Kevin D. Williamson 2 Letters to the Editor Gambling Is a Racket, Not a Tool of Economic Development

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MARCH 19, 2012 | VOLUME LXIV, NO. 5 | www.nationalreview.com

COVER STORY Page 29 John J. Miller on Dr. Seuss The College Cartel p. 25 By doing the unthinkable—by dramatically reducing federal funding BOOKS, ARTS for higher education—we can actually & MANNERS make a college education more 43 AN INVERTED SYSTEM Ramesh Ponnuru reviews The accessible and more affordable Upside-Down Constitution, for working- and middle-class by Michael S. Greve.

Americans. By Vance H. Fried & Reihan Salam 45 A CLASSIC RENEWED Tracy Lee Simmons reviews The Golden Ass, by Apuleius, translated COVER: MPTVIMAGES.COM by Sarah Ruden.

ARTICLES 46 UNLOCKING THE AMERICAN MIND 16 THE TEAM PLAYER by Robert Costa Matthew Spalding reviews The Rick Santorum and the art of the possible. Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between 18 STILL THE ALINSKY PLAYBOOK by John Fund the Declaration and the President Obama continues to dance with the one who brung him. Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It, 20 COUSINHOOD, LATELY by Jay Nordlinger by Larry P. Arnn. Notes on Anglo-American relations in the time of Obama. 48 ART: REDISCOVERING 23 MAN AT HIS BLANDEST by Daniel Foster AMERICA The politics of Esquire. Roger Kimball tours the new American Wing Galleries at the Met. 25 FRIENDS OF THE LORAX by John J. Miller Dr. Seuss’s politics for children. 50 FILM: HOLLYWOOD’S CIA Ross Douthat reviews Safe House. 27 THE HIPSTER AND THE SUPERZIP by Rob Long Analyzing a symbiotic relationship. 51 CITY DESK: NOT ALL THAT JAZZ Richard Brookhiser listens to the bluesmen. FEATURES 29 THE COLLEGE CARTEL by Vance H. Fried & Reihan Salam Competition and innovation will lower the cost of higher education. SECTIONS

36 PLAY TO EXTINCTION by Kevin D. Williamson 2 Letters to the Editor Gambling is a racket, not a tool of economic development. 4 The Week 41 Athwart ...... James Lileks 39 DECLARER OF INDEPENDENCE by Andrew Stuttaford 42 The Long View ...... Rob Long Nigel Farage wants Brussels out of Britain. 44 Poetry ...... Sarah Ruden 52 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

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The Tank Buster MARCH 19 ISSUE; PRINTED MARCH 1 Bravo to Daniel Foster for his paean

EDITOR to the A-10 Warthog (“Justice for Richard Lowry Warthogs,” March 5). In World War Senior Editors II, I was an enlisted combat aircrew- Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger man in Marine Corps aviation. Post- Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts war, after college and ROTC, I took Literary Editor Michael Potemra an Air Force commission and went Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy National Correspondent John J. Miller to pilot training. Whenever I dis- Political Reporter Robert Costa Art Director Luba Kolomytseva cussed our dearth of ground-support Deputy Managing Editors aviation, I’d be laughed at and told Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson Associate Editor that our mission was big-time nukes. Robert VerBruggen Then Korea came, and the Air Force was scrambling for ground support. F- Research Director Katherine Connell Executive Secretary Frances Bronson 51 Mustangs, unsuited to the task, did a lot of the job and suffered considerable Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos losses. The twin-engined B-26 (earlier the A-26) Invader helped, but was even Contributing Editors Robert H. Bork / Shannen Coffin / John Derbyshire less suited to troop support. We did a lot better in Vietnam with the A-1 Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum Skyraider (secondhand from the Navy). Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Then came the A-10, too late for Vietnam, but what a machine! The Air Force, Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi with a tank-buster and troop support? The Warthog has covered itself with Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne David B. Rivkin Jr. / Reihan Salam glory, and, frankly, I fully expected its transfer to the Army or Marine aviation.

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE It’s the perfect weapons platform for a mission with which Air Force brass still Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez seem uncomfortable. Managing Editor Edward John Craig News Editor Daniel Foster Editorial Associates Robert J. Powers Brian Bolduc / Charles C. W. Cooke Katrina Trinko Colonel, U.S. Air Force (ret.) Technical Services Russell Jenkins Shreveport, La. EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Contributors The Warthog’s Weak Spot Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley In early 1975, I was recently retired and working as a tactical-aviation expert at Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans a think tank in Washington, D.C. We were asked to do a study on the efficacy of Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman the A-10 on a modern battlefield. I was chosen as the team leader. James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart After months of study, we decided that because of its slow speed, it would be Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler toast on a battlefield surrounded by Soviet-type ground-to-air defenses—the David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak “bathtub” surrounding the pilot would provide insufficient protection. We also Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Taki Theodoracopulos concluded that it would be exceptional in a “banana war” environment. Who knew Vin Weber there would be conflicts like Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, and Afghanistan? Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge I was so perplexed by the decision to buy so many A-10s—a few would have Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak been a good idea, just in case—that I interviewed retired four-star general Business Services William W. Momyer, who was commander of Tactical Air Command at the time Alex Batey / Kate Murdock Elena Reut / Lucy Zepeda of the buy, and asked him why so many. His response was roughly, “I did it for Circulation Manager Jason Ng the soldier boys.” WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 There’s no doubt of the A-10 exploits that Mr. Foster chronicles, but they were SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 possible only because we have been lucky enough to fight wars where the ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 enemy has had relatively weak ground-to-air missile defenses. That said, men- Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler tion tanks in a desert as the target, accompanied by relatively weak air defenses, Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet and most fighter pilots, this one included, will immediately salivate. ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett

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n Who knew “Race to the Top” was his plan for gas prices, too?

n The Mutiny of 1857 was sparked by rumors that cartridges issued to Indian soldiers were greased with cow or pig fat. A smaller but similar wave of mayhem rolled over Afghanistan after See page 14. American soldiers burned Korans. No matter that the books were already desecrated—by terrorist prisoners who used their pages to send messages to one another. The infidel was committing sacri- lege, so mobs took to the streets, six American soldiers at a military base in Kunduz were injured by a grenade, and two American officers inside the Interior Ministry in Kabul were murdered by a driver. Afghan and American officials labored to contain the damage. President Hamid Karzai policed the demonstrations—in the past, he has cravenly stirred outrage up—while President Obama offered “sincere apologies” (Mitt Romney, Rick San tor um, and Newt Gingrich all criticized him, wrongly—first response to a fire is to douse it). If Americans cannot work closely with Afghans in maintaining security, then our options for keeping al- Qaeda out and the Taliban down will shrink to a regimen of drone attacks, varied by special-forces raids.

n Governor Mitt Romney says he wants to cut tax rates across the board by 20 percent to improve incentives to work, save, and invest. That’s a fine goal, but some caveats are in order. Deficits, and projected deficits, are much larger than they were when Republicans cut taxes in the past, and Romney has been vague about which spending programs he would cut and which tax breaks he would reduce to make room for these tax cuts. Leaving the existing tax structure in place would be a missed opportunity. religious views did not interfere with his private affairs.) Ken - Cutting the 10 percent tax rate to 8 percent reduces federal rev- nedy’s argument implies that religious people are welcome to enue enormously while doing little to improve anyone’s incen- participate in politics so long as they act as though they had no tives. Romney could have proposed a tax code that raises the same religion. It is an argument without much in the way of constitu- amount of revenue while reducing the number of tax brackets and tional principle or historical American practice to recommend it, expanding the tax credit for children. The proposal he did make is as indeed the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was contempora- unimaginative but contains enough that appeals to conservatives neously proving. Santorum can justly be criticized for rhetorical to get him through the primaries, which makes it characteristic of inelegance and analytical imprecision, but his irreverence toward his campaign as a whole. the Gospel according to Saint Jack is amply warranted.

n Having said that John F. Kennedy’s famous speech to the n Santorum continued his sometime role of making perfectly Greater Houston Ministerial Association made him want to defensible views seem ridiculous through overstatement (see “throw up,” Senator Rick Santorum was asked to defend his state- editorial below). In the latest case, the defensible view is that the ment. “To say that people of faith have no role in the public bipartisan goal of getting every high-school graduate to go to col- square?” he replied. “You bet that makes you throw up.” Kennedy, lege is a mistake; the ridiculous overstatement is that Obama he said, had argued that “only people of non-faith can come into supports the goal because 1) he is a snob toward people without the public square and make their case” and that “the church can degrees and 2) people become less religious while in college and have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state,” he welcomes this effect. Needless to say, many people who are and had promised not even to “consult with people of faith.” neither snobs nor hostile to religion believe in encouraging young- Santorum got Kennedy’s speech wrong; but Kennedy’s speech, sters to go to college. They think it is a path to prosperity for both however celebrated, got church-state relations wrong too. Ken - individuals and society. This view is wrong, we think: At this point nedy suggested that Catholicism would, and should, have no the marginal student brought to college by additional social pres- influence on his public acts. (“I believe in a president whose reli- sure and subsidies is more likely to accrue large debts than to

ROMAN GENN gious views are his own private affair”—and, it turns out, whose acquire marketable skills. One of the many unfortunate conse-

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THE WEEK quences of the prevalence of the view Obama expressed is to ered a company that refuses to cover HIV treatment for moral make it appear that people who do not get a college degree are reasons. The legislation merely safeguards rights that had doomed to poverty. But Santorum is not going to persuade people never been in question—that had never even had to be con- that they are wrong by telling them that they harbor motives they ceived of as rights—before this administration came along. know they do not have. n The Reverend Franklin n Come the next contested Republican presidential primary— Graham, on a recent session by grace, in 2020—it should be left to the party to set the num- of Morning Joe, commented ber, dates, and locations of debates. They should be fewer than on Obama: “He has said he’s the 20-odd we saw this year, so that they are not so unduly a Christian, so I just have to agenda-setting. And they should enroll conservative think assume that he is.” This re - tanks, alternative media, tea-party groups, and grassroots or - mark generated scare head- ganizations to help determine formatting and questions. For lines—“Franklin Graham broadcasting purposes, the participation of mainstream media Questions Obama’s Christian may still be necessary, but they should be distinctly junior part- Faith” (Yahoo! News)—but ners. The George Stephanopouloses and Diane Sawyers of the Graham is not alone in his world brought us the semiotic search for the racism beneath doubts. A year ago Bill Maher Newt’s food-stamp line, the dismissal of “the Constitution” in called Obama “a centrist the haughty air quotes, the wasting of primetime minutes ponder- way he’s a Christian. He’s ing which wife would make the best first lady, the obsessive pre tending to be a centrist.” Conservative Christians should deposing of Romney on the legality of condoms, and a dozen know the rules of the game: If they question the president’s other lowlights designed to generate buzz for the networks Christianity, they are yobs who think he is a Kenyan Marxist and make conservatives look weird. So why on earth should Muslim. A liberal atheist such as Maher will be passed over in conservatives trust them to play any substantial role in the silence: He is talking in sign language to the cognoscenti. The selection of our presidential standard-bearer? The answer, of Reverend Graham eventually apologized. But it’s a free coun- course, is that we should not. try. A believer can say anything he thinks about a pol’s faith or practice, and Americans have been doing it for a long time n President Obama has the odd habit of decrying “loopholes” (George Washington’s enemies called him a “horrid blasphe- in the tax code while proposing to create new ones. He did so mer”). Politics tends to go better, though, when the chattering in his recent State of the Union speech, and in February while class chatters about politics. announcing his new corporate-tax plan—which would reduce the nominal rate from 35 to 28 percent while reshuffling and n During the most recent presidential debate, New York Times further complicating the vast and bewildering array of credits, columnist and graphic-design editor Charles Blow responded exclusions, and deductions through which the U.S. govern- to Mitt Romney’s comments on out-of-wedlock births by ment uses the tax code to conduct industrial policy. President tweeting, “Let me just tell you this, Mitt ‘Muddle Mouth’: I’m Obama would eliminate some manufacturing credits for in- a single parent and my kids are *amazing*! Stick that in your dustries he dislikes (oil-and-gas firms) while creating new magic underwear.” Mormonism’s distinctive practices and rel- breaks for industries he does like (favored domestic manu - ative rarity do not begin to excuse Blow’s comments about the facturers) and taking punitive measures against U.S. firms “temple garments” some Mormons wear and regard as sacred. that succeed in overseas markets. The plan is one more Blow later allowed that his comment was “inappropriate,” attempt by the Obama administration to try to pick winners although his employer delivered no public reprimand. Would and losers in the marketplace. Given its track record— the Times react so feebly if someone told a notable Muslim to Solyndra and General Motors have both lost money for tax- stick his opinion under his turban? It is bad enough that the payers—Americans would do well to seek investment advice Times shows no embarrassment when one of its columnists elsewhere. responds to discussion of a pressing social concern with a solipsistic non sequitur. n Senator Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) is trying to pass a bill that protects conscience rights from Obamacare. It would, for n Leading Democrats are once again trying to guilt the rich. instance, reaffirm the right of employers to refuse to provide You may recall Joe Biden, campaigning in 2008. “It’s time to their employees with insurance coverage for activities they be patriotic,” he said. What he meant was: It’s time to pay consider immoral. The main theme of the Democratic opposi- higher taxes. Now the Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, tion to this bill is that Republicans are waging a war on con- has said that “the most fortunate Americans” should “bear a traception. A secondary theme is that, under this legislation, slightly larger burden of the privilege of being an American.” employers could (for example) refuse to provide coverage for This was maybe especially hard to take from Geithner, given the treatment of HIV. What these attacks ignore is that the fed- his tax delinquency in the last decade. It is, yes, a privilege NEWSCOM / eral government has always allowed employers to refrain from to be an American—as much for the poor as for the rich (and ZUMA / providing coverage they find objectionable, or providing cov- America is one of the best places in all the world to be poor). erage at all. An employer who exercises this right faces no fed- Paying for federal profligacy, on the other hand, is neither a eral penalties even today, in 2012. Yet people still seem able to privilege nor anything in which we should take patriotic

ANDREA RENAULT get contraception, and no enterprising reporter has yet uncov- pride.

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THE WEEK n The Defense Department has announced the opening of some between combat support and combat per se, just as there is a 14,000 new “combat support” roles to women in the military, gulf between the soldiers who fall in combat and the civilians another incremental win for those seeking to erode the protec- who die as collateral damage. Current military-integration poli- tions that have long kept women out of the most dangerous cies have demanded gender-normed scoring on physical tests assignments. Conservatives have been divided on the issue, but owing to undeniable sex differences in physical abilities. But count us with those who take exception to Virginia governor the ability to survive is not gender-normed. Military women Bob McDonnell’s assertion—echoed by Mitt Romney— have served bravely and selflessly and done everything asked that the reality of female soldiers’ having died in Iraq and of them. The present direct-combat exemptions ensure that they Afghanistan counts as evidence of the wisdom of dropping won’t be told to serve in ways that deny them the most impor- them into firefights in forward areas. There remains a gulf tant equal opportunity of all: the opportunity to come home.

Raising the Cost of Crime

ERHAPS the first and foremost role of the govern- It would result in a 13.5 percent reduction in murder, a ment is to protect its citizens from crime. It can do 27.2 percent reduction in rape, a 12.2 percent reduction in P so by providing active and visible police protec- ag gra vat ed assault, a 12.0 percent reduction in larceny, tions, and by vigorously pursuing and prosecuting crimi- and a 22.7 percent reduction in vehicle theft, as well as a nals once crimes have been committed. There have been sta tis tic al ly insignificant (5 percent) reduction in burglary. many crime-fighting innovations in recent years, and crime While a 50 percent increase might be difficult to rates have fallen sharply at the same time. But there has achieve without arousing concerns about civil liberties, been little hard evidence that all of the high-tech techniques the U.S. could choose to follow the lead of the United contributed to the crime reduction. Until now. Kingdom, where all arrestees suspected of serious of - One innovation of the past two decades has been the fenses are included in a database. In the U.S., the addi- spread of state-maintained databases of criminal offend- tion of arrestees for serious felonies would increase the ers’ DNA profiles. The databases make it easier for the database size by 12 percent, which would still have a authorities to find and ultimately capture suspects. In significant impact on crime. The FBI’s Uniform Crime principle, this increased capability could have a chilling Reports show that 12,996 murders were committed in effect on crime as potential criminals abandon illegal the United States in 2010. Doleac’s results suggest that pursuits in the face of higher odds of conviction. adopting the U.K. approach would save 415 lives per Stanford University economist Jennifer Doleac has year. And compared with increasing police forces, ex - written a fascinating new paper that explores the impact panding a DNA database costs almost nothing. on crime of DNA databases. The paper exploits random DNA databases have significantly increased the safety variation in the timing of database expansions. Different of our citizens. Policymakers should explore ways to states have different criteria for putting people into their expand them without prompting fears of Big Brother. databases, and have often changed those criteria. They typically expand their databases following widely publi- —KEVIN A. HASSETT cized “if only” cases: cases in which terrible crimes could have been prevented if only the database had been more inclusive. For example, California added incarcerated Decrease in Crime Rates Following a felons to its DNA profiles after it was revealed that a man 50 Percent Increase in DNA-Database Size who was convicted of raping 14 women had served time for a felony burglary years earlier. Had his DNA been in 30% the system after that incarceration, he probably would not have been able to commit so many rapes. 25% 27.2% Doleac compares criminals who were released before 20% 22.7% database expansions took effect with those released afterward. She finds that those in the database are far 15%

more likely to be caught if they commit a crime, and far 13.5% less likely to commit new crimes in the first place. 10% 12.2% 12.0% The scale of her findings is quite striking. The nearby 5% chart shows the results of a simulation based on her evi- 5.0% dence. A hypothetical 50 percent increase in average 0% Murder Rape Aggravated Burglary Larceny Vehicle data base size, which in 2008 would have been an in - Assault Theft crease from about 177 to 266 profiles per 10,000 resi- SOURCE: JENNIFER L. DOLEAC, “THE EFFECTS OF DNA DATABASES dents, has a statistically significant effect on crime rates. ON CRIME,” JANUARY 3, 2012

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THE WEEK n Climate scientist Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute is by his to view it beforehand. Opponents of the bill call it “state- own admission a liar and a thief, but whether he is a forger as sponsored rape.” Specifically, the charge is that a “transva ginal well remains un known. Posing as a member of the board of the ultrasound” (an alternative to a transabdominal ultrasound that Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank, he procured is sometimes necessary in the early stages of pregnancy) is access to internal documents, which he then gleefully released equivalent to forcible penetration. It turns out, however, that to left-leaning blogs and the media. The documents included a Planned Parenthood in Virginia already requires ultrasounds damning strategy memo that is an apparent forgery, and a clum- before abortions, for medical reasons. Still, the increasingly sy one at that. Gleick has owned up to the first two offenses but hysterical rhetoric caused enough of a backlash that Governor pleads not guilty to the third. Strange thing about the global- Bob McDonnell was forced to backpedal and request that the warming alarmists: For a group of people certain that the facts bill be amended “to explicitly state that no woman in Virginia are on their side, they lie rather often. As Jonah Goldberg has will have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound involuntarily.” pointed out, a respected sci- The real basis of opposition, of course, is that the pro-choice entific journal published an lobby does not want women to look at what they are choosing, article encouraging scientists any more than it likes to name the choice it’s pro. to exaggerate the evidence for global warming, and when n Tyler Clementi, a gay Rutgers student, was a martyr to the Gleick scandal broke, cyber-bullying; his roommate, Dharun Ravi, spied on his the Guardian’s James Garvey make-out sessions with a hidden webcam and outed him praised him: “If Gleick frus- online. That was the story that flashed round the world after trates the efforts of Heartland, Clementi killed himself by jumping off the George Wash ing - isn’t his lie justified by the ton Bridge in 2010. But Ravi’s trial, which has just begun, pre- good that it does?” Perhaps sents a more complicated picture. It is not clear that Ravi’s the evidence would be more snooping caused Clementi’s suicide. Clementi was already compelling if it were not fab- out; Ravi’s Web-voyeurism was brief and shared only with a ricated. few friends across the hall; both men are on record, shortly after the incident, making light of it. There seems to be a case n When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993, jihadi for invasion of privacy, though it is not open and shut: Cle men- headquarters was Jersey City. The terror cell met in the local ti’s tryst took place in his and Ravi’s shared room. Bias in - mosque. Jihadists trained and maintained bomb-construction timidation is the more serious offense Ravi is charged with, safehouses in the Garden State. Most of the terrorists lived in carrying a penalty of up to ten years; prosecutors must show New Jersey and held jobs in New York, commuting through that Ravi intended to ridicule Clementi’s homosexuality. But the tunnels they were conspiring to blow to smithereens. That this charge falls under the dubious category of hate crimes. Let is the nature of the terrorist threat in the metropolitan area: us hope that, after being tried in the court of public opinion, What happens on one side of the Hudson River deeply affects Ravi can find justice in court. the other side. It is with that understanding in mind that we should consider the complaints of Islamic activists that the n Not only did the ill-fated solar-panel maker Solyndra fail to New York City Police Department has conducted surveillance produce the “green-collar jobs” President Obama promised, it of Muslim neighborhoods in New Jersey. Top officials, includ- also failed to keep things clean. Now in bankruptcy pro - ing Governor Chris Christie—who last year appointed a for- ceedings, the company has left a leased property in Milpitas, mer board member of the (Islamist) American Muslim Union Calif., “vacant with barrels of unknown chemicals and lead- to the state bench—have predictably expressed concern. But contaminated equipment,” reports the Washington Times. In the NYPD maintains that it has kept New Jersey police ap- one picture of the facility, “two large blue drums are filled with prised and acts within strict civil-liberties guidelines. Amer- a black substance with no secure lids and covered instead with icans will have to make up their mind whether they want their clear plastic wrap.” In another, there’s a “yellow drum about security managed by the likes of Commissioner Ray Kelly or the size of a large garbage can containing a yellow-brown by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. gooey substance.” Lovely. True, Solyndra has hired contrac- tors to clean up its other property in Fremont, but things are n Governor Christie vetoed legislation to let same-sex couples slow because the company is broke and most of its employees receive marriage licenses. While we disagree with some of the have been laid off. So, to review, the federal government backed maneuvering that preceded the veto, we commend him for Solyndra’s loans and received in return a bankrupt, unkempt keeping his promise. Challenged on the question on MSNBC, deadbeat—all for the low, low price of $500 million. he noted that, unlike President Obama, who says he opposes same-sex marriage but has come close to promising that he n The Germans have approved another bailout for Greece, and will flip-flop at some later date, he is willing to state a clear the dissentious process has left Chancellor Angela Merkel public position on the issue. He also noted that he favors a weakened. European leaders will gather in Brussels in March democratic settlement of the issue, something else that, for to decide whether to lift the cap on bailout funds, currently lim- some reason or other, the president has refrained from saying. ited to $672 billion. Which is to say, the Europeans currently put a price of $672 billion on the luxury of defending bureau- n Legislation in Virginia would require women seeking an cratic pride from economic reality, but the bidding is likely to abortion to undergo an ultrasound and be given the opportunity go higher. The Eurocrats are now speaking of a “firewall” to

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contain the Greek contagion, a tacit admission that the Yankee Dogberrys. But French police investigating a prostitu- prospects for organic economic improvement are slim. The tion ring in Lille recently summoned Strauss-Kahn for ques- underlying defects (undisciplined government spending, a tioning. Prostitution is not illegal in France, but diverting unitary monetary policy for nations with diverse interests and company funds to pay for it is, and Strauss-Kahn, who had economies, a European labor market in which cross-border attended orgies sponsored by the ring as far afield as Wash - mobility is more theoretical than practical) remain unad- ington, D.C., was asked what he knew about it all. Not much, dressed, because Brussels has nothing with which to address his lawyer argued: “In these parties, you’re not necessarily them. Short of entirely stripping Greece of its sovereignty over dressed. I defy you to tell the difference between a nude pros- internal economic matters, a European Union with Greece in it titute and a nude woman of quality.” We guess that depends on will not be stable or solvent—and Greece is not the only male- the quality of the women you have known, or more likely on factor of scant wealth. National sovereignties of course rank the quality of the attention you pay them, and we think, as we last on the list of priorities in Brussels, which is more con- often do, of Edmund Burke: “The age of chivalry is gone . . . a cerned with Europe in theory than Europe in practice. Such woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order. idealism is fine, as WFB once noted, “but as it approaches real- All homage paid to the sex in general as such . . . is to be ity, the costs become prohibitive.” $672 billion and counting. regarded as romance and folly.”

