new York, Mas sa chu - budget. more taxes. Our side looks at the head setts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Ver- For these governors, “fiscal conser- of the fish and thinks, If that’s our mont, and even Barack Obama’s Ha waii. vatism” meant running a tight ship head, we’re winning! Their side focuses All ran as fiscal conservatives and within the prevailing center-left con- on the powerful part that stinks. They social moderates, and all succeeded sensus in their states. If they provide a know the truth: The head doesn’t mat- model of a “libertarian Republican” ter. Because in the end, the head is just Mr. Olsen is a vice president of the American future, their fiscal apostasy must be cat food. Enterprise Institute. accounted for.

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That’s where the poll data come in. A Democrats; Libertarians don’t like him, percent). And they are more likely than careful look at a recent major poll, the and vote Republican. The reason is that Lib er tar i ans to support gun control (54 2011 Beyond Red vs. Blue analysis Post-Moderns agree with the modern percent vs. 18 percent) and government from the Pew Research Center, ex - Democratic party on a range of matters efforts to fight childhood obesity (62 plains why these governors sound like well beyond social issues. percent vs. 24 percent). neo-libertarians but act like regular lib- Post-Moderns like unions (50 per- Compare their beliefs with those of erals. cent favorable), Obamacare (only 16 Senator Paul. He proposes dramatically The Pew poll broke down the elec- percent think it will have mainly a bad cutting major entitlement programs. He torate into component groups based on effect), and the U.N. (60 percent favor- proposes eliminating foreign aid. He respondents’ demographics and politi- able). They are much less likely than champions fossil-fuel production. He is, cal attitudes. Two of the eight voting Lib er tar i ans to say government should in the Pew typology, a typical Lib er tar i an. groups they identified help to explain be smaller (85 percent vs. 55 percent), He has little in common with the Post- why libertarians often think there is an and are significantly less likely to say Moderns he seeks to attract. easily reachable new constituency for that cutting major programs should be These differences follow through to limited government. These two groups the main way to cut the deficit (47 per- the social issues. Senator Paul is pro- were called Post-Moderns and Liber tar - cent vs. 8 percent). They much prefer life. He favors giving states the authority i ans. Libertarians make up 10 percent of expanding alternative energy (79 per- to define marriage as they want, but he registered voters, while Post-Moderns cent) to producing more fossil fuels (13 does not favor same-sex marriage. He is make up 14 percent. Libertarians and Post-Moderns are very similar demographically. They are nearly identical in terms of college completion (37 and 41 percent, respec- Finally, an AFFORDABLE tively), income (39 and 34 percent have incomes above $75,000), being em - solution for anyone ployed (52 and 51 percent), and being a parent (32 and 34 percent). Both groups having difﬁ culty with are also very likely to live in cities or suburbs, and they are among the least the stairs! religious groups in the survey (only Solid Liberals are less religious than “Our Acorn Stairlift has made such an these two groups). Age is the only sig- amazing difference in our lives. I wish nificant demographic difference be - we had called sooner!” - Susan K. tween them: Post-Moderns are mainly under 50, while Libertarians are evenly split. The world leader They also share many important beliefs and political attributes. They in stairlifts strongly believe that Americans can still Buy direct from the advance through hard work, and they manufacturer and save are the groups likeliest to believe that Wall Street helps America more than it The most trusted name hurts. While Libertarians are a bit more in the industry socially conservative than Post-Moderns, probably because they are older, Post- Works on ALL types Moderns fit the libertarian-Republican of staircases pattern: Over three-quarters favor gay marriage, and similar numbers support legal abortion and believe illegal immigrants should have a path to citizenship. FREE INFORMATION Both groups also perceive themselves KIT AND DVD! as politically independent: Over 60 percent of each group describe themselves that way. If one looked only at these character- CALL US TOLL-FREE NOW istics, one could easily believe the libertarian-Republican fable. But the 1-877-242-4186 two groups are very different when it visit us online: www.acornstairlifts.com/nr comes to current politics. Post-Moderns overwhelmingly like Obama and the

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fromuntaxedonlinesales. TheCourt’srulingsleavethedoor Federalism. opentocongressionalactionthatgives thestatesthepowertocollecttaxesfrom com out-of-statesellers,andtheSenatehas passedabilltodojustthatbyawide margin.Manysenatorsinbothparties An Internet sales tax should foster arguethatthebillgetsridofanunfair competition among states taxbreakand,bygivingthestatesmore authority,promotesfederalism. BY RAMESH PONNURU The case for tax neutrality—for a levelplayingfieldbetweenonlineand he debateoverInternetsales offlinesales—wasstrongenoughtoper- taxes,whenalldistractionsare suade no less a foe of statism than strippedaway,isn’taboutthe WilliamF.BuckleyJr.thatInternetpur- T Internetortaxes.Itisabout chasesshouldbetaxed.Supportersof federalism.Confusionoverwhatfeder- thebillhaveregularlyremindedconser- alismmeansexplainstheconservative vativesofthefact. divisionthedebatehascreated. It is, however, impossible to have Theimmediatequestioniswhetherto fullyfairorneutralsalestaxessolongas supportoropposeabilltomakeiteasier statesareindependentofoneanother. forstatestotaxsalesmadeoverthe Underthebill,aMassachusettsresident Internet.Alotofconservativesjustneed whobuysaTVonlinewillpayMassa- toheartheword“tax”toknowthey’re chusettssalestaxes.Ifhegoesoverthe againstit.Otherssaythatfairnessand bordertoNewhampshire,whichlacks federalismbothcounselinfavoroflet- asalestax,andbringshisTVhome,he tingstatestaxInternetsalesthesame won’t.Sotaxeswillgivehimanartifi- waytheytaxsalesinstores.Manycon- cialreasontobuyfromthebrick-and- servativeeconomistswhosupportthe mortarstore. billaddthattaxingInternetsaleswould Online retailers have complained maketheeconomymoreefficient. aboutthecompliancecostsentailedin Thoseeconomists,andtheotherpro- makingthemfigureoutwhattaxestheir opposedtoguncontrol.Andhisviews ponentsoftheInternet-taxbill,arenot customersowetotheirhomejurisdic- onimmigrationarefarfromthoseheld wrong about fairness or efficiency. tions.Onewaythebilladdressesthat byPost-Moderns.Inshort,onarangeof They’rewrongaboutfederalism,though, concernisbyexemptingallcompanies issues,SenatorPaulhimselfisnotthe and that’s enough to invalidate their withrevenuesunder$1millionannually. sortofpersonthatPost-Modernswill case. Thatconcession,however,introduces flockto. Stategovernments,intheory,already anotherdistortion:Taxcollectionwill Thesedatado,however,explainwhy tax sales over the Internet. In most favorsmallcompaniesoverlarge. pro-choicedeep-blue-stateGOPgover- places,peoplewhobuyproductsonline Thereisanalternativewaytolevel norsactthewaytheydo.Thestatesthey aresupposedtopaytheirstate’ssales theplayingfieldbetweenonlineand governhavemuchhigherconcentrations taxes.Veryfewpeopledoso,though, offline sales, but it has not received ofPost-Modernvotersthandotherestof unlesstheonlinesellercollectsthetaxes muchattentioninthedebateoverthe thecountry.Thesegovernors’brandof andsendsthemtothestategovernment bill.TheInternetsalestaxbeingpro- pro-wealth-creation,pro-redistributive- where the buyer lives. Many people posedis“destinationbased”:Thestate economics politics is precisely what don’tevenknowthey’resupposedto wherethecustomerlivesandusesthe these voters want. The governors’ to payatax. productistheonethatleviesthetax.The enact the sort of economic policies TheSupremeCourthasheldthata taxonInternetsales,andonsalesgener- favoredbylibertarianswasnotabetrayal statemaynotforceacompanytocollect ally,couldinsteadbe“originbased”: oftheirfollowers;itwasafaithfulimple- andremitthesalestaxesunlessithasa Thetaxcould,thatis,bepaidtothestate mentationoftheirconstituents’beliefs. physicalpresenceinthestate.Soprod- wherethesellerislocated. TheheroesinLOTR resistBoromir’s uctssoldinstoresaretaxedwhileprod- Nothing would change under this blandishments. Guided by Gandalf’s uctssoldonlinetypicallyaren’t.That’s regimeforabrick-and-mortarstore:The wisdom and Frodo’s courage, they theunfairnessthatbrick-and-mortar storewouldcontinuetopaythesales-tax JOHN FLAVELL / defeatSauronbytakingthelessobvious, storescomplainabout.It’salsotheinef- rateoftheplaceinwhichitislocated, butultimatelymoresuccessful,course. ficiencythatbotherstheeconomists:It anditwouldcontinuenottomatterwhat ConservativeRepublicanslookingfor givespeopleareasontofavoronline statethecustomercamefrom.Online THE INDEPENDENT

/ politicalheroismandsuccesswouldbe sellerseveniftheydon’tsupplythebest sellerswouldhavetopaythetaxbased wellservedbyfollowingtheirexample productatthelowestpre-taxprice.State onwheretheyortheirwarehousesare

AP PHOTO andignoringPaul’spyrite. governmentsbemoanthelostrevenue located,alsowithnoregardtowherethe

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customer lives. cause state governments would not be residents. That Congress has the power Both the origin-based and the interested in directly billing customers. to accommodate this preference does destination-based sales-tax regimes The political costs would be too great. not mean it should exercise it. would be neutral between online and In-state customers, who vote on who Ideally, Congress would set a national offline sales, but the origin-based regime runs the state governments, would rebel. standard of origin-based sales taxes. would have two advantages. Its enforce- The federal legislation the state govern- That’s politically impossible for a dif- ment costs would be much lower: It ments want lets them get the money ferent reason than aggressive state en - would not make every online retailer without incurring that political cost, by forcement against customers: The state charge all of the different sales-tax rates forcing out-of-state sellers to be the col- governments don’t want to live with that apply throughout the country. And it lectors. By leaving that cost in place, the that degree of tax competition. The would generate competitive pressure on current rule (that states can’t make out- second-best solution is the status quo, state governments to keep sales taxes low. of-state sellers pay taxes) imposes a in which states have the power to make Offline sales taxes already involve constraint on the rapacity of the states. companies collect sales taxes only if some competition among states. Massa - The merits of the federal legislation they are within the states’ jurisdiction. chusetts cannot hike its sales taxes too under consideration stand or fall on the That arrangement leaves more space much without people in the area making proposition that eliminating that politi- for competition among governments, more of their purchases elsewhere, and cal inconvenience for the state govern- and any unfairness is a result of the without companies making location ments is in the national interest. state governments’ own political deci- decisions accordingly. Destination- The Supreme Court’s rulings about sions. based taxation of the Internet would the limits of state governments’ author- To see what’s wrong with the Internet- largely eliminate such competition in ity to collect taxes—that it runs no far- sales-tax bill before Congress requires online commerce: The only way to es- ther than their borders—track with the looking at the logic of the Founders’ cape a state’s tax, however onerous, Founders’ deep concern about those design. That design was based more on would be for the customer to move. governments’ exploitation of interstate suspicion of the state governments than To escape an origin-based tax, he commerce. The states prefer destination- romanticism about them. It sought to would merely have to buy from a sup- based taxes to origin-based taxes largely maximize choice, competition, and ac - plier located in a low-sales-tax state— because the former let them get a piece countability. It emphatically did not seek and online sellers would, all else equal, of transactions involving out-of-state to maximize the prerogatives of states. want to be located there. Because all else sellers and the latter confine the enforce- Neither should would-be federalists isn’t ever equal, sales-tax rates would not ment costs of their tax regimes to their today. converge to zero. It stands to reason that they would nonetheless be lower than they would in the absence of the relatively robust competition of an origin- based system. This advantage of an origin-based system is, for state governments, a dis- advantage: It constrains their ability to raise revenue. That’s why there is no organized campaign for origin-based sales taxes as a way of fixing the distor- tion caused by states’ not collecting taxes on Internet purchases. There is yet another alternative open to the states, though, if they want the additional revenue and want to do right by offline sellers. The state governments could make out-of-state companies tell them what their residents are buying as a condition of letting them ship products into the state, and then bill the residents for sales taxes due. (They could set up a system that allowed the residents to be billed while protecting their privacy by, for example, not itemizing their purchases.) From an economic point of view, taxing sales this way would be almost identical to making out-of-state sellers collect and remit the taxes. This alternative is a non-starter be -

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nasty instance occurred in 1996, when a Here is another slur that Mike Free man magazine called “Emerge” had a disgust- and CBS Sports may like to add to their Uncles, ing caricature of Justice Thomas on its repertoires: “apple.” An Indian you disap- cover, with the words “Uncle Thomas: prove of—who’s not “Indian” enough for Fruits, and Lawn Jockey for the Far Right.” you—is an apple. Red on the outside, Now and again, someone will protest white on the inside. Get it? They’ll also Nuts that “Uncle Tom” ought not to be a put- want to know, and use, “coconut.” That’s down, because the character in Har ri et the slur for a His pan ic deemed “brown on A look at some American slurs Beecher Stowe’s momentous novel of the outside, white on the inside.” Linda 1852 is noble. Fans of The Jef fer sons, Chavez, the conservative writer, has faced BY JAY NORDLINGER that clever and racially interesting sit- violence in her life: a dead cat left on her com, may remember an episode in which doorstep; a knife flicked in her face; death RITING for the website of Louise’s uncle Ward comes to visit. Ward threats over the phone. She has also had CBS Sports, Mike Freeman works as a butler, and George couldn’t coconuts thrown at her. In Canada—and, blasted the nickname of the be ruder to him. He calls him “Uncle to a degree, in the United States—people W Washington, D.C., football team: the Redskins. He also blasted those who support or tolerate the name. He had As a rule, we bow to the opinions of a particular blast for one group of people. people belonging to minority “Sure, there will be some Uncle Tom American Indians who will say ‘Red - groups, except when their opinions skins’ honors them,” he wrote, “just like there were some Uncle Tom blacks who conflict with our own. once didn’t mind being called ‘colored.’” As a rule, we bow to the opinions of Tom,” to his face. Finally, Ward sits him of South Asian origin are sometimes people belonging to minority groups, down and gives him a lecture on Josiah called “coconuts.” Their sin is to integrate except when their opinions conflict with Hen son, sometimes thought to be the themselves into North Amer i can culture, our own. I think of a case in a town I’m “real Uncle Tom.” Ward’s climactic lines or simply think for themselves. familiar with, Ypsilanti, Mich. There, the are, “He was a brave man, a great leader. Then you have “bananas”—the slur for Eastern Michigan University teams were And I’ll tell you something else, George: people of East Asian origin who are called the Hu rons, after an Indian people. I’d never call you an ‘Uncle Tom.’” The deemed . . . well, you know. In Hong (There is also a Huron River, a Huron audience whoops. Kong, those who favored continued Brit - High School, etc.) Most of the real-live Well, too late: Just as “decimate” can ish rule, rather than rule by Beijing, were Hu rons who could be found supported never mean one in ten, and “awful” can called “bananas.” Here in Amer i ca, the the nickname. But that was the “wrong” never mean “inspiring awe,” “Uncle more “ethnically conscious” Asians de - opinion, so the nickname had to go, and Tom” can never mean anything but a self- ride and bully the more assimilated as EMU became the Eagles. denigrating, toadying black. “bananas.” Those who are half Asian, Freeman’s slur of choice was “Uncle Do you remember “Aunt Tom”? It was half white have been known to question Tom Indians,” but there is a better slur, a term used by feminists to denote a whether they are “bananas” or “eggs” one he may not know: “Uncle Tom a- woman who was reluctant or unwilling (white on the outside . . .). Any chance hawk.” It was used by such militants as to go along with their program. Betty they could be just people, or them- Russell Means and AIM (the American Friedan liked to use this term. In a debate selves? Indian Movement)—the kind of people with Phyllis Schlafly, her conservative There is one fruit that is neither ra cial who took over and trashed the Bureau nemesis, she said, “I’d like to burn you at nor ethnic but political and ideological: of Indian Affairs in 1972. You still hear the stake!” (Friedan can at least be cred- “watermelons.” These are certain envi- it today, mainly in Indian country. A guy ited with candor.) “I consider you a traitor ronmentalists who are “green on the out- who may want to leave the rez, immerse to your sex. I consider you an Aunt Tom.” side, red on the inside.” In my view, a himself in the broader world, and get on There was an echo of this attitude in 2008, political term of this type is far different with life could be called an “Uncle when Sarah Palin was the GOP vice- from the racial and ethnic terms—far Tomahawk.” presidential nominee. A bumper sticker more benign. I also believe “RINO” is The term, obviously, derives from appeared that said, “She’s not a woman, different from “LINO.” More about those “Uncle Tom,” one of the nastiest names in she’s a Republican.” terms in just a second. the whole, horrible American lexicon. People use “Aunt Tom” in a racial way One of the more galling things about Any conservative black is liable to be too—as the feminine (to be distinguished the racial-and-ethnic-slur business is tagged with it. As luck would have it, two from “feminist”) equivalent of “Uncle this: Not just your own, but people out- of the most prominent black conser - Tom.” When Mia Love, the Utah Re - side your race or ethnicity may tar you as vatives have “Thomas” in their names: publican, spoke at the GOP convention insufficiently loyal to your group. A few Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court jus- last year, the Internet was stinking with years ago, I asked Tom Sowell, “Who tice, and Thomas Sowell, the writer. Some such terms as “house nigger,” “picka - has treated you worse in your life? Other who hate them can’t resist. An especially ninny,” and, yes, “Aunt Tom.” black people or white liberals?” He