n Vladimir Putin is holding an election to the Russian presi- n The French have long been in the forefront of the battle of dency solely to keep up appearances. A Soviet mutant, he the sexes. Monsieur has had an advantage; he is free to use his learnt from his time as a KGB officer that victory is best fixed judgment about whether the woman he meets is a married in advance. First comes the boasting. He’s been praising intel- Madame or an unmarried Mademoiselle, and so to address her ligence channels in the Cold War for stealing the nuclear with whichever term he thinks fit. The well-mannered Mon - se crets of the United States. Spies acquired information, he sieur will kiss the hand of Madame out of respect but only A European Union with Greece in it will not be stable or solvent—and Greece is not the only malefactor of scant wealth.

exclaimed, “not on microfilm but literally in suitcases. Suit - shake hands with Mademoiselle. Feminists say that these two cases!” Shades of Robert Oppenheimer and Klaus Fuchs and terms are intrusions into their private lives. “Mademoiselle” Bruno Pontecorvo. They and others were helping Moscow, in implies virginity, and informs Monsieur whom it might be a reporter’s words, “out of concern for humanity.” Next come worthwhile to pursue. The prime minister is intervening. A the threats. Russia has to be the counterweight to a United circular from his office instructs officials to ensure that doc- States that maintains and manages artificial but general chaos. uments no longer carry the giveaway “Mademoiselle,” or even So by 2022, when his presidency will have just expired, Russia “maiden name” and “spouse’s name.” “Madame” is supposed will have spent $775 billion on a formidable arsenal of mis- to become the Gallic equivalent of “Ms.” Linguistic equality siles, ships, aircraft, guns, and tanks. And lastly a plot to whip has been tried before but French grammar distinguishes between up fear on the streets. Chechen terrorists are alleged to have masculine and feminine, and Monsieur’s hand-kissing does been planning to throw a bomb to kill Putin, but they were too. arrested some time ago in Ukraine, conveniently abroad. This is an exemplary study in modern dictatorship. n Last fall, the Palestinians tried to get the United Nations to admit them as a full member, and failed. But they succeeded at n Don’t tell Tom Friedman, but the characteristic features of a U.N. agency, UNESCO. That triggered an American law, China’s for-profit police state are: 1) It’s a police state, and 2) it which says that U.S. funds must be cut off from any inter - is wildly profitable for the police chiefs. The 70 richest members national organization that recognizes the Palestinians as a state of China’s national legislature, the so-called People’s Con gress, in advance of a peace agreement with Israel. Too bad for saw their wealth increase last year by an amount greater than UNESCO, for the United States had contributed 22 percent of the entire net wealth of every member of the U.S. Congress, the organization’s budget. Naturally, the Obama administra- Supreme Court, and cabinet, as well as the president, combined tion, for whom the U.N. is next to godliness (as are the (and Obama earns serious book royalties), according to Bloom - Palestinians), is seeking the restoration of funding. It is asking berg. Representative Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) is the wealthiest Congress for a waiver from the law. The chairman of the House member of the U.S. Congress, with a net worth of around $700 Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), is million; if he were a Chinese congressman, he would be No. 40. saying, Nothing doing. “Resuming U.S. funding would give a Representative Issa is a car-alarm magnate who made his money green light for other U.N. bodies to follow in UNESCO’s foot- preventing thievery. China’s rulers make it the other way. steps and support the Palestinian statehood push.” It would send “a disastrous message that the U.S. will fund U.N. bodies n When French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss- no matter what irresponsible decisions they make.” We wish Kahn was arrested in New York City, then released, on charges we could rule out the possibility that it is precisely this mes- that he assaulted a hotel worker, France blazed up at puritan sage that the administration wants to send.

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THE WEEK n The presidential election in Senegal is beset by a birth- tickets, too. Allow us to offer the unambivalent hoorah that certificate controversy. President Abdoulaye Wade is run- Mr. Strickler could not quite muster: Kickstarter shows that ning for reelection, but is he 85—or more like 90? Officially, allowing people to interact voluntarily with one another on he’s a puppy-like 85. But, as the Associated Press reported, their own terms works, especially when the people in question “his birth certificate is locked away. And the page stating are enterprising, risk-taking, and generous—qualities not when he entered primary school has been torn out.” The is - often on display in the dystopian banalities sponsored by the sue is “so touchy,” said the AP, that “a longtime resident who NEA. knew the president before he was elected began receiving death threats this week after he claimed Wade was born in 1919.” Senegalese should insist on seeing the long form. n Jeremy Lin, once a scholarly basketball star at Harvard, And if Wade is still doing the job, why not reelect him regard - now an undrafted NBA phenom with the New York less? Knickerbockers, has electrified New York and gathered global attention by leading the Knicks back to playoff con- n According to the 2010 census, of the 15 richest counties in tention, racking up almost unprecedented statistics in his America (measured by median household income), five are first dozen starts. His performances as an unheralded NBA in Virginia and five are in Maryland—all in the D.C. area, of sophomore would be headline news anyway, but since he is course. Few people will be surprised to learn this: After all, just the fourth Asian American in NBA history, his ethnicity Washington is where the money is. Yet it’s getting worse: Ten has drawn much of the attention. One ESPN editor, unfor- years ago, only five of the richest 15 counties were in the D.C. tunately, found himself on the wrong area. America will start getting back on its feet when ambitious side of the issue by using the headline people once again flock to places where money is made—not “Chink in the Armor” about one of the where it is collected (or borrowed), shuffled around, wrangled Knicks’ losses, accidentally punning on over, and disbursed. a common anti-Chinese epithet. ESPN un - ceremoniously fired him for the inadvertent n If the Obama administration had its way, the Catholic offense. In the aftermath, the Asian Amer - Church would be ripe for an employment-discrimination ican Journalists Association has offered lawsuit: Since the 1840s, every archbishop of New York has guidelines for writers covering Lin, re - been Irish, even though today’s flock is heavily Hispanic. jecting any lines about driving, eye Fortunately for those who count rosary beads instead of beans, shape, Asian food, or martial arts the current archbishop, Timothy Dolan, is an ideal spiritual as either offensive or “lazy.” Lin - leader: pious, committed, exuberant, and joyous in proclaim- sanity, indeed. ing his faith and nurturing that of others. Pope Benedict XVI evidently agrees, as he has just elevated Dolan to cardinal. New York being what it is, much of the local coverage of n New Mexico’s trailblazing governor, Susana Martinez, has just Dolan’s investiture focused on his tendency to forcefully pro- achieved another historic first: She is the first female Hispanic pound the Church’s teachings on such matters as same-sex Republican governor to have her hairdresser quit in a dispute marriage and the contraception mandate, and whether it over marriage policy. The owner of Antonio’s Hair Studio, in would keep the Empire State Building’s owner or an Irish- Santa Fe, told the governor she was no longer welcome at his shop American organization from honoring him. Such a cynical because of her stance on same-sex marriage (she is opposed, town is much in need of charity and humility, and we hope though the question has never come up for a vote in New Mexico). Cardinal Dolan will continue providing those things for many Then Antonio told everyone else, and he has been giving inter- years to come. views ever since to explain his decision. For centuries, hair cut- ters were proverbial paragons of discretion, from the Barber of n Kickstarter, a New York–based Web company that allows Seville to “Only her hairdresser knows for sure.” Now barbers and creative enterprises to raise seed capital for new projects in hairdressers have become “stylists,” and the dominant ethos is increments large and small, made an interesting announce- clip-and-tell. No man, it is said, is a hero to his valet, and evident- ment: It will provide more funding to its arts-oriented clients ly no woman is a heroine to her stylist, though in this case the feel- this year than the National Endowment for the Arts will dis- ing is mutual: Governor Martinez snipes that Antonio cut her hair tribute to its dependents. Kickstarter’s projects have included only two or three times, and he always talked too much. We can books, films, and technology, and there have been some re - easily believe that. markable successes among them: more than $2 million raised for a Web-based graphic novel, more than $1 million raised n In a recent edition of THE WEEK, we observed that male and for an iPhone dock (American-made, at that), more than female homosexuality are very different phenomena; for exam- $1 million for a video game, and thousands of smaller projects ple, gay men typically know from an early age they are attracted ranging from works of journalism to culinary innovations. to men, whereas women sometimes discover lesbianism in adult- Co-founder Yancey Strickler was ambivalent about surpass- hood. Evidently, three Boston lesbians didn’t want to be confused AP

/ ing the NEA: “Maybe it shouldn’t be that way. Maybe there’s with gay men, either, as they stand accused of beating a gay man a reason for the state to strongly support the arts.” And maybe in a subway station while yelling homophobic slurs. Naturally, there’s a reason that well-off sophisticates on the Upper West they are being charged with a hate crime. Some have claimed that

BILL KOSTROUN Side should pay the full price for their Shakespeare in the Park these women by definition could not hate gay men, which isn’t

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THE WEEK quite right—but we still think it would be adequate to charge them with a beating, rather than a special category of hateful beating.

n Marie colvin was one of the outstanding reporters of her generation. Her courage was a byword. She was to be found in the front line, not because she was drawn to gunfire but out of fellow feeling for victims. in the Sri lankan civil war she had lost an eye, and a black patch over the socket gave her extra panache. as a correspondent for the Sunday Times of london, she character - istically made her way into Homs, and was killed when Syrian artillery shelled the house in which she had taken shelter. born in oyster bay, N.Y., she had her home in london, and was 56 at the time of her death. r.i.P.

n lee anderson went to work at the Chattanooga News–Free Press on april 18, 1942. He was just 16: Many men had gone to war, and the paper needed warm bodies. anderson, too, would serve in the military. but mainly he served at the paper, where he was an unstinting voice of conservatism. recently, rival edito- rialists in chattanooga wrote, “anderson is, above all, a gentle- man of the old school. He genuinely likes people. He treats those who disagree with his political and philosophical outlook with the same courtesy shown to those whose views jibe with his.” a colleague called him “a chattanooga institution, and a mar- velous example of sincere, gracious christianity, to boot.” anderson will retire from what is now the Chattanooga Times Free Press on april 18—exactly 70 years after joining. May there be more like him. brookhiser once remarked, “in their hearts they know they’re wrong.” He seems serenely confident that with enough time he can change anyone’s mind on the issues. but he has not always POLITICS shown that he knows how to pick his battles wisely, or that he The Devil and Rick Santorum understands that voters want a president with a suitably modest conception of a president’s proper role in national life. on an riticS of Senator Santorum’s moral and religious views, intellectual level Santorum must understand these points: He has especially in the media, have not been wholly scrupulous not repeated his comment about using the presidency to turn the C about identifying what they are before attacking them. He culture away from contraception. the challenge before him is to has been described, falsely, as an advocate of banning contracep- marry his self-confidence to a more consistent exercise of dis- tion. a dated joke about birth control made by one of his major crimination and tact. supporters has been treated as a campaign scandal. a remark about if he does not heed this lesson, he risks doing damage to the obama’s misguided environmental “theology” has been turned causes he rightly holds dear. already his inopportune remarks into an insinuation that the president is not a christian. about contraception have lent an undeserved credibility to liber- but the press has not had to invent controversial remarks aldom’s claim that a republican “war on contraception” rather by Santorum, who has supplied them himself. He has said that than a Democratic attack on freedom is what underlies the debate Satan is undermining america, in part by corrupting mainline over the obama administration’s new regulations. Protestantism; that liberal versions of christianity are distortions we have defended Santorum many times in the past and will of the creed; that as president he would speak out against birth happily continue to do so. we do wish he would leave himself control, and that states should be free to prohibit it; and that John exposed a bit less often. Mccain “doesn’t have any” religious views. Some of his comments are indefensible, and even some of Santorum’s defensible assertions would have been better left to n Notice to SubScriberS: Several agencies are soliciting someone else—someone not seeking the presidency—to say. your NatioNal review subscription renewal without our Santorum’s remarks about Senator Mccain were unwise and authorization. these organizations have no relationship with uncharitable. Nor do we need political leaders to share their the- ological judgments about the various denominations that call NatioNal review. Please make sure that you reply only to themselves christian. there is no good reason for a prospective NatioNal review subscription-renewal notices with a return pres i dent to pledge to lecture americans about contraception. AP

/ address in Palm coast, Fla., and ignore all requests for renewal Social conservatives have an understandable and mostly laud- that are not directly payable to NatioNal review, as these may able impulse to defend Santorum. He is one of us, he has fought for our causes, and he has the political scars to prove it. San- be fraudulent. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

JOSEPH KACZMAREK torum is not one of those republicans about whom richard

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enabling that victory for Obama. San - torum claims that he spoke with Specter before endorsing him in 2004 and was promised a quid pro quo: If Specter be - came chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he would support Bush’s judicial nominees. Specter disputes San - tor um’s account. Regardless of what really happened, the Specter endorsement, like much else that Santorum did during his Senate career, was a crafty political maneuver. It was as much about keeping his own seat—in swing-state Pennsylvania, and at the leadership table—as it was about his convictions. Specter had helped San - torum win his first Senate race in 1994, and in the ensuing decade, they had be - come legislative partners. In endorsing Specter, Santorum was doing a favor for The senators from Pennsylvania in 2004 a fellow Pennsylvanian, and sending a signal to Senate Republicans—many of whom were wary of his ideology—that though he may not agree with Specter’s The Team Player politics, he could play ball. Rick Santorum and the art of the possible One other episode has haunted San - torum. As the GOP conference chairman in 2001, he helped shepherd President BY ROBERT COSTA Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation to passage. Due to its far-reaching federal ICk SANTORuM is embraced by blend of outsider and establishment mandates, it remains deeply unpopular conservatives on the campaign figure. with conservatives. During a recent CNN trail. On the rope lines, gray- As a legislator and as an influential debate in Arizona, Santorum infamously R haired activists crowd around Pennsylvania politico, Santorum was a struggled to defend his role in bringing his tall frame, lightly grip his sweater- right-wing stalwart, to be sure. But as he it about. “When you’re part of the team, vest-covered shoulder, and whisper good defended traditional marriage and sup- sometimes you take one for the team, wishes. Well-scrubbed college Republi - ported the Bush administration’s foreign for the leader, and I made a mistake,” he cans cheer his white-hot rhetoric; indus- policy, Santorum was also a practical law- said. The crowd booed. He turned toward trial workers, clad in Carhartt jackets, maker. He steered appropriations bills them and scowled. “You know, politics is applaud his blue-collar message. With through the Senate; he ladled cash to a team sport, folks,” he said. Romney his attractive family, his open faith, and home-state interests. When he needed a grinned as Santorum drifted, and the next his pluck, he connects. But since early cosponsor, a vote, or a friend, he forged day used Santorum’s line against him. “I February, when he began his rapid ascent alliances—with moderate Republicans wonder which team he was taking it for,” in the national polls, Santorum’s appeal and Democrats. That included working Romney told a trade group in Phoenix. has been dented. At the debates and on the with Arlen Specter, the influential senior “My team is the American people, not the airwaves, his decade-plus stint on Capitol senator from Santorum’s state who insiders in Washington.” Hill has come under criticism. Voters have switched from the Republican to the Santorum advisers roll their eyes at been reminded, usually by Mitt Romney, Democratic party during the first year that gibe. But many of them acknowl- that Santorum is—a politician. of the Obama administration. edge that Santorum’s tendency to “get Conservatives are rediscovering that he When Specter was challenged by GOP lost in the weeds,” as one of them puts has not always been, as his stump speech congressman Pat Toomey in the 2004 it, rarely benefits the campaign. Another suggests, a Jim DeMint type, a crusading Pennsylvania primary, Santorum heartily Santorum hand, long familiar with the foe of the party’s leadership. Instead, he endorsed the incumbent—to the chagrin senator’s freewheeling style, frames is cast by his opponents, with varying of conservatives, who, then and now, Santorum’s method as unabashed truth- degrees of accuracy, as the consummate despise the ornery, liberal Specter. Spec - telling. But both worry about whether it’s Beltway power broker—an ally of the ter, who eked out a narrow primary vic - effective. AP Bush White House and a cunning cloak- tory and was reelected, went on to cast a The aides admit that Santorum support- / room operator. Tea-party Republicans find decisive vote in favor of Obama’s health- ed many efforts despite finding them this unsettling. But a review of Santor - care bill. Romney and his surrogates have unsavory, including the notorious “Bridge

um’s Washington experience reveals a described Santorum’s endorsement as to Nowhere” and countless other pork JACQUELINE LARMA

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projects. He supported the Medicare February interview. “that’s part of run- prescription-drug benefit, even though he ning a national campaign. they’re go - had private concerns about its effect on ing to drop the kitchen sink on us.” Still the the federal deficit. And yes, the advisers remember, “a few weeks ago people say, when he voted for various legislative were asking me why I was still in the Alinsky packages over the years, he sometimes race.” As he sees it, to fret publicly about voted against his conscience: specifical- a few bad votes would play into rom- ly, on sprawling appropriations bills that ney’s hands. He will, as ever, address any Playbook included funding for Planned Parent - pressing concerns; he’ll express regret President Obama continues to dance hood. when appropriate. But he will not linger with the one who brung him Nonetheless, John Brabender, San - on the parts of his past that his oppo - torum’s senior strategist, is confident that nents criticize. If anything, he says, he BY JOHN FUND his candidate can handle the scrutiny. wants to weave his record as a whole In an interview in mid-February, he pre- into his case that he is conservative. In orty years after his death, dicted that romney and other contenders fact, he loves roaming through his per- Saul Alinsky—the father of the might try to make the race about San- sonal political history, as his long-winded community-organizing model torum’s record, should the senator con - narratives at town-hall meetings attest. He F that inspired both Barack tinue to rise. And if so, then bring it on, can happily spend hours recalling his obama and Hillary Clinton—is more he told me. Santorum may get criticized effort to enact welfare reform in 1996, politically relevant than ever. for this vote or that vote, he says, but when he gained notice for trading punch- Leading conservatives attempt to tie republicans will ultimately overlook the es with the upper chamber’s liberal titans the obama administration to Alinsky’s former senator’s miscues. Compared with Daniel Patrick Moynihan and ted Ken - radicalism, with Newt Gingrich de clar - romney, who ushered to passage a con- nedy. ing that obama draws his “under stand - troversial health-care program in Massa - I’ve seen Santorum in this mode up ing of America” from “Saul Alinsky, chusetts, or Newt Gingrich, who has close, at diner counters and in high-school ra dical left-wingers, and people who supported various eccentric initiatives, auditoriums. Santorum can be a force. He don’t like the classical America.” For Santorum has a pretty clean record, Bra- is a knowledgeable and articulate candi- their part, liberals have scrambled to bender says. He expects that by the end of date. “I see this as part teacher, part story- minimize obama’s affinity for Alinsky the primary fight, Santorum, perhaps a tad teller, part leader,” he told me on the eve and to sand over Alinsky’s sharp edges. bruised, will emerge as the “true” conser- of the Florida primary. “you try to con- A blogger at Britain’s Guardian news - vative. nect with an audience, bring them in, and paper claims that Alinsky was merely “People have no doubts that rick San - tell them not just what you believe but “what passes for a left-wing radical in torum is a trusted conservative,” Bra - why.” Since leaving the Senate, while American politics, agitating for better bender says. He argues that romney has biding his time in the wilderness as a living conditions for the poor.” (Liberals flip-flopped on many issues over the Fox News pundit, he has vocally criti- have also largely ignored the fact that the course of his career, but Santorum, even cized the Beltway crowd of both parties. subtitle of Hillary Clinton’s honors the- when he was facing stiff political head- He opposed the bank bailouts, the auto sis at Wellesley was “An Analysis of the winds in 2006, ran as a conservative. It bailout, and the stimulus. But at his core, Alinsky Model.”) was only Santorum’s strategy in the he is a politician—determined and brave, Somewhere between Gingrich’s exag- Senate—not his principles—that bent but also calculating, and sometimes gerations and the Left’s whitewash of with circumstances. “I don’t have to undisciplined. “He’s sincere, he’s aggres- Alinsky is an explanation of why so many spend a lot of time telling people to trust sive, but he has some limitations,” says followers of Barack obama—along with him,” Brabender says. “What I do have to former Pennsylvania congressman Phil the president himself—draw inspiration do is contrast his record with the other English, a romney supporter who man- from a long-dead radical. candidates’.” aged Santorum’s first House race. “He’s Born in 1909, Alinsky was a left-wing With fewer dollars and a smaller cam- also divisive. He still has a propensity to activist with a streak of ruthless political paign than team romney, doing that will blurt out things.” realism. After studying criminology at be difficult. romney’s flaws have been But only sometimes, says ron Haskins, the University of Chicago, he went into widely discussed since he first began run- a former Senate staffer who worked close- union organizing, and found it too tame. ning for the presidency in 2007. Santorum ly with Santorum on welfare reform: “He His “approach to social justice,” in the has been a national personality, but he has has a reputation for being a wild man, but words of the Washington Post, would been best known, even to political-junkie in the way he actually works behind the come to rely instead on “generating con- republicans, mainly as a culture warrior. scenes, working with Democrats and flict to mobilize the dispossessed.” His No more. As the primary trudges toward republicans, he’s very reasoned, calm, first big conflict came in 1939, when he the spring, Santorum will likely be taking and dispassionate.” In other words, he’s helped lead workers in cleaning up the fire from many additional fronts. Even a team player—focused on moving the Back of the yards, the festering slum ron Paul is running ads against Santorum, ball, and maneuvering as necessary. Con - calling him a “fake.” vincing voters to see him that way is now Mr. Fund, a writer based in New York, is the author “Look, I never said this was going one of the main challenges of his surpris- of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud to be easy,” Santorum told me in a mid- ingly potent campaign. Threatens Our Democracy.