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shook his head, chuckled, and said, “It’s Speaking of Cuban Americans, you for some “progressives.” For example, too close to call.” may remember an affirmative-action case “he plays golf.” A week and a half later, Which brings me to Aswini An bur a jan, of a decade ago, Grutter v. Bol lin ger. It Lawrence O’Donnell, an MSNBC host, who recently called Ted Cruz a LINO. concerned the University of Michi gan said that it was white racism to mention “LINO” is a takeoff from “RINO,” which Law School. On that campus, the question Obama’s affinity for golf. Why? Because means “Republican in Name Only.” arose, “Who qualifies as a Hispanic?” that is to associate the president with “the “LINO” means “Latino in Name Only.” One professor said that Cu ban Americans lifestyle of Ti ger Woods.” (O’Donnell Anburajan is a journalist who works for should be counted out, because they vote was not alluding to a record-setting golf BuzzFeed and WNYC (the National Republican. career, but to adultery.) A cigar may be a Public Radio outlet in New York City). To my knowledge, Wanda Sykes, the cigar, and golf may be golf—but not to Cruz, as you know, is the new Repub- comedian, has cracked one good joke in the hard-bitten racialist. lican senator from Texas. According to her life. It was at the beginning of Barack “Sticks and stones may break my Señorita An bur a jan, or so it seems, you Obama’s presidency, in Oba ma’s pres- bones / But words will never hurt me.” have to be a left-winger in the mold of ence. “The first black president—proud to The problem with this pleasant ditty is La Raza or MALDEF to qualify as a be able to say that,” she began. “That’s that it isn’t necessarily true. Words may Latino. (I have named two prominent unless you screw up. And then it’s going hurt as much as sticks and stones, or pressure groups.) Cruz is half Cuban, to be, ‘What’s up with the half-white more. It’s hard enough to navigate true. His father was a refugee. The sena- guy, huh? Who voted for the mulatto, through life without racial and ethnic tor makes no bones about this. In fact, he what the hell?’” The Obama presidency pressure and condemnation. Without emphasizes it, when the occasion war- has revealed much racial strangeness in having to be “black” enough, “His pan ic” rants. But he is also a conservative, and America—and revealed it redundantly, to enough, or whatever. Furthermore, it’s as American as apple pie—or as Texan be sure. Take merely the matter of golf. possible to make arguments without as a steak. And this, the racialists can’t Last summer, Bill Maher, another co - name-calling. When it comes to the stand. median, said that Obama was “too white” Washington Redskins, I think I agree with Mike Freeman of CBS: The label, and logo, should probably go. (I be lieve “Red skins,” as a name, is different in character from “Hurons,” “Sem i noles,” and the like.) But when he says “Uncle Tom Indians,” I want to stand up and sing the fight song, “Hail to the Red skins.” There is a name in America that covers a multitude of people—people of all types, biologically and mentally: “Ameri can.” When Linda Chavez was a schoolgirl, a teacher asked her, “What nationality are you?” Later, Linda told her mother about this. Her mother said, “I hope you said ‘American.’” Linda, being Linda, had. In 1997, Ward Connerly, the president of the American Civil Rights In sti tute, was interviewed by a New York Times reporter over the phone. The reporter said, “What are you?” Connerly said, “I am an American.” The reporter said, “No, no, no! What are you?” Con ner ly said, “Yes, yes, yes! I am an American.” The reporter continued, “That is not what I mean. I was told that you are African American. Are you ashamed to be African American?” “No,” said Connerly, “I’m just proud to be an American.” Then there was the moment at the end of last year’s presidential campaign, when Vice President Joe Biden said to a man in Sarasota, “Are you Indian?” The man MOLLY RILEY

responded, “Amer i can!” Oddly enough, / that word can sound gloriously subver-

Senator Ted Cruz: ‘as American as apple pie,’ ‘as Texan as a steak’ sive. AP PHOTO

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Men’s Rising Earnings Tales of decline rely on flawed methodology

BY SCOTT WINSHIP

SSeSSiNg the severity of economic problems often Bruce Mey er, and Notre Dame’s James Sullivan—all of requires choosing between different sets of analyses whose work has recently been bolstered by Congressional that reach disparate conclusions. While much lip Budget Office estimates—it has become irrefutably clear that, A service is paid to “evidence-based policymaking,” when properly measured, middle-class incomes actually rose all too often it works the other way in Washington, with by at least 30 percent between 1979 and 2007 (both business- problematic “facts” serving as the basis for “policy-based cycle peaks), and possibly by 40 percent or more. The Census evidence-making,” in the phrase of my colleague Richard Bureau figures indicate only a 15 percent rise between these Reeves. instead of trying to discern why different analyses years. yield different conclusions, and whether one is better supported Faced with the overwhelming evidence that household than another, partisans simply pick the results that support incomes have risen significantly, some observers have tried to their beliefs. Sometimes the evidence really is unclear, and rescue the theory of middle-class decline by pointing to evi- resolving the question requires further research. But other dence that earnings have fallen sharply among working-age times, it is clear enough, and those committed to evidence- men. Thus, the story goes, rising household income simply re - based policymaking should favor some conclusions over flects the fact that women have gone to work in response to others. the deterioration of their husbands’ standing. Consider the state of the middle class. According to pub- There are a number of problems with this claim, the main lished Census Bureau figures, median household income one being that, across the developed world, rising employ- (adjusted for inflation) was just 5 percent higher in 2011 than ment among women has coincided with their rising educa- in 1979. But thanks to economists such as Cornell Uni - tional attainment, as well as deferred marriage, delayed versity’s Richard Burkhauser, the University of Chicago’s childbearing, and lower fertility. This suggests that women today work more than their 1950s counterparts for reasons

Mr. Winship is a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. unrelated to men’s earnings. Less appreciated is that middle- DARREN GYGI

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class men are doing better than the most widely cited statistics and using the CPI-U—yields the widely cited estimate that indicate. median male earnings declined by 28 percent from 1969 to Commentators often cite estimates from Michael Green- 2009. Using the same method, I find a decline of 26 percent. stone and Adam Looney, my colleagues at the Brookings In - The small difference likely reflects the fact that the Hamilton sti tu tion’s Hamilton Project. Greenstone and Looney, whose Project figures include institutionalized men, who are not work I generally admire, argue that the rise in labor-force interviewed in the CPS. Extending the trend beyond 2009, my dropout among working-age men masks frightful trends. Peo - figures show a decline of 28 percent from 1969 to 2011. ple who spend the entire year jobless are not usually included in earnings statistics, but if these men, most of whom are less skilled, did work, they would be factored into the Census Bu - UT the Hamilton Project’s assumption is far too reau’s Current Population Survey (CPS). The result would be sweeping. Among the non-working men it adds in, not the stagnation in male earnings seen in Census Bureau fig- B who are assumed to be below-median earners, are ures, but sharp decline. Taking this into account, the Ham ilton retirees and a smaller group including students, stay-at-home Project reports that median earnings among men ages 25 to 64 dads, armed-forces members who live in barracks, and men declined by an astonishing 28 percent from 1969 to 2009. living in mental institutions or residential-care facilities. The To be sure, measures of earnings trends ought to account for retirees, in particular, were a growing group over the period in labor-force dropout. But the conclusion that men’s earnings question, as the typical age at retirement moved steadily have plummeted stems from inappropriate methodological downward. It makes no sense to assume that all or even a decisions and inadequate contextualization. Two such deci- majority of retirees or students would have earnings below the sions were especially consequential. The first was to rely on a median if they were in the work force. The remaining groups cost-of-living adjustment that results in an understatement of should be thought of as mostly outside the population of interest real-earnings growth. The Census Bureau has used an infla- in these analyses. In short, the Hamilton Project had a valu- tion adjustment known as the CPI-U-RS since 2001, but the able insight about invisible men, but instead of throwing in all Hamilton Project analyses use the CPI-U. Though widely non-workers as below-median earners, it should have included employed in policymaking to update benefits and tax brackets only a subset. for cost-of-living increases, the CPI-U is known to overstate If we accept the Hamilton Project’s correction but follow inflation. (This problem lies behind the push in Wash ing ton to the Census Bureau’s practice of using the CPI-U-RS, the 28 switch to the chained CPI, yet another measure, in updating percent decline through 2011 shrinks to 19 percent. If we then Social Security benefits and tax brackets. Doing so would include as below-median earners only those non-working men cause benefits and tax brackets to rise more slowly over time, who report being sick or disabled and those who report not reducing government spending and increasing revenue.) For being able to find work, median earnings fall just 12 percent. analyzing income trends, the CPI-U was abandoned over 20 Finally, if we compare the peak year of 1969 with 2007, years ago by not only the Census Bureau, but also the Bureau another peak year, rather than with 2011, a year in which the of Labor Statistics and the Congressional Budget Office. economy was recovering from the worst downturn since the Using the CPI-U-RS yields a 1 percent decline between 1969 Great Depression, there is no decline at all. and 2011 in median earnings among men ages 25 to 64, The picture gets brighter as the estimates are further re - whereas using the CPI-U results in a 12 percent decline. fined. (I will keep focusing on men ages 25 to 64, including In addition, the Hamilton Project counts all non-working non-working men if they were sick or disabled or could not men between 25 and 64 as below-median earners. This is a find work.) One change that has affected earnings statistics in large group; according to the CPS, the share of men between recent decades is rising immigration. As the number of immi- 25 and 64 who went an entire year without working rose from grants has increased, so too has the share of the work force 5 percent in 1969 to 18 percent in 2011. The share who reported with limited formal education. These workers are undoubtedly being unable to find work rose from essentially zero to 3 per- better off than they would be in their home countries, but if we cent, while the share who did no work and reported being sick add more and more below-median earners to the economy, we or disabled rose from 3 percent to 8 percent. necessarily end up with a lower median. This rise in reported sickness and disability mirrors an It is impossible to identify immigrants in the CPS before increase over the years in receipt of federal disability bene- 1993, but we can identify Hispanics as early as 1970. Other fits—an increase that has not been accompanied by any dete- Census Bureau data indicate that the foreign-born rose from 5 rioration in the health of workers. As Burkhauser and MIT percent of the population in 1970 to 13 percent by 2007. If we economist David Autor have shown, this increase has basically exclude Hispanics, however, the increase is only from about 4 constituted a rise in welfare receipt among men who would percent to 7 percent. This is surely an imperfect adjustment have worked in the past. The Hamilton Project is right that for rising immigration, but it gives a decent picture of what an conventional figures should be corrected to account for these ideal adjustment would show. disappearing men, who, it may be assumed, are overwhelm- Assuming the 1969-to-1970 earnings change was the same ingly lower-skilled and would therefore bring median earn- as that for men in general, median earnings among non- ings down if they worked. More to the point, to the extent Hispanic men declined from 1969 to 2011 not by 12 percent these men have become more numerous, their inclusion in the but by 8 percent. From 1969 to 2007, they rose by 2 percent. data would cause the trend in median earnings to look worse Among Hispanic men, earnings fell by 24 percent through than published Census Bureau figures convey. 2011, but this decline is simply a more dramatic demonstra- Counting all non-working men as below-median earners— tion of how rising immigration pulls the median downward.

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Among non-hispanics, the earnings increase for blacks was stronger than for whites, so this is not simply a story about non-hispanic whites’ doing better than everyone else. The House To this point, the analyses have assumed that the CPI-U-RS is an appropriate cost-of-living adjustment, but this index, too, overstates inflation. When particular goods and services become cheaper, consumers buy more of them and less of others. Of Jaffa The CPI-U-RS only partly reflects such choices: It accounts for consumers’ ability to switch brands of coffee, for example, The remarkable career of a but does not recognize that consumers can switch from coffee to tea. scholar still at work The chained CPI does a better job, but it goes back only to 2000. Another cost-of-living index, the PCe (personal con- BY JOHN J. MILLER sumption expenditure) deflator, accounts for this “substitution bias” and is available going back decades. The Con gres sion al Budget Office and the Federal Reserve Board both prefer the hen harry V. Jaffa learned of the Boston PCe to other indices. If we switch from the CPI-U-RS to the Marathon bombing on April 15, he phoned a 36- PCe, median earnings among non-hispanic men rose by 2 year-old high-school teacher in Ashland, Ohio, percent from 1969 to 2011, instead of falling by 8 percent. W named Sara Whitis. “I just want to be sure you’re From 1969 to 2007, they rose by 10 percent. okay,” he said in a voice mail. Whitis listened to the message Finally, earnings are narrowly defined to include wages, when she arrived home from work. “It stirred me to tears,” she salaries, and self-employment income. But for workers em - says. Two years earlier, Whitis had completed a master’s thesis ployed by firms, what ultimately matters is total compensa- about Jaffa’s scholarship on Abraham Lincoln and the politics tion, including fringe benefits. My final analyses make two of freedom. The paper had come to the attention of the 94-year- modifications. They drop men with self-employment income old professor, who liked it so much that he reached out to (which has essentially no effect on the results), since the self- Whitis and took a grandfatherly interest in her career. he also employed do not receive employer-paid benefits. Then they knew that Whitis was a marathoner who had raced in Boston incorporate an adjustment for non-wage benefits using Bu - seven times—and was relieved to learn, when Whitis called reau of economic Analysis figures. These benefits include back, that she was safely at home. employer contributions for pensions, group health and life Jaffa is one of the most famously cantankerous intellectuals insurance, and payroll taxes. They were 10 percent of com- in America—and when he takes a special interest in a person, it pensation in 1969 but 20 percent in 2011. doesn’t always remain as amiable as it did with Whitis. This is The adjustments yield the result that men’s compensation especially true for fellow conservatives. “If you think harry rose by 14 percent between 1969 and 2011. From 1969 to Jaffa is hard to argue with, try agreeing with him,” quipped 2007, a peak year, the increase was 20 percent. These esti- William F. Buckley Jr. in the foreword to one of Jaffa’s books. mates reflect the change in what employers pay to the typical “he studies the fine print in any agreement as if it were a trap, worker, though they may overstate the typical worker’s or a treaty with the Soviet Union.” At various times, Jaffa has improvement in living standards. It may be that employees lit into such right-of-center heavyweights as Willmoore would rather receive cash than pensions or health insurance, Kendall, Irving Kristol, and George Will. The more they had in in which case the increase in the enjoyment or satisfaction the common, the more contentious the disputes seemed to run. “I median male receives from his compensation would be some- do not mean to be gentle with you,” Jaffa once wrote in an open what less than 20 percent. It would be strange, though, for letter to Walter Berns, another conservative scholar. “In your employers not to recognize this preference. present state of mind, nothing less than a metaphysical two-by- Perhaps the favorable tax treatment associated with those four across the frontal bone would capture your attention.” An benefits distorts employer decisions and prevents workers annoyed Berns later retorted: “Who will rid us of this pest of a from attaining even higher living standards. It’s also possible priest?” that workers would rather receive cash than have their Yet Jaffa has kept on pestering. even at his advanced age, employers contribute toward their Social Security and Medi - with four score and fourteen years behind him, he tries to care benefits, in which case federal social-insurance programs remain engaged. When I first called Jaffa in April, he was work- also keep living standards lower than they would otherwise ing on a response to Lincoln’s Tragic Pragmatism, an 814-page be. That, too, seems unlikely, given the political difficulty book by John Burt just published by harvard University Press. proposals to reform senior entitlements have faced. Some (“There are brilliant passages, but also lots of bad writing and analysts may find my treatment of employee benefits inade- bad thinking,” he says of it. “I’d like to write something that quate and prefer the earnings estimates to the compensation will make us partners rather than adversaries.”) he also says he ones. In that case, the increase, peak to peak, was 10 percent enjoyed Steven Spielberg’s recent film Lincoln, though he was instead of 20 percent. That is still a more accurate conclusion quick to point out a few mistakes and thinks the Thirteenth than the claim that male earnings have plummeted, and a very Amendment “is not a good subject for a movie.” different one. Careful empirical analysis does not always end Jaffa may be the most important conservative political theo- debate, but in this case and others it should at least narrow its rist of his generation. he is the founding father of the Claremont scope. School of conservatism, a set of ideas connected to Claremont

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McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University, which quote: “Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him are located in suburban Los Angeles. Some call it “West Coast while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.” The Straussianism,” in reference to Leo Strauss, the political philo- words came from an 1854 speech in Peoria. “I paid no attention sopher who was Jaffa’s main influence. In brief, the Claremont to it whatsoever,” says Jaffa, though he admits that it may have School believes in the moral truth of natural right as well as had “an influence on my subconscious.” American exceptionalism, with a special appreciation for the In 1946, as an emerging Straussian, Jaffa wandered into a statesmanship of the Revolutionary generation and Abraham used-book store in Greenwich Village—and what happened Lincoln. Its disciples—i.e., students of Jaffa as well as the stu- there, he says, provides “irrefutable proof of the role of divine dents of his students—may be found at some of the most high- providence in human affairs.” He came across a copy of the minded perches within the conservative movement, from the Lincoln–Douglas debates and started to read it. “I didn’t have Heritage Foundation to Hillsdale College (where I teach), plus, time for the whole book, but I was interested enough to come of course, the Claremont Institute and its Claremont Review of back the next day and read more,” he says. These were his Books. Modern conservatism’s focus on the Declaration of “impecunious grad-school days,” when money was too tight to Independence and the Constitution—never absent, but increas- blow much of it on books. Yet this one captivated him. “I came ingly prevalent in these tea-party times—owes much to Jaffa up with $5 and bought it,” he says. Today, this volume—an and his circle. 1895 edition, printed in Cleveland—sits on a shelf in his office at the Claremont Institute, crumbling to pieces and obviously cherished. ARRY V. JAFFA was born in 1918, a few weeks before Jaffa’s innovation was to treat the 1858 senatorial debates the armistice agreement that ended the First World between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas as a Socratic dialogue. H War. “Harry” is his given name—it’s not short for Up to this point, historians had tended to see Lincoln and “Henry” or “Harold”—and the “V” stands for “Victor,” in honor of the Allied victory. He grew up primarily on Long Island, where his high-school classmates included two other men who would make their mark in political theory: Francis Canavan, who went on to the priesthood and developed an expertise in Edmund Burke, and Joseph Cropsey, a fellow Straussian whom Jaffa first met at Hebrew school. Jaffa and Cropsey became fast friends. As adults, during breaks at academic conferences, they would still haul out their baseball gloves and play catch. Jaffa’s relationship with Canavan had to wait. “Back in those days, there were barriers between Catholics and Jewish people,” he says. “We grew close later on.” As an undergraduate at Yale, Jaffa majored in English and dreamed of a life in the academy. “Reading books and talking about them was the only thing that interested me,” he says. “My greatest ambition at the time was to write a history of Eliza - bethan drama.” Yet his advising professor, Harvey Mansfield Sr.—the father of the well-known professor of government at Harvard—warned him away from graduate school. “He told me it wasn’t an option because colleges wouldn’t hire Jews as professors,” says Jaffa. So after Yale, Jaffa went into the federal civil service. He met his wife in Washington, D.C., but otherwise was miserable. “I learned all about bureaucracy—and hated it,” he says. “It reinforced my desire to go to graduate school.” In 1944, he enrolled at the New School for Social Research, in New York City—and that’s when Harry met Leo. The German-born Leo Strauss was teaching a course on Rousseau. “I didn’t know who Strauss was,” says Jaffa. “Nobody knew.” Strauss didn’t make much of an impression on Jaffa until the next semester, in a course on Aristotle and Kant. “His discussion of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics just blew me away. It was like the Gospel for a Baptist preacher. All my life had been a preparation for that moment.” Under Strauss’s tutelage, Jaffa began his life’s work—first a dissertation on Aristotle and Aquinas, and then his pioneering scholarship on Lincoln. Jaffa’s fascination with the 16th president now seems like a rendezvous with destiny. When he was a boy, his mother had

COURTESY OF THEhung CLAREMONT INSTITUTE a silhouette of Lincoln on his bedroom wall. It bore a

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Douglas the way today’s pundits view the candidates in an ordi- written about Lincoln. In February, the New York Times’ nary Senate race—as a pair of political hacks prepared to say reviewer of Burt’s book described Crisis as “the first and still just about anything to win election. Jaffa, however, had been best effort to advance a philosophical reading of Lincoln.” Yet studying Plato’s Republic with Strauss. He observed that the Jaffa never meant for it to stand alone. The preface to Crisis dispute between Lincoln and Douglas was fundamentally the announced a companion volume, to be titled “A New Birth of same as the argument between Socrates and Thrasymachus. On Freedom.” Readers in 1959 who assumed that Jaffa would pro- the question of slavery, Lincoln claimed that all men are created duce it quickly were disappointed: The sequel wasn’t published equal and Douglas called for popular sovereignty in the territo- until 2000. ries. Jaffa looked at the Lincoln–Douglas showdown in a new There were plenty of reasons for the four-decade delay— way, and saw something very old: a classic contest of right Jaffa got into politics, for one. In 1964 he became involved with against might, in a dispute that has engaged and troubled Barry Goldwater’s campaign for president. Jaffa had voted for Western civilization from its earliest moments. Democratic presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson and John F. He worked on this approach through the 1950s. He also Kennedy, but switched parties following the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Harry V. Jaffa proposed equality as a conservative principle—not as a rival to freedom, but as the very foundation upon which freedom may flourish.

found a job. As war veterans funded by the GI Bill flooded the 1961. “It was a terrible betrayal of the anti-Communists,” he nation’s campuses, colleges and universities needed to hire says. Goldwater’s team swooped in and recruited him to help more professors and the barriers to Jewish academics melted add heft to the GOP nominee’s rhetoric. Jaffa eventually drafted away. Mansfield, relocated to Ohio State, contacted Jaffa and Goldwater’s acceptance speech, including its legendary line: hired him to teach in Columbus. Woody Hayes became the “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. . . . Moderation school’s football coach around the same time. Hayes and Jaffa in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” often ate dinner together in a cafeteria—two of the most irascible Academic distractions also interrupted Jaffa’s follow-up men in their fields. In 1957, Jaffa aired his main ideas about work. He moved from Ohio State to Claremont in 1964, and Lincoln and Douglas in the pages of The Anchor Review, a jour- conservative graduate students flocked to study with him. “It nal sponsored by Doubleday, in an issue that also carried the took only about ten minutes to realize that you were in the first American excerpts from Lolita, the provocative novel by presence of a great mind,” says Michael Uhlmann, a former Vladimir Nabokov. Reagan-administration official who now teaches at Claremont. Students commonly recall moments of brilliance—times when Jaffa had the effect on them that Strauss had exerted on Jaffa. WO years later came the publication of Crisis of the They also learned to deal with their teacher’s quirks. “I discov- House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the ered that getting the most out of Jaffa required disagreeing with T Lincoln–Douglas Debates. Jaffa portrayed Lincoln as him, just to see how he’d come back at me,” says Ken Masugi, an American philosopher-in-chief whose devotion to the who was a student of Jaffa’s as an undergraduate and later Declaration of Independence made him a statesman of timeless introduced his teacher’s ideas to Clarence Thomas when he principle. This proved controversial, as it collided with a variety worked for Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity of anti-Lincoln prejudices, ranging from mainstream historians Com mission. who saw the Civil War as a clash of large social forces rather Jaffa also began to write about other topics, such as than individuals and ideas to southern scholars in the grip of Shakespeare, demonstrating a range that few political-science regional loyalties. Amid all of this, Jaffa proposed equality as a professors can match. “Strauss taught us to read Platonic dia- conservative principle—not as a rival to freedom, but as the logues as Shakespearean drama,” says Jaffa. “I discovered that very foundation upon which freedom may flourish. Although we could read Shakespeare as a Platonic dialogue.” He collab- many conservatives view “equality” as a code word for egali- orated on that topic with Allan Bloom, a fellow Straussian, who tarianism, Jaffa’s view gained an important following. At a later wrote The Closing of the American Mind. Today, Jaffa 1999 dinner, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas toasted thinks his work on the Bard is just as important as his work on Jaffa and his influence: “We owe a debt of immeasurable grati- Lincoln, though probably few would agree. “His memory is tude to Harry Jaffa for recovering for us the true Lincoln and for incredible,” says Edward J. Erler, a former student who lives a helping us remember our sacred heritage: our nation’s founding few blocks from Jaffa and visits regularly. “A few weeks ago, devotion to the truth of human equality and liberty, a truth he gave me an hour-long lecture on The Merry Wives of applicable to all men at all times.” Windsor. He said he hadn’t read it in 50 years—he was just Crisis is a difficult book, written for academics rather than thinking about it.” lay readers. Much of it proceeds through critique, as Jaffa These private lectures are familiar to Jaffa students. “He points out the deficiencies of earlier writers rather than laying loves to call people and talk about what’s on his mind,” says out his own views in a clear and positive fashion. Scholars, Steven Hayward, another former student, who will become the however, frequently call Crisis the most important book ever University of Colorado’s first Visiting Scholar in Conservative

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thought and Policy this fall. yet disagreements with Jaffa can turn into alarming ruptures, as Jaffa never hesitates to point out what he regards as wrong The Grapes thinking. “Philosophers must prefer truth to friendship,” he insists. Many of those who became locked in disputes with Jaffa recoiled at his aggression. “a true friend may be grateful for correction, but not necessarily to be condemned in public as a Of Rand nihilist,” says a former student. the fiercest attacks are often aimed at figures who appeared to be his closest ideological Ayn Rand’s God and allies. Jaffa savaged conservative judicial champions such as robert Bork, William rehnquist, and antonin Scalia for re - John Steinbeck’s capitalism fusing to look outside the text of the Constitution and acknowledge the animating spirit of the Declaration of independence in BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON their jurisprudence.

iterary propaganda calls for a deft hand. it helps, of aFFa clearly enjoyed the give and take, perhaps even to the course, to be on the side of the Good and right, as point of distraction. the biggest cause of the delay in his George Orwell was when executing 1984 and Animal J writing of A New Birth of Freedom, however, was some- L Farm. Such was the uniqueness of Orwell’s genius that thing else: “i changed my mind,” he explains, though he says his novels seem to us today less expositions of any narrow that it was a refinement rather than a reversal. instead of think- parochial political point of view and something more like the ing Lincoln had saved the Union by extending the vision of the fables of aesop: this is the way the world is. Founders, as he had argued in Crisis, Jaffa decided that Lincoln the desire to propagate political views through literature had preserved the Union by remaining true to the Founders’ brings out the worst in better writers and the unbearable in lesser original vision. “i was not sufficiently in the tank with the ones. Strangely enough, though, while John Steinbeck was a Founding as Lincoln was,” he says. “i came to understand that better—much better—novelist than was ayn rand, Atlas most of the virtue i attributed to Lincoln was there in the Shrugged is a better—much better—novel than is The Grapes Founding itself.” of Wrath. the Steinbeck of Of Mice and Men is a far better nov- Conservatives never have agreed on whether Lincoln’s rev- elist than is the Steinbeck of The Grapes of Wrath, just as the erence for the Declaration makes him a hero for the ages or rand of The Fountainhead is much better than the rand of merely a crypto-liberal. is equality a “self-evident truth,” as the Atlas Shrugged. Steinbeck was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for The Declaration proclaims and Jaffa believes, or is it a “self-evident Grapes of Wrath and a Nobel Prize for his general contributions half-truth,” as Harvey Mansfield Jr., a leader of “east Coast to literary leftishness. instead of receiving a Nobel Prize, rand Straussianism,” has put it? these deep questions operate at the was made the central figure in an ersatz religion. the Joads tectonic level of conservative thought, far removed from the earned Steinbeck a pot of money, and John Galt earned rand a everyday worries of a movement that struggles with budgets cult—that is justice more poetic than anything to be found in and elections. yet Jaffa defends their importance: “Sound prin- either novel. ciples will generate sound policy.” anybody who wants to Atlas Shrugged and The Grapes of Wrath are a pair of medio - know what he thinks of President Obama, Jaffa says, should crities culturally bookending the discussion of what we call, for read I Am the Change, the 2012 book by Charles r. Kesler on lack of a better term, capitalism. the problem is that neither why today’s liberals are at odds with america’s founding tradi- rand nor Steinbeck really understood capitalism as an eco- tions. He adds that many republicans share Obama’s progres- nomic arrangement or a moral system. Neither do their cultural sive affliction and that everyone would be better off trying to heirs. From tea-party rallies to Occupy Wall Street, one of the think and act more like Lincoln. least understood issues of our time is what we talk about when amazingly, Jaffa says he has much more work to do. the we talk about capitalism. preface of New Birth makes a promise he probably won’t keep: it may well be that this is inevitable. it may be impossible to “the present work will be followed by a concluding volume on write a great novel about capitalism, to write a great drama the triumph and tragedy of the war years.” if it takes as long to about capitalism, to make a great film about capitalism, or to write the next one as the last one, however, the unnamed final paint a great painting about capitalism. Capitalism is, for the volume won’t come out until 2041, when Jaffa is 123. He has most part, boring. there is the occasional dramatic figure, a kept fit his whole life—he attributes much of his longevity to genius along the lines of Henry Ford (whom rand idolized) or exercise, especially cycling—but the scholar understands the Steve Jobs, and the story of a man with a vision, a man pos- actuarial realities. Does he really expect to complete the trilogy? sessed, can be a very good story indeed; Moby-Dick is that kind “i’m almost 95—you make your own judgment about that.” of story. But capitalism mostly consists of unexceptional men yet he won’t abandon the notion completely: “i may write a and women sitting in offices or factories or cubicles, trying to series of essays that will not fulfill the prescription but set the figure out how to make relatively mundane processes a little bit stage.” better, a little bit quicker, a little bit cheaper. in other words, the teacher may be offering a great task to a smart young day-to-day capitalism does resemble Moby-Dick: specifically, scholar—an assignment to finish the work that Jaffa so nobly the chapters everybody skips over, the bits in which Herman advanced. Melville communicates excruciatingly detailed technical trivia

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about how much tar you want on your whaling rope. (“The line Wallace’s 1996 novel Infinite Jest to confer street cred upon a originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly businesswoman, describing her as “the only woman I personally vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of fear.” “Wayne who?” says everybody under 40. Huizenga was ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the and is a tremendously successful businessman, having built hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope three Fortune 500 companies. They are: a waste-management itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, firm, a chain of car dealerships, and Blockbuster. Good luck not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the turning any of that into high literature, though you might get a whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; very sad opera out of Blockbuster. but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope’s durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss.” Really, Herman Mel - and makes the occasional nod toward the big-picture ville?) view of capitalism and its complex ecosystem of cre- Bill Gates and other ahabs are part of the capitalism story, R ativity, which includes a great many people who are not but they are a relatively small part of it. Consider the fact that earth-shaking titans. The best of the little people—the top nobody invented the internal-combustion engine: The Romans workmen, the masterly electrician—invariably share the views developed crankshaft-connecting rods, a millennium later and values of Rand’s heroes, and sometimes they get to play a Civilization is sustained by nobodies, and the magic of capitalism is that it allows aggregates of nobodies not only to send men to the moon but to give them tasty powdered orange-juice substitutes to take along for the ride.