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area of the Chicago meatpacking district. That led to a major grant from department- store heir Marshall Field III, whose gen- erosity enabled Alinsky to found the Industrial Areas Foundation, the non- profit at which he invented “community organizing.” This new approach was distinctive. He deployed pickets to the homes of slum- lords and used megaphones to hurl insults at them; he dumped trash on the front step of a local alderman to demand better garbage collection; he flooded stockholder meetings with raucous protesters, a tactic Occupy Wall Street is emulating; and he tied up bank lines with people who exchanged loads of pennies for $100 bills and vice versa. He boasted that knowledge of his tactics often led to preemptive surrender by local officials or businesses. He was able to abandon plans to flood a department store with protesters who would order merchandise to be delivered that they had no intention of paying for; he also never had protesters occupy every bathroom stall for hours at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. In both cases, the mere threat of Saul Alinsky in Chicago in 1966 such action won important concessions from his targets. ends. The book was even dedicated, Pro fessor and I became his student. Nitti’s Alinsky himself disdained the chaotic presumably tongue in cheek, to Lucifer, boys took me everywhere.” tactics of 1960s student radicals. He “the very first radical,” who “rebelled Alinsky recalled that he “learned a hell eschewed violence in favor of planting against the establishment and did it so of a lot about the uses and abuses of power radical seeds. While students were riot- effectively that he at least won his own from the mob,” and that he applied that ing at the 1968 Democratic convention, kingdom.” knowledge “later on, when I was organ - former left-wing radical David Horow- Alinsky argued for moral relativism izing.” The Playboy in terviewer asked, itz recalls, “Alinsky’s organizers were in fighting the establishment: “In war “Didn’t you have any compunction about insinuating themselves into [Lyndon] the end justifies almost any means. . . . consorting with—if not actually assist- Johnson’s War on Poverty program and The practical revolutionary will un- ing—murderers?” Alinsky replied: “None directing federal funds into their own derstand [that] in action, one does not at all, since there was nothing I could do to organizations and causes.” always enjoy the luxury of a decision stop them from murdering. . . . I was a non- His most enduring influence may have that is consistent both with one’s in - participating observer in their professional been to inspire the National Education dividual conscience and the good of activities, although I joined their social Association to become a political power- mankind.” life of food, drink and women. Boy, I sure house. Sam Lambert, the executive sec- Where did Alinsky get this amorality? participated in that side of things—it retary of the NEA in 1967, when it hired Clues can be found in a Playboy maga- was heaven.” Alinsky as a political trainer, boasted zine interview he gave in 1972, just before Unlike the mob members he hung out that it would “become a political power his death. In the closest thing to a memoir with, Alinsky never coveted great wealth. second to no other special interest.” The Alinsky left, he told how he decided to do “He was essentially a thrill-seeker who NEA delivered on that promise. Between his (never-completed) doctoral disserta- admitted he was easily bored and always 1963 and 1993, the number of teachers tion in the 1930s on the Al Capone mob, had to stir things up,” says Lee Stranahan, belonging to unions grew to 3.1 million, and to do it as “an inside job.” He caught who was a blogger for the Huffington up from only 963,720. the eye of Big Ed Stash, the mob’s top Post until last year, when his research into Alinsky didn’t live to see that, or a executioner, and convinced him he could Alinsky-inspired groups soured him on number of other fruits of his labors. But be trusted as a sort of mob mascot who the Left. “His followers are even more just before his death in 1972, he synthe- would interpret its methods to the outside ideological and relentless than he was.” sized the lessons he had learned into a world. “He introduced me to Frank Nitti, Alinsky’s tactics of intimidation are a book called “Rules for Radicals,” in known as the Enforcer, Capone’s number- case in point. His most oft-quoted rule is which he urged radicals to make com- two man,” Alinsky told Playboy. “Nitti “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it,

AP mon cause with anyone to further their took me under his wing. I called him the and polarize it. . . . One acts decisively

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only in the conviction that all the angels tion that has proven to be a bonanza for are on one side and all the devils on vote fraudsters—in Illinois. Later, while the other.” on the board of the liberal Woods Fund, Cousinhood, Obama’s White House has honed that Obama saw to it that the group gave sub- tactic to perfection. In 2009, then–com- stantial grants to ACORN. Lately munications director Anita Dunn His 2008 presidential campaign quiet- sneered that Fox News “really is not a ly hired ACORN affiliates to handle Notes on Anglo-American relations news network at this point.” President get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio and in the time of Obama Obama himself has, in the spirit of Pennsylvania, improperly concealing Alinsky, gone out of his way to lambaste their activities in Federal Election Com - BY JAY NORDLINGER “fat-cat bankers” and greedy health mission reports as being for “staging and insurers. lighting.” Obviously, Team Obama was N the middle of March, President and “[The administration has] shown they’ll eager to distance itself from ACORN’s Mrs. Obama will host a state dinner go after anybody or any organization reckless record in voter-registration-fraud for British prime minister David that they think is standing in their I Cam eron and his first lady, Saman - scandals. Indeed, since then ACORN way,” Senate minority leader Mitch has gone into bankruptcy following the tha (known in Britain’s popular press McConnell said in a February speech. surfacing of undercover videos showing as “Sam Cam”). It should be a fairly “You know the drill. Expose these folks its employees offering advice on setting glamorous affair, and reported as so. The to public view, release the liberal thugs up a whorehouse for underage illegal Obamas are about 50, and the Camerons on them, and then hope the public pres- aliens. several years younger than that. All four sure or the unwanted attention scares Obama’s 2008 campaign showcased individuals have a sense of style. Photo - them from supporting similar causes many Alinsky methods. “Obama learned graphers will be pleased. down the road.” his lesson well,” David Alinsky, the son Obama and Cameron may not be What exactly are the connections be - of Saul Alinsky, wrote in the Boston FDR and Churchill, or Ronnie and Mag - tween Obama and Saul Alinsky’s Globe in 2008. “The Democratic Na - gie, but they are said to get on. No one thought? In 1985, the 24-year-old Obama tional Convention had all the elements would say, though, that the course of answered a want ad from the Calumet of the perfectly organized event, Saul Anglo-American relations, in the time of Community Religious Conference, run Alinsky style. Barack Obama’s training Obama, has run smooth. Shall we have by Alinsky’s Chicago disciples. Obama in Chicago by the great community orga- a review? was profoundly influenced by his years nizers is showing its effectiveness. It is It all started a few days after Obama as a community organizer in Chicago, an amazingly powerful format, and the was sworn in, when he unceremoniously even if he ultimately rejected Alinsky’s method of my late father always works returned to the British government a bust disdain for electoral politics and, like to get the message out and get the sup- of Churchill that had been in the Oval Hillary Clinton, chose to work within porters on board.” Office. Her Majesty’s Government lent it the system. “Obama embraced many of In her new book on Obama, New York to President George W. Bush after 9/11, Alinsky’s tactics and recently said his Times reporter Jodi Kantor lifted a bit of in one of its many shows of solidarity. years as an organizer gave him the best the curtain on his past. She told the Texas Plus, wasn’t Churchillian determination education of his life,” wrote Peter Slevin Book Festival: “The Obamas often don’t and clarity called for at this hour? of the Washington Post in 2007. That mingle freely—they often just stand From the White House, the bust went same year, The New Republic’s Ryan behind the rope and reach out to shake to the home of the British ambassador in Lizza found Obama still “at home talk- hands—but he sees Jerry Kellman, his Washington. An experienced Washington ing Alinskian jargon about ‘agitation’” old community-organizing boss, and he hand tells the following story: One night and fondly recalling organizing work- is so happy to see him he reaches across after dinner, the ambassador and an Amer - shops where he had learned Alinsky con- and pulls him in. And Obama says, ‘I’m ican visitor were looking at the bust. The cepts such as “being predisposed to other still organizing.’ It was a stunning mo - ambassador remarked to his visitor, “We people’s power.” ment and when [Kellman] told me the are keeping it here for the time being, In 1992, after Obama returned to story, it had echoes of what Valerie trusting that your next president, who - Chicago from Harvard Law School, he Jarrett had told me once: ‘The senator ever he is, will want it back.” ran a voter-registration drive for Project still thinks of himself as a community When Obama returned the bust, he Vote, an ACORN affiliate set up by organizer.’ . . . I think that plays into what stoked a longstanding anxiety in Britain: Alinsky acolytes. The purportedly non- will happen in the 2012 race.” an anxiety about Americans’ regard for partisan effort registered 135,000 new You can expect that the Obama 2012 “the special relationship,” as Churchill voters and was integral to the election of campaign and allied groups will be dubbed the U.S.-U.K. alliance. The way a Carol Moseley Braun to the Senate. filled with people deeply steeped in Telegraph writer put it was, “The rejec- Obama then moonlighted as a top trainer Rules for Radicals. That is good reason tion of the bust has left some British offi- for ACORN. for conservatives to spend time studying cials nervously reading the runes to see Obama even became ACORN’s attor- Saul Alinsky. It also explains why liber- how much influence the UK can wield ney in 1995, when he sued on its behalf als are so anxious to sugarcoat Alinsky with the new regime in Washington.” to implement the “Motor Voter” law—a and soft-pedal his influence on Team Britons wanted to know, Who is this new loose system of postcard voter registra- Obama. president, and what makes him tick?

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A writer in the Independent expressed It was during this visit, you may re - George W. Bush mercilessly for his lack a view that was found all over the Brit - member, that Touching-gate occurred. of diplomacy (in their indictment). He ish media: “It’s not surprising that Mr Michelle Obama put her arm around the had “squandered our alliances,” they said, Obama didn’t want Churchill looking queen, becoming one of the very, very and we needed to “restore our alliances,” over his shoulder as it was Churchill who few people to have touched the queen in as well as America’s “good name.” Yet ordered the crackdown on the Mau Mau public, in the course of a 60-year reign. Bush enjoyed famously—to the Left, rebels in Kenya in 1952, a time when Mr Afterward, the palace said, No sweat. irksomely—warm relations with Brit - Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango Besides, said some observers, the queen ain’s Tony Blair, along with many other Obama was labelled a subversive and had made the first move. leaders. thrown into detention.” In the fall of that year, 2009, came In March 2010, a multiparty committee A few weeks after Bust-gate, Gordon Kitchen-gate. World leaders were in New in the House of Commons said, in effect, Brown, then serving as prime minister, York for the opening of a U.N. session, Enough: We must no longer pretend that called on Obama. He brought with him a and Obama had meetings scheduled with we’re as special to the Americans as they notably thoughtful gift: an ornamental representatives from Japan, Russia, and are to us. Britain needed “a more hard- penholder made from timbers of HMS China. Five times, Prime Minister Brown headed political approach towards our Gannet, a Victorian anti-slaving ship. requested a meeting. Five times, he was relationship with the U.S.,” said the chair- The press described Gannet as a sister rebuffed. Eventually, Obama agreed to a man of the committee, “with a realistic ship of HMS Resolute, from which the sense of our own limits and our national famous Oval Office desk was made. In interests.” The committee even recom- addition, Brown gave Obama a framed mended that Britons abandon the very commission for Resolute and a first edi- term “special relationship.” tion of Sir Martin Gilbert’s eight-volume Two months later, the U.S. House said, biography of Churchill (oops). Not so fast. They passed a resolution And what did Obama give Brown, his affirming the special relationship, citing guest? A box set of DVDs, containing the Magna Carta, John Locke, Adam classic American movies: Some Like It Smith, the Atlantic Charter, Afghanistan, Hot, Raging Bull, Star Wars: Episode IV, Iraq, and more. and so on. In the main, British commen- During this same period, we had the tators were aghast at this gift, calling it BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, occa- cheesy, cheap, and unworthy. They point- sioning some harsh rhetoric from Presi - ed out that Brown wasn’t known as a film dent Obama about “British Petroleum,” buff and that the discs were unplayable as he called the company (though the on British DVD players anyway. Did com pany had been “BP” since the Nine - Obama mean to send another signal that ties). This caused some heartburn in Lon - the once-special relationship was to be don. In January 2011, Obama declared, downgraded? with the French president sitting next to The Telegraph quoted an anonymous him, “We don’t have a stronger friend State Department official who said, in and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy essence, that the Brits needed to get over Special relationship or bust and the French people.” Serious, serious themselves: “There’s nothing special about heart burn. Britain. You’re just the same as the other “walk and talk” through a kitchen after Worse, though, was the impression left 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t dinner. Brown’s people said the leaders’ by documents revealed by WikiLeaks expect special treatment.” Whether a discussion had lasted 15 minutes. The that the U.S. had compromised British State Department official really used such British press derided that as spin—point- nuclear secrets in order to get a deal undiplomatic language can’t be confirmed. ing out that the kitchen wasn’t that big: with the Russians. The State Department But no language could more rattle our One minute, tops. said this was “bunk,” but the leaked doc - British cousins. Again, Americans rolled their eyes at uments were hard to wave off. More A few weeks after Brown’s visit, Obama British sensitivity. In a 2010 book about recently, Britain endured some upset over went to London, where his schedule in - Brown, Anthony Seldon quotes Rahm Afghanistan: Days after David Cameron cluded the queen. He had a gift for her: an Emanuel, then the White House chief of assured the Afghan president that British iPod loaded with various items, including staff, now mayor of Chicago, as saying, troops would remain in Afghanistan some related to himself. These were pho- “What do we have to do to convince them through 2014, the Obama administra - tos of his inauguration and audio record- of the special relationship? Pictures of tion announced that, actually, Americans ings of two of his speeches: his keynote Gordon getting it on with Michelle in the would be essentially through in 2013. address to the 2004 Democratic conven- Oval Office?” This is another statement This caught the Brits off guard. tion and his inaugural address. Another that can’t be confirmed, but it certainly Worst of all, from their point of view, gift, however, was without self-regard: sounds like our Rahm. is Obama’s position on the Falkland Obama gave the queen a songbook signed Diplomacy can seem silly, with its Islands, or the Malvinas, as the Ar - by Richard Rodgers. She is known to be symbols and sensitivities, but it is not gen tinians call them—and as the State a fan of American musical theater. unimportant, and Democrats used to fault Department sometimes calls them, much

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to Britain’s distress. The American posi- Where in the World Is Carmen San - tion is one of neutrality, and also one that diego? and I had every intention of calls for negotiations between Britain and Man at His growing up to be Indiana Jones. By Argentina. The British position is, What my tweener years, when the innate is there to negotiate? It’s a matter of Blandest Apollonian rationalism in every young history and a matter of people’s self- man’s brain starts to exert its influence, determination. Besides, didn’t we just The politics of Esquire my cultural waypoints were MacGyver fight a war over this? and James T. Kirk, and I brought a Obama had a happy visit with Cam - BY DANIEL FOSTER careful, cogent, and ultimately success- eron in May 2011, when Americans and ful case to bar in the court of Gramps, Britons were fighting alongside one HEn I was young enough arguing that my gift subscription could another in Libya, as well as elsewhere. that I could—and often and by rights should be transferable This visit took place on Cameron’s home did—count my age on my to Popular Science. And lo, I had turf, London. In a joint statement, the two W two hands, my grand - many a fine month with Pop Sci’s rock- men said the Anglo-American alliance father gifted me a subscription to ets and robots. Indeed, my grand - was not just a “special relationship” but National Geographic. This was wel- father’s gift outlasted the man himself, an “essential relationship.” The only come, since I was an avid fan of the and each year, well into high school, I’d shadow over the visit was Toast-gate: kids-as-geography-gumshoes quiz show receive a letter informing me of its when President Obama had trouble coor- dinating his toast of Queen Elizabeth with the orchestra’s playing of the nation- Rare Chance to Own America’s Hugest Silver Dollar! al anthem. It was a painfully awkward moment, almost unbearable to watch. Obama was largely blameless, but if 2012 Brilliant Uncirculated Bush had done it ... The upcoming state dinner at the Silver Eagle Dollars White House should be a fine occasion, with well-coordinated toasts. And yet Only Brits, as the Daily Mail’s ace Toby Harn - $ 95 den says, will be on the lookout for every 49 each slight and half-slight. Late last year, Plus S&H Obama referred to “the English em - bassy” in Tehran, rather than “the British embassy.” This set tongues clucking and renewed suspicions of presidential anti - pathy to, and ignorance of, Britain. People can be touchy. And presidents can be clumsy, as Obama has sometimes been. I feel sure he’s not an Anglophile—which is no sin. I’m also pretty sure he’s not an Anglo- phobe. Put it this way: Does he think less No Larger, Purer, of Britain than do the combined faculties U.S. Silver Dollar Exists Anywhere! of Oxford and Cambridge, plus the archbishop of Canterbury? (A mischievous Here’s your chance to take possession of the biggest, heaviest and purest question, I realize.) Silver Dollar ever struck by the U.S. Government ... The magnificent Silver In the last three years, people on both Eagle. With considerable bulk, and a full Troy ounce of .999 Pure Silver, the sides of the Atlantic have intensely de - Silver Eagle was originally issued purely as an investment coin. But its rising bated the special relationship: whether it value and stunning beauty have made it among the most sought-after and exists, whether it should. I say yes (to collected U.S. coins in modern history. both). This idea of a special relationship: It has become a must-have part of any collection. Currently, these Silver Eagle Is it only for us romantics, nostalgists, Dollars are still affordable, but many past dates have appreciated rapidly. sentimentalists, Churchill-holics, and So, ACT NOW! reactionaries? Is it only for those with This offer may change depending on the current market price of silver. There is a strict limit of 20 coins per customer. Elgar flowing through their veins? I think Call Toll-Free of the 179 British dead in Iraq, and the Ask for Ext. 4754 1-888-4NC-MINT 398 British dead in Afghanistan. I also 24 Hours a Day / 7 Days a Week (1-888-462-6468) think that Anglo-American liberty means something—to everyone, everywhere, National Collector’s Mint, Inc. is an independent, private corporation not affiliated with, endorsed, or licensed by the U.S. Government or the U.S. Mint. © 2012 NCM, Inc. 2T-252 now as much as ever.

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renewal courtesy of the late, great Dick in a hole in the middle of it, falling into the “won’t be as anodyne and evenhanded as Sander. interregnum after youthful longing and it has been.” But around age 14, as the opposite sex before middle-aged nostalgia. I wasn’t Let that last one kick around awhile, reached the peak of its awesomeness (in sure, because I’d never really bothered to and remember that the right-honorability both the classical and contemporary sens- sit and figure out exactly what it was of Slick Willy is just one of the things “we es of that word) and self-esteem became a about the magazine that I’d begun to find can all agree on.” Here are some of the direct function of other’s-esteem, there at turns annoying and irrelevant. other 78. came suddenly a moment when no ques- That was, until I saw Esquire’s Feb - No. 3: Chris Christie would be less tion seemed to matter but the question of ruary cover. Billed as “an ISSUE for popular if he weren’t fat. No. 5: The how to be a man, and how to be one as our DIVIDED TIMES,” it ominously Electoral College should be abolished. quickly as possible. And in the course of promised “Bill Clinton and 78 other No. 11: President Obama has “accom- the single-minded search for the answer things we can all agree on.” And behold, plished more in his first three years than to that question I developed an infatua - there sat Bill, puffy-eyed and sporting any of his five predecessors.” No. 28: tion with another, quite different glossy: a wizened half-smile atop a three-piece Ezra Klein is awesome. No. 29: Ezra Klein Hearst’s Esquire. suit, with stark white two-inch letters is awesome. No. 30: Ezra Klein is awe- Adolescents look for archetypes for reading “AGREE” superimposed on the some. No. 35: “The New York Times [is] their nonconformity, and I wanted des- better part of his torso. All caps, sans the only essential newspaper left.” No. perately to cut the figure of the bookish serif, unpunctuated. No question mark of 58: “Most people shouldn’t be allowed rogue: Worldly and witty, yet austere and doubt. No colon of qualification. And I anywhere near a handgun.” aloof. Not a dandy, but a Romantic; not realized I was being commanded to agree I’ll give you a second to stop reflexive- a politician, but a statesman. with, and about, the man who rendered ly nodding. This is the stuff, obviously, of In the pages of Esquire I “agreement” de minimis, a blandly conventional liberalism. A liber- found a handbook of applica- who singularly showed alism for people who are mainly here for ble affectations and ready- how tenuous was the con- the celebrity profiles and sartorial tips, made opinions with which nection between “agree- and really want only enough politics to to accouter this bare per- ment” on x and anything frown thoughtfully over during post-work sonage, recipes for, as like a sincerely held belief drinks. And that’s fine. What makes it Fitz gerald put it, the “un - about x. And I was being dumb, and dangerous, is calling it an broken series of suc - commanded to do this by American consensus. cessful gestures” that idiots. Some magazines—like the one you’re con stitute personality. I’ll save you the trouble of holding—are explicitly ideological. There were capable- reading the lengthy interview Every thing we write exists against a back- looking gentlemen in well- with the ex-prez. Starting from ground of broadly agreed-upon first prin- cut clothing; PG-13 women I could get the interviewers’ premise that ciples and the repository of knowledge past the motherly censor; tight, aspira- “there is now no figure of greater con - built up from them. You may not think a tional sentences about Man at His Best sensus in America” than Bill Clinton, we given argument herein is sound, but there (the magazine’s motto) that might have learn that, contra the political tranquility will be an argument, and the name on the been written by Hemingway had he been we’re told characterized the greater part cover will let you know under which ini- a self-help guru. And there were arts and of his presidency, the “vituperative ener- tial assumptions it proceeds. But in the letters, whiskey and tobacco, leather gy” driving contemporary American poli- truncated politics of Esquire, first princi- briefcases and straight razors—all the tics is due to the failure of conservatives to ples are dispensed with, and every con- essential furnishings of the wannabe be center-left technocrats. The only ques- clusion is presented as conventional sophisticate, 15 going on 40. tion is whether conservatism as actually wisdom. Nothing is argued for, every- But while Esquire made for great read- practiced is contingently or essentially thing asserted. This would be one thing ing during that long wait in the lobby of insane. (Sample question: “Was there a if Esquire were content to preach to the manhood, I’ve found I have less and less moment when the Republicans could have converted, if its editorial tone were less use for it as I actually go about the busi- turned away from the anti-intellectual, grandiloquent, the sweep of its edicts less ness of being a man. I’ll admit I carry a antiscience, no-tax-increases-of-any- ambitious. Maybe then I could still get a vestigial subscription even now—I’ll be kind kind of thing?”) To his, um, credit, kick out of it. But Esquire purports to damned if I know who pays for it—but Clinton allows that the cretinization of speak not just for coastal yuppies with the amount of time I spend reading the the Republican party was avoidable, and four-year degrees and a dressed-up, thing has dwindled to the point that there that it might yet be reversed not if, but watered-down machismo. No, it claims resides on my coffee table a stack of the when, President Obama wins reelection. to speak for “the things we can all agree half-dozen most recent issues, spines Obama’s reelection will also dissolve the on,” for Man at His Best. And it’s not just uncracked, some still preserved in their question of why (“aside from his race,” prepackaged MSNBC/Bill Maher politics mail-order cellophane wrap. but of course) the 44th president has it so that Esquire tries to pawn off as the thing It is possible Esquire has always been much worse than the 42nd. Not to worry, all the cool kids are doing. It’s an entire blah, and that I have simply managed to says Clinton. Once Obama has a general- culture, a fully formed Weltanschauung. outgrow its peculiar pretensions. Or even election opponent, the mainstream-media Take, for instance, the pleasures of the that I am not beyond Esquire’s appeal but coverage “will tilt back toward” him and flesh. The Hoover Institution’s Mary

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Eberstadt, in what is surely in the running It’s not all terrible. Esquire’s long list for observation of the young century, has of contributors includes too many great written that the ways we think about food prose stylists and insightful journalists to Friends of the and sex have undergone a complete inver- name individually, and in digging through sion in the last few decades. Food, once my back issues I found most contained at Lorax unfussed over and subject to no tribunal least one long-form essay or piece of jour- beyond the tastes of the kitchen table, is nalism promising enough to be worth Dr. Seuss’s politics for children now governed by a complex of social reading. mores and taboos. Eating is tribalized, But it seems like it’s getting worse. BY JOHN J. MILLER politicized, even eroticized. Sex, on the Even newer columns like lit-critic Stephen other hand, is now casual—not just in Marche’s pessimistic “A Thousand Words HE most popular children’s au - some of its instances, but in its totality. about Our Culture,” presumably brought thor of the 20th century didn’t Laissez-lay. The most aberrant of bed- in to be a kind of doomy-gloomy ballast to have kids of his own. “You room proclivities is no more controversial the bubblegum and popcorn that increas- T make ’em, and I’ll amuse ’em,” than one’s preference in ice-cream fla- ingly pervades the rest of the issue, are Dr. Seuss once said. And he amused vors. And so Esquire, evangelizer of both awkwardly situated at best. To wit: Only a ’em as well as any author who ever orthodox and protestant methods of steak Ph.D. could be possessed of the combina- lived. Seuss’s books of sing-song verse preparation and hermeneutician of vin- tion of gall and ingenuousness required to and zany drawings have flourished. The tage cocktail recipes, employs Stacey scold us at length about how we have website of Dr. Seuss Enterprises claims Grenrock-Woods, a former Daily Show reached the “apotheosis of advertising” on that more than half a billion copies of correspondent, as its sex-advice colum- pages flanked by sticky samples of Bleu The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and nist. Say what you will about Dan Savage de Chanel and editorial “advertainments” Ham, and other titles are in print. Not (Rick Santorum’s most famous detractor), for $5,000 crocodile-skin man-purses. even death has slowed Seuss down: but at least he dispenses advice. Woods Marche should know that his paycheck The majority of these books have been more often than not takes her corres - is contingent on Esquire’s selling you bought since he died in 1991. To borrow pondents’ earnest sexual queries as op - clothes that would look ridiculous if you a line from The Lorax, Seuss’s success portunities to indulge in second-rate moved five years in any direction in time- just keeps on biggering and biggering vaudevillian non sequiturs. space. and biggering. Not that Esquire suffers from a want of And that, at least, is something we can His books have encouraged untold sex. By my rough count George Clooney all agree on. numbers of children to read, but Seuss gets the cover in the odd months, and in the evens there is a rotation of the half- clad eye candy from the latest Michael Bay action extravaganza. But rather than PRACTICAL, SENSIBLE SOLUTIONS objectify these women like a Maxim, FOR MANAGING IMMIGRATION which, for all its artlessness, is at least honest with itself, Esquire objectifies # # # them with a condescension that has become so ingrained it might now be unconscious. It has internalized the cen- A MUST-READ FOR tral operational lesson of going on four generations of men: that the sexual revo- EVERY AMERICAN lution redounded to the benefit of none # # # more than the cad. That it takes two (or preferably three) for a woman to celebrate S. ROB SOBHANI, PH.D. her sexuality. That “You’ve Come a Long America’s most forward-thinking immigration expert Way, Baby—so why not slip into something more comfortable?” From monthly features like “A Funny Available at ReformImmigration.com Joke from a Beautiful Woman,” to the For National Review Readers Only sweaty-palmed profiles of barely legal Use Code NATREV for Free Shipping starlets, to its help popularizing the psyche- twisting methods of pickup artistry known NEW BOOK ON AMERICA’S BIGGEST DILEMMA as “Game,” Esquire has become golden- age Playboy with higher-cut décol- letage. It is the 21st-century realization of Hefner’s 1950s dream: a compendium of just enough swank and pseudo-intellect to bed a girl who’s taken a couple of ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY! women’s-studies classes.