Christiaan Huygens had the idea of using them in conjunction semi-important role in the story. at Galt’s Gulch, we even meet with gunpowder to run the water pumps at Versailles, a lady called “the fishwife,” a would-be writer who, having had alessandro Volta developed a rudimentary sparkplug, the no success in her chosen field in the outside world, retreats to niépce brothers put their Pyréolophore engine into a boat and menial work, with the consolation that she at least gets to do powered upstream, etc. By the time Étienne Lenoir and Rudolf that for and among people she respects. The fishwife is, of diesel came onto the scene with designs that would be familiar course, no less a personage than Rand herself. to a modern mechanic, the project had been in the works for But you don’t write novels about fishwives—not if you are hundreds of years or more, with countless engineers and inven- ayn Rand, anyway. You write about the comings and goings of tors following countless dead ends. I happen to find the niépce the great and the wicked. and you write about them presumably brothers’ experimental fuel recipes (coal dust, resin, and Lyco - because they are important—morally important. This is, of podium moss spores in varying proportions) fascinating, but course, where Rand goes off the rails like one of James only a fool or a fanatic would try to write an epic novel about Taggart’s mismanaged trains. Capitalism is for Rand merely the them. economic expression of a larger and more important reality, the In Rand’s imagination, capitalism is what happens when study of which she organized into a potted philosophy called heroic, creative geniuses are allowed to work their magic, Objectivism. Rand was as thoroughgoing a materialist as any preferably in some heroically austere circumstances against a Marxist, militant not only in her atheism but also in her view of heroically austere art deco background. In the real world, cap- a clockwork universe governed by reason. She writes a great italism is nothing more or less than what happens when property deal about value and values, and was a great abuser of the word rights are respected. You get your John Galts and dagny “metaphysics.” Rand’s metaphysics were of course not meta- Taggarts, true, but you also get a lot of guys who start a pizza physics at all, but simply physics, with all the universe and shop or build a successful chain of dry-cleaning businesses. every aspect of reality accessible to human reason. Those guys don’t invent pepperoni or starched collars; they just The peculiar thing is that, working on the raw material of raw work really hard, economize, try a few new things, invest in materialism with the toolbox of aristotelian logic, ayn Rand new equipment, hire people, create capital, and make the world managed to replicate that least rational of exotic superstitions: go round. and John Galt is not going to do his own cleaning. karma. (She might be pleased to know that the literal meaning Every era and every culture has its great men—every Golden of the word “karma” is “work.”) In the famous Winston-tunnel Horde has a khan at its head. Civilization is sustained by episode in Atlas Shrugged, during which a great many train pas- nobodies, and the magic of capitalism is that it allows aggre- sengers are sent to their death by managerial incompetence, it is gates of nobodies not only to send men to the moon but to give not enough for Rand that death visit the express train: It has to them tasty powdered orange-juice substitutes to take along for be a righteous death, the black angel of reason coming down the ride. like a ton of non-metaphysical bricks. It’s not just that a=a, but Even at the rarified end of the spectrum, you rarely have the that a has it coming. She chronicles her victims’ transgressions makings of great drama. Wayne Huizenga was once such a big at typically Randian length: One is a sociology professor who deal in the business world that he made a cameo in david Foster rejected the importance of individual ability, another a journal-

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ist who favored government compulsion in the name of “good moment in the novel is toward the end, when the judge who has intentions,” a third a publisher who believed men to be “unfit joined Galt’s Gulch stages his own constitutional convention, for freedom,” another a schoolteacher who crushed her stu- as though simply amending the law would transform the broken dents’ individualism, etc. And then the real bad guys: a profiteer hearts of men. Rand writes: “The rectangle of light in the acres who used government favors to make a fortune in frozen rail- of a farm was the window of the library of Judge Narragansett. way bonds, a businessman who relied on government support He sat at a table, and the light of his lamp fell on the copy of an to acquire a profitable ore mine, etc. ancient document. He had marked and crossed out the contra- “These passengers,” she writes, “were awake; there was not dictions in its statements that had once been the cause of its a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their destruction.”

John Steinbeck Ayn Rand

ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt’s In other words, he was delivering the law from on high. One Torch was the last thing they saw on earth.” constantly smells the smoke from the burning bush clinging to This passage frequently is cited as evidence of Rand’s funda- the atheist, who is strangely evangelistic in furtherance of an mental inhumanity, but it is in fact the best evidence of her fun- entirely negative creed. Real unbelievers simply accept the damental humanity. She is in search of a transcendent principle chaotic nature of the universe; they understand that bad things to govern human life, ensuring not only order in the universe happen to good people and vice versa, and you can find them in but moral justice—not in the next life, as believers in karma or the pews of the Episcopal Church or a hundred other non - Judgment Day would have it, but in this life. What she is in committal congregations on any given Sunday. Nonbelievers search of is God, unless you have another word for a divine do not preach their nonbelief in the street. But Rand’s atheism force that intervenes in human affairs to enforce justice. The is not simply a case of seeing no evidence for the proposition of great defect in Rand’s thinking is not her atheism but her mys- God. What she wants is to go God one better. When Abraham ticism, her naïve belief that there is some inescapable force in asked God to spare the city of Sodom, he asked Him a bold the universe acting in accord with the best of human values. The question: “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the fact is that the only guarantor of justice that man knows is the wicked?” What, Abraham proposed, if there should be 50 right- actions of just men, but that takes Rand down a road she does eous men in Sodom? God says that he’d spare the city for the not much want to explore: toward politics, compromise, the sake of 50 righteous men, and Abraham, launching several building of institutions, and community life. Atlas Shrugged is thousand years of crude ethnic stereotyping, starts working the in part a fantasy about community life—life in a community in Almighty over on the price. What if it’s 45? Surely, the Lord which everybody holds identical values—and it even makes the will not let the absence of a mere five righteous men cost the occasional clumsy nod toward politics: Perhaps the worst other 45 their lives? Okay, the Lord relents, I’m willing to go

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down to 45. Abraham takes him down to 20, and then to ten. In maybe that’s the Holy Sperit—the human sperit—the whole the event, the only righteous family in Sodom gets a divine shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ warning to get out of Dodge, and the rest is fire and brimstone. Now I sat there thinkin’ it, an’ all of a suddent—I knew it. I “If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.” And should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin,” T. S. Eliot wrote. just like you-know-who, Steinbeck conflates the economic with That is perhaps what Whittaker Chambers had in mind when he the spiritual: “One big soul” is an echo of the Industrial Workers wrote that one hears in the pages of Atlas Shrugged a tiny voice of the World’s demand for “one big union.” saying: “To a gas chambers—go!” But Rand did not aspire to Whereas Rand makes an object of worship out of machines dictatorship—she aspired to deity. In the Winston tunnel, Rand and the men who invent them, Steinbeck uses a particular plays the role of both Abraham and God. She will not destroy machine—the tractor—as one of the main villains of his novel. the righteous with the wicked. But she is a pretty tough grader, Tractors put people like the Joads out of work, and therefore are and there is by her uncompromising standard not one righteous evil. Steinbeck is the par excellence literary exponent of the man aboard that doomed Sodom on rails. And so comes the Malthusian error, which regards human beings as liabilities— judgment. mouths to feed—rather than assets to be invested in. One What the above passage from Atlas Shrugged also makes should not discount the violence of Steinbeck’s vision: His clear—something that is so regularly missed by Rand’s critics moral touchstone was Tom Joad caving in heads. Artistically, that one suspects willful blindness—is that the lower circles of that is clumsy, especially compared with its counterpoint in Of Randian hell are not populated by welfare recipients and little Mice and Men: When Lennie catches the bully Curley’s fist in people, but by crony capitalists. The great villains of Atlas medias uppercut and crushes it in his own, that shocking image Shrugged are not the poor and the vulnerable, but the rich and stays with the reader. There’s plenty of dumb politics in Of Mice the powerful who got that way by using political clout, social and Men, too, but there’s also real humanity. It is a story, not a pull, and any other means short of hard work and building a tract. better mousetrap. Writers as different as NATIONAL REvIEW’s The Joads, on the other hand, are mere cartoons, the Ameri - Jay Nordlinger and the illiterates at Salon and AlterNet have can version of the noble savage set loose upon the farm country written in recent months that our current situation is Randian: of California. But one wishes that Ma and Pa Joad were with us We are “living in an Ayn Rand economy,” as Salon put it, or, as today. All they wanted out of life was a roof over their head, Nordlinger wrote, “American life is more and more resembling honest work to do, a sufficient quantity of meat and bread, and an Ayn Rand novel.” They even mean similar things by that sen- the great luxury of hot water on tap. If one could transport them timent: Both detect that the government is rigging the eco nomic from Steinbeck’s dreary pages into even the dreariest modern game for the benefit of its favorites. The strange thing is that the American community, they would think that they had been Left seems to think that this is an argument for giving the gov- bodily assumed into Paradise. Steinbeck predicted a hungry ernment even more power over the economy rather than workers’ uprising against landowners and banks. What we got restricting its ability to reward allies and punish enemies. in short order was . . . Disneyland. A mere 16 years after the For that, you can blame Tom Joad. publication of The Grapes of Wrath, California was a very different place, a wonderland of optimism and affluence. When Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States, all he asked to OR propagandistic crudeness and grotesqueness of see was Disneyland. The revolution the IWW and Steinbeck vision, Atlas Shrugged has nothing on The Grapes of dreamed of never came. Capitalism was the revolution. F Wrath, an undisguised love letter to Communism by a What Steinbeck never foresaw—what he was incapable of man who would later pen an embarrassing apologia for Joseph foreseeing—was a capitalism in which the Joads of the world Stalin’s reign of terror in A Russian Journal. Steinbeck’s novel could be owners, too, at least part masters of their own lives. is, it bears noting, a very long fantasy about putting people into The only capitalism the Left can imagine is crony capitalism, camps—and them liking it there. If you have not picked up whether described witlessly by Steinbeck or in more sophisti- Grapes since high school, the badness of the writing really must cated fashion, as in Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo. When the Left be revisited to be fully appreciated. John Galt’s turgid denoue- says “We hate capitalism,” it is saying in effect what the Right ment speech may be a subject of mirth, but Grapes is 450 pages says when it abominates the government’s “picking winners of even more cartoonish prose: “Talking in the camps, and the and losers” in the market. The difference is that the Left cannot deputies, fat-assed men with guns slung on fat hips, swaggering imagine any other kind of capitalism—one based on free mar- through the camps: Give ’em somepin to think about. Got to kets rather than favoritism—while the Right can. What Rand keep ’em in line or Christ only knows what they’ll do! Why, saw too well was that that latter kind of capitalism—dynamic, Jesus, they’re as dangerous as niggers in the South! If they ever powerful, and productive beyond all previous imagining— get together there ain’t nothin’ that’ll stop ’em.” (Somewhere, would present an irresistible temptation. The hired goons of some women’s-studies undergraduate is working on a thesis Steinbeck’s imagination gave up running off Okies for a liv- about Steinbeck, Rand, and body image in a literary universe in ing—where’s the profit in that?—and became the crony capi- which lean is virtuous and fat is wickedness literally incarnate.) talists of Rand’s dark vision, the regulators and string-pullers Like Rand, Steinbeck was a proponent of a godless philoso- and planners with whom we are all too familiar. Capitalism phy out of which he inexplicably constructed a god and a cult transformed California from John Steinbeck’s pre-revolutionary to worship it: “I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus stew to Walt Disney’s utopian confection. And Ayn Rand, to her road. I figgered, ‘Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? credit, as early as 1957 saw that the politicians and their pet Maybe,’ I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; profiteers would do their damnedest to turn it back.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Big Brothers’ Big Brother

OThINg sums up the demographic that went political views, your health, well, he’s just one man. gung-ho for Obama like this: A Pew Re - Bottom line for the youth: The only way to solve the search Center poll said that young people problems of big government is to elect its staunchest N were the least likely to know anything about defenders, over and over again. Because, you know, cor- the NSA/PRISM story, and the most likely “to say they porations. Koch Brothers and Big Oil and Walmart. highly value their privacy.” If you told them the scan- They’re the threat. To which one wants to say: Did any cor- dal’s particulars, they might pause from posting blurry poration force you to see the recent Star Trek movie? cell-phone photos from Tequila Jello-Shot Nite on Well duh, it’s a movie, they can’t. Really! I thought Facebook or Instagramming a picture of dinner with a marketing and advertising were so powerful that the indi- location tag that tells everyone where they were at 7:03 vidual will melted like cotton candy in a rainstorm. The P.M., and say, “Violating my privacy? The government? Koch brothers buy the L.A. Times and force reviewers to That’s my job.” give thumbs-up to pro-family movies, and a week later Young liberal voters may be unhappy about snooping, at people have blank happy expressions and say “nuclear- first. If you believe the primary function of the government family formation may have a positive effect on childhood is to ensure small-business loans for cartoon Julias who development” in creepy monotones. I mean, that’s what want to hand-craft artisanal same-sex-wedding cake stat- they want, man. Anyway, no one forced anyone to see the uettes, then the idea that there are agencies devoted to Star Trek movie—yet. You were, however, forced to pay surveillance and counterespionage is disheartening. But for the Star Trek parody the IRS played at one of their con- they’re realists: This stuff was always going on, and there’s ventions. It was instructive. only so much of the Augean stables the hercules-in-Chief 1. It answered the question, long posed but never solved, can shovel in five years, they’d say. of what the dialogue of Star Trek would sound like if the Or would if the educational system hadn’t tossed the show had been written and performed by accountants. classics. Anyway, it’s Bush’s fault. Right after that thing in 2. It demonstrated the shift in national purpose: The 2001 with the planes and the buildings, okay, he got his opening narration recast the mission “to seek out new advisers together and said, “Well, this is the perfect oppor- life forms” as seeking new tax forms. Yes, there lies the tunity to squander money and credibility on a global scale, path to national greatness: Just as Rome was remem- so let’s invade a country on trumped-up reasons. But more bered not for its roads and aqueducts but for its complex important, this is the chance to find out whether a guy in fish-paste tariff structure, America will be recalled for Nebraska decides to ‘like’ Doritos on a computer network, the invention of Form 103-33B, which calculated the and enter it into a vast searchable database, so get on that.” maximum deduction for paying an accountant to figure “Sir, the technology does not exist to capture corn-chip out Form 103-22A. snack preference.” Of course we are still exploring space, but given the “Well, invent it, then. Call it headbook or Faceplace, I recent revelations it’s possible NASA will admit that the don’t care.” Curiosity probe was sent to Mars to look for evidence Mitt Yes, that was exactly what happened. The party whose Romney had some extra-planetary bank accounts. philosophical precepts consist of “Don’t tread on me” and 3. It was lousy. But it was a particularly dreary, ama- “get your hand out of my pocket” wanted to learn every- teurish thing familiar to anyone who’s encountered anything about everyone. good thing there’s another party thing produced by a government agency. This is why the that wants everyone puréed into a grey slurry of collec- PRISM slides had the instant snap of authenticity: Only tivism so someone can stand up for the individual. government could produce a slide that ugly, a logo that This demographic in previous incarnations also insisted bad. that AIDS was Ronald Reagan’s fault, as if he’d personally You can opt out of Facebook. You can opt out of the en - walked through the Castro district in San Francisco with a tire Internet. You won’t be jailed if you don’t see Star Trek. bullwhip and forced everyone into bathhouses when he You have to pay for a Star Trek parody and you will be should have been bursting into private bedrooms and sep- audited if you join a group that objects to such coercion. arating people with a crowbar before handing out con- Still: The kids are glad they didn’t vote for Romney, doms. Republican presidents are the most powerful beings because he wouldn’t pay for college or condoms. Just on earth, you see. Democratic presidents are Awesome! like Dad. What’s so scary about Big Brother, anyway? when they give everyone health care in defiance of old ’n’ Your brother was always cool, on your side. Sure, once busted paradigms like “economics,” but when it comes to you found him reading your diary and laughing, but when ensuring that the tentacled behemoth in Washington doesn’t he saw you were mad he put it down and said he’d never wrap a tentacle around your data, your bank account, your do it again. You believed him, because he was your big brother. And Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. you loved him.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

INSTAGRAM TEXT MESSAGE TO: melanie123987 Mel, turn on the TV right now! Cops surrounded Crystal’s house and have The following user, tylerswatchingy- taken Rachel into custody for making ounsa, has liked all of your photos! threats and having bomb-making equip- GMAIL INBOX Follow tylerswatchingyounsa back! ment! Mean girls 0, Tyler 1! Just TO: [email protected] want you to be happy, Mel! Luv you FROM: [email protected] GOOGLE VOICE TRANSCRIPT soooooooo much!!!!!!!!!! tor.gov “Hey, Melanie? It’s Tyler. I sent you TWITTER an e-mail and a friend request on Hi! Twitter, which I know you saw be - @tylerswatchingyounsa: “Follow Totally weird coincidence! You and I cause—well, it’s not important how I Friday! Everyone in America! Espe - were in the same homeroom sophomore know. But I’m really confused about cially @melanie123987 who needs to year! I was the quiet kid in the back? why you haven’t responded. Is it some- have more confidence in herself! Dump Tyler? Do you remember? Probably not. thing I said? I thought we had a really Jason, Mel!” You were kind of popular back then! nice thing going, and so I’m just going Anyways, totally totally small world! to assume you’ve been busy with fam- FACEBOOK I’m the contractor assigned to read your ily stuff and your insane mom. Boy, she data here at the NSA intercept office and sends a lot of texts, huh? So please call “Tyler NSA likes your status: ‘Can’t I was reading through your intercepts me back when you listen to this, which understand how the IRS thinks my and suddenly your name rang a bell and should be in a few minutes because I can boyfriend Jason hasn’t filed income it was just like being back in homeroom! see you right now standing outside the taxes in ten years. How does this hap- Isn’t this weird? And I just want to let Coffee Bean staring at your phone, and pen?’” you know that I totally agree with you the satellite image delay is only about 45 about your mom. She is being totally seconds, so factoring that in, you should GMAIL INBOX unsupportive about your college plans. I be calling me back . . . now.” think taking a year or two off is a great TO: [email protected] FROM: [email protected] idea! Really find yourself. And I’m not TEXT MESSAGE sure if you know this or not, but your tor.gov “friend” Rachel really talks a lot of trash OK. Worried I may have scared u off. about you behind your back, which I Soooo sorry! Not being a creeper I You know what, Melanie? I’m tired myself find really unacceptable. I’ll for- promise! Just want to be friends is all. of this one-way business. I’m tired of ward her texts to Crystal if you want. Really thought we had something back giving and giving and giving and giv- Not nice stuff. in HS! ing and getting nothing in return. I’ve Anyways, just wanted to reach out to tried to look out for you, to listen in on you and say hi. If you ever want to talk, GMAIL INBOX your phone calls and your e-mails and I’m here. Well, everywhere. chime in with really solid advice and I’m attaching a jpeg of myself in TO: [email protected] feedback, and all I get is, like, a lot of case you’re wondering what I look like. FROM: [email protected] really negative stuff. Do you think it’s Just FYI, it was taken a few months tor.gov easy to do this every day? Do you ago, before I really started hitting the think you’re the only cute girl I inter- gym a lot, so I’m way more buff right Please find attached the credit report cept? I’ve got news for you: You’re now. for Joshua M. Sunderland, your “boy - not! I’m responsible for intercepting Stay sweet like you are! friend,” I guess, which is weird because literally hundreds of cute girls every Ty he’s got a LOT of real problem areas in single day, Melanie, and if you’re not the credit department. Melanie, I’m even going to have the courtesy to P.S.: I don’t think Josh is right for only saying this because I’m a friend meet me at the yogurt place that I you. Not sure he’s being totally honest. and I care about you, but this guy is know you go to every day anyway, Will do some digging. BAD NEWS. His credit score is pretty then what choice do I have? I’m break- lousy and I don’t like the way he texts ing up with you, girl. Good luck with TWITTER with his friends. Lots of foul language your next interceptor. I hope you treat and coarse innuendo. You can do SO him better than you treated me. Hey! @melanie123987! This is MUCH better Melanie. Please let me Tyler @tylerswatchingyounsa! Tried to e- take care of him for you. Just say the mail you a few days ago! Follow me word! P.S.: Don’t call me. back so I can DM you! Ty P.P.S.: Seriously, don’t. They’ll hear.

4 0 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 , 2 0 1 3 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/11/2013 5:06 PM Page 41 Books, Arts & Manners

eral after in competent general until he as Lowry shows, Lincoln was uncom- finds Ulysses S. Grant and somehow monly driven from an early age. he had Lincoln’s brings the Union to victory. there is eric much to overcome. his mother, who died Foner’s Lincoln, the emancipator, swept when he was nine, was so illiterate that Path, Still up by his sense of purpose and imbuing she signed her name as an X; his father, the great struggle of the civil war with a barely able to scratch out a living, hired J A Y W I N I K morality higher than blood, sweat, and out his own son for wages until abe was treasure. there is David herbert Don - finally able to work for himself. By ald’s Lincoln, the master politician, pro- Lincoln’s own admission, the family fell tean in his own right, navigating the into a “sad if not pitiful condition.” No shoals of the nation’s intricate politics. wonder Lincoln often became brooding, there is Stephen oates’s poignant Lin- withdrawn, beset by the specter of death. coln, his head bowed, morosely wander- But against the odds, Lincoln was ing the halls of the white house, crying determined to make good. he was out for relief from the terrible anxiety of largely self-taught; he had one year of the war. there is the Lincoln of the formal schooling—in a “tiny school- Gettysburg address (Garry wills), the house.” he learned a myriad of trades: Lincoln of the second inaugural (Ronald rafting, carpentry, boating, forestry, white Jr.), and Lincoln the healer (my plowing, storekeeping, and butchering. Lincoln Unbound: How an Ambitious Young April 1865). and the list goes on. he read voraciously. and he had a Railsplitter Saved the American Dream—And Deciphering Lincoln, almost certainly genius for storytelling. More often than How We Can Do It Again, by Rich Lowry our most beloved president, is no easy not, a simple quip or revealing tale was (Broadside, 288 pp., $26.99) task. he was always a riddle of quirks and his broadsword; satire his rapier. and it eccentricities, and his self-derogation was always had a point. ich LowRy is nothing if not real: “my poor, lean, lank face.” So was early on, he had his run of bad luck. prolific. he was named edi- his simplicity: his clothes were invariably he set up a store, which failed. he tried tor of NatioNaL Review, out of season; he referred to himself as his hand at being a postmaster and a R america’s leading journal of “a” and greeted visitors with “howdy”; surveyor, but was unable to make a go conservatism, at the stunningly young and he stuffed notes in his pockets and of it. the circuit court issued a judgment age of 29. as if being heir to william F. stuck bills in a drawer. and his two most against him for overdue notes; the sheriff Buckley Jr.’s august legacy weren’t memorable speeches—the Gettysburg attached his personal possessions, in - impressive enough, 15 years later he is a address and the Second inaugural—total cluding his surveying equipment and regular commentator for the Fox News less than 1,000 words. Moreover, few even his horse. and he lost his first bid network; he writes a syndicated column men could have been so ill-prepared for for office at the age of 23. on all matters political; and he con- the office and its nearly impossible task of But as Lowry masterfully points out, tributes to other journals across the polit- stitching a divided nation back together, while Lincoln may have been born into ical spectrum, including Politico and let alone for a titanic civil war that would “the old world,” he could “feel the new Time. and he has even written a best- consume 620,000 lives. But somehow, at one arising.” Shaped by an ethic of seller about the clinton presidency, a the hour of fate, Lincoln would find himself-improvement, and an increasingly polemic unapologetically titled Legacy: self and save a nation. successful political career, he gazed out Paying the Price for the Clinton Years. what, then, is there left to say? as it upon a changing world, one being revo - Now, Lowry has taken on perhaps his turns out, in Lowry’s Lincoln Unbound, lu tionized by emerging canals, im proved most ambitious project yet, a book about plenty. in his elegantly rendered thematic transportation, bustling steamboats, abraham Lincoln. portrait, Lowry contends that there is a manu facturing and the market, railroads one almost wonders what there is left Lincoln who is too often forgotten but and the telegraph. as it happened, he to say about Lincoln. Generation after must be found anew: the Lincoln of the fervently wanted financial advancement generation, this has been well-trod terri- wisconsin State agricultural Fair who not just for himself, but for the ameri - tory, and by some of the nation’s finest believed in hard work, restless ambi- can people at large. historians. we have many pictures of tion, and a dynamic capitalism that shed we see this in his political life. though Lincoln, each of them rich in its own the old ways of life and pointed the way he grew up among Jacksonian Demo - way. there is James McPherson’s Lin - to a vibrant future for the country. crats—they were his neighbors and his coln, the wartime leader, weathering indeed, Lowry is persuasive that this family—Lincoln gravitated first to the death after death and incompetent gen- was Lincoln’s vision long before the whig program of economic development guns fired on Fort Sumter—and that it and upward mobility, which he democra- Mr. Winik is the author of the New York Times is worth examining almost irrespective tized (in what Lowry calls “a momentous bestseller April 1865. of the civil war. shift”), and then to Republicanism. here

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS again, a restless ambition that shaped his dency on government dangerously grow- own personality became the underpin- ing, a welfare state out of control. He ning for the inchoate Republican vision. warns that a great nation “is flabby” and Greatness in As Lowry demonstrates, Lincoln wanted “declining from its former glories.” He to spread the system of enterprise, free even quotes Lincoln himself bitterly A Dark Time men, and free labor across the continent, lamenting a backsliding nation: “We are benefiting all regardless of class or sta- not what we have been,” Lincoln wrote. CHARLES J. COOPER tion. Among other things, even as the war “We have grown fat.” The answer? was raging, Lincoln and Republicans cre- Lincoln once insisted that “work, work, ated the transcontinental railroad, which work, is the main thing.” Lowry writes would knit East and West together in a that the solution Lincoln would propose growing web of commerce. He signed a today is as stark as it is straightforward: land-grant-college bill, protective tariffs, “economic growth.” and the Homestead Act—this last, in part Lowry does not want to overstate his Lincoln wanted to spread the system of enterprise, free men, and free labor across the continent, benefiting all Saving Justice: Watergate, the Saturday Night Massacre, and Other Adventures of a regardless of class or station. Solicitor General, by Robert H. Bork (Encounter, 200 pp., $23.99) because he sought to break up land case, and points out that we are as far monopolies and boost the country’s agri- away in time from Lincoln as he was from HE ornate courtroom was cultural potential (albeit with minimal the America of the early 1700s, necessi- rela tively empty as the Su - government intrusion). tating caution in divining what Lincoln’s preme Court justices som - Lowry raises the fascinating question intentions would be in 2013. Nor does he T berly emerged from behind as to where Lincoln would fit into the want to be accused of “ideological body long crimson drapes to hear arguments political spectrum today. It is a question snatching.” That said, he posits that Lin- on October 31, 1978. Not surprising, I well worth pondering for the future of coln would resist dependency, emphasize thought, as I took a seat in the small area the Republican party. The author says, education, and embrace what is new. He of the courtroom reserved for the correctly, that Lincoln would not fit would also welcome immigrants, pay Court’s law clerks: It was hard even for neatly into today’s ideologies—firmly attention to the interests of the common us to get excited about whether an rejecting, in particular, the notion that worker, and look to the Founders. Omaha bank could charge 18 percent Lincoln belongs in the liberal pantheon, Would Lincoln, as Obama implies, sup- interest to its Minnesota credit-card cus- as FDR once suggested when he asserted port all of today’s government programs? tomers despite Minnesota’s law limiting that Lincoln was the posthumous father A resounding no, says Lowry, writing that interest on credit cards to 12 percent. Yet of the New Deal, and as progressives “the liberal fallacy is to believe Lincoln most of the 33 law clerks were in the such as Barack Obama and Mario Cuomo would have favored almost every itera- courtroom that morning. Robert Bork so brashly contend today. Lincoln was tion of government and expansion of it, was arguing. “desperate for industrial development,” just as they do.” Bork was the premier appellate advo- Lowry writes: He “exulted in new tech- Perhaps Lowry’s most trenchant ob - cate of his time. He had been hired by the nologies,” sought a powerful national servation is that it’s absolutely essential Omaha bank after the briefs had been banking system, and “never attacked” for the Republican party to develop a filed, solely to present oral argument. It wealth. And throughout his political Lincolnesque agenda within its limited- was a wise decision. The case seemed career, he saw his role as a champion of government framework: The GOP has like a hard one, until Bork put the issue in the budding middle class. “Republicans,” no future “unless it is a party of aspira- starkly simple terms. “What we’re being as he memorably put it, “are both for the tion.” told today is that [charging 18 percent] man and the dollar.” This is a superb book, one that elo - would be all right if a Minnesota resident But beyond his fascinating portrait of quently recaptures a too-often-over- drove to Omaha and got his credit card, Lincoln, Lowry has a deeper goal, which shadowed side of Lincoln. It is, arguably, but not if he sent a letter or an application is to tease out lessons from Lincoln about a Lincoln for our time. If you are a asking for his credit card.” Hmm. Why how to revitalize American society Lincoln buff, you will want to read this. hadn’t I, or anyone else, thought of that? today—lessons he believes can constitute If you are a political strategist, Re - Bork was right, and his argument that day a blueprint for the Republican party in publican or Democrat, you will want to turned a close, and possibly losing, case years to come. With passion, Lowry study it. One can savor, debate, or dis- warns of the crisis now afflicting the cuss this book without agreeing with Mr. Cooper, who served in the Justice Department American dream: the middle class strug- everything in it. Lincoln would have it during the Reagan administration, is chairman of the gling, the lower class left behind, depen- no other way. law firm Cooper & Kirk.