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also stuffed his stories with political debate over whether PM was Com - all he can see. / And the turtles, of course themes, usually liberal ones—and al - munist. . . . all turtles are free / As turtles and, most nowhere was he more aggressive During World War II, Seuss savaged maybe, all creatures should be.” Three about it than in the book that blasted all the right people: Hitler, Mussolini, years later, The Sneetches took on anti- business for all of its biggering. The and Hirohito. His caricatures of the Semitism. It tells of yellow birdlike Lorax was one of Seuss’s later books, Japanese emperor—slit-eyed and buck- beings who hold a harebrained brawl coming out in 1971. The author often toothed—would fail most of today’s over which ones have green stars on said that it was his favorite. On its pages, standards of political correctness, but he their bellies and which don’t, and ends Seuss lampooned the rapacious greed was also ahead of his time in calling for with a clear plea for tolerance. of a straw-man capitalist and celebrated racial integration in the U.S. military. On at least a couple of occasions, the environmental activism of the title Even way back then, his style was rec- Seuss’s themes veered to the right. In the character, who “speaks for the trees.” ognizably Seussian, full of bizarre peo- 1948 book Thidwick the Big-Hearted The influence of The Lorax and its left- ple and animals. One of his wartime Moose, a collection of freeloading crit- ward slant is already vast—and it only drawings, published in the 2001 collec- ters take up residence in Thidwick’s will grow when the movie adaptation tion Dr. Seuss Goes to War, appeared antlers. They’re like an Occupy Seuss arrives in theaters on March 2. a few months before Pearl Harbor. It movement, as these “hard-hearted guests” The author was born Theodor Seuss shows a figure labeled “The Appeaser.” exploit the kindness of a “soft-hearted Geisel in 1904, and he never pursued a He stands on a rock, holding four lolly- moose.” They boss Thidwick around, medical degree. In 1927, Ted (as friends pops and surrounded by sea monsters telling him what he may do and where called him) started using his middle wearing swastika tattoos. “Remember,” he may go, even putting his life at risk. name as a pseudonym, soon adding “Dr.” says the appeaser, “One More Lollypop, Modern readers may see it as a parable as a whimsical afterthought. (“I was and Then You All Go Home!” of uncontrolled immigration. More fun- saving the name of Geisel,” said Seuss, If this is liberalism, it’s a fighting lib- damentally, it’s about the importance according to biographers Judith and eralism that many of today’s conser - of private property—and the villains’ Neil Morgan, “for the Great American vatives can applaud. The same may be comeuppance is the story’s satisfying Novel.”) Although raised by Republican said for several of Seuss’s most popular climax. A 1965 book, I Had Trouble in parents, Seuss turned into an FDR Dem - books for kids. Yertle the Turtle, pub- Getting to Solla Sollew, is deeply anti- ocrat in the 1930s. By the 1940s, he lished in 1958, took aim at tyranny. It utopian. was illustrating PM, a short-lived daily was “modeled on the rise of Hitler,” One of Seuss’s most successful books newspaper whose brand of politics explained Seuss, and it told the story was Horton Hears a Who, published earned an entry in Oxford University of a dictatorial turtle and his toppling: in 1954. An elephant named Horton Press’s Encyclopedia of the American “And today the great Yertle, that Mar- encounters the Whos, a band of micro- Left. Most of the entry is devoted to a velous he, / Is King of the Mud. That is scopic people who inhabit a speck of dust. Horton’s friends don’t believe in the wee folk. They persecute Horton and try to destroy the speck, giving rise to Horton’s principled refrain: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” Two decades later, following the Roe v. Wade decision, pro-lifers adopted the line as a slogan. Seuss always objected, and his widow has continued to complain. In 2001, Action Life Ottawa featured the phrase in material distributed through the local archdiocese. Lawyers for Mrs. Geisel demanded removal, and the Cana - dians complied. Even so, the words continue to pop up beside pictures of fetuses on highway billboards. At times, Seuss turned partisan. In 1974, during the height of the Water - gate controversy, Art Buchwald of the Wash ington Post dared Seuss to write an explicitly political book. Seuss re - sponded by grabbing a copy of Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!, which he had put out two years earlier, and replacing the name of the title character with the name of the presi-

dent, fashioning Richard M. Nixon ROMAN GENN

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Will You Please Go Now! Buchwald “thneeds,” furry garments that serve no loved it and, with Seuss’s blessing, useful purpose but become a fad to printed the mashed-up text in his news- own. The Once-ler, who narrates, builds The Hipster paper column. Nine days later, Nixon a factory and begins mass production: really did go, resigning from office. “So I quickly invented my Super-Axe- And the Seuss was thrilled. “We should have Hacker / which whacked off four collaborated sooner,” he wrote to Buch - Truffula Trees at one smacker.” Before wald. long, the factory spews smoke, pollutes SuperZip In 1984, Seuss released The Butter ponds, and imperils wildlife. A forest of Battle Book, which his publicists pro- Truffula Trees transforms into stump Analyzing a symbiotic relationship moted in after-school-special language country, over the barking protests of as “probably the most important book the Lorax, a bean-shaped orange gnome BY ROB LONG Dr. Seuss has ever created.” It describes who sports a yellow mustache. “I blue-suited Yooks who like to eat their speak for the trees, for the trees have no f you want to make an Episcopalian bread with the “butter side up” and tongues,” he says. By the end of the look down at his shoes, goes the say- orange-suited Zooks who like the “but- book, just about everyone has lost. The ing, all you have to do is mention ter side down.” Their differences spark a I two things: Jesus and money. noble Lorax fails to preserve the trees perilous arms race, as the Zooks and and the animals that depend on them. In his new book, Charles Murray, the Yooks strive to build a series of ever- The avaricious Once-ler, having cut Big Brain behind such Big Books as The deadlier screwball weapons. By the down the last Truffula Tree, goes out of Bell Curve and Losing Ground, doesn’t story’s end, they’re marching into under- business. Yet a single seed survives. The talk much about Jesus, but he does talk a ground bunkers to protect themselves Once-ler, now shuttered away in shame, lot about money, and what it—or the lack from the Bitsy Big-Boy Boomeroo, a bequeaths it to a wide-eyed boy and of it—has done to white people. And that clear reference to “Little Boy,” the code speaks the book’s final lines: “Plant a has made a lot of white people—espe- name for the Hiroshima bomb. Seuss new Truffula. Treat it with care. / Give it cially, it seems, the ones with the cash— called The Butter Battle Book “an echo clean water. And feed it fresh air. / Grow very uncomfortable. of my days as a political cartoonist.” a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. / In Coming Apart: The State of White One of the main characters is a warmon- Then the Lorax and all of his friends America 1960–2010, Murray divides gering grandfather, an obvious stand-in may come back.” those of us of a more pinkish hue into for Ronald Reagan, the aging president The Lorax contains some of the best two broad categories: those who live in who challenged the Soviet Union with poetry Seuss ever wrote, but its words lower-class, slipping-down locations— a defense buildup. Reagan understood march in the service of the book’s he calls these “fishtown”—and those the Cold War as a grand struggle against simple-minded political message: busi- who live in upper-class, movin’-up loca- the menace of Communism. Seuss saw ness bad, environmentalism good. tions—he calls these “Belmont.” only moral equivalence, as if the choice With in months of publication, the Keep And then, diabolically, he dives into between freedom and totalitarianism Amer ica Beautiful campaign gave Seuss “Belmont” and comes up with a tiny, tony amounted to no more than an eating an award because it believed The Lor - subcategory, something he calls “Super - preference. ax would persuade children to become Zips.” These are the ZIP codes where the Virtually alone among Seuss’s works “pollution fighters.” In Your Favorite rich and powerful live—the swanker parts for children, The Butter Battle Book fin- Seuss, a 2004 compendium of 13 Seuss of D.C. and New York, the Hollywood ishes on a note of threatening uncer - classics, folk singer Pete Seeger wrote power elite of Brentwood and Pacific tainty. The conclusion of The Lorax is an introduction to The Lorax: “If some- Palisades, Silicon Valley, the leafy suburbs more hopeful, but its full vision is thing wrong is being done to the envi- of Boston and Chicago. These are the nearly as dark and spiteful, quite dif- ronment, speak up as the Lorax did. Talk kinds of places people talk about when ferent from the brightness and laughter to your parents, your teachers, your leg- they talk about yoga and wagyu beef and that most parents and teachers associate islators.” Last year, on the 40th anni - artisanal scented candles selling for $100. with Seuss. “Every once in a while I versary of The Lorax, Emma Marris of When Rush Limbaugh inveighs against get mad,” said Seuss in 1983. “The Nature, the science journal, called the “Georgetown cocktail parties,” he’s talk- Lorax came out of my being angry.” So book “a kind of Silent Spring for the ing about the SuperZips. When people in he channeled his rage into his work: playground set,” referring to the 1962 these places say, “Did you see the paper “The ecology books I’d read were dull. work by Rachel Carson that is often said this morning?” they’re talking about the . . . In The Lorax I was out to attack what to have launched the modern environ- New York Times, no matter where they I think are evil things and let the chips mental movement. The Lorax is now a live. And, in a wonderfully cocooning bit fall where they might.” A few years ear- popular character at Earth Day festivals, of symmetry, when reporters at the lier, he had described his method more especially in elementary schools—an New York Times talk about “new trends bluntly: “The Lorax book was intended association that Seuss’s publisher, Ran - in dining” or “how busy marriages work” to be propaganda.” dom House, cheers on. or “what the independent voter wants” The tale involves the Once-ler, a mys- And now the book is a big-budget they’re talking exclusively about the peo- terious green figure who chops down movie, ready to amuse—and influence—a ple in the SuperZips, because, for the most candy-colored Truffula Trees to produce new generation. part, those are the only people they know.

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There are deep pockets of dough all one does with the people who live in the doesn’t carry it—or where I can buy toi- over the country, of course. One thing towns just next door, which is probably let paper. (The liquor store doesn’t sell that always astonishes the rich elites who some version of Murray’s Fishtown. it anymore. Had to make room for the live on the coasts is how much money People in SuperZips notice one another artisanal-bread display.) there is in places they usually sniff at— by certain class markers—a copy of The And that makes me the neighborhood places like Alabama and Indianapolis. Economist, some kind of Mac computer, oddity. Not because of my politics—I’m It’s unnerving, to some of them, to a foreign car—and they notice who’s not smart enough to keep those to myself— note that Oklahoma City is the home of from a SuperZip by other markers— but because of the one thing that Charles a giant, spanking-new Whole Foods. American-flag lapel pins, bad denim, Murray, in his excellent book, neglects to “What’s up with that?” they wonder to morbid obesity. deal with. themselves. If a lot of unsophisticated Residents of SuperZips, in other I’m old. Okies can buy organic chicken and mes- words, are the very worst kind of rich Not old old—I’m still firmly in my clun salad mix, that sort of takes the elite, white people—rich white people with mid-40s—but older than the entitled exclusive fun out of the entire Wednes- taste. SuperZippers in Training who are my day “Dining In/Dining Out” section of Or, perhaps more accurately: old rich neighbors. Older than the artists and trust- the paper. white people with taste. fund babies—and, often, these amount to (That’s the paper I’m talking about. Confession time: I don’t live in a Super - the same thing—who throng the coffee But you knew that, right? Or didn’t you? Zip. I live SuperZip-adjacent, but that’s spots and eat up the arugula in my hipster What’s your ZIP code, again?) not really the same thing. In my Los heaven. They may not be as rich as their If the biggest thing that distinguishes Angeles neighborhood, the slow and state- parents, a couple of clicks away, in the “Fishtown” from “Belmont” is money— ly progression from beachside slum to SuperZips across town. But they’re influ- Belmont’s got it; Fishtown don’t—then affluent-hipster heaven is still in progress. ential all the same. More often than not, what distinguishes the broader “Bel - Young women with $5,000 strollers and when the Choosers who live in the real mont” from its subset of SuperZips is peach-colored yoga mats vie for sidewalk SuperZips want to go to the cool new Residents of SuperZips are the very worst kind of rich white people—rich white people with taste. Or, perhaps more accurately: old rich white people with taste.

influence. If you breathe the purified, space with bleary-eyed drunks. The $5 restaurant or buy a pair of cool pants, powerful air of the Upper East Side of coffee spot on the corner sells pain aux they’ll head over to the Hipster Quarter— Manhattan or the breezes off of Santa raisins to children with European accents. every SuperZip has one handy by—and Monica Bay, you’re what we call in show Restaurants in the quarter are routinely contend with a waiter or shopkeeper who business a “Chooser.” You’re one of the profiled in pages of Food & Wine. The reminds them, vaguely and disquietingly, folks who put together the nation’s tele - place is lousy with Priuses. Put it this way: of their children. vision shows, news reports, financial When I bought into the neighborhood Murray’s book takes in a tumultuous instruments, and academic agenda. You’re twelve years ago, the only candle you number of fairly rotten years—1960 to a consumer, naturally—people in the could buy was one of those emergency 2010 weren’t really good for anyone, SuperZips gobble up organic vegetables ones at the shabby liquor store, the ones especially anyone who was paying at - and iPads with unrestrained appetite— the local junkies used for cooking up a fix. tention to the culture—but it’s almost but you’re also a creator of the national Now, the only candle you can buy is one of impossible to imagine that any of the conversation. You’re one of the people those scented ones that come in their own feckless and languorous hipsters in my who decided that Rick Santorum is too valise. And the closest we’ve come to neighborhood will ever pull themselves socially conservative. You’re one of the having a local junkie lately was the few together enough to move on up into the people who miss Steve Jobs. You’re one months last year when troubled movie star SuperZips when their parents finally of the people who think that everyone in Lindsay Lohan lived in the neighborhood stroke out on the elliptical. And even if Fishtown thinks that 9/11 was an inside under house arrest. they wanted to, it’s hard to imagine that job. You’re one of the people who look at The place still looks a bit like Fish - they’d be able to afford it. The SuperZips, their shoes when someone mentions town. But it’s the Epcot version of despite their atmosphere of entitled in - Jesus or money. Fishtown. fluence, are places where people work Especially Jesus. The neighborhood has changed so pretty hard, in media jobs (which are People in the SuperZips, according to deeply that I often find myself wandering dwindling) and financial jobs (which are Murray, are rich and powerful, and around the streets, walking my dog like more competitive) and the kinds of occu- what’s more, they’re all alike. The folks some kind of disoriented ghost, wonder- pations where young hipsters just don’t who live in Atherton, Calif., have more ing where the hardware store went—it’s perform. They’ll be stuck in Fishtown for in common with their fellow SuperZip a yogurt shop now—or where I can buy real, wondering where all of the yoga dwellers in Weston, Mass., than either peanut butter—the local gourmet place studios went.

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The College Cartel Competition and innovation will lower the cost of higher education

BY VANCE H. FRIED & REIHAN SALAM

heRe was a time when higher education wasn’t a na - which a college education is the highest aspiration of all students. tional political issue. Then as now, the United States had And President Obama has dramatically expanded federal fund- a flourishing network of private and public colleges ing for higher education. T and universities, which were supported primarily by fee- But President Obama has also been striking a different note on paying students and subsidies from state governments, many of higher education in recent months. During his State of the Union which took great pride in building academic powerhouses. address, for example, the former legal academic said, “We can’t But in the decades since Sputnik and the Great Society, the fed- just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition,” a message that has eral role in higher education has increasingly taken center stage. been advanced by a number of conservatives and libertarians. Though Obamacare, taxes, and Iran are soaking up most of the “So let me put colleges and universities on notice. If you can’t attention, funding for higher education might emerge as a key stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers dividing line in this year’s presidential election. Last year, the will go down.” This was a welcome breath of fresh air from a Occupy movement devoted much of its attention to mounting president who has never evinced a terribly strong taste for con- student-loan debt. trolling the growth of public spending. It remains to be seen More recently, higher education once again became a flash whether Obama follows up on his pledge, but he certainly point in the culture war. At a tea-party rally in Troy, Mich., last deserves at least some credit for taking on an industry that has month, Rick Santorum called President Obama a “snob” for been his powerful ally. wanting all Americans to go to college. “I understand why he It is easy to understand Rick Santorum’s frustration with the wants you to go to college,” he said. “he wants to remake you in notion that college is for everyone. It really is true that, as San - his image.” The former Pennsylvania senator was suggesting that torum said in Troy, “not all folks are gifted in the same way,” and the president had embraced a one-size-fits-all worldview in it seems profoundly unfair to suggest that there is only one way to succeed. But there is a very simple reason that the universal Mr. Fried is the Riata Professor of Entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University college ideal has emerged: While Americans with a high-school and the author of Better/Cheaper College: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to education or less have seen their labor-market position deterio- Rescuing the Undergraduate Education Industry. Mr. Salam writes rate in recent decades, the wage premium for college-educated NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE’s domestic-policy blog, The Agenda, and is a workers has increased. Moreover, the unemployment rate for

policy adviser at the economic-research think tank e21. college-educated workers has consistently been lower than that DARREN GYGI

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Sailing November 11–18 on THE NATIONAL REVIEW Holland America’s luxurious Nieuw Amsterdam 2012 Post-Election Cruise JOIN Andrew Breitbart, Bernard Lewis, Scott Rasmussen, Victor Davis Hanson, Ed Gillespie, Ralph Reed, Cal Thomas, Elliott Abrams, James Lileks, James Pethokoukis, Alan Reynolds, John Yoo, Bing West, Mona Charen, Brian Anderson, Rob Long, John Fund, Michael Walsh, Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry, Mark Krikorian, Roger Kimball, John O’Sullivan, Ed Whelan, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Andrew McCarthy, John Derbyshire, Kathryn Lopez, Robert Costa, Kevin Williamson, Jim Geraghty, John J. Miller, Andrew Stuttaford, Kevin Hassett, and special guests Priscilla Buckley and James L. Buckley

as we visit Grand Cayman, Ocho Rios (Jamaica), Roatan (Honduras), Half Moon Cay, and Ft. Lauderdale

ign up for what’s certain to be one of the most exciting sea- Krikorian, author Michael Walsh, NRO editor-at-large Jonah faring adventures you will ever experience: the National Goldberg, NR editor Rich Lowry, political correspondent John S Review 2012 Post-Election Cruise. Featuring a cast of all- Fund, former NR editor John O’Sullivan, “Long View” columnist star conservative speakers, this affordable trip—prices start at Rob Long, senior editors Jay Nordlinger and Ramesh Ponnuru, $1,999 a person—will take place November 11–18, 2012, aboard NRO “Exchequer” blogger Kevin Williamson, NRO editor-at- Holland America Line’s MS Nieuw Amsterdam, the large Kathryn Jean Lopez, political reporter Robert Costa, acclaimed ship of one of the world’s most respected NRO “Campaign Spot” blogger Jim Geraghty, national cruise lines. correspondent John J. Miller, and NRO contributor From politics, the elections, the presidency, and John Derbyshire. And, as a special treat, our contin- domestic policy to economics, national security, and gent will include two wonderful people who are so close foreign affairs, there’s so much to discuss. That’s precisely to the history of both National Review and the conservative what our array of three dozen leading conservative analysts, writ- movement: former NR managing editor Priscilla Buckley and for- ers, and experts will do on the Nieuw Amsterdam, your floating mer U.S. Senator and federal judge James L. Buckley. luxury getaway for scintillating discussion of major current events No wonder we’ve had 100 cabins booked in just three weeks! and trends, and the 2012 elections. The “typical” NR cruise alumnus (there are thousands) has On hand to make sense of politics, elections, and world affairs: gone on four of our voyages and knows that NR trips are marked Breitbart.com founder Andrew Breitbart, Islam scholar Bernard by riveting political shoptalk, wonderful socializing, intimate din- Lewis, historian Victor Davis Hanson, pollster Scott Rasmussen, ing with our editors and speakers, making new friends, rekindling former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, political guru Ralph Reed, old friendships, and grand cruising. That and much more is in columnists Cal Thomas, James Lileks, and Mona Charen, military store for you on the National Review 2012 Post-Election Cruise. expert Bing West, foreign affairs expert Elliott Abrams, legal Here’s our exclusive event program: nine scintillating seminars scholars John Yoo and Ed Whelan, economics experts James featuring NR’s editors and guest speakers; two fun-filled “Night Pethokoukis, Alan Reynolds, Kevin Hassett, and Andrew Owl” sessions; three revelrous pool-side cocktail receptions; a Stuttaford, City Journal editor Brian Anderson, The New late-night “smoker” featuring world-class H. Upmann cigars (and Criterion editor Roger Kimball, immigration expert Mark complimentary cognac); and intimate dining on two evenings with a guest speaker or editor. JOIN U S FOR SEVEN BALMY DAYS AND COOL C ON SERVAT IVE N IGHT S The best reason to come is the luminary line-up. This tremendous DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT ensemble (we’re awaiting RSVPs SUN/Nov. 11 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 5:00PM evening cocktail reception from many more invited guests) guarantee fascinating and informa- MON/Nov. 12 Half Moon Cay 8:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminar “Night Owl” session tive seminar sessions. a Some of our primo prior cruise TUE/Nov. 13 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars experiences have been the informed WED/Nov. 14 Ocho Rios (Jamaica) 7:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminar interchanges between Bernard Lewis evening cocktail reception and Victor Davis Hanson on the THU/Nov. 15 Grand Cayman 7:00AM 3:00PM afternoon seminar brutal, age-old struggle between late-night Smoker Islam and the West. FRI/Nov. 16 Roatan (Honduras) 9:00AM 3:00PM afternoon seminar a Watch Andrew Breitbart, “Night Owl” session Brian Anderson, and Roger Kimball SAT/Nov. 17 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars discuss just how deep the media is in evening cocktail reception the liberal tank. SUN/Nov. 18 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 8:00AM Debark a Legal experts John Yoo and Andy McCarthy will provide razor- caribbean 2012_carribian 2p+application.qxd 2/27/2012 4:03 PM Page 3

NEW SPEAKER: ECONOMIST KEVIN HASSETT PRICES START AT JUST $1999! OVER 150 CABINS RESERVED!

Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and great entertainment await you on the beautiful mS Nieuw Amsterdam. Prices are per-person, based on double occupancy, and include port fees, taxes, gratuities, all meals, entertainment, and admittance to and participation in all NR functions. Per-person rates for third/fourth person (in same cabin with two full-fare guests) are as follows: Ages infant to 2 years: $586. Ages 2 to 17: $896. Ages 18 and over: $1,446. sharp insights on national security, and will join Ed Whelan to DELUXE SUITE Magnificent luxury quarters (528 score judicial decisions and Justice Department hijinx. sq. ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge a Try to keep your sides from aching at our hilarious and and personal concierge, complimentary laun- informative post-dinner “Night Owls” where Jonah Goldberg, dry, pressing and dry-cleaning service. James Lileks, Michael Walsh, Rob Long et al. vent, ruminate, Large private verandah, king-size bed (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool expand, expound, and josh about the things which tickle their bath/shower, dressing room, large sit- fancies, yank their chains, and everything in between. ting area, DVD, mini-bar, and refrigerator. a Pollster Scott Rasmussen will analyze the numbers and Category SA explains why this candidate won and that one lost, while Ralph DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,799 P/P Reed, Mona Charen, Cal Thomas, and John Fund provide expert SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 7,499 analyses of the conservative movement and the GOP. a Picture John O’Sullivan, Bing West, and Elliott Abrams SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (392 sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed discussing the US military’s impact on foreign affairs, and Mark (convertible to 2 twin beds), whirlpool Krikorian giving you his critical take on immigration policy. bath/shower, large sitting area, DVD, mini- a Get your masters in economics as Alan Reynolds, James bar, refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling windows, and much more. Pethokoukis, Andrew Stuttaford, Kevin Hassett, and Kevin Williamson inspect America’s dilapidated fiscal house. Category SS a They’ll be joined in all the world-class elucidating and ana- DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,599 P/P lyzing by NR’s editorial heavyweights, including Rich Lowry, SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,899 Ramesh Ponnuru, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Jim Geraghty, John J. Miller, John Derbyshire, Bob Costa, and Jay Nordlinger—who will DELUXE OUTSIDE Spacious cabin (241 sq. ft.) do a very special interview with conservative greats (and WFB features private verandah, queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin beds), bath with shower, sitting siblings!) Priscilla Buckley and James L. Buckley. area, mini-bar, tv, refrigerator, and floor-to- As for the ship: The luxurious Nieuw Amsterdam offers well- ceiling windows. appointed, spacious staterooms and countless amenities, with a Categories VA / VB / VC stellar staff providing unsurpassed service and sumptuous cuisine,. DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 P/P And don’t forget the fantastic itinerary: Ocho Rios (Jamaica), SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,499 Grand Cayman, Roatan (Honduras), and Half Moon Cay (with its famous must-see-it-to-believe-it blue lagoon)! LARGE OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters (190 sq. Our 2012 Post-Election Cruise will be remarkable—but then ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin every NR sojourn is. And it will be affordable—prices start as low beds), bathtub with shower, sitting area, tv, large as $1,999 a person (there’s a cabin for every taste and circum- ocean-view windows. stance). You really must experience it for yourself. Category D Take the trip of a lifetime with America’s preeminent intellec- DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,499 P/P tuals, policy analysts, and political experts. You can sign up now SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 by filling out and and returning the applicaton form on the next page, visiting our dedicated website, www.nrcruise.com (which provides complete information about the trip), or calling LARGE INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters (152 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin beds), The Cruise Authority (M-F, 9AM to 5PM EST) bathtub with shower, sitting area, tv. at 1-800-707-1634. Don’t delay! We’ll see you on the Nieuw Amsterdam this Category J DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 1,999 P/P November! SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,499 REGISTER NOW: USE THE FORM ON THE NEXT PAGE, VISIT US AT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM OR CALL 800-707-1634 FOR MORE INFORMATION. caribbean 2012_appl_carribian 2p+application_jack.qxd 2/14/2012 2:15 PM Page 1

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for workers with no more than a high-school diploma. As of ly what we’ve been doing. At the end of the Clinton presidency, January, the unemployment rates for the two groups were 4.2 per- a time many look to with great nostalgia, the federal government cent and 8.4 percent respectively. There are, of course, con- provided the higher-education sector with $64 billion in grants, founding variables at work. The kind of person who attends and loans, and tax credits in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars. As Kevin completes college might have a number of other qualities that Carey, head of the think tank Education Sector, has observed, that make it more likely that she’ll be able to maintain steady employ- number soared over the intervening decade to $169 billion. And ment. Nevertheless, the divergence in life outcomes between the over this same period, the total amount of outstanding student- college-educated and all other workers has been front-of-mind loan debt doubled to $1 trillion. for policymakers for some time now. What isn’t very well understood in today’s higher-education debate is that we can reconcile the positions advanced by con- o what exactly is happening to all of this money? Why isn’t servatives and liberals. By doing the unthinkable—by dramati- a sharp increase in the amount we’re spending on higher cally reducing federal funding for higher education—we can S education translating into higher college-completion rates? actually make a college education more accessible and more The discomfiting answer is that the higher-education industry is affordable for working- and middle-class Americans. At the enriching itself at the expense of taxpayers and students. Students same time we can reduce the burden on taxpayers and alleviate and recent graduates burdened by debt shouldn’t be calling for legitimate concerns that we are unduly privileging one way of more public subsidies, the banner taken up by many in the life over another. occupy movement. Rather, they should take aim at the higher- Having a more educated population can in theory create a pos- education cartel that has been extracting ever more resources itive feedback loop, in which workers innovate faster and find without offering an improved product. ways to spread knowledge more efficiently. Some argue that this Higher education has become a very profitable industry. Since is exactly the dynamic that fueled America’s rise to economic most colleges are legally organized as non-profits, they do not dominance in the last century, which is why the case for subsi- earn profits in the traditional sense. But a kind of profit occurs dizing higher education has been so widely accepted. As Claudia whenever a non-profit derives more revenue from providing a Goldin and Lawrence Katz recount in The Race between service than it costs to provide. Universities do not pay out these Education and Technology, the United States educated its work- profits in the form of dividends to shareholders; they spend them. ers to a far greater extent than any other country at the start of For most colleges, the revenue derived from providing under- the last century. As late as the 1930s, the U.S. was all but alone in graduate education exceeds the actual cost of providing that edu- providing a free and accessible high-school education to its cation. The excess is spent in two ways: economic rents and young. And mass secondary schooling provided a solid founda- subsidies for other missions. Economic rents are payments made tion for a vibrant and diverse higher-education sector, which was to college insiders that do not increase the college’s output. and to some extent still is the envy of the world. Excess compensation (e.g., when the president of a small college Yet in more recent years, something has changed for the worse. makes over $1 million) and featherbedding (e.g., a 10:1 student- In our breakneck efforts to subsidize education, we’ve wound up to-faculty ratio) are economic rents. Subsidies for other missions spending more and more for the same mediocre outcomes. High- include the revenue from undergraduate tuition that is spent on school-graduation rates peaked in the United States in the late graduate education and research. Unlike economic rents, this 1960s, despite the fact that the labor-market position of high- spending does increase colleges’ output and is not bad per se. school dropouts has sharply deteriorated in the decades since. Yet it is spending beyond what is necessary to provide an under- Despite the fact that per-pupil spending on K–12 schools has graduate student with a high-quality education. increased threefold in inflation-adjusted terms since 1970, high- The free-spending nature of non-profit colleges is well known. school-graduation rates have been stagnant. And while the num- As longtime Harvard president Derek Bok once quipped, ber of students attending college has increased over this period, “Universities share one characteristic with compulsive gamblers college-completion rates have been similarly disappointing. and exiled royalty: There is never enough money to satisfy their Until the 1970s, they rose at a healthy clip, but there was a sharp desires.” deceleration in the mid-1970s, driven in large part by the failure Thirty years ago, Howard R. Bowen, an economist who served of men to keep up with women. as president of three different colleges, proposed what is known one curious result of this stagnation is that while American in education circles as Bowen’s Law. It can be summarized as 65-year-olds are among the best educated in the world, American “Colleges raise all the money they can, and spend all the money 21-year-olds are in the middle of the pack among workers in the they can raise.” But don’t colleges try their best to keep costs low world’s most advanced economies. Goldin and Katz observe that in order to keep tuition down? No, it turns out that they don’t. As while the 25-to-34 age group is better educated than the 55-to-64 Bowen pointed out: “The question of what ought higher educa- age group in most European nations, the two groups are nearly tion to cost—what is the minimal amount needed to provide ser- identical in the U.S. The economists Dale Jorgenson, Mun Ho, vices of acceptable quality—does not enter the process except as and Kevin Stiroh reached the sobering conclusion that, because it is imposed from the outside.” And those who provide the educational attainment appears to have reached a plateau, the money, the legislators and students and families who pay tuition, labor quality of the U.S. work force will stop improving within have failed to check the tendency to overspend. the next decade. Robert E. Martin, an economics professor with substantial The conventional solution for America’s education problems, experience as a faculty member at both a large state research uni- advocated by politicians on the right as much as those on the left, versity and a small liberal-arts college, recently expanded on is to invest more resources in higher education. But that is exact- Bowen’s Law. He concluded that “because costs in higher edu-

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cation are capped only by total revenues, there is no incentive to formula and pushed it to its limits, as suggested by the fact that, minimize costs.” So when colleges are able to secure new rev- according to the think tank Education Sector, for-profit colleges enues, costs increase commensurately. And these higher costs, in produced an extraordinary $43,383 in debt for every degree, as turn, are used “as justification for more revenue.” Suffice it to opposed to $21,827 for private non-profits and $16,247 for four- say, this dynamic wouldn’t be tolerated in many other industries. year public universities. Bowen proposed his law over 30 years ago. In the time since, Recently, the Obama administration has focused its efforts on colleges have spent money and raised tuition as rapidly as the regulating the for-profit sector by, for example, denying federal market and legislators have been able to bear. They have been so aid to schools that produce graduates who can’t secure paid successful at raising prices that their basic financial model has employment and repay their loans. Congressional Republicans changed. Non-profit colleges, whether private or government- have called for extending these regulations to non-profits as well, owned, were originally designed to provide an education to stu- recognizing that while for-profits have gone the farthest in gam- dents funded by a mix of commercial and donated financing. The ing subsidies, there are non-profits that do the same. This is a commercial financing came in the form of tuition paid by stu- position that the president and his allies have so far been reluctant dents. The donations came in the form of charitable giving and to take. state subsidies, and benefited students by reducing tuition. This is how most non-profit colleges were funded until the 1980s. Since then, the amount of donated financing has increased hE trouble with regulating the lucrative higher-education substantially. In 1980, states were the primary donors to higher industry is that it won’t necessarily force colleges, education through the subsidy they provided to state-owned col- T whether explicitly for-profit or “non-profit,” to lower leges. They have continued to generously fund higher education. their prices. The reason is that the flow of new entrants into the While in some years there have been cuts because of downturns higher-education industry has been severely restricted by region- in state tax revenues, historically the subsidy has gone back up as al accreditation bodies, which effectively determine whether col- the state’s financial position has improved. In fact, between 1987 leges are eligible for the lucrative federal subsidies. These and 2009, per capita state spending on higher education increased accreditation bodies present themselves as the guardians of high by 31 percent after accounting for inflation. standards. In practice, however, they serve as cartels that protect At the same time, private donations have gone up, and the fed- higher-education incumbents by setting difficult and sometimes eral government radically increased financing for higher edu- arbitrary hurdles to accreditation for new schools. In the past, for- cation. From 2000 to 2010, annual student lending went from profit colleges simply bought faltering accredited institutions $42 billion to $96 billion, and Pell grants increased from $9 bil- outright to avoid having to go through the onerous accreditation lion to $28 billion. Congress also created federal tax deductions process. Now, however, regional accreditation bodies have and credits. For example, in 2010, a married couple with an in - closed off that option, further limiting competition. come under $160,000 received a $2,500 credit for their child’s The existence of accreditation cartels is not in itself a reason to college tuition. Total federal tax benefits for higher education in abandon regulatory efforts, but it does suggest that addressing 2009 totaled $18.2 billion. accelerating cost growth in higher education might require more Given this massive inflow of donated financing, what have radical solutions, such as dramatically reducing federal funding colleges done with their prices? They have aggressively raised and creating a process through which innovative schools can do them. For example, in 1980, in-state tuition at the University of an end-run around regional accreditation bodies. Texas at Austin was a bargain, at $1,176 (in 2010 dollars). By There is good reason to believe that actually eliminating fed- 2010, it had soared to $8,930. huge tuition increases were the eral subsidies for higher education would lead to lower tuition norm at public universities throughout the United States; in fact, even as it reduced federal spending by $60 billion a year. This today, Texas is still a bargain in comparison with Penn State and doesn’t mean, however, that federal loans should be eliminated; the University of Illinios at Urbana-Champaign, which charged such loans serve the valuable function of guaranteeing that every- in-state tuition of $17,344 and $15,144 respectively in 2010. one, regardless of family income, can secure a long-term loan The emergence of a large number of explicitly for-profit col- with interest deferral until graduation. Rather, loan programs leges has done little to undermine Bowen’s Law. The main dif- need to be redesigned and operated on a break-even basis. ference between for-profits and non-profits isn’t, as we’ve seen, Even given today’s high in-state tuition, it is quite possible for that non-profits don’t actually generate profits. Rather, the differ- people with a net worth of zero and no family support to work ence is that for-profits disburse their profits in a somewhat dif- their way through college and graduate owing no more than ferent way—to private investors as well as to college insiders. $30,000, a very serviceable debt. The problem with the current The great virtue of the for-profit sector is that it has been able to loan program is that it doesn’t adequately protect the interests of expand rapidly and serve the needs of so-called non-traditional students and taxpayers. The default rate has risen considerably, in students, such as working adults who are obligated to take their no small part because many young adults who can’t finish their classes at night and on weekends. This is one reason for-profit degrees are nevertheless burdened by an enormous amount of schools such as the University of Phoenix now enroll 9 percent loan debt. Imposing reasonable caps on the amount students can of America’s students, up from 2 percent in 1987. borrow, and implementing better monitoring and collection poli- The main drawback of for-profit colleges is that they’ve cies (such as reducing the amount students are eligible to borrow proven very effective at gaming existing federal education subsi- if they fail to complete some number of credit hours), can do a dies, particularly since the federal government has until recently great deal to limit the burdens upon students. subjected colleges to only the most minimal scrutiny. Basically, Improving the design of the federal loan program will greatly many for-profit colleges have taken a poorly designed funding reduce, if not eliminate, the need for the Pell Grant program,

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which currently subsidizes 40 percent of students. Only students Not all states will take such steps, and very few will take them with extremely low incomes will require any additional assis- quickly. But the federal government might contribute to breaking tance, which state governments are well positioned to provide. In up higher-education cartels by providing an alternative route to a similar vein, it is important to eliminate the provisions in the tax accreditation. The aforementioned Kevin Carey of Education code that subsidize tuition, which overwhelmingly benefit rela- Sector has called on the federal government to create a mecha- tively affluent households. nism through which high-quality providers of instruction—for Will reducing the flow of subsidies into higher education sim- example, a program exclusively devoted to teaching college- ply starve colleges and universities out of business? That is the level calculus or Mandarin—can get approval to accept federal claim we will no doubt hear from members of the cartel. But loans. Carey would require that such educators offer their ser- returning to 1980 prices just means returning to 1980 profit mar- vices at low cost and provide transparency regarding their effec- gins. While this will certainly be painful for colleges, it is doable. tiveness. If they meet these criteria, any college or university that however, it would be naïve for policymakers to expect estab- accepts federal loans would have to accept the credits they pro- lished universities to take a lead in reducing their own profits. vide. While some may find Carey’s approach heavy-handed, it has That is where competition comes in. the potential to strongly encourage the adoption of low-cost busi- As Bowen observed, cost containment must come from the ness models in higher education. Existing schools that can’t com- outside—either from state legislatures, or from students and their pete with the new providers will die out as they see their business families, or from competitors. At the time Bowen wrote, most cannibalized. Those that rise to the challenge will do so by state legislatures were actively involved in controlling cost. improving the quality and cost-effectiveness of their offerings. Tuition increases required lawmakers’ approval, which was often hard to come by. Then legislatures began to cede the power to set tuition to their hErE have been a number of promising recent develop- colleges. Not surprisingly, the colleges chose to raise tuition ments in higher education. The most impressive may be aggressively. Prices have risen so much that many legislatures T the rise of Western Governors University, a highly in- have become alarmed. There is a natural tendency for policy- novative institution built around entirely online delivery and a makers to try to micromanage individual colleges—something competency-based degree—i.e., WGU grants credits based on that will not work, either politically or practically. They can, test performance, and does not require class attendance. A WGU however, create a competitive higher-education system that student who is already very knowledgeable about software places the power to keep costs down in the hands of students programming, having worked as a coder before starting work on and families. her degree, might secure a credit in computer science by pass- State governments would be wise to pursue two complemen- ing a final exam without actually taking a course. In essence, tary strategies: WGU offers the equivalent of a CPA exam for every subject. First, break up existing higher-education cartels. State govern- Moreover, WGU charges its students based not on the number ments often insulate incumbent schools from competition. For of credits they complete, but rather on an “all you can eat” basis example, State X might prevent the University of State X from over two semesters: If you can demonstrate competency in seven competing with State X U by barring it from opening a campus or eight semesters’ worth of credits in only two semesters, you on the other school’s turf. This might make sense if our goal were pay the price for two. The beauty of the WGU model is that it to preserve the market share of both schools, but it does not make allows students to seek instruction anywhere they can find it— sense when our goal is to foster robust consumer-friendly com- they can read independently, study with a tutor, enroll in some petition. Prices are often fixed by the state so as to eliminate any other school, etc.—while turning to WGU to certify that they’ve potential for competition. States should let their individual pub- mastered the relevant material. lic colleges freely compete with one another. Some colleges will In a somewhat similar vein, the Massachusetts Institute of be winners and others losers, but the consistent winner will be the Technology has sponsored MITx, a program through which stu- student, who will get lower tuition and a higher-quality educa- dents who take free online courses offered by MIT can, for a tion. modest fee, secure an MITx credential by demonstrating a thor- Second, level the playing field. State higher-education subsi- ough understanding of the material. dies are generally paid only to state-owned colleges, giving such It’s not just online programs that show promise. Grace College, schools a huge competitive advantage over private colleges: a small institution in northern Indiana, uses a much more tradi- State colleges can spend just as much as a private colleges, but tional, residential model. But it has recently trimmed some then charge a substantially lower price, because of the subsidy. unnecessary spending and moved summer school totally online. States should instead allow private colleges to receive the sub- As a result, a Grace degree can now be earned in three years for sidy as well. One approach would be for state governments to total tuition of $38,000, about the same as an Indiana resident develop partnerships with private colleges. For example, private pays over four years to get a degree from Purdue or Indiana colleges located within the state could become private charter University Bloomington. colleges, akin to K–12 charter schools. In return for the state sub- The combination of low profit margins and innovation- sidy, private charter colleges would agree to charge in-state stu- encouraging models might even allow higher-education costs dents a lower tuition than the most expensive public college to fall well below 1980 levels—and if current levels of state- currently charges. The goal of leveling the playing field would be government subsidies were maintained, higher education could to pressure the most expensive public colleges to spend public even be tuition-free. Through competition and innovation, we resources responsibly, not to run the public colleges and univer- can achieve the dream of left-wing higher-education visionar- sities out of business. ies—but without breaking the bank.

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ply making a principled case that putative adults have the right to entertain themselves with their own money according to their Play to own tastes (or, let’s be serious, lack thereof), then their argument would be persuasive. But what is in fact happening is that politicians smell money, and so government itself is getting into Extinction the game, taking gambling to be a fruitful model of economic development. Gambling is a racket, not a tool of While the data are hotly contested, it is hard to deny that gambling has taken more out of Atlantic City than Atlantic City has economic development taken out of gambling. A report prepared by the California Research Bureau on the potential for gambling in that state BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON found that while many of the AC casinos had done well, there was little secondary economic impact: “The success of gam- e are the Silver Horde, and we are descending— bling in Atlantic City,” the report finds, on chartered buses, on Chinatown buses, and on the Greyhound “Lucky Streak” express bus we has done little to revitalize the rest of Atlantic City and its busi- W come, on crutches and canes, lapping obesely ness community. Atlantic City has been described as two cities. over the seats of mobility scooters, adjusting oxygen tubes, dis- One is the casinos, and the other is a city of boarded-up build- creetly nursing Big Gulp cups full of tequila and Pepsi through ings with a unemployed minority work force. Gambling has bendy straws at three in the afternoon, doing serious damage to largely failed in achieving the objectives of job growth for local complimentary troughs of Cheez-Its and Famous Amos cook- residents and city-wide economic development. ies. We are getting comped. Free passes to the all-you-can-eat buffet? Whatever: We have our own dedicated train, Amtrak’s The federal government’s National Gambling Impact Study Atlantic City express Service (read: ACeS), and we come Commission notes that while gambling advocates favorably rolling and thundering down the tracks bearing our Social cite the “Mississippi Miracle,” the economic boomlet that that Security checks, our welfare checks, and quite possibly our rent state experienced after legalizing casino gambling, “in reality checks. We are the blue-rinsed, unhinged, diabetic American id the unemployment rate in Mississippi declined at about the on walkers, and we are scratching off lottery tickets the whole same rate as the national average in the years from 1992 to way there as we converge from all points on the crime capital 1998.” A University of Chicago report found that there was “no of New Jersey—because we are feeling lucky. change in overall per capita income” as the result of gambling Funny thing about Atlantic City: Nobody feels really obvi- liberalization in the cases it studied. Governments, always ously lucky to live there. Its population is declining (it has lost eager to out-enron enron in the accounting-shenanigans olym - 40 percent since its peak), and among the foot soldiers of the pics, earmark gambling proceeds for popular programs, then gambling industry—blackjack dealers, scantily clad cocktail reduce general-revenue support for those programs and use the waitresses, cab drivers—it is difficult to find anybody who extra money to increase spending elsewhere. It’s a lot like slot actually lives in it. One lightly clothed entertainer working at a machines: The house exploits the occasional jackpot to distract particularly gamey establishment along a row of empty com- the schmucks from the fact that losses are a statistical in - mercial buildings, video stores, and the occasional storefront evitability. And while the accounting gets pretty hairy, it’s not mosque, all within a couple minutes’ walk of the casino district, too hard to find entries on the losing side of the ledger: In one snorted derisively at the notion of living in the city. “Oh, hell study of Atlantic City, 22 percent of the local homeless report- no. Too dangerous.” That’s AC: It’s a great place for a visiting ed that gambling was the proximate cause of their condition. go-go dancer, but she wouldn’t want to live there. Touring the local landscape of decay and disorder, it is hard to imagine why a whole range of American politicians—from such likely sus- OU wouldn’t know that from the ventisomethings. pects as ed Rendell and Andrew Cuomo to lots of otherwise They’re the young ladies’ auxiliary to the Silver Horde, conservative Republicans who really ought to know better— Y climbing leggily out of Lamborghinis and GT-Rs in look at the city’s depressed and depressing precincts, its sad front of Borgata, and they are a tribe apart: stiletto heels with coat of glitz (Sinbad! At the Tropicana!) and say to themselves: jeans, the inevitable Starbucks venti cup, Marlboro Light con- “My state needs to get some of that action!” trails. Borgata is by most accounts the swankiest place in They had better think twice about what they are getting them- Atlantic City, which tells you a lot about Atlantic City, because selves into. The issue of gambling is not a question of rah-rah Borgata is a dump, albeit a kind of expensive one. It has some libertarians vs. no-no bluestockings: Nobody who looks seri- dimly lit nightclubs for the ventisomethings to frolic in, and it’s ously at the nexus between politics and gambling could pos - big on overpriced restaurants serving food that was trendy five sibly conclude that what is happening in Atlantic City, in years ago (Kobe burgers, Asian fusion), the kind of place that Pennsylvania, on the Indian reservations, or in the lottery rack- has architectural spaces meant to be imposing but a mainte- et represents the operation of the free market. It is a cartel in nance schedule that’s running a bit behind: oversized glass most cases and a monopoly in many, all with the blessings of showers and stained carpets. It’s a mind-jarring mix, a lot of the state. The arrangement, in the words of one scholarly study polished marble and women in stylish dresses, with something of casinos in Montana, leaves government “a dependent partner in the middle that resembles nothing so much as a Chuck e. in the business of gambling.” If gambling advocates were sim- Cheese’s full of septuagenarians with mobility impairments.

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(Seriously, visit around four in the afternoon: It’s wheelchair ful, and Mississippi is successful, and the Indians are success- derby in there.) Unlike the relatively cheery Caesars, which ful, and Connecticut is successful—where exactly does the gold-leafs every surface with an inch of kitsch in a winking money come from? acknowledgement of the underlying plebeianness of the venue, Borgata affects a kind of Parisian hauteur like a down-on- his-luck aristocrat expecting things to get worse, which is what he money will come from the Silver horde. Casinos it is: In February it reported declining revenues and a 7 percent have long loved the high rollers, the whales who still drop in operating profits. Gaming-industry analysts are gloomy T rule in Vegas, but the low rollers are the new bread and about its outlook as the new $2.4 billion Revel casino prepares butter for casinos in the rest of the country. If the politicians to open its doors. have their way, the Silver horde will not have to hop on the For that new competition, Borgata can offer its gratitude to Lucky Streak and go to Atlantic City: Atlantic City is coming to the great state of New Jersey and to Governor Chris Christie, them. thanks to whom taxpayers will be partners in, among other having long since shaken off the last vestiges of its ancestral things, a burlesque show at Revel called “Royal Jelly.” (The Quaker sobriety, Pennsylvania has opened up casinos every- burlesque show will not be the only source of eye candy: The where from obscure Pittsburgh suburbs to Valley Forge, right casino also is implementing some unusual business practices, near the monument to George Washington’s brutal winter there, including a plan to fire all of its servers, hostesses, and wait- and the state flirted with licensing one on the edge of the bat- resses every four or six years and force them to reapply for their tlefield at Gettysburg (a dispute over which legal wrangling jobs, in a more-nakedly-brutal-than-usual strategy for weeding out anybody who doesn’t look good in tall heels and a short skirt.) Revel began as a project headed up by the hapless Morgan Stanley, which owned 90 percent of the partnership behind the casino. The bailed-out investment bank, facing bigger problems and unimpressed by recent Atlantic City revenues, in 2010 took a billion-dollar write-down and pulled the plug on the half-finished project. Governor Christie moved in with a $261 million bailout of the orphan casino the bailed-out bank had bailed out on. Some of that money will be used for construction and operating expenses, but $70 million will sit quietly in an account earmarked for the project’s new Wall Street financiers, so that they’ll have something to walk away with if the casino tanks. Governor Christie had better hope it doesn’t. In February, he released a budget proposal that contains some implausibly opti- mistic financial projections: Among other things, he’s betting that gambling revenues are going to rise by 14 percent, or nearly a half-billion dollars, resulting in $40 million in new taxes. While Governor Christie is putting up taxpayers’ money for Revel, he can at least say he’s getting government out of the way: There was a bloodbath at the Casino Control Commission, which was cut from 260 regulators and staff to 65, its budget continues). The Gettysburg project was stopped because its reduced from $24 million to $9 million. (Taxpayers have little opponents included people with some real money and influ- reason to celebrate that development: The commission’s budget ence, but money and influence are not evenly distributed, which is funded largely by fees charged to casino operators, not by state is why there’s a harrah’s casino in Chester, one of Pennsyl - taxes.) Lest some of those axed regulators end up on New vania’s poorest cities (per capita income $9,052) and its most Jersey’s unemployment rolls, the state has been merrily signing murder-happy (24 homicides in 2010 among 33,972 residents), waivers allowing them to go to work for the casinos, which they a place where the school district just plain ran out of money in are forbidden by law to do for two years after leaving the com- January, requiring a state bailout. mission. Governor Christie is executing what amounts to a state- There’s a lot of broke to go around: In a particularly depress- level takeover of Atlantic City’s gaming district, and he is, as ing sign of the times, the parent company of the struggling they say, all in. his optimism is not shared by many gambling- Miami Herald sold the paper’s Biscayne Bay headquarters to industry analysts, including Deutsche Bank Securities managing the Malaysian conglomerate Genting, which, in addition to its director Andrew Zarnett, who says that he fears the project will plantations and oil-and-gas businesses, is one of the world’s not produce any new revenues: “Revel casino will mostly can- largest gambling concerns. It is the largest casino operator in nibalize existing operators,” he told the Press of Atlantic City. the United Kingdom, and it is expanding remorselessly in the Which is to say, the supply of ventisomethings is limited. United States. The Pequot tribe may be the name on the brass There’s only so much play at the top of the market, but that’s not plate at the giant Foxwoods Resort in Connecticut, but it was where all the action resides, and the question that is seldom Genting, through its Kien huat Realty subsidiary, that put the asked is: If New Jersey is successful in increasing its casino rev- money up for the project. Likewise the Seneca Indians’ casino

AP enues, and Pennsylvania is successful, and Indiana is success- at Niagara Falls and the Wampanoags’ development in

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Massachusetts. Kien Huat Realty is the controlling shareholder to be kept plugged in to the machine to accrue points, producing in the Monticello Raceway in the Catskills, and Genting built a strangely umbilical sight. the casino at the Aqueduct Racetrack in New York City. The statistics are astounding: Gambling rates for the 65-and-up Interestingly, Genting also has the contract to build the new set went from 35 percent in 1975 to 80 percent in 1990. By 1996, New York City convention center—conveniently located next gambling was a bigger business than movies, recorded music, door to its casino in Queens. (Seriously—New York thinks sports, live entertainment, and cruise ships—combined. And America is coming to visit Queens.) Among Genting’s demands while there is a great deal of debate about gambling addiction and for the project is that it be given a monopoly on video-poker its role in the casino industry’s business model, a government licenses in the area. It’s also asking for a sweeter revenue-sharing study found that “disordered gambling” rates are double for pop- deal with the state, and says that an amendment to New York ulations living within 50 miles of a casino. If cancer rates were State’s constitution, which forbids table games and many other double in the 50 miles surrounding a bubblegum factory, you can kinds of gambling, would be welcome. Governor Cuomo has bet that the bubblegum factory would get the full erin pronounced himself favorably disposed, which puts him at odds Brockovich treatment. with a long line of legendary New York politicians opposed to And it’s not just the gambling rates: In the years after the first state-sanctioned gambling, from Fiorello LaGuardia to Governor casinos were built, Atlantic City went from having the 50th- Cuomo’s own father. (The Little Flower, who made a name for highest per capita crime rate in the United States to being No. 1 himself cracking down on gambling dens in 1930s New York— on the list. That’s a big price to pay, but many in government are and smashing their paraphernalia with a sledgehammer—must willing to pay it—for a big enough cut of the action. be shaking his fist eternally in heaven that the city’s first legal “The nanny state is bad news,” Davies says. “But when you casino is a stone’s throw from the airport named after him.) start looking into gambling and what the companies do, they’re When Genting showed up in Florida, it had plenty of cash to not just running a business. The more problematic part is the gov- acquire the Herald building and surrounding properties, and it ernment’s role. It’s a joint venture between the government and had plans in hand for a massive casino development. Which was the casinos, and gaming pays a higher tax rate than do other busi- pretty cocky, considering that casinos were not yet legal in Miami. nesses. In Pennsylvania, slot-machine revenue is taxed at 55 per- “Nobody had even introduced a bill yet,” says Paul Davies, a fel- cent rate—55 percent of the cut. Government is not a minority low at the Institute for American Values who runs a project called partner, but a majority partner.” Get Government Out of Gambling. “Talk about thinking you’ve got it all sewn up.” Genting hadn’t counted on the intensity with which its project would be opposed by the Walt Disney Company, He ride home on the Greyhound on Sunday morning is a and the Miami casino bill died in the Florida legislature. The state damn sight less rollicking than the one down. A woman in chamber of commerce and the local hotel association and Indian T the bus terminal is negotiating with a friend for a ticket gambling interests were opposed, too, along with a few political home—she doesn’t have enough money left on her ATM card to activists, but it was Mickey Mouse who killed the casinos—for buy it, and she’s pushing a handful of sweaty singles and loose now. “Those guys will be back,” Davies says. And not only will change at her traveling companion. (Weird fact: You can use a they be back in Miami, they’ll be back everywhere. card to get cash advances out of casino ATMs without entering a Dave Jonas, president of the Parx casino, which is nestled PIN—paradise for pickpockets.) among the strip malls of the hideous Philadelphia suburb of The Silver Horde is getting sober, and some are just plain sleep- Bensalem, offered a preview of coming attractions at a recent ing it off, sprawled across seats and falling shambolically into the speech to the Pennsylvania gaming association (held at Valley aisle. Another woman argues on the phone with a third party who Forge, hooray), in which he said his firm had “underestimated apparently has failed in her assigned duty to pick the lady’s grand- significantly” how often the locals would pop in to gamble: kids up from wherever they are staying. (The Parx casino in “When I was in Atlantic City, to have twelve to fifteen trips out Bensalem has seen several gamblers cited for leaving their kids in of customers, they were VIPs,” he said. At Parx, the low rollers parked cars while trying their luck inside.) Various byzantine dis- are coming in two or three times a week, or 150 to 200 trips a putes are under way. One cannot help but recall the fact that between year. “We have customers who give us $25, $30 five times a October 2009 and May 2010 some $1.8 million in California wel- week.” They call these local-yokel joints “convenience casinos,” fare benefits was withdrawn at casino ATMs; the corresponding and they are the future: gambling anywhere, anytime. Some casi- Social Security figure must be shocking. The ventisomethings are nos already are experimenting with handheld devices so that off to Aspen or Mustique or wherever is in fashion this year. The players can piss their money away in the bathroom. Silver Horde is filing off grumpily at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and at Greyhound stations across the country, sad and bedraggled and losers right down to the literal Webster’s meaning He industry term of art that denotes success vis-à-vis any of the word. Cash has changed hands, but in no more than what individual gambler is: PLAY TO exTINCTION. The mandate economist Paul Samuelson called the “sterile transfers of money or T is to keep gamblers tied to the machines until they have goods between individuals, creating no new money or goods. handed over all the money they have to hand over. There are a Although it creates no output, gambling does nevertheless absorb great many ways to do this, but one way to keep the grannies teth- time and resources. When pursued beyond the limits of recreation, ered to the “Sex and the City: Change of a Dress” video slot where the main purpose after all is to ‘kill time,’ gambling subtracts machine is to keep them literally tethered: Casinos have begun from the national income.” Call gambling a vice, call it an addic- offering rewards cards that give gamblers points based on their tion, call it a harmless diversion, call it anything you fancy—but volume of play. The cards are affixed to neck lanyards and have don’t call it economic development.

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which history has been sanitized, tradition reduced to decoration, and difference regulated away. Declarer of If there is an era for which Farage is nostalgic, it’s more likely to be the 1980s, a time when big government was in retreat and big opportunity was round the corner. Not the most diligent of Independence students, he skipped university and went straight into the City, London’s financial center, just as Mrs. Thatcher’s reforms were transforming it from an entertainingly seedy, mildly run-down Nigel Farage wants Brussels out of Britain club into today’s chilly international hub. It was “like a gold rush,” as we both recall. And there’s still the hint of an Eighties trading BY ANDREW STUTTAFORD desk about Farage, an engaging, quick-witted risk-taker (a survivor of testicular cancer, he still enjoys his Rothmans) with a taste for a good time that has sometimes got him into trouble. E’S a tolerant man, Nigel Farage, a devotee of John Rick Santorum he’s not. Smart, direct, and impressively fluent, he Stuart Mill, a cricket-loving happy warrior, an “acci- speaks in paragraphs, punctuated with one-liners: He has a way dental politician.” The leader of the Euroskeptic United with words, and he knows it. H Kingdom Independence party (UKIP), and, since 1999, If you doubt that, just check out the way he welcomed Her man a member of the EU’s Potemkin parliament, he is standing expec- Van Rompuy to the European Parliament shortly after that dis- tantly at the bar of his local, the George & Dragon (of course) in creetly sinister Belgian had taken the EU’s top job at the beginning Downe, a friendly low-ceilinged Kentish pub as English as its of 2010. Farage’s speech was brutally iconoclastic, rudely funny, name. I’m ordering the beers. There’s a traditional, brewed-by- and, in its warning of the threat that this official with “the charis- two-yokels county bitter for him (of course) and for me an in - ma of a damp rag” posed to European democracy, deadly serious. dustrial, vaguely Teutonic lager, bitte. “Euro-piss, I see.” Mock It created uproar across the EU and made UKIP’s leader a shock: Live and let live. Later on we share a bottle of good red YouTube star. Check it out, and you will see why. wine. French. “You’re a bit of actor, aren’t you?” We met up earlier at a railway station in a spot where the coun- Farage grins his confession. His only regret—a very English tryside emerges from London’s shadow. As we drove past tall regret—is that he may sometimes appear “too shrill.” In fact he hedgerows and stark winter trees, the late-fortysomething Farage doesn’t, but, endearingly, he insists on explaining that the micro- proudly played guide: “I’ve always lived around here.” There’s phones in the EU parliament’s chamber are set up in a way that landscape, history, old graveyards to inspect, English Shinto. Up makes it difficult for viewers to hear the barracking to which he is, there (he gestures) are the remnants of the oak where William not infrequently, reacting. But if it’s not always possible to make Wilberforce resolved to launch his great anti-slavery campaign, out the jeers, you can, I tell him, occasionally see the faces of his and over here is the splendid pile where Pitt the Younger once critics twisted into something that looks a lot like hatred. lived. I point out Biggin Hill, an RAF redoubt during the Battle of “Oh, it’s hatred.” He names a couple of names. “They have their Britain. Replicas of a Hur ri cane and a Spitfire stand guard. “They dream. It’s their religion. These are dangerous people.” They can- had real ones when I was a boy.” not accept dissent, especially when they know they’ve been rum- Farage feels the past in this place. He’s a history buff, a battle- bled: They just don’t want to be told how anti-democratic they field maven, just finishing reading a book on Allenby of Great really are. Wouldn’t they be happier if bolshie John Bull just quit War fame. We stopped off at the small town of West er ham to the EU? “Some of the Euronuts,” maybe, but not the Merkels and inspect a statue of its most famous son, General Wolfe, conqueror Sarkozys: They’d be too nervous about which country would be of Quebec. Nearby, a restless-looking Churchill seems ready to next. leap out off the chair on which his sculptor sat him. The last lion’s last den—Chartwell—is nearby. Then on to the George & Dra - gon, just past the house of another Farage hero, Charles Darwin: UT is UKIP the right vehicle to extricate Britain from this The woods where the great scientist wandered are “just as they mess? Since its founding in 1993 as a party set on taking were . . . almost.” B the country out of the EU, it has woven an unsteady path, But to believe, as many critics like to suggest, that Farage and marked by scandal, factionalism, sporadic incursions by the far his party are golf-club xenophobes wanting their country back as right, PR disasters, leadership crises, damaging outbreaks of it was (. . . almost) is to subscribe to a very partial version (in both eccentricity, and, above all, the pervasive, persistent sense that it senses) of the truth. To be sure, there is a trace of the 19th hole was not ready for prime time. This was probably inevitable, and about them; oh, what a horror. And is the idea that the country has not just because small parties tend to be a lot like that. There was gone to the dogs imprinted in UKIP’s DNA? Maybe, but the coun- also the matter of UKIP’s great cause. try has gone to the dogs. Claims of xenophobia, however, are Euroskepticism was hardly unknown in Britain at the time— difficult to reconcile with reality, in ways both small (Farage’s sec- particularly amongst Conservatives—but it was house-trained. ond wife is Ger man; their two young children are being brought Withdrawal from the EU was widely considered a step too far up to speak the language) and large: UKIP is a defender of de even amongst those who loved Brussels least. “Banging on” about Gaulle’s Europe des patries, fighting the bureaucratic drive to Europe (to borrow David Cameron’s notorious phrase from a remold the continent into a homogenized administrative unit in decade or so later) was portrayed by media and political grandees alike as obsessional, retrograde, and profoundly damaging to the Mr. Stuttaford is a contributing editor of NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE. governing Tories’ unity, the last a development that, in a paradox

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seats out of the UK’s total of 72. Even allowing for the low turnout and the fact that Eu ro pe an elections are an excellent opportunity for Britons to register a protest against the EU, the result was a triumph. Stymied at home, however, by the uncooperative electoral system, UKIP continues to struggle domestically, even as it stands at about 6 percent in the polls, not so far behind the Liberal Democrats. But Farage is determined, stubborn, and resilient (he has survived a plane crash as well as cancer). He’s not giving up. And he’s going to do it his way. Deals with the Conservatives, such as (one suggestion) an agreement not to challenge the party’s many genuinely Eu ro skep tic MPs, seem out of the question for now. Farage clearly wants UKIP to be seen as more than a Tory offshoot (he takes pains to tell me that its membership also includes “patriotic old Labour and classical liberals”). Those Euroskeptic Tory MPs? Useful camouflage for a Conservative party unserious about the only thing that really counts: prising Brussels out of Britain. “Unless we sort this out, we can’t do the rest.” The financial cost of EU membership is enormous (in direct payments alone, a net £10.3 billion in 2010, UKIP estimates). Nigel Farage The democratic toll is still higher: About half of all “British” laws understood by just about everyone, could only help sweep the are now passed at the EU level. True enough, bad enough, but slavishly Eu ro phile Tony Blair into power. And, it turned out, keep by splitting the right-of-center vote, Farage risks helping the him there. Europhile left, which is always pressing to make matters even Smears can be self-fulfilling prophecies: The nascent UKIP worse. attracted more than its fair share of cranks, outsiders, and the So there he stands athwart a political conundrum, Captain hopelessly adrift. And it continued to do so, creating the image of Sparrow at the head of UKIP’s motley crew, but something of a the party to which David Cameron played when, in 2006, he one-man band too, harrying the Eurocrats, embarrassing Britain’s referred to UKIP as a bunch of “fruitcakes and loon ies and closet establishment, deftly playing new media and old, deftly playing racists, mostly.” The feigned reasonability of that “mostly” was a politics, new style and old. He crisscrosses the country, address- clever touch. ing meetings (he truly is a terrific speaker), talking to schools, Farage is no fan of Cameron. Is the prime minister a Chris tian retail stuff, good stuff. He’d like UKIP to take first place in the Democrat on Rhineland lines? Not really. “Dave” (“an affable next Eu ro pe an elections (2014), but what Farage, the gambler, chap,” he adds, kindly) is more of a social democrat, a paternalist, wants most is a referendum—in or out—a high-stakes, binary a statist, and he’s not going to do much about Brussels: nothing game (a vote, however reluctant, to remain in the EU is every Eu - that counts, anyway. Farage, a staunch Thatcherite back in the day, ro skep tic’s nightmare). It would bypass that domestic impasse. doesn’t have much time for the way in which the Conservative And he believes it is winnable: His much-disdained UKIP has, party has evolved. To read what UKIP would stand for, at least in “like Stalin’s [Red Army] punishment battalions, softened the theory (once Britain was out of the EU), is to be presented with an ground up.” attractive mix of the hard-nosed and the libertarian, including The polls suggest that Farage might be right, but he understands deregulation, flat taxes, strict immigration controls, proper schools, that fear of what lies outside (possibly exaggerated further, and tough policing, an aversion to multiculturalism, and a reversal of ironically, by the instability that the battered euro is leaving in its the kamikaze greenery of the Cameron years. Compared with the wake) could make voters pause. To calm that, he’s looking for Tories, what’s not to like? business support to rally behind his idea of a country that sees The problem is that Britain’s “first past the post” electoral sys- its future in a world far wider, and freer, than the EU’s inward- tem guarantees that, in most elections, a vote for UKIP is wast- looking, closed, and highly regulated customs union. That’s a vision ed—or worse. It’s “difficult,” Farage admits, an understatement. that ought to be made all the more sellable to clearer-headed voters In the 2010 general election, UKIP scored some 3 percent of the by the damage that the euro-zone crisis has done to the whole vote, but took no seats, and, by nibbling away at Tory support, cost notion of Brussels’s “ever closer union.” And that crisis is unlikely the Conservatives an absolute majority, thus (more or less) forc- to end soon or well. Farage doesn’t know what’s coming next. If he ing them into coalition with the Eurofan atic Liberal Democrats. did, he’d be “in the betting shop.” He guesses that Greece will exit UKIP hoped that the Lib Dems would use their new position to sometime in 2012, followed by Portugal, and believes that the push for the adoption of a voting system friendlier to small parties. “ultimate question” is France. But he’s not waiting to find out. To They did, but they failed: A switch to the Alternative Vote was him, the issue is this: If Britain does not quit now, then when? rejected in a referendum in May 2011. Remaining in the EU is death “by a thousand cuts.” Farage still wants electoral reform (AV+, since you asked). A I ask Farage whether he’d like Pitt the Younger’s old job. No glance at Britain’s elections for the European parliament (where a thanks, he’s not interested in rank. He’d rather be remembered AP / type of proportional representation is used) in 2009 explains why. like a Wilberforce, for having changed things for the better. Led by Farage since 2006, UKIP came in second (slightly ahead Put another way, he will damn the torpedoes and steam on