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into a unanimous win. poenaed them—“as any competent pros- Bork argued his first case in the ecutor,” Bork notes, “would be bound to Supreme Court in October 1973, shortly do.” When Cox held a nationally tele- after he became solicitor general, the vised press conference to announce his third-ranking official in the Justice refusal to accept any compromise on his Department and head of the office that demand for all the subpoenaed tapes, represents the federal government in the unedited, Nixon ordered Richardson to Supreme Court. He had prepared for that fire him. The central focus of Saving I M P O R T A N T first argument in a single day, “as if cram- Justice is Bork’s defense of his role in the ming for an exam,” as he recounts in this Saturday Night Massacre and its after- N O T I C E memoir of his service during the last 15 math. months of the Nixon administration. Richardson and Deputy Attorney to all National Review “I don’t advise heading into the General William Ruckelshaus had made Supreme Court with one day’s prepara- commitments in their confirmation hear- subscribers! tion,” he writes, “but I had no other ings not to fire the special prosecutor choice.” He had no choice because he absent “extraordinary improprieties,” a was preoccupied with another matter standard that they did not believe had that was somewhat more pressing: de- been met by Cox’s conduct. Both offi- fending the Justice Department’s deci- cials therefore refused to fire him, and We are moving our sion to seek the indictment of a sitting resigned. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Bork vice president for taking bribes. Spiro was the acting attorney general, and he subscription-fulfillment Agnew’s venal corruption was, nonethe- admits that he was “taken off guard.” office from less, small potatoes by the standards of Those who knew Robert Bork have diffi- the Nixon White House: The Watergate culty imagining him in a state of indeci- Mount Morris, Ill. scandal had already forced the resigna- sion and confusion; but he admits that he to Palm Coast, Fla. tions of Nixon’s top aides, and the I- was “a welter of contradictory impulses” Please continue word was on everyone’s mind as special as he tried to think through the likely prosecutor Archibald Cox’s investigation consequences of a decision to fire, or not to be vigilant: methodically, relentlessly crept closer to fire, Cox. There are fraudulent Nixon himself. The issue for Bork was not the presi- Bork casts new light on how miserable dent’s authority to fire Cox, which was agencies soliciting life in the Nixon administration could be, clear, or his grounds, which had been your National Review with the Watergate revelations throwing a supplied by Cox’s flamboyant press con- suffocating blanket of distrust and suspi- ference. Rather, the question was which subscription ! renewal cion over the White House. For example, course was more likely to ensure that the without our authorization. to ensure that a private conversation with special prosecutor’s staff, and the Justice Please reply only to his dear friend, Yale law professor Alex - Department as a whole, would remain ander Bickel, could not be overheard, intact and on course. If he refused to fire National Review Bork insisted that they get out of his own Cox and resigned, Bork thought, the renewal notices or car and walk along the semi-rural road to likely result would be Nixon’s appoint- Bork’s home. He also recounts a scene in ment of a White House apparatchik as bills—make sure the which Attorney General Elliot Richard - acting attorney general, and the “disso- return address is son turned on all the faucets in the men’s lution of the special-prosecutor staff and room outside the Oval Office to drown mass exodus in the Department of Palm Coast, Fla. out his whispered conversation with Justice.” In the end, Bork obeyed Nixon’s Ignore all requests for Bork in case “anybody was eavesdrop- order because he was determined “to renewal that are not ping electronically.” Looking back, Bork hold together the Watergate investigation directly payable attributes the “low comedy” in these and the Justice Department as a whole.” episodes to “the paranoia of the time,” We can never know what would have to National Review. but such distrust hardly seems irrational happened if Bork had refused to fire Cox, given the revelation of Nixon’s secret except that he undoubtedly would have If you receive any mail or taping system; and there is more tragedy been hailed by the elites as the fourth telephone offer that makes than farce in the spectacle of Nixon’s hero martyred in the Saturday Night you suspicious contact attorney general (and former defense sec- Massacre, rather than vilified as Nixon’s retary) being as wary in a visit to the hatchet man. He might even have banked [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. White House as he would have been in a enough street cred with the Left to Your cooperation visit to the Soviet embassy. change the outcome of the 1987 Senate Those who live by the audiotape die by confirmation hearings that made his is greatly appreciated. the audiotape. On learning of the White name a verb. House recordings, Cox immediately sub- But we certainly know what did hap-

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS pen. Bork held the special prosecutor’s construct new rights.” break down citizens’ doors in midnight staff together and preserved the integrity This theory of constitutional interpre- raids, and schoolchildren could not be of the Watergate investigation, includ- tation came to be called originalism, and taught about evolution.” Kennedy’s ing its authority to go to court to enforce Bork became its foremost champion, speech went downhill from there. the subpoena for the tapes. He named elaborating his argument in speeches, Bork did not help his cause in the con- Leon Jaworski to replace Cox as special essays, and articles. He was also a lonely firmation hearings. The black-and-white prosecutor, and Jaworski successfully advocate, for his views were heretical in photo on the dust jacket of Saving Justice defended the subpoena in the Supreme the legal academy, which idolized Warren captures the stern visage of Bork that the Court, which unanimously rejected and other liberal-activist judges. But he Senate Judiciary Committee and count- Nixon’s claim of executive privilege. became a hero to judicial conservatives, less millions saw during his televised The Court’s decision sealed Nixon’s fate; and in 1981, Ronald Reagan appointed confirmation hearings. This image made shortly after the tapes were released, with him to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Kennedy’s monstrous caricature of Bork an impeachment trial in the Senate loom- Then, six years later, Reagan nominated more credible. Had more of Bork’s warm, ing, he was forced to resign. No fewer him to the Supreme Court, to replace the charming personal style, and his quick than 48 Nixon-administration officials retiring justice Lewis Powell. wit, come through during the hearings, were ultimately convicted of the result might have been dif- crimes related to Watergate. In ferent. short, Nixon and his men were Bork’s defeat in the Senate brought to justice—and justice embittered him, but did not was indeed saved from cor- chase him from the field. He rupt government officials wrote a bestselling book about who sought to thwart it. the experience, The Tempting Bork was quite aware of the of America, that featured his price he would pay for firing most powerful explication of Cox, and he fully anticipated originalism. The idea that the that “oblivion” awaited him. original meaning of the Con - But there are no men like Bork stitution is determinable, un - in oblivion, at least not for changing, and binding on the long. He continued to serve as courts is now generally ac - solicitor general through most cepted—even among the law of the Ford administration, professoriat—as a legitimate, distinguishing himself as one albeit still controversial, the- of the greatest of all Supreme ory, largely because of Bork’s Court advocates. In 1977, he scholarship. returned to Yale Law School Saving Justice completes and to the cause that would the Bork canon. Written over become his lifelong work: sav- the course of a long, debili- ing the Constitution from acti - tating illness, it was published vist judges. after his death. It pays Bork’s Bork entered the debate Acting Attorney General Robert H. Bork, November 14, 1973 debt to history, revealing riv- over the proper role of the eting, intimate details about courts in 1971, with the publication in the “I thought my confirmation was a sure some of the most wrenching events in our Indiana Law Re view of his seminal arti- thing,” Bork writes. So did those of us in nation’s experiment with constitutional cle “Neutral Principles and Some First the Justice Department who were in- democracy. And it strikes the final blow Amendment Problems.” He decried as volved in the confirmation process. It is in his struggle to save the rule of law from illegitimate the Supreme Court’s make- difficult to think of any nominee in activist judges. His last written words, fit- it-up-as-you-go fabrication of constitu- American history who presented a better tingly, were these: tional rights under Chief Justice Earl résumé. But because he would be replac- It bears endless repeating that we are now Warren. His argument was simply that “a ing the moderate Powell, the Court’s being ruled in some of our most crucial legitimate Court must be controlled by swing vote, the Left and its allies in the cultural and moral issues by judges who principles exterior to the will of the Senate were resolved to defeat Bork at have acquired the power, but certainly Justices.” And given that, in our constitu- any cost. The low point in the campaign not the authority, to take these decisions tional democracy, courts must “accept to demonize him came within an hour of out of our hands. . . . They continue their any value choice the Legis lature makes the announcement of his nomination, as attack on the basic structure of the law by unless it clearly runs contrary to a choice Senator Edward Kennedy took the floor filling the categories of law with politics. made in the framing of the Constitution,” of the Senate to utter these despicable Originalism provides hope that the con- Bork argued, it follows that in construing lies: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in stitutional structure of our country will be maintained. BOB DAUGHERTY

/ and enforcing the Con stitution, a “judge which women would be forced into back- must stick close to the text and the histo- alley abortions, blacks would sit at segre- Now, with Bork gone, that hope is a bit

AP PHOTO ry, and their fair implications, and not gated lunch counters, rogue police could dimmer.

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Epic of A Nation

DANIEL JOHNSON

Conrad Black

war ship, for example, you can be sure ground. What about the book itself? It is, Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That that he would be able to reel off all her as the subtitle announces, a strategic Brought America from Colonial Dependence to vital statistics on demand. history of America, describing the arc that World Leadership, by Conrad Black Even if its author had not been a pris- led it “from colonial dependence to world (Encounter, 746 pp., $35.99) oner at the time of writing, however, this leadership.” It is not a conventional polit- book would rank as one of the most ical, diplomatic, or military history, but rom Boethius to Bonhoeffer, remarkable achievements of a remarkable an amalgam of the three, peppered with many authors have written their man. The spartan circumstances of its vivid pen portraits of all the dramatis per- most famous books in prison. In composition have concentrated and dis- sonae. Some attention is paid to domestic F rare individuals down the ages, tilled the reading of a lifetime—a lifetime politics and economics, mainly insofar the predicament of incarceration seems to evidently spent accumulating intellectual as these had a bearing on American pres- have unleashed great creativity. Some of as well as financial capital. This book had tige and policy abroad. Little or none is the results are prodigious works of imagi- its origins in lectures given to those un - devoted to social, cultural, or intellectual nation: Don Quixote transformed Euro - educated but intelligent prisoners eager to history, except where they throw light on pean literature; The Prince revolutionized learn and to escape from a life of crime, the main players. The result is in one political thought. But there is also Mein for whom such an erudite and command- sense quite old-fashioned: This is history Kampf, the work that crystallized the evil ing presence must have been a godsend. seen from the top. But Black writes with a fantasies of a monster and poisoned the For Black, himself an autodidact, teach- keen eye to the factors that really mattered minds of a generation of Germans. ing was a welcome outlet for energies at the time. He has no patience for the Conrad Black’s Flight of the Eagle is otherwise liable to be consumed in the anachronistic attitudinizing of the acad- also largely the product of imprisonment. ultimately fruitless quest for full exoner- emy, which emphasizes structures rather As a feat of historiographical memory, ation by the courts. What makes this than charismatic individuals, or makes it does not quite compare with Sir Wal - history of the United States so gripping too much of the masses at the expense of ter raleigh’s History of the World or and lucid is, in part, that it arose from the the elite. For him, the great men (they usu- Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean. author’s need to hold the attention even of ally are men, though he does not ignore While these historians were not entirely convicts, most of whom, like him, had the women) make the strategic decisions denied books (respectively, in the Tower their grievances against American justice. and hence make history. In his excellent of Lon don and a Nazi prison camp), This eagle could spread its wings and take introductory note, Henry Kissinger de - Black had access to the Internet in the two flight only behind bars. fines “national strategy,” Black’s key con- Florida correctional facilities where he Though Black was no ordinary convict, cept, as “the goals [a society] seeks to was held between 2007 and 2012, includ- and would never have gone to jail for such achieve and the contingencies it seeks ing a period from 2010 to 2011 when he obscure and dubious offenses either in his to prevent”: “It unites a people’s core was released on bail pending his appeal native Canada or in his adoptive Britain, interests, values, and apprehensions.” to the Supreme Court. Yet unlike so many he makes little of his ordeal in this book. That Americans have pursued such a CHRIS YOUNG

academic histories, every page of this In fact, he does not mention it until the grand strategy since the days of the / book has the authentic touch of a histo- penultimate page, when he appends a Founding Fathers Black takes for grant- rian who knows countless facts and fig- footnote by way of disclosure to a passage ed. Whether or not they have generally ures by heart. When he mentions a in which he denounces the “evils of the agreed, either in war or in peace, on what THE CANADIAN PRESS

[U.S. judicial] system,” whose “rogue precisely these interests, values, or appre- / Mr. Johnson is the editor of Standpoint, a London- prosecutocracy terrorizes the country.” hensions might be, there has indeed been

based political and cultural monthly magazine. So much for the author and the back- a broad consensus that the “manifest des- AP PHOTO

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS tiny” of the United States was, in John L. eral power. Still, as the author of a full- O’Sullivan’s resounding declaration of length biography of Roosevelt, Black 1845, “to overspread and to possess the knows this material inside out and makes Genius for whole of the continent which Providence a good case for his hero: “Presi dent has given us for the development of the Roosevelt had made it America’s world Friendship great experiment of liberty.” What later to lead, a world largely safe for democ- came to be called “American exception- racy, at last, as long as the United States J O H N A V L O N alism” may have been, as Black insists, was involved in it.” (Whether demo - “always to a degree a fraud,” but it has cracy was indeed safe outside the Anglo - OmEONE should tell the story of been the nation’s secular religion ever sphere is another matter.) this odd couple, because many since the 1750s. Already at that time, Coming to the post-war era, Black has today would find it hard to Benjamin Franklin was predicting that a bold conjecture: He castigates Truman S believe. Politics often feels the American population “will in another for firing General macArthur during the like an ideological blood-sport, with century be more than the people of Korean War. The hero of the Pacific War pundits mercilessly bludgeoning one England, and the greatest number of had demanded the resources to exploit another to entertain the agitated masses. Englishmen will be on this side of the his military ascendancy over the North But while the godfather of the modern water.” In a letter to Lord Kames, he ex- Koreans, in order to destroy Communist conservative movement, William F. pressed his view that “the future grandeur China’s military capability and, if possi- Buckley Jr., was a happy warrior in the and stability of the British Empire lie in ble, replace mao with Chiang Kai-shek. world of intellectual combat, he was America,” but Black comments that macArthur’s point was that it is im - also blessed with a genius for friend- Franklin “was essentially sketching out moral to sacrifice young American lives ship—and he counted a handful of com- the future of America, not Britain.” for anything less than victory—a point mitted liberals as close friends: John The period from the Seven Years’ War that still resonates today. Black dis misses Kenneth Galbraith, Allard Lowenstein, to the “transatlantic civil war,” as Black fears at the time of a nuclear escalation, and, perhaps most notably, murray calls the revolution that gave the colonies both in this episode and in the Cuban mis- Kempton. independence, was such a short time that sile crisis, but of course he speaks with the Kempton was, in Buckley’s words, a many opponents in the latter had fought benefit of hindsight. Kennedy’s brink- “socialist—a sworn enemy of all anti- as comrades in the former. Once the manship was quite enough to unnerve Communist legislation, sworn friend of French had been expelled from America, his allies without pushing his luck fur- militant unionism.” He was also, accord- British rule had outlived its usefulness. ther. ing to Buckley, “the finest writer in the “No taxation without representation” was Not for the first time, Black champions newspaper profession,” with character- a good rallying cry, but only a pretext for Nixon, above all for the 1969 “silent istic “wit and irony and a compassion the urge to go it alone. majority” speech, in which he declared: which is sometimes unruly.” more to the There is little to whet Black’s appetite “North Vietnam cannot defeat or humili- point, he was “a great artist and a great for grand strategy during the century ate the United States. Only Americans can friend.” between the “silly little war” of 1812 and do that.” Replace “North Vietnam” with In his four-decade, four-day-a-week World War I: “Alone among the world’s the name of any other enemy, and Nixon’s column in New York tabloids, murray Great Powers, the United States had no words hold true today. But his strategic Kempton established himself as an serious business to conduct diplomati- vision was not matched by his personal iconic iconoclast, a Christian gentleman cally.” But he has a high regard for integrity, so it was left to Reagan to pick and sometimes lonely devotee of the Lincoln, for him one of the Big Four up the pieces and restore American civil society who bicycled around town presidents along with Washington, FDR, morale after Vietnam. in a three-piece suit listening to Bach on and Reagan. These four each won deci- By the time Reagan had left the Soviet a portable CD player. The unassuming sive victories and, in Lincoln’s case, his Union in the dust, the eagle not only had Pulitzer Prize winner was, in the words emancipation of the slaves did away taken flight but was almost out of sight. of David Remnick, “a moralist who with the hypocrisy of America’s claims Black sees this lack of rivals as the real does not preach: an artist who reports.” to speak for liberty. But it was Woodrow challenge: The U.S. had to “sustain a Growing up in Baltimore, Kempton Wilson who involved America in the will to greatness when it had nothing left had been a copy boy for the legendary power games of Europe and conceived to prove.” He concludes with a somber H. L. mencken and, in his reminiscence the notion of making the world safe for indictment of present decline, of which of that journalistic giant, Kempton paid democracy. Strategically, this was the Barack Obama is more a symptom than mencken and Buckley the compliment big shift. a cause. Yet Black is confident that a of comparison, writing that mencken For Black, however, the greatest strate- restoration of sound strategic leadership “had the luck of the disability that gic triumph of all was FDR’s achieve- is imminent, for when the nation has afflicts William F. Buckley: His nature ment between 1937 and 1945. Before the needed such leadership in the past, it has war, the United States was primus inter found it: “The United States remains Mr. Avlon is a columnist for Newsweek and the pares; afterwards, even the Soviet Union incomparably the greatest and most suc- Daily Beast, and a CNN contributor. He is the had to play second fiddle. Conservative cessful country there has ever been.” author or co-editor of several books, including readers may balk at Black’s panegyric to This brave book, a call to arms in dark Independent Nation. He is working on a book the man who irreversibly centralized fed- days, is worthy of its subject. on George Washington’s farewell address.