REX FEATURES of Labour) with 16.5 percent of the vote and, like Labour, won 13 ahead.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Dim College Years

uMOr said the prof flipped out: pulled a pistol in genetically modified corn to make its oil, and that’s not sus- front of the class, declared he was the son of Otto tainable. von Bismarck, and started yelling in Ger man. There’s no plan, no plot. The faculty doesn’t meet to divvy R No doubt some still took notes. This could be on up brainwashing duty: “All right, Blythe-Smidgens, you use the test. The incident supposedly happened a few years lit courses to elevate the proletariat to its rightful role as the before I took his class, and seemed specious. Granted, lec- vanguard of revolutionary change, and Parsons here will use turing seemed to be a strain; by the end of the class he looked biology to strip the fetus of its personhood.” Like the liberal- like a hot, wet beet. But he was certainly one of the finest ism of newsrooms, it’s just in the air. Problem is, you have to teachers I ever had. I wish I remembered 5 percent of what breathe. If the teacher asks the student to describe Gatsby in he taught us. terms of the Occupy movement, the kid won’t say, “That’s a The class was 19th-century diplomatic history, and while I specious application of faddish politics to great literature,” recall the pillars and timbers, the details are gone, and the because a) he’ll flunk or b) those are hard words! We never characters are standing around looking had to use them in high school! The bored and uncomfortable, waiting latter point is often used as a reason for for someone to feed them their lines. The college sending everyone into the dark satanic The entire senior year is like an eye diploma mills—college does the job that chart seen through pebbled glass. The model is content secondary schools used to. The high- russian-lit class? A memory of aristo- to let people school history final used to be “Explain crats sitting around on an estate in late the rise and fall of the Greek city-state, summer looking fretful and enervated. graduate with and Italy’s achievement of unitary renaissance art history: I seem to recall penin sular political cohesion.” Now it’s a painting of pastel-colored saints, float- a degree in “Which president would you like to ing up like balloons escaped from a chil- grievance studies hang out with?” dren’s party. You despair when you No, we can’t expect kids to come out recall how much you’ve forgotten. and a minor in of high school and plunge into the work Not just college: You think back to a force. They need to be slowly digested History Channel documentary a few ferret husbandry. by a large, respected institution, which years back, which gave you a sudden excretes them years later holding a piece command of the history of the Hittite incursions on Egypt. of paper that will forever change their life—by which I mean That’s gone, too. But at least you know where the Hittites the statement from the bank detailing their loan-payback were, and when. At least you can tell Baroque from renais - schedule. In ex change they will have one of two things: a spe- sance, Turgenev from Gogol. They’re not useful skills, but cific set of skills that can be applied to something useful and they add depth and pleasure to life. Conclusion: For some remunerative, like opening up human bodies and fixing things, people in some instances, college is good. or a vague array of artistic aptitudes that assures an employer Pack that seed in the nightsoil of progressive fertilization, the graduate can write a coherent sentence and knows which and you have: College is good for everyone and no one should side the Nazis were on in WWII. That’s all a liberal-arts degree have to pay for it. rick Santorum rolled a stink bomb into the means these days: I’m not hopelessly stupid. faculty lounge the other day when he suggested college is The college model is broken. It costs too much. It promis- overrated. It destroys faith, he said, and the president’s call for es too much. It is content to let people graduate with a degree everyone to go to college, preferably twice, was “elitist.” He’s in grievance studies and a minor in ferret husbandry. We certainly right on the latter point. The president is a product of should replace the traditional model with four alternatives: academia—which may explain his enthusiasm for wind ener- trade school, with cultural electives; fun school, where you gy—and hence he believes in the magic power of Credentials. can pursue things that cannot possibly lead to a job, but If you’ve a Master’s, then a Master you must be. you’re required to learn how to fix a leaky toilet; hard school, As for upending the Etch A Sketch of a freshman’s belief where they throw everything at you; and ultra-hard school, system, parents are right to worry. Oh, the school looks like where you work on cadavers or law or chemicals or the a place of gravity and tradition, what with the ivy and colon- means to build things that don’t fall down. nades and Latin engraved over the doors, but parents fear It would be unfair to make the interest rate for fun school that after they leave, it’s a Mazola midnight orgy on the higher, but it would be wise. This might mean a decrease in commons with a huge picture of Che projected Bat-signal- the number of people who major in puppetry. It’s one thing style in the sky. To which the educators will scoff and say to wish I recalled everything that brilliant professor taught that’s troglodyte paranoia, and besides, Mazola might use me about Metternich. It’s another to think back, consider the cost of tuition, and realize you’ve forgotten which one’s Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. Punch and which one’s Judy.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

course. But, you know, you take your don’t know, is a very committed and cards as they are dealt. devout Christian. LARRYCHING: Santorum Rick is a LARRY CHING: Did not know that. gambling man? FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA SANTORUMRICK: Yes. And I’m sure Larry Ching Live SANTORUM RICK: Um, no, Larry. I dis- that if he decides to run for office in approve of gambling. the future—and that’s a big if, by the On CCTV LARRY CHING: No gambling, no prosti- way—his Christian faith will have a FeBRUARY 28, 2013 tutes, hey! Don’t go to Harbin during lot to do with it. the Rose Petal Festival, huh? LARRY CHING: Weird. Weird. LARRY CHING: From Harbin, in Hei - FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA long jiang Province, ni hao! SANTORUM RICK: I’m not familiar with SANTORUMRICK: Not really. In the CALLER: Ni hao, Larry, and ni hao to that reference. United States, you see— your guest. LARRY CHING: Tomorrow night! The LARRY CHING: From Urumqi, ni hao! FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA whole hour with Han Han! Do you CALLER: Ni hao, Larry. I have a question SANTORUM RICK: Yes, hello. know Han Han, Mr. Santorum Rick? for Santorum Rick. Does he have any LARRY CHING: Do you have a question FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA contact with President Clinton Hillary? for the American person? SANTORUM RICK: No, I don’t. LARRY CHING: Good question. Late- CALLER: Yes, Larry, I have a question LARRY CHING: Chinese blogger. Very night calls? Brunch conversations? for Santorum Rick. Santorum Rick, controversial. Interesting fellow. FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA you have suggested that had the FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA SANTORUM RICK: I hate to disappoint Republicans nominated you last year SANTORUM RICK: I’m surprised you’re you, Larry, and you, Caller, but Pres - for the high commission, you would allowed to have him on. ident Clinton doesn’t really reach out have beaten Obama Barack in the LARRY CHING: Oh yes. Very free soci- to me. election. My question is, if this is so, ety we have here. From Shenyang Pro - LARRY CHING: Were you surprised by why have you not called for a trial for vince! Is the caller there? the turn of events? Romney Mitt under the charge of CALLER: Ni hao, Larry! FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA treason? LARRY CHING: Ni hao! What’s your SANTORUMRICK: Well, of course, LARRY CHING: Good question, caller! question for the failed American poli- when a sitting American president is So what do you say, Santorum Rick? tician Mr. Santorum Rick? revealed to be a Kenyan national, FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA CALLER: My question is, does he think we’re all a little surprised. SANTORUM RICK: It’s Rick Santorum. that the next president should be Lin LARRY CHING: Were you surprised that LARRY CHING: What did I say? Jeremy? it was Clinton Bill who figured it out? FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA LARRY CHING: Good question! Yes! FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA SANTORUM RICK: You said Santorum Mr. Santorum Rick—Lin Jeremy! SANTORUM RICK: Less so. Rick. We do it backwards in the United Talk to me! Next great American LARRY CHING: Tomorrow night! The States. pres ident? whole hour with the cast of Drive LARRY CHING: You certainly do! You FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA Away the Japanese! certainly do! SANTORUM RICK: Um, well, I admire FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA Jeremy Lin very much. He’s an excel- SANTORUM RICK: I thought tomorrow’s SANTORUM RICK: But if I may, to the lent basketball star. And I especially show was with that controversial blog- caller’s point, look, we don’t do that in admire his Christian faith— ger, Han Han? the United States. We have free elec- LARRY CHING: Whoa. Hold the phone. LARRY CHING: Just canceled. Little tions, and the people chose to vote for His what? bug in my ear went kablooey. the other candidate. Do I think they FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA FORMER SENATOR FROM PENNSYLVANIA would have voted for me? Yes, of SANTORUM RICK: Jeremy Lin, if you SANTORUM RICK: I see.

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rather than a balance of powers, and it ments, all three authors generally treat did so not to protect the interests of the them as rapacious, short-sighted, and An states but to safeguard accountability faction-ridden. and competition (although the Founders Greve persuasively outlines the theory Inverted did not use those exact words). that underlay our competitive constitu- Thus, under the Constitution, the fed- tional order, the provisions of the writ- System eral government exercises its limited ten document that contributed to it, the powers by acting directly on people legal doctrines that elaborated it, and rather than through the states. That way, the political economy that protected it. RAMESH PONNURU if a governmental function is performed hamilton assumed (and hoped) that badly, one level of government may be business interests would go to federal held responsible: The federal govern- court to stop state schemes to exploit ment cannot blame states’ foot-dragging or frustrate national commerce. So it while the states blame poor federal lead- proved. From John Marshall onward, ership. the Supreme Court developed in its For an example of the Constitution’s business cases a law that made the com- protection of competition and commercial Constitution work by limiting merce, consider its limits on states’ tax- the depredations of state governments ing powers. Several provisions of the while being careful not to generate a Constitution block state governments backlash that would threaten the whole from taxing economic activity outside project. their borders. The Constitution does Chief among the Court’s stratagems not harmonize tax rates among states was its deployment of what has come to The Upside-Down Constitution, (something many modern constitutions be known as the “dormant” or “nega- by Michael S. Greve (Harvard, do for subnational units of government). tive” commerce clause: the inference 518 pp., $39.95) And it forbids states to enter a compact that since the Constitution vests Con - to harmonize their rates without congress with the power to regulate com- he Founders of this country, gressional approval. So people and busi- merce among the states, it denies that according to lore, created a nesses can move to low-tax states; states power to states. That inference has long system in which federal and must therefore compete with one another been controversial, not least among T state power balanced each for residents; and that competition pro- original ists, but Greve points out that other. During the New Deal, however, duces favorable conditions for the growth without it the states would have at hand the Supreme Court stopped maintain - of commerce. a ready means to circumvent the spe - ing that balance. In Wickard v. Filburn Almost any other set of arrangements cific prohibitions on them that the Con - (1942), the Court allowed the federal would have done more to serve the inter- stitution spells out. government to shove the states aside ests and dignity of state officials. But The federal courts also developed a to regulate purely intrastate activity those considerations count for nothing federal common law so that a plaintiff (specifically, to tell a farmer to stop in the constitutional design, which sub- suing an out-of-state corporation would growing wheat to feed his cattle). Since ordinates the concerns of the states to not have the advantage of state legal that time, the federal government has the public welfare. Madison is, as Greve rules that might be biased in his seized more and more power at the ex - comments, “uncharacteristically impas- favor. The key decision here, Swift v. pense of the states. In recent years, how- sioned” on this point in The Federalist. Tyson (1842), was unanimous, notwith - ever, the Court has tried to move back Far from romanticizing state govern- standing the notoriously broad spec- toward the Founders’ view of the rights trum of opinion on nationalism during and dignity of the states. the era. Michael S. Greve, a scholar at the Sectional divisions in American American enterprise Institute, has writ- politics, and the Gilded Age Republi- ten The Upside-Down Constitution to can party, made the Court’s task easier tell you that all of the above is wrong. by preventing congressional action to “Balance” is precisely the wrong way to undo the courts’ work and augment the look at the constitutional allocation of power of the states. Greve does not responsibilities, implying as it does that suppose that these circumstances could the state usurpation of a federal power have lasted forever, but notes that the could somehow compensate for the erosion, collapse, and replacement of federal usurpation of a state power. “I should have read the pre-nup this competitive order all happened The Constitution established a division more carefully.” with the connivance of the states. It was

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS private litigants, especially businesses, raisin growers to extract rents from because state officials may confer them who defended the old constitutional the rest of the country. The two cases without imposing an equal amount of order from the New Deal; not the have opposite logics. Since California’s taxes on the voters who elect them, half states. scheme regulated in-state production, the cost being paid by taxpayers else- For Greve, the key New Deal case is Parker treated it as irrelevant to inter- where. During budget crunches, for the not Wickard but Erie Railroad Co. v. state commerce; but Wickard treated same reason, states reap only half the Tompkins (1938), which declared the in-state production as subject to con- savings from each benefit cut. federal common law of Swift and its pro - gressional regulation because it affec- Greve theorizes that the New Dealers geny unconstitutional. Under the new ted interstate commerce. Beneath the involved state governments in these regime, the federal courts would extend ap parent contradiction is a common spending programs, notwithstanding extreme deference to state courts and impulse: to allow cartelizing actions the obvious inefficiency of the arrange- state law in suits concerning interstate by either the federal government (in ment, as a response to the weakness commerce. The default rule was in Wickard) or state governments (in Par - of the coalition for redistribution in effect reversed: Now it would take an ker). national politics (the same weakness affirmative act of Congress to protect At the same time, cooperation re - that Madison celebrated in his remarks that commerce from state-level faction- placed competition in fiscal matters. about the “extended republic”). If that alism. Such action has rarely been forth- The best example of this phenomenon, coalition managed to create pilot pro- coming. The new regime could hardly though it postdates the New Deal, may grams in a few states, it could then agi- be better designed to produce a litigation be Medicaid, a joint federal-state pro- tate for federal help. Even people within explosion, which is why we have had gram. States may expand benefit levels the state who had opposed the program one. The most pro-plaintiff jurisdictions and eligibility criteria, subject to federal initially might join that agitation to can now effectively create a national restrictions, while the federal govern- reduce their own costs. In later decades, legal standard. ment provides roughly half the funds. the federal courts would strengthen re - Wickard itself is misunderstood. State governments that do not wish to distributive coalitions even further by Greve observes that Parker v. Brown participate are forfeiting their citizens’ granting them the right to sue under (1943), argued at the same time, upheld federal tax payments to other states, vaguely worded statutes to force state California’s program to cartelize its so nobody refuses. Benefits expand agencies to expand entitlements; in many cases, the agencies have been happy to be forced. LULLABY FOR STOMP THE CAT These cooperative arrangements generate more spending than a program run Sleep, darling! Your accessory entirely by the federal government or After the fact is here—that’s me. the states would produce. Over the last five decades, federal tax revenue has tended to stay flat as a proportion of the I see you fluffy, ten weeks old. economy, while state and local revenue You smirk. We’re too surprised to scold. has climbed up and up. Government has The kitchen floor is purple-black: been growing at its lower levels, with You’ve worked a bottle from the rack. federal help. Other results of coopera- A click of claw—the heater’s on. tive federalism include persistent con- A flick of paw—the dog is gone. flicts in which the states demand more “flexibility” in spending federal dollars; But these, we learned, were minor stunts, a pervasive sense that the programs are For soon—ah!—you began to hunt. beyond any government’s control; and recurrent demands, increasingly met, for God give you everything you wish: federal bailouts of states. Dynamite for killing fish, Instead of enforcing the structural limits on state governments, the Su - An anti-aircraft gun for birds, preme Court turned to vindicating vari- A repertoire of handy words: ous constitutional rights—many of them Like “sorry,” “I,” “forgot,” “to,” “say,” previously unimagined—against the “Just,” “borrowed,” “your,” “big,” “knife,” “today.” states. Instead of being disciplined by competition, states’ political choices I hear Creation click and whir would be constrained by the justices themselves. The Constitution was thus In you, dear bag of fur and purr— inverted. States could no longer adopt In you, Destruction’s polymath. their own policies with respect to abor- Sleep, my little psychopath. tion, but their attorneys general could regulate commercial activity nation- —SARAH RUDEN wide. Faction was no longer to be feared,

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as in the old Constitution, but to be Golden Ass by Apuleius, a quirky Roman empowered to produce robust local author of the second century A.D., and experimentation. (This was the real A Classic though her call to wade into the baroque point of Justice Brandeis’s famous paean prose of an early novelist may not strike to the states as “laboratories of demo - Renewed us as an obvious move to make after the cracy.”) Where the old Constitution heady heights of Virgilian verse, the result made a virtue of its fixity, the new one TRACY LEE SIMMONS is a rollicking ride well worth the fare. To celebrated its mutability as a way of know a bit about Apuleius and his time is responding to the ever-changing neces- to understand why. sities of history. Apuleius arose out of that period in Instead of a federal government lim - classical times known as the Second ited to its enumerated powers but su - Sophistic, an age when the cleverest preme in their exercise, we now have a wordsmiths in Greek found the language government of unlimited powers that of their time worn out and desiccated, and must be exercised concurrently with the so they yearned to resurrect—zealously if states. The federal government may artificially—the eloquence of the Golden attempt to regulate commerce in phar- Age of fifth-century B.C.Athens by close- maceuticals by setting labeling stan- ly emulating in their works some of the dards that balance the risk of nasty rhetorical forms of those bygone days. side-effects against the good the medi- The Golden Ass, by Apuleius, This movement amounted to a cultural cines can do. But the Supreme Court translated by Sarah Ruden fashion, and as such it sent out ripples says that states may undo that balance (Yale, 288 pp., $30) among Roman authors, who still took by piling on their own additional stan- many stylistic cues from the Greeks, and dards, with drugmakers subject to all RANSlATING makes a dirty, Apuleius was one of the flowers of the of them—and all of their judges and thankless business—except, of trend. And what an odd trend it was. In juries, who may be making them up on course, to those for whom the the shrewdest hands some fine objects the fly. T work is its own reward. The got crafted, though the workaday prod- Greve is not a merchant of hope. translator stands to readers rather as the ucts coming from the witless could be Recent attempts by conservatives to piano player does to patrons in a frontier less than stirring—literary jumbles of revive federalism in both the legal and saloon, ignored if folks are having a rip- “verbal stunts” (as Ruden says) about political arenas have often shared New ping good time and shot if they’re not. It’s very little, virtuoso style matched with Deal assumptions—with justices seek- the realm not only of educated guesses, thin substance. It would be as though ing to protect the dignity of state gov- but of halting hunches as well, even when we found ourselves convinced that the ernments, and legislators trying to give the translator is a scholar. Few arts are English we used every day had become them more control over federal money. more inexact. This sticky predicament too tired, frayed, and inexpressive to serve Originalists have sometimes even gets compounded when the work ren- our literary purposes and so resolved trained their fire on those remnants of dered into modern idiom hails from one to write henceforth solely with the rhetor- the pro-competitive constitutional order of the ancient languages; critics may ical flourishes of, say, Shakespeare, only that the New Deal left standing, such assail a translation on philological or to discover that we had little to talk as the dormant commerce clause, out of historical grounds, but proving that it’s about but mouthwash, Facebook, and a misguided fear of drawing inferences utterly wrong becomes more tricky with Cheetos. from the structural logic of the Consti - every century separating us from the date To his and our good fortune, Apuleius tution. of composition. A better informed, more was not among the uninspired. He pos- If there is to be a recovery of the Con- nuanced guess is still a guess. Yet some- stitution’s federalism, it will involve a body has to do it. Without able, ingenious retreat by the federal courts from the translators our cultural life would be “Rated One of New York City culture wars and, simultaneously, a hugely impoverished, our view into the ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats renewed commitment by them to polic- past extended no farther than the horizon ing the boundaries of state authority we can see behind us. We would all be over national commerce. A precon - provincials. dition for any such recovery is the Sarah Ruden, a younger scholar and conservative intellectual reorientation poet who has already taken an estimable that Greve is attempting to advance. swing in the big leagues with, among Thoughtful conservatives understand, other works, that monolith of latin liter - New York’s all suite hotel is located in as he notes, that the free market is not ature, Virgil’s Aeneid, now takes on The the heart of the city, near corporations, theatre & great restaurants. Affordable the same thing as “the opportunistic elegance with all the amenities of home. demands of the Fortune 500.” They Mr. Simmons is the author of Climbing ought to begin distinguishing as well Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 between federalism and the desires of and Latin. He is working on a book about Reservations 1-800-248-9999 Ask about our special National Review rates. state governments. Thomas Jefferson.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS sessed the talent to employ his verbal exu- further, this is an author who “bridges berance to the utmost. Had he not opted loony gaps between registers with rhyme to concoct tales of the fantastic and or alliteration” and uses “smooth rhetori- Unlocking bizarre—however much he freely bor- cal periods and delicately woven poetic rowed some of the plots of those tales imagery [containing] obscenity or vio- The from other authors, a common practice of lence, a dissonance as weird but as enter- the time—he probably could have written taining as a groundhog in a frilly dress.” American about his own life by itself and kept read- In other words, a tall order for a translator. ers entertained for millennia. A man So how does one go about refabricating educated in the cosmopolitan manner, he the tang of the original? By aiming for Mind had come from an outpost of the empire tone over rigid accuracy. With timely (modern Algeria), traveled broadly, hov- advice from a well-read husband, she took MATTHEW SPALDING ered about mystery cults, and found him- up and, in places, strategically mimicked self in a few scrapes worthy of a novelist’s authors in English now known by many invention, including a lawsuit brought for their “slatternly ornamentation” and against him after he married the rich boisterousness—P. G. Wodehouse, Kip - mother of one of his friends. Probably his ling, and George MacDonald Fraser—a was a life and character fit only for crime method as inspired as it is sound. (I would or authorship. add Captain Marryat.) We read “Now, I The Golden Ass (or, as it was titled ear- was making my way home from a dinner lier in its career, Metamorphoses) comes party somewhat late, and I was, well, more down to us as an early example of so- or less plastered—I won’t try to disavow called meta-fiction, a story in one sense my guilt in this,” and we think we hear about storytelling; stories are told within Jeeves shimmer into the room the next other stories. But there’s no need to get morning to prepare one of his potions for The Founders’ Key: The Divine and Natural theoretical to enjoy this series of out- Bertie’s hangover. And yet it’s right be - Connection Between the Declaration and the landish incidents and its bawdy, brazen cause it works. Oh, and Ruden also says Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It, dramatis personae. We might call it a fairy she “had to blow off pretty comprehen- by Larry P. Arnn (Thomas Nelson, tale for grown-ups. It’s a story by turns sively the creative-writing professors who 224 pp., $19.99) hilarious, coarse, and tender, a bit of so- told me that semi-colons are pretentious; phisticated playfulness at the center of that adverbs are for trailer trash; that MERICANS generally recog- which a man named Lucius finds himself, nobody who is anybody ever italicized a nize that our fiscal affairs are by a magical trick gone wrong, trans- word, wrote a long, complex sentence, or in grave disarray and that we formed into a donkey and forced to wan- referred to an emotion otherwise than A are near bankruptcy. They are der doggedly from place to place to find through a sensory image,” for which she aware that the world has grown increas- the magic that will restore him to human ought to be awarded a Pulitzer and proba- ingly dangerous. Yet the gravest problem form. But that goal takes on secondary bly would be were it not for the fact that we face—perhaps the greatest challenge rank as he’s improbably presented with the committee is enthralled to such splen- we have ever faced—is the decline of one crude or lewd or ribald or violent didly, preternaturally stupid advice. constitutional government in the United episode after another and listens to tale This book is not, to put it mildly, one States. upon tale, some of which—like that of to post on a marquee under “Wisdom “Are you serious? Are you serious?” Cupid and Psyche—have gone on to live Literature of the Western World.” There’s was then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s independently of their setting here. His wisdom here of a sort, but it’s not, be infamous answer when asked what pro - troubles are solved in the end, movingly, warned, of the facile, didactic kind, and so vision of the Constitution authorizes through divine direction and humble this story would not be properly featured Congress to require Americans to buy submission. on the reading lists of those wishing to health insurance. Her press spokesman But much of the joy of this translation encounter Greek and Roman minds in confirmed: “You can put this on the hums under the hood. Ruden is a consum- all their airy, placid aloofness in order to record: That is not a serious question.” mate classical scholar who has made pluck petals of moral or philosophical A new Congress, under new manage- herself thoroughly conversant with the insight. The Golden Ass reminds us abun- ment, launched an effort to make it seri- Latin text and so she knows that a strict, dantly that for all their accrued sapience, ous: “For too long, Congress has ignored lexicon-led rendition of this work would the ancients could be marvelously, side- the proper limits imposed by the Consti - issue in a translation all at once stiff, dull, splittingly ridiculous. One reads this for tution,” proclaimed House Republicans in and wrong; the words would be right, diversion, or, as we might say, one reads their campaign platform, “A Pledge to more or less, but the tone would be woe- it for some of the same reasons one reads America.” The Republican how-to manual fully, comically off. For Apuleius had Don Quixote, another picaresque romp— created a narrator, she says, who is for the sheer unabashed fun of it, not for Mr. Spalding is the vice president for American studies “sometimes urbane, sometimes naïve, “life lessons.” It’s a story, not a homily, at the Heritage Foundation, and the author of We sometimes ironic, self-pitying, and sym - and Sarah Ruden has re-bestowed it with Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our pa thetic all within a single sentence”; artful aplomb. Principles, Reclaiming Our Future.

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for new members of Congress advised embrace both documents, and sets out to Americans of all political persuasions them to “read and re-read the Constitu - explain their deeper meaning and their should take this timely reminder to heart. tion” and to “be prepared for two eventu- integral unity: The universal and timeless Progressives belittle the Constitution. al questions every time you cast your vote claims of the one are intimately connect- Among conservatives, the Constitution on the House floor: Did you read the bill, ed to the forms and institutions of gov- is seen too often as merely a legal docu - and is it constitutional?” ernment established by the other. “The ment rather than as a framework of It turns out that following the Con - Declaration,” he writes, “acquires a prac- self-government, its clauses parchment stitution is easier said than done. The fed- tical form and operation that do not seem mechanisms for judicial experts rather eral government is vastly out of its proper to come from it alone. The Constitution than the rules for constitutional politics. relationship with the Constitution. The soars to the elevation of the natural law, Yet the essence of what Madison achieved liberal welfare state is deeply entrenched, and its arrangements are reinforced with is not to be found in the technicalities of and unraveling today’s regulatory regime that strength.” The combination of those the Constitution as much as in its opera- Larry Arnn explains that the key to unlocking the problem of the modern state has been there all along.

will be extremely difficult. The adminis- principles and that form is central to the tional form—not so much in what it says, trative web of government policies and project of creating a just system of gov- but in how it works. procedures that covers America amounts ernment—something understood by the Consider the “citation rule” of the cur- to a new form of rule by bureaucratic Founders and still available for those rent Congress: Every law must cite its experts. who wish to ignite an American restora- constitutional authority as a requirement This underlying problem of our poli- tion. for consideration. I strongly advocated tics is not about to change anytime soon, The Declaration, in Arnn’s correct and the idea and had a hand in its formulation. the result of one congressional session or moving description, is grounded in the It’s a great teaching tool, intended to presidential election. It is the work of very nature of things. Its words reach encourage deliberation and debate about many generations. Yet the restoration of back to both classical philosophy and legislative powers under the Constitution. the principles and practice of constitu- Biblical theology; “the Laws of Nature” But in the current context, it has quickly tional government must be at the heart of and of “nature’s God” represent a pro- any effort to renew America. How are we found agreement between reason and to proceed? revelation about man and politics. Its In this wonderful little treatise, Hills - understanding of natural rights is a dale College president Larry Arnn ex - continuation of both the English republi- plains that the key to understanding the can tradition of Locke and Sidney and problem of the modern state and reveal- a natural-law tradition dating back to med - ing the solution of the Founders’ design ieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas has been there all along, bound up in the and to classical thinkers such as Aris- midst of the country’s title and deed, so to totle and Cicero. Properly located in this speak. The American story has unfolded nature, man is his own natural ruler, with EXERCISE IN ONLY in the way it has because of the inter- the capacity to govern himself, to make weaving influence of two brief but decisions about how to live his life and 4 MINUTES PER DAY powerful documents: the Declaration conduct his affairs. of Independence and the Constitution. In discussing the structure of the Con- Special Forces looked at it in 1990 Writes Arnn: “The way we talk, the way stitution, Arnn recalls The Federalist’s and ﬁnally purchased in 2010. we stand, the way we dance or sing—all famous argument for “auxiliary precau- Made in America. Good for ages are influenced by the laws of our land and tions” and its “republican remedy for the principles behind them, and our laws the diseases most incident to republican 10 to 100. For strong or very weak and principles spring from these two doc- government.” Rather than relying on and ill people. Diabetes, bad uments.” a predominance of virtue and civic re - backs, shoulders, Modern liberalism has managed to spon si bility—which would have been a knees. Order a 30 sever the documents from each other and dangerous assumption for constitution- mutate them, turning the Declaration’s makers—the Founders designed a system day trial in your self-evident truths into constantly evolv- that separated power and provided for home or a free ing rights claims and the Constitution’s checks and balances. The goal was to har- DVD online or call. clear commands into meaningless gen- ness man’s competing interests—not to eralities. This intellectual sham is well debase politics to a discussion only of 818-787-6460 advanced, especially among our elites, questions of narrow self-interest, but to and increasingly in the citizen body. make up for what the Framers called “the RestartFitness.com Arnn calls on us to rediscover and re- defect of better motives.”