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was not cold enough to make a good the campaign with evident delight for worshiped talent.” Tory, or a good Bolshevik; he was defi- the New York World-Telegram. “Buck - The socializing did not obscure their cient in the high-mindedness, the disci- ley made it plain yesterday that he does very real differences on politics and pline, the cold-hearted need.” not merely disdain the opposition but policy—instead, it elevated the debate. Kempton was right about them: There rather disdains the office itself,” Kemp - Kempton’s youthful flirtation with was embedded in both men a respect ton recounted for his readers, comparing Communism was a frequent target of for transcendent values and a skepti- WFB’s grim attempts at glad-handing Buckley’s jabs, with Bill recounting that cism about the wisdom of contemporary voters to a “gentleman ranker offered his “Kempton was nearly alone in champi- crowds. But they were unlikely rebels, oning men and women who had fallen blessed with cool minds and warm hearts, under the spell of ideology and the Com - entering the arena armed with reason, munist Party and never seemed to cease civility, and wit rather than pitchfork pas- paying for their folly.” sion. They embodied the aphorism “Take This was true. There was a congenital your work seriously, but not yourself.” compassion to Kempton’s work that led Perhaps not coincidentally, they were him to empathize even with fallen Mob among the greatest newspaper colum- bosses and disgraced political power bro- nists of their time. kers (his simultaneously sarcastic and The Buckley-Kempton friendship “was sentimental defense of Tammany Hall’s amusingly unlikely at the time, but it Carmine DeSapio against Greenwich would be almost impossible to imagine Village reformers is a classic). When now,” says former New York Newsday New York governor Mario Cuomo asked publisher Steven Isenberg—unlikely, Newsday columnist Sydney Schanberg that is, “unless you knew them person- how he could get Kempton on his side, ally, and then you saw the points of over- Schanberg famously replied, “try getting lapping interest.” indicted.” “Both these guys were funny. They Kempton’s eye always sought out the both loved music, the corners of classi- underdog and he studiously avoided cism,” says Isenberg. “They both had bringing his journalistic sledgehammer grace—a style and character with reli- down on the comparatively small and gious undertones. They both had great powerless. Even in a portrait of “The care and respect for the young in their Southern Gentlemen”—“Louisiana’s own crafts. But their strongest bond was mili tant symbol of the counter-attack language—they lived by it and they against racial integration”—published by died by it.” While Buckley famously the New York Post in 1955, Kempton did trotted out twenty-dollar words that not lead with judgment. Instead he de - required mere mortals to consult a dic- scribed the group’s ringleader this way: tionary, Kempton was often criticized “J. B. Easterly, Southern Gentle man for his baroque style, featuring long sen- No. 1, is a spike-haired, square-bifocalled, tences and dry wit, neither of which are heavy-necked man of sixty-one, alternat- standard operating procedure in the New ing explosions of laughter and indigna- York tabloid world. tion. His grandchildren call him ‘Pop-Pop’ Another love that Kempton and Buck - and he’s totally impossible to dislike.” ley shared was a love of New York City, Offered an ogre, Kempton was kind with all its faults and exhilarations. Murray Kempton, 1973 and chose to keep the white suprema- Kempton was a defiantly lifelong local cist’s humanity intact. He let “Pop-Pop” columnist, declining various overtures first introduction to the men’s latrine.” hang himself with his own words. to join the New York Times and “go Acquainted as reporter and subject, But Kempton balanced his jeweler’s national.” they coexisted as colleagues in the world eye and essentially modest nature with “I walk wide of the cosmic and settle of columnizing for far longer, with Kemp - an allergy to the pretensions and ambi- most happily for the local,” Kempton ton occasionally appearing on Firing tions of elites. He once described him- explained, “a precinct less modest than I Line and even contributing to NATIONAL self as having pursued “a life dedicated make it sound, since my local happens to REVIEW (always on art, never politics). to no civic activity except striving to be the only city under the eye of God He became a frequent guest at Buckley’s protect this country from being man- where the librettist for Don Giovanni parties. “I met Murray Kemp ton be - aged by persons like William F. Buckley could find his closest friend in the author cause of Bill,” remembers longtime Jr. and myself.” of ’Twas the Night before Christmas.” NATIONAL REVIEW senior editor Richard The unexpected affectionate ribbing A similar if slightly less exalted Brookhiser. “He went to NR Christmas only hinted at the reservoirs of mutual

JVB parties and the like. Murray was a very / dichotomy existed in their friendship. respect. Kempton dedicated the last When Buckley famously ran for mayor sweet guy—which Bill liked. But at his collection of his columns—Rebellions,

AP PHOTO of New York in 1965, Kempton covered best he was a terrific writer and Bill just Perversities, and Main Events—to

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THE NATIONAL REVIEW 2013 MICHAEL NOVAK SIGNS ON! Norwegian Fjords Cruise Sailing August 1-8 on Holland America’s Eurodam with Allen West, Paul Johnson, Ralph Reed, John Sununu, Cal Thomas, Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry, Daniel Hannan, Jay Nordlinger, Michael Novak, James Pethokoukis, Kevin Williamson, Anthony Daniels, David Pryce-Jones, John Fund, John O’Sullivan, Ramesh Ponnuru, Robert Costa, Jim Geraghty, John J. Miller, John Hillen, Charles Cooke, Andrew Stiles, Cleta Mitchell, Daniel Mahoney, James Lileks, Rob Long, Edward Whelan, Victor Sperandeo, and Eliana Johnson, as we scenic-cruise the stunning Norwegian coast, visiting Amsterdam, Bergen, Flam, Eidfjord, and Stavanger!

ere’s your special opportunity to take part in one of the most Whelan, and NR all-stars Rich Lowry, Jonah Goldberg, Kevin exciting seafaring adventures you will ever experience: the Williamson, Robert Costa, Andrew Stiles, Charles Cooke, Jim H National Review 2013 Norwegian Fjords Cruise. Featuring Geraghty, John Fund, John Miller, and Eliana Johnson. an incredible cast of conservative celebrity speakers—and affordable Over 300 NR readers—make certain you’re one of them!—are accommodations—this special trip will take place August 1-8. Set for expected to take this wonderful trip, which is why we urge you to act the absolutely ideal time to visit Norway and enjoy its now to reserve your stateroom. This cruise is very popular, unique, breathtaking beauty, the phenomenal journey because of the raw beauty of the fjords (for Mother will sail round-trip from Amsterdam aboard Nature at her finest, it’s hard to beat the stunning Holland America Line’s MS Eurodam, which will waterways hugging the Norwegian coast) and the “scenic-cruise” the coastal fjord paradise in the narrow crusing “season.” This is an unrivaled “Land of the Midnight Sun,” and visit the family summer-vacation destination, so don’t delightful ports of Bergen, Flam, Eidfjord, and beat them—instead, join them (with your fami- Stavanger. (We’re also making available a super ly!) on our 2013 Norwegian Fjords Cruise. three-night pre-cruise visit to beautiful Den The Eurodam has a cabin to meet every taste Hague in The Netherlands!) and budget. We renegotiated prices with Holland This is a unique opportunity to meet preemi- America, and have slashed original per-person nent conservatives: esteemed theologian and his- rates by $167 to over $550 (depending on cabin torian Michael Novak has just joined our contin- Put some Aurora in your Borealis! Enjoy the categories) for double-occupancy, and by $269 to summer lights on the glorious ms Eurodam gent, which includes former Florida Congressman $1,100 on “single” staterooms! Our reduced Allen West, historian Paul Johnson, former White House Chief of prices start at just $2,199 per person, and “single” staterooms begin Staff John Sununu, conservative EU parliamentarian Daniel at a very affordable $2,699. Hannan, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, political analyst Ralph Given where we’re going, make that very affjordable! Reed, acclaimed social critic Anthony Daniels, NR columnists Rob For those of you who’ve wanted to go on an NR cruise (this will be Long and James Lileks, economics writer James Pethokoukis, fiscal our 33rd!), but haven’t yet, consider this: The “typical” NR cruise guru Victor Sperandeo, senior editors Jay Nordlinger, David Pryce- “alumnus” has been on an average of four of our seafaring trips! He Jones, and Ramesh Ponnuru, military expert John Hillen, conserv- keeps coming back again and again for an obvious reason: An NR ative scholar Daniel Mahoney, legal experts Cleta Mitchell and Ed cruise is a great time. It’s time you discovered this for yourself. When you do, you will find that O NE CO OOO L WE EK O F S UM MER FUN A ND CO NS ERVA TIVE RE VEL RY! our voyages are marked by riveting political and policy shoptalk, wonder- DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT ful socializing, intimate dining with editors and speakers, making new Thur./Aug. 1 Amsterdam, Netherlands 4:00PM evening cocktail reception friends, rekindling old friendships, and Fri./Aug. 2 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars grand cruising. That and much more await you on the National Review Sat./Aug. 3 Bergen, Norway 8:00AM 5:00PM afternoon seminar 2013 Norwegian Fjords Cruise. “Night Owl” Here’s our exclusive event program: seven scintillating seminars fea- Sun./Aug. 4 Flam, Norway 8:00AM 6:00PM afternoon seminar Scenic cruising Sognefjord late-night smoker

Mon./Aug. 5 Eidfjord, Norway 10:00AM 6:00PM evening cocktail reception Scenic cruising Hardangerfjord

Tue./Aug. 6 Stavanger, Norway 8:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminars Scenic cruising Lysefjord “Night Owl”

Wed./Aug. 7 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars evening cocktail reception

Thur./Aug. 8 Amsterdam, Netherlands 7:00AM Norway 2013 2 page spread July 1 2013 issue:Panama cruise.qxd 6/11/2013 1:44 PM Page 2

ADMIT IT: YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO GO ON AN NR CRUISE! NOW DO IT!

turing NR’s editors and guest speakers; two fun “Night Owl” sessions; ACT NOW: TIME IS RUNNING OUT! three revelrous pool-side cocktail receptions; a late-night “smoker” featuring world-class H. Upmann cigars (and complimentary cognac); and RATES START AT JUST $2,199 P/P! dining on two evenings with a guest speaker or editor. The best reason to come is the luminary line-up. This tremendous Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, ensemble guarantees fascinating seminar sessions. Then there’s the ship: and great entertainment await you on the Eurodam. Prices are The Eurodam’s luxurious staterooms are matched by the indulgent staff, per-person, based on double occupancy, and include port fees, superior cuisine, top-notch entertainment and excursions. taxes, gratuities, meals, entertainment, and admittance to and And then there are the great destinations. We start and end the trip participation in all NR functions. Per-person rates for 3rd/4th in historic Amsterdam, but let us tell you about the Norway itinerary: person (in same cabin with two full-fare guests) are as follows: Ages 2 to 17: $769. Ages 18 and over: $1,299.

BERGEN This town will make you think of a fairy tale. Stroll its cen- DELUXE SUITE Magnificent luxury quarters (506 turies-old cobbled streets and alleyways, past the small wooden hous- sq. ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge es and flowers (they’re everywhere!). Mingle with the Fish Market and personal concierge, complimentary laun- crowds, visit the Bergen Aquarium, the wooden buildings at Bryggen, dry and dry-cleaning service. Large private the old fortress at Bergenhus, or its many museums and galleries. verandah, king-size bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool bath/shower, dressing room, large sittingSOLD area, flat-panelOUT FLAM Surrounded by steep mountainsides, roaring waterfalls, and tv/DVD player, mini-bar, and refrigerator. deep valleys, this beautiful town is nestled in a tributary of the world’s longest and deepest fjord. Go cycling, hike one of the many trails in Category SA DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,399 P/P the Flam Valley or in the mountains, or visit Otternes Bygdetun (its SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 8,499 27 different buildings dating back to the 1600’s). SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (273- EIDFJORD This place of peace and quiet is surrounded by beautiful 456 sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen- scenery. Take a lazy-day stroll along the waterfront, gaze at the majes- size bed (convertible to 2 twin beds), tic fjord, visit the old stone church and the Viking grave yards. whirlpool bath/shower, large sitting area, mini-bar, refrigerator,SOLD flat-panel OUT tv and STAVANGER This vibrant and picturesque city is home to two DVD player, floor-to-ceiling windows. dozen museums, with a center arrayed around a pretty harbor and quiet streets. Don’t miss the well-preserved old town (Gamle Category SS DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,999 P/P Stavanger), the unique Canning Museum or the 12th-century SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 6,299 Stavanger Cathedral. DELUXE VERANDAH Spacious cabin (213-379 Sign up today for what will be seven of the most glorious days you’ll sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed ever experience. To reserve your stateroom visit www.nrcruise.com or (convertible to 2 twin beds), bath with shower, call The Cruise Authority at 1-800-707-1634. Remember, while there’s sitting area, mini-bar, refrigerator, flat-panel a stateroom to fit your taste and budget, don’t tarry: All cabins are avail- tv/DVD player, floor-to-ceiling windows. able on a first come, first served basis. Categories VA / VB / VC Take part in a truly special conservative event. Join us this August on DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,399 P/P the Eurordam, in the company of Allen West, Paul Johnson, Daniel SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,299 Hannan, Ralph Reed, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Novak, Anthony Daniels, John Sununu, Cal Thomas, Dick Morris, Rich Lowry, John Categories VZ (Similar cabin located forward or aft) DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,199 P/P O’Sullivan, John Fund, James Lileks, James Pethokoukis, David SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,999 Pryce-Jones, Jay Nordlinger, Kevin D. Williamson, Jim Geraghty, Robert Costa, Ramesh Ponnuru, John Podhoretz, John Hillen, John OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters (169 to 267 sq. J. Miller, Rob Long, Andrew Stiles, Charles Cooke, Daniel Mahoney, ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin Cleta Mitchell, Victor Sperandeo, Edward Whelan, and Eliana beds), bathtub with shower, sitting area, flat-panel Johnson on the National Review 2013 Norwegian Fjords Cruise. tv/DVD player,FEW ocean-view LEFT windows. Category C REGISTER AT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM OR CALL DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,649 P/P THE CRUISE AUTHORITY AT 1-800-707-1634. SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,499 ASK ABOUT OUR 3-DAY PRE-CRUISE TOUR! INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters (from 141 to over 200 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin beds), shower, flat-panel tv and DVD player.

Category J DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,199 P/P SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,699 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/11/2013 5:07 PM Page 50

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS “William F. Buckley, genius at friend- were exemplars of civility and defend- cially needed in our time. But for all of ships of the kind that passes all under- ers of civilization at a time when many Buckley’s enduring areas of influence, standing.” What went unsaid was that contemporaries were preoccupied with this gift seems the most lost in transla- Buckley not only encouraged Kempton the fashionable flash and bang that tion. to embark on the project, he made its could come with its collapse. Against “The failure of Bill’s ‘genius for publication financially possible. this common backdrop, their consid- friendship’ to rub off on the current gen- In the autumn of their lives, Kempton ered political differences were small eration of public figures on the Right and Buckley remained close despite indeed. had to do at least in part with the punishing schedules stemming from In Kempton’s final fight with pancre- changes in the culture,” e-mails WFB’s their principled refusal to retire. Buck- atic cancer, Buckley broke his general longtime assistant and keeper of the ley could not attend one late-inning preference for avoiding the deathbeds flame, Linda Bridges. “The increasing birthday party held for Kempton in the of friends by visiting Murray multiple propensity towards ‘in your face’ atti- Newsday newsroom, but he sent a pre- times. And when Kempton passed in tudes; the notion that in a world of consent. It was a 16th-century copy of The May 1997, at the age of 79, he requested stant media and Internet bombardment, Book of Common Prayer. After unwrap- that only The Book of Common Prayer quiet intelligent conversation can’t ping the volume, Kempton broke down be read at his funeral service, as an grab the attention in the way that shout- in tears. alternative to the cavalcade of speakers ing and invective can. And I do think Faith was another common bond that who assumed they would be given a there’s something to that. But I’m not transcended their different denomina- chance to eulogize the departed. Buck - sure that Bill’s genius for friendship was tions. Kempton was an unusually obser- ley penned a four-page tribute to his ever all that transmissible,” Bridges vant Episcopalian. “My church was friend in NATIoNAL REvIEW, saying that says. “I think Bill influenced far more inspired by a languid but dutiful zeal to Kempton “in his career lacerated us all, people with his conservatism and his serve the royal will with a bill of di- but scorned only the hypocrites and the Catholicism than with what may, after vorce,” Kempton wrote. “The Book of arrogant.” all, be a very individual and personal Common Prayer—the envy of even you Now, of course, both men have gone gift.” Romans, who deserve to be envied for on to what they would consider their But you catch more flies with honey everything else—was established as reward. But their words endure and with than vinegar, as my grandfather often the foundation of this shadowed faith; them their ability to inspire. I came into said, and Buckley’s shimmering civili- and every line and comma was passed contact with their voluminous output ty was always a core element of his through the gimlet eye of Elizabeth I. while co-editing the Deadline Artists appeal, helping him win converts. A For centuries thereafter congregants anthologies of America’s greatest news- dour and dogmatic William F. Buckley ingested mighty cadences, sweet solaces, paper columns, in which both are well is hard to imagine, and such a figure and the necessary adjurations to pull up represented. I was particularly taken by would have also been far less persua- their socks.” their unlikely friendship, especially be - sive in communicating his conservative That paragraph makes clear their cause the history of journalism is littered message. And while ideology did not over lapping interest: an appreciation with outsized personalities who became drive Murray Kempton’s journalism, for tradition and the precision of words, bitterly preoccupied with their rivalries. civility animated his approach—as it chased with puckish irreverence. They Here was a positive object lesson, espe- did Buckley’s—to telling the stories of his time. He ad vanced grace and kind- ness where they were least expected, finding figures worth redemption HEELS UPON THE TILE among the dispossessed and disgraced. The effect was not moral relativism but When I consider your devoted eyes, moral clarity. devoid of any vice I could reject, In the end, civility is a value best alive with avid interest, subtly flecked, expressed through actions, and Kemp - and focused on my face with slight surprise, ton and Buckley’s relationship reminds it seems as though I had disturbed a séance us that there is something essentially in which the phantoms of the past collect, grace less about imposing political lit - to see in me preposterous, weird nuance, mus tests on personal friendships. It dramatic as mascara when it dries. coarsens civic conversations and dumbs them down, obscuring the view of our For me, then, there can be no more denial common humanity and overlapping in - you love me. I shrink back in re-appraisal, terests. Perspective is the thing we have to closely clutch suspicion like a vial least of in our political debates. And so with my own blend of rosewood and witch-hazel, as we still learn from Buckley and strike my stiletto heels upon the tile, Kempton’s artful arguments, there is and properly return your proper smile. much to learn from their friendship as well: a reminder of the (almost) lost art —JENNIFER REESER of disagreeing agreeably.

5 0 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 , 2 0 1 3 books:QXP-1127940387.qxp 6/11/2013 5:07 PM Page 51

Film No Green Light

ROSS DOUTHAT

he Bling Ring, the latest film from Sofia Coppola, marks something of a departure for its T director. After several movies that have looked at the celebrity lifestyle from the inside—whether in the fancy hotels of Asia and California or in their 18th-century equivalent, Versailles—she’s decided to tell a story about how celebrity Taissa Farmiga, Israel Broussard, Emma Watson, Katie Chang, and Claire Julien in The Bling Ring culture influences the kind of people who are on the outside looking in. who ever seems even to imagine that The director has an answer for that, Her subjects this time are a gang of they might get caught. But he’s three- judging by a recent new York Times inter- upper-middle-class L.A. girls (and one dimensional only in comparison with view in which she dismissed any compar- hapless guy) who perpetrated a string of the girls, whose unremitting vapidity is ison between her own background and the high-profile burglaries about five years at first amusing, and then tedious, and celebrity culture that features in The Bling ago, robbing such stars as Paris Hilton then all too easy to simply tune out. Ring. Yes, she allowed, “people think I and Lindsay Lohan and then, when the The most entertaining is Nicki, the grew up around that or something,” but cops caught up with them, leveraging member of the ring whose quest for fame “to me, Al Pacino and Paris Hilton are dif- their notoriety into the celebrity they went farthest (she briefly had her own ferent, you know what I mean?” obviously craved. It’s a story that seems post-prison reality-TV show), and who’s Which is fair enough, in a sense—but perfectly calibrated to illustrate the played by harry Potter veteran Emma then this movie feels a little like high-art strange anxieties of affluence, the way Watson with a hateful narcissism that Hollywood revenging itself on trashy that privilege often only generates an seems intended to bury the memory of Hollywood, with the audience’s experi- even stronger urge to get further up and Hermione Granger. But even her insistent ence a victim of the crossfire. There has further in, and the role that “famous for awfulness grows tiring, and the rest of the to be something more to say about Paris being famous” figures such as Hilton posse—Chang’s ringleader included—are Hilton and her fans than that they’re and Lohan play in making stardom just unmemorable clichés of SoCal solip- stupid and vacuous. Or if that’s all there is seem oddly accessible—something eas- sism, with eyes as blank as their pilfered to say, then maybe it wasn’t worth Cop - ily grasped, or in this case easily stolen. designer sunglasses. pola’s time and talent to say it. But to show any of this, Coppola would Which may be Coppola’s point, I sup- It’s also a strange film to watch so soon have needed to muster some sympathy for pose—that there’s no there there, because after Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The her fame-addled, Rolex-hoarding sub- the interactions between celebrity culture, great gatsby, which was widely criti- jects, and instead she seems to regard consumerism, and social media have cized for glamorizing the lifestyles of the them as dead souls, beyond her ability to produced a generation of teenagers with rich and famous even more than F. Scott penetrate or understand. None of the kids designer-bag wish lists where their hearts Fitzgerald’s novel did. But in both gatsby are given real backstories, none of their should be. But if that was what she want- the movie and gatsby the book, the lure conversations rise above banality, and ed to say, then the movie needed to be of glamour and glitz is intertwined—as there’s almost nothing in any of the young more savagely satirical, rather than cool, it is in life—with higher human aspira- actors’ performances that hints at any distant, clinical, chilly. Especially given tions, and the story shows us the inherent motivation beyond peer pressure and the the filmmaker’s own background: I know attractions of privilege precisely in lust for bling. that it’s predictable to judge Coppola by order to make us sympathize with, and Our point-of-view character is Marc her biography, but there’s something a understand, the criminal arriviste-cum- (Israel Broussard), a socially awkward, little off-putting about a daughter of madman at the center of the story. probably gay high-schooler who falls Hollywood privilege going from a series That kind of sympathy and understand- under the spell of Rebecca (Katie Chang) of movies that work very hard to human- ing is what’s glaringly missing from and helps her make the leap from casual ize actual celebrities—think of Bill Mur- The Bling Ring. It’s a gatsby with all kleptomania to robbing Orlando Bloom. ray as a faded movie star in lost in the meretriciousness and none of the Marc is the closest the film has to a human Translation, oozing existential angst—to yearning, all of the parties and no green center, because he expresses a little bit of a movie that effectively dehumanizes light. And if it’s an artistically accurate self-loathing to an interviewer and be - the hapless teenage dolts caught in the rendering of its subjects, then so much the

AMERICAN ZOETROPE cause he’s the only member of the ring celebrity-industrial complex’s wake. worse for art.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Leviathan’s Subcontractors

T took me years of living in the United States before I robot in customer service, “I’m just applying the new fed- acclimated to certain uniquely American rituals. I eral rules.” noticed early, standing in the pick-up line at CVS or You hear that a lot these days. Unable to sleep the other I Rite Aid, that it took more time to collect a prescrip- night, I found myself reading the 2011 Federal Reserve rule tion than in any other country I’ve ever needed a bottle of “amending Regulation Z (Truth in Lending) to implement pills in. But it was a while longer before I was sufficiently amendments to the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) made by bored to start following the conversations of those two or the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Pro - three places ahead of me in line, as they argued over 78- tection Act”: cent co-pays, or suggested the clerk had perhaps transposed The Board’s proposed rule provides flexibility in underwrit- two of the insurance numbers, or explained that the prob- ing standards so that creditors may adapt their underwriting lem might be due to their employer having recently processes to a consumer’s particular circumstances, such as switched from Blue Cross to Cigna . . . Filling a prescrip- to the needs of self-employed consumers and consumers tion in America is like going to a very fashionable night- heavily dependent on bonuses and commissions, consistent club: You can never be entirely certain the doorman will let with the Board’s 2008 HOEPA Final Rule. See 73 FR 44522, you in. 44547, July 30, 2008. It happened to a friend of mine the other day. Her Sure, it sounds boring, but wait till you see Amending monthly refill was denied late on a Friday afternoon so Regulation Z—The Musical. But here’s the thing: Why she had the weekend to prepare herself for the Monday- should it be the job of a Federal Reserve “rule” to “provide morning bad news that her health insurance had been can- flexibility in underwriting standards”? In a supposedly pri- celed, without notification, and its cancellation backdated vate banking system, shouldn’t the guy sitting across the a couple of months just to add to the fun. Long story. They desk from the customers be allowed to evaluate his cus- all are. Too long for this column, or indeed the average tomers as individuals? Ah, but, as readers will have noticed, novella. Also very complicated. That’s one of the advan- you can take your credit application to the First National tages of the system. I confess, as a guest host for Rush Bank of Dead Moose, the First National Bank of West Dead Limbaugh on the radio, that my heart sinks a little when- Moose, and the First National Bank of Dead Moose ever a caller wishes to explain the particular indignities Junction, and they’ll all give you the same answer. They heaped upon him by his health-care “provider,” because can compete on debit-card design and check-wallet color generally it takes a good 20 minutes just to lay out the but ever less on banking services. For most Americans, facts of the case, and even then it doesn’t really make there are many banks with different names, but increasing- sense. I don’t like to think I’m a total idiot. When an ISI ly, like the “private” health system, they’re uniform guy from Islamabad expounds on the ever shifting tribal enforcers of the federal rules: From the customer’s point of allegiances of North Waziristan, I’m on top of every view, it’s a government bank in all but name. nuance. When a London tax expert explains money laun- Most countries decay into statism through nationaliza- dering by Russian oligarchs through Guernsey and Nevis tion: Britain nationalized health care in the late Forties, via Ireland and Cyprus, I can pretty much keep up. But France nationalized the banks in the early Eighties. But when a victim of American health care starts trying to fill that’s not the American way. So the veneer of a private sec- me in, round about 40 minutes in I have a strange urge to tor is maintained as an ever more implausible façade for a stab forks in my eyeballs. Except then, of course, I’d have hyper-regulated statism: Big Government at one remove, to go to an American hospital. subcontracted to nominally private paperwork shufflers Foreigners can’t understand a word of an Obamacare across the land. In health care, banking, homeownership, conversation. The problem with health care in most coun- college tuition, Americans now enjoy considerably less tries is that they’re third-party systems, which are by defin- freedom of movement than citizens of openly statist nations ition economically inefficient, whether the third party is in Europe. government or private insurance. But that would be too As it happens, these are all the areas of life the prudent obvious for us. So in America there’s the patient and there’s man is enjoined to take care of: Save for the future. Get an the doctor, and there’s the insurer, who is provided through education. Buy property. Look after your health. Re morse - the employer, who outsources it to an employee-benefits- less governmentalization of all four sectors is part of the management company. By my count, that’s a fifth-party ever greater sclerosis in America—and immensely time- system, on top of which Obamacare adds a sixth. consuming. My friend may well get her health care back, And if, somewhere between the party of the fifth part and after weeks of effort. But so much of life is like that now, the party of the fourth part, things come apart, well, good isn’t it? Not the rough-and-tumble of a free society or the luck with that. As my friend was told, over and over, by the homogenized mediocrity of socialism, but just the vast diversion of so much American energy into shuffling Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). around the regulatory obstacles to daily life.

5 2 | www.nationalreview.com JULY 1 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/10/2013 2:34 PM Page 1

The Rise and Fall of the British Empire Taught by Professor Patrick N. Allitt

TIME ED O 1. The Sun Never Set IT FF E IM R 2. The Challenge to Spain in the New World L 3. African Slavery and the West Indies 4. Imperial Beginnings in India 70% 5. Clive and the Conquest of India 6. Wolfe and the Conquest of Canada O 2 off 1 7. The Loss of the American Colonies R T D S 8. Exploring the Planet ER U BY AUG 9. Napoleon Challenges the Empire 10. The Other Side of the World 11. Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery 12. Early African Colonies 13. China and the Opium Wars 14. Britain—The Imperial Center 15. Ireland—The Tragic Relationship 16. India and the “Great Game” 17. Rebellion and Mutiny in India 18. How Canada Became a Nation 19. The Exploration and Settlement of Africa 20. Gold, Greed, and Geopolitics in Africa 21. The Empire in Literature 22. Economics and Theories of Empire 23. The British Empire Fights Imperial Germany 24. Versailles and Disillusionment 25. Ireland Divided 26. Cricket and the British Empire 27. British India between the World Wars 28. World War II—England Alone 29. World War II—The Pyrrhic Victory 30. Twilight of the Raj 31. Israel, Egypt, and the Suez Canal Explore One of Modern 32. The Decolonization of Africa 33. The White Dominions 34. Britain after the Empire History’s Greatest 35. Colonial and Postcolonial Literature Empires 36. Epitaph and Legacy The Rise and Fall of the British Empire th At its peak in the early 20 century, the British Empire was the Course no. 8480 | 36 lectures (30 minutes/lecture) largest in the history of the world. So how did this grand empire eventually disappear? And why are the lives of people from nearly every nation on Earth in one way or another the consequence of the British Empire? SAVE UP TO $275 In The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, award-winning Professor Patrick N. Allitt of Emory University leads you through DVD $374.95NOW $99.95 400 years of British power, inﬂ uence, and diminishment. His +$15 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee remarkable 36 lectures give you new insights into British and world CD $269.95NOW $69.95 history in a range of areas, from the political to the economic to the +$10 Shipping, Processing, and Lifetime Satisfaction Guarantee social. They also help you better grasp current events in countries Priority Code: 77829 that were once a part of this fascinating empire, including Ireland, China, and Africa. Designed to meet the demand for lifelong learning, The Great Courses is a highly popular series of O er expires 08/12/13 audio and video lectures led by top professors and experts. Each of our more than 400 courses is an intellectually engaging experience that will 1-800-832-2412 change how you think about the world. Since ../3 1990, over 10 million courses have been sold. base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 6/10/2013 11:05 AM Page 1