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS become—as many of us warned that it scher, chairman of the American Wing, might—a thoughtless exercise in box- Art and his staff of curators have assembled a checking. The citations are mostly broad visual rhapsody that is as revelatory as it is references, with no argument or crea - Rediscovering aesthetically and historically engaging. tivity. The first (and thus far only) debate The arrangement is broadly chronological, under the new rule was on the monu - America taking the viewer from the Colonial period mental and riveting question of patent (John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, John reform. ROGER KIMBALL Smibert, et al.) up through the Teens of the The Founders didn’t rely on the enu- 20th century and the advent of the Ashcan meration of powers alone to limit gov- oW do you spell “triumph”? Painters (William Glackens, Robert Henri, ernment, and neither should we. The Try “The new American Wing John Sloan, et al.). Many visitors, I suspect, better path is for each branch of govern- Galleries for Paintings, Sculp - will come away with the same convic - ment to be responsible (and held respon- H ture, and Decorative Arts,” tion that I did: that 18th- and 19th-century sible) for its actions according to the which opened at New York’s Metropolitan Amer ican art is a far more vigorous affair structure and distribution of government Museum of Art in January. From every than one had thought. powers set out in the Constitution. point of view, the new ensemble of 26 The usual narrative places the center of The reconstruction of constitutional galleries, which completes the Met’s am - artistic energy during that period in con- government will not occur all at once, bitious decade-long renovation of its tinental Europe, not in England and cer- across the board. We must think strate - American Wing, is a winner. tainly not in America. Writers such as Paul gically if we are to relimit government, Take the architecture: Kevin Roche John Johnson—as well as the evidence of our defining and pursuing a realistic path that Dinkeloo and Associates, which has over- own eyes—have lately done much to reha- focuses government on its primary oblig- seen the Met’s overall expansion and re - bilitate the achievement of 18th- and 19th- ations, restores its responsibility and design for decades, turned in a splendid century English artists in comparison with democratic accountability, and corrects suite of new and repristinated galleries, the achievements of their French and its worst excesses. This is the task of featuring abundant natural lighting (light Italian counterparts. Stock in such artists statesmen, schooled in America’s princi- matters!) and cunning cross-gallery sight as Gainsborough and Constable has risen ples as well as in the prudential applica- lines that help the viewer knit together sharply while shares in Continental Paint- tion of those principles in our time. It will different aspects of the collection. The ers Ltd. have tended to stagnate where they require informed public argument and galleries themselves—comprising some have not dropped precipitously. I’d wager effective popular persuasion, for sure, but 30,000 square feet of exhibition space on that the new American Wing Galleries even more the revival of a strong political the second floor of the American Wing— at the Met will have a kindred effect on jurisprudence combined with a great deal are models of understated elegance: “a our appreciation of the native American of political skill and practical wisdom. contemporary interpretation of 19th- achievement. In the end, though, what is needed century Beaux-Arts galleries,” as the Met The exhibition begins with a bang, above all else is a renewed consensus puts it, in which gracious unobtrusiveness showing Colonial-period craftsmen and about the meaning of the American enter- colludes with a cool, almost imperceptible artists like Copley with unapologetic con- prise, and this is not possible without lusciousness (taut, not blowsy) to welcome fidence that would have seemed misplaced reconnecting the noble ideas of the Dec - the gallery-goer. The architects, drawing if not arrogant a decade ago, but that now, laration to the workings of the Consti - on their deep reservoir of experience in in the context provided by serried ranks of tution. Making these old texts lively and building museum galleries, have thought other American artists congregated in these fresh, so that they become once again of everything, from circulation patterns to halls, seems entirely appropriate. Copley what Thomas Jefferson called “an ex - flooring materials, and they had the budget will be a familiar figure to most readers; pression of the American mind,” is the and enlisted the craftsmen to realize their never, I think, has his work been shown task of great books and great teachers ideas with glorious though retiring pa - to greater advantage. His famous portrait that draw us into a conversation about nache. These rooms are for looking at art, of the boy Daniel Crommelin Verplanck the most important things. Such is The and everything conspires to abet that end. (1771), for example, has been the subject Founders’ Key, and such is its author. “A It’s only when you take a breath and look of art-critical attention that was as patron- classroom is a very exciting place for one about that you notice how much thought izing as it was admiring. “Naïve,” “lack - who has good students,” Arnn concludes. has gone into keeping your attention ing in polish,” and similar hedges have “There is the magical process of learning focused on what the walls and vitrines abounded in describing the work. Here, in together, of discovery, and from that have to show you. these new galleries, the chief epithets that process comes a bond that lasts a life - If the architecture and interior design of spring to mind are “charm” and “power.” time. In the classic works, this experience the new American Wing are reticent victo- (In this same category belongs Ammi is treated as one of the few highest things ries, the art and installation are reminiscent Phillips’s splendid, if slightly eldritch, Mrs. that human beings can do. That is be - of the Reverend Sydney Smith’s idea of Mayer and Daughter from around 1840.) cause it can touch on the things that call heaven: eating pâté de foie gras to the A similar alchemy is at work in the great us toward places beyond time or condi- sound of trumpets. Morrison H. Heck - works of the Hudson River School. The tion. People give their lives for causes; in work of Frederic Edwin Church and John the classroom one may discover which of Mr. Kimball is the publisher of Encounter Books, and Frederick Kensett (both early trustees of them are good.” the publisher and editor of The New Criterion. the Met) has, along with that of Thomas

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Cole and Albert Bierstadt, long ago emerged from a trough of neglect sponsored by doctrinaire modernism, but there is a potent visual synergy created by seeing them as it were in conversation with one another in the three galleries devoted to them and their confrères. Church’s magnificent Heart of the Andes (1859), for example, meticulously cleaned and restored, communicates an indelible impression of wild, untamable grandeur. Another artist who enjoyed an upgrade in the Kimball racing form was John Singer Sargent, a stylist of immense skill and ingratiating slyness but whose sugar content seemed often excessive. Some - how, the Sargents on view here seem tarter, bolder, toothsome not fulsome, and the great Madame X from 1884 is one of the real showstoppers. The portrait of Mme. Pierre Gautreau, an American-born haute- bohemian who lived in Paris, caused Sargent endless difficulties. The portrait was not commissioned, but was attempted with the sitter’s—or, rather, with the stander’s—complicity. Its reception at the Salon caused a scandal. “It is positively dangerous to sit to Sargent,” declaimed one observer. “It is taking your face in your hands.” Among Sargent’s offenses was painting one of the straps of Mme. Gau - treau’s dress slipping off her shoulder. (He later repainted the strap, removing the suggestion of deshabillé.) The more serious offense was the suggestion of animal bold- ness to the work that seems to have out- raged everyone, Mme. Gautreau included. Sargent kept the painting for more than 30 years and then sold it to the Met. “I suppose,” he said mournfully, “it is the best thing I have done.” I think he was probably right. As one would expect, the Met’s collection of American art is spectacular. Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing Madame X,1883–84 the Delaware, Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream and his paintings of Prouts Neck in Innesses, on the other hand, seemed to the vital center of the arts, which turns on Maine, portraits by Sargent and Whistler, me—it’s my one cavil—to lack the enig- the engine of aesthetic delectation, has Thomas Eakins and William Merritt matic, almost mystical, majesty charac - taken a back seat to show biz, community 1916

, Chase, sculptures by Frederic Remington: teristic of his greatest work, which was uplift, and “diversity.” There aren’t many These rooms are full of iconic American mostly done at the end of his life in the late institutions that have managed to cleave art. Not every object is a masterpiece, but 1880s and early 1890s. fast to their founding principles. The Met is all are at least representative. To my mind, The art world, and that part of it inhabit- one, and its new American Wing Galleries the two greatest artists in the American ed by art museums, is not in a healthy state for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative pantheon are Eakins and George Inness. these days. I don’t mean that “the arts” are Arts provide another reminder of how rare ARTHUR HOPPOCK HEARN FUND / On view are nine excellent paintings by not thriving financially. On the contrary, its achievement is. Go see them. It will pro- Eakins—not, perhaps, the acme of his they’re big business, a fact that has attract- vide a heartening couple of hours full of work (The Gross Clinic and some late ed ambitious purveyors of cappuccino and aesthetic enjoyment. It will also, I suspect, portraits in the Philadelphia Museum of opening parties for the swells in cities, bolster your admiration for the vitality

JOHN SINGER SARGENT Art), but splendid nonetheless. The Met’s towns, and hamlets across the country. But of classic American art.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS man. Ten years after selling out his coun- dictable. (If you can’t anticipate which Film try in some unspecified way, Frost shows of Weston’s bosses—played by Gleeson, up in Cape Town to purchase the movie’s Vera Farmiga, and Sam Shepard—will MacGuffin, a data file whose contents ultimately betray him, you should have Hollywood’s apparently make the Church Committee’s your moviegoer’s license revoked.) But reports look like pro-CIA propaganda. the road to getting them is reasonably CIA Naturally, various powerful people would fun, because we’re riding with Denzel like the file for themselves, and so Wash - Washington in full-on swagger mode. ROSS DOUTHAT ington’s character spends the first 20 min- Washington is 57, with salt-and-pepper in utes of the movie dodging assassins in his hair and enough years on him to make he most remarkable thing about Cape Town’s crowded streets, ultimately his third-act flashes of vulnerability con- Safe House, the new hit thriller eluding his pursuers only by slipping into vincing. But he still has the mix of charis- starring Denzel Washington as a the American consulate and turning him- ma and physicality necessary to sell a T rogue CIA operative on the self in. superspy character, and enough “seduce loose in South Africa, is that it wasn’t his subsequent waterboarding takes and destroy” charm to make us believe made during the Bush presidency. essen - place in the safe house supervised by that Frost could have outwitted, out- tially an updating of 1975’s Three Days of Reynolds’s character, a Yalie named Matt played, and outlasted a world full of the Condor, with a naïve junior spook Weston who chafes at his dullsville duties enemies and ex-friends. (Ryan Reynolds in the Robert Redford as an Agency “housekeeper” and whines Reynolds, his straight-shooting foil, is role) caught up in intra-Langley maneu- to his superior (Brendan Gleeson) about essentially a comic actor (his best movie verings and mayhem, Safe House has all how much he covets a plum job opening remains the slapstick 2005 romantic com- the hallmarks of hollywood’s Bush-era in Paris. (his French fixation isn’t just pro- edy Just Friends) who has been consis- revival of the paranoid style. In the spirit fessional: his girlfriend, a lovely medical tently miscast as an action hero. But he’s of such movies as Syriana and the Bourne student played by Ana Moreau, is about game and obviously grateful to still have a franchise, it depicts the American intelli- to jet off for a hospital assignment in career after last year’s disastrous Green gence bureaucracy as the sum of all con- her native country’s capital.) Lantern, and if he can’t compete with spiracy theories: ruthless, murderous, and Once Frost enters his life, though, Washington, he isn’t completely cast into entirely self-interested, with any hint Weston’s whining days are over. The safe the shade. The movie drags, inevitably, of patriotism buried under decades’ worth house turns out to be the least safe place in whenever Frost drops offstage, but the of crimes. Cape Town, and the housekeeper barely action set pieces strike the right balance The movie even manages to work in escapes with his prisoner and his life. between chaos and comprehensibility, and a quick dose of waterboarding, as the first hunted by a team of assassins and un - the screenplay even gets off a few good (and only, as it turns out) interrogation certain which of his higher-ups to trust, he lines. technique employed by the agents as - goes on the lam, trying to hang on to his They’re in the service, of course, of a signed to debrief Denzel Washington’s voluble, volatile captive while figuring out worldview that’s rotten with cynicism Tobin Frost, a former Agency heavy- just what kind of mess he’s landed himself about American institutions and the men weight whose betrayals have made him in. and women who populate them. But in a the intelligence community’s most wanted The answers are almost comically pre- way it’s encouraging to see that the paranoid style has endured into the age of Obama: It suggests that somebody in the movie industry has noticed that many of the Bush-era national-security policies that inspired the paranoid style’s revival in the first place have endured under the current administration. (You wouldn’t normally give people points for noticing something so obvious, but where holly - wood’s connection to political reality is concerned, you have to take what you can get.) The truth about our intelligence agencies that never makes it into motion pictures, of course, is also a truth about government in general: Nothing should be explained by malice and conspiracy when it can be better explained by incompetence. Maybe someday some intrepid filmmaker will dare to make a movie on that theme. But I can pretty much guarantee that it won’t

Denzel Washington in Safe House star Denzel Washington. UNIVERSAL

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run out onto the deck or the stoop; always equally casual. They were professionals in City Desk the same question, always the same no- the best, and the not-so-good, senses of the answer, always the same thrill. Back in the word. They all had their licks down, but city, huddled under some sonic niagara, I the gig was another day, another dollar. Not All wonder, Have I permanently damaged my Then in a moment of unhappy distrac- treetop frequencies for the sake of Michael tion I looked at the audience, before and That Jazz Bay or Wagner? below me (we sat halfway down the bowl Back to the bluesmen. The second half of the hall). White heads (mine among of the program the night I went out was them)—that I expected, for I had seen devoted to a genial English chap. You us all filing in. But nodding heads, nod- know his bio, sight unseen. Grew up lis- ding to the beat. no no no, my brothers tening to shellac 78s. Played with every- and sisters—you don’t have to enjoy this, body from Jimi Hendrix to Fleetwood or if you do, you can enjoy it in the dark. I Mac. The devotion of foreigners to our would not be a good demonstrator—but I popular music does us honor. Centuries would also not be a good church member, after America has been obliterated, what or Boy Scout, or anything. Is there no will we have left the world to remember alternative to the run of the mill, and con- us by? The Declaration of Independence, stantly fretting at the run of the mill? RICHARD BROOKHISER the Model T, and some good tracks. He There is at least one alternative. We had started off with an ancient blues lament, experienced it in the first half of the pro- n the other hand, if you do accompanying himself on the harmonica. gram, which was devoted to a soloist. His feel like a dose of declinism Then a band came out—a guitarist from father was a record producer, the discover- there are many ways to get it. Texas, a drummer from Chicago, and a er of everybody and his brother. The son O Quick est is to watch public bassist from sophomore year, by the look had made his own pilgrimage through the television during membership drives, of him. The mix was suddenly unsettling. blues. Forty years ago he looked like the when they bring out Peter and Paul to sing The bandleader, splendid in his long white Apollo of the Belvedere; now he looks their Childe ballads about the marijuana dragon and peace in our time. The pans over the audience look like bingo night Centuries after America has been in the assisted-living facility. Is this the senescent republic that guarantees the obliterated, what will we have left the world’s liberty? Second quickest is to world to remember us by? The attend a concert of white bluesmen. The jazz branch of the great culture cen- Declaration of Independence, the ter has a concert hall at one of the prime intersections of the city. The view is spec- Model T, and some good tracks. tacular. Six stories up you look out a two- storey-high window on the monuments ponytail, now looked old enough to be the more like the buffalo nickel, but still hand- to Christopher Columbus and the USS father of his guitarist and drummer, old some. Maine; on the southwest corner of the enough to be the grandfather of his bassist. He wore flannel and jeans, but beneath great green carpet of the park; on the broad I have written already of the death grip of them he wore cowboy boots. This was a double band of a crosstown street, white baby boomers and their taste on popular good sign—he had dressed for the occa- headlights coming at you, red taillights culture. What about the death grip of their sion. The second good sign was his instru- speeding away, both blazing after what we own first loves on the taste of baby ments—an acoustic guitar and a dobro, persist in calling nightfall (in midtown boomers? We are old enough to retire, old miked but not electrified. His voice was night is only a set-off for electricity). It’s a enough to be older than the guy in the good, his playing was spectacular. His long way from the Delta up there. White House, and yet we still play and stage presence combined a little Glenn It is also, unfortunately, a long way from groove to what stirred us when we were Gould and a little Asperger’s—a private good acoustics. The surfaces are all sharp druggie horndogs (or more likely, pimply affair. He would play the same way in and resonant, yet the space is vast, so you sober celibates). Doesn’t anyone ever Yankee Stadium, or all alone. get a double hit: Everything pings, then grow up around here? The first song the To play for others, you must play for rumbles around. Run the music through band did was by a black bluesman, b. 1935. yourself. And to play for yourself, you must a sound system, and it becomes painful. I The second song was by a rock group, b. play for your masters. You start off copying know I am an outlier: I can’t stand the trail- 1965 (it still marches on, Wikipedia tells their every mannerism, but when you have ers for the average blockbuster; sym- me, with changed personnel, just like the developed your own manner you keep talk- phonies and operas strike me as yelling for College of Cardinals). ing to them, long after they are dead. The morons; a bar scene on a Saturday night is no one had changed clothes since after- first set was as wonderful as barred owls; the morons themselves. In my house in the noons in the knotty-pine rec room either. we left early in the second. Back home, the country, I can hear the barred owls asking The performers wore sneakers and had magic of YouTube let me watch both musi- Who cooks for you? through my walls; I never heard of belts. Their music was cians, on grainy TV shows, years ago.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Weird Politics

eekING respite from the disappointments of the ditional” family? Seventy percent of black children are born Republican-primary season, I have been in out of wedlock, as are 70 percent of the offspring of poor Australia—where, upon every TV or radio ap- white women, as are a majority of Hispanic babies. Forty S pearance, I get asked about the Republican- percent of American children are born outside marriage; primary season. News does not travel well; it gets winnowed among women under 30, a majority of children are. Well, so to its essence. Rick Santorum is a crazed, stern-faced theo- what? It’s the same in Scandinavia, isn’t it? Well, not quite. crat who wishes to impose a Christian version of sharia law Our progeny are fatter, sicker, riddled with childhood dia- on America and round up gays and single mothers. “That’s betes. Dennis Prager wrote a couple of years ago that Obama certainly why I’m supporting him,” I say. saw the United States as a large Sweden. A large Sweden is If there’s a follow-up question, it tends to be about why a contradiction in terms, and out there in the Dependistans of he’s demonizing Satan, so to speak. “Well, there’s a lot of America we’re better at being large than being Swedish. things said in the heat of a primary campaign,” I say. “I’m Well, okay, say the Santorum detractors, but you guys are sure by the time of the convention he and Satan will have supposed to be the small-government crowd. Why is this any patched up their differences. Wouldn’t rule out Rick offering business of the state? A fair point, but one that cuts both the prince of darkness the vice-presidential slot in the inter- ways. Single women are the most enthusiastic constituency ests of unity. Dream ticket, and all that.” for big government: A kiss on the hand may be quite conti- even to those Aussies of a conservative bent, the weird- nental, but statism is a girl’s best friend. One can argue about ness of Santorum is a given. I’ve spent whether the death of marriage leads to maybe 15 minutes in his company, at big government or vice versa, but simply a GOP county dinner in southern New raising the topic shouldn’t put one be - Hampshire, where we talked mostly yond the pale, should it? about the Habsburg empire—his grand- Let’s take it as read that Rick Santorum father was a bit of imperial cannon fodder is weird. After all, he believes in the sanc- on the Russian front who managed to tity of life, the primacy of the family, the survive the Great War and get on the boat traditional socio-religious understanding to Pennsylvania. Santorum didn’t seem of a transcendent purpose to human exis- weird to me—or at any rate no weirder tence. Once upon a time, back in the mists than the normal weirdness quotient re - of, ooh, the mid–20th century, all these quired of those who decide to run for things were, if not entirely universal, president of the United States. sufficiently mainstream as to be barely On that night in the Granite State, I said something like, worthy of discussion. Now they’re not. Isn’t the fact that con - “Wow! Two generations from immigrant to presidential can- ventional morality is now “weird” itself deeply weird? The didate,” and Rick said something like, “Only in America.” instant weirdification of ideas taken for granted for millennia But the old clichés don’t exert quite the same pull. After all, is surely mega-weird—unless you think that our generation we live in fast-moving times: In the course of two genera- is possessed of wisdom unique to human history. In which tions, what doesn’t change? The Habsburg empire for which case, why are we broke? Grandpa Santorum fought is dust, and, according to the Look, I get the problem with a Santorum candidacy. And I Vienna Institute of Demography, by mid-century a majority get why he seems weird to Swedes and Aussies, and even of Austrians under the age of 15 will be Muslim. As I wrote Americans. If you’re surfing a news bulletin en route from here last year: Salzburg, 1938—singing nuns, Julie Andrews, Glee to Modern Family, Santorum must seem off-the-charts “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Salzburg 2038— weird, like a monochrome episode that’s been implausibly How do you solve a problem like sharia? colorized from a show too old even for TV Land reruns. It Old settled societies appear like a frozen river in my part would be healthier to thrash these questions out in the cul- of New Hampshire: On the surface, all is still. Underneath, ture, in the movies and novels and pop songs. But Holly - the icy water is fast-moving. That’s where all the business wood has taken sides, and the Right has mostly retreated that really engages Santorum is—and he’s not wrong on from the field. And somebody has to talk about these things most of it. As Congressman Mike Pence said a year or two somewhere or other. Our fiscal crisis is not some unfortunate back, “To those who say we should simply focus on fiscal bookkeeping accident that a bit of recalibration by a savvy issues, I say you would not be able to print enough money in technocrat can fix. In the United States as in Greece, it is a a thousand years to pay for the government you would need reflection of the character of a people. The problem isn’t that if the traditional family collapses.” Rick Santorum’s weird, but that a government of record- But Pence’s doomsday scenario is already here: What “tra- breaking brokeness already busting through its newest debt-ceiling increase even as it announces bazillions in new AP / Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). spending is entirely normal. ERIC GAY

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Before 1776: Life in the American Colonies IM ED T E O Taught by Professor Robert J. Allison IT FF E IM R L 70% 1. The World before Colonial America 2. Spain’s New World Empire off 3. John Smith, Pocahontas, and Jamestown O 8 4. Virginia and the Chesapeake after Smith R 1 DE AY 5. The Pilgrims and Plymouth R BY M 6. The Iroquois, the French, and the Dutch 7. The Puritans and Massachusetts 8. New England Heretics— Religious and Economic 9. The Connecticut Valley and the Pequot War 10. Sugar and Slaves—The Caribbean 11. Mercantilism and the Growth of Piracy 12. South Carolina—Rice, Cattle, and Artisans 13. New Netherland Becomes New York 14. King Philip’s War in New England 15. Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia 16. Santa Fe and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 17. William Penn’s New World Vision 18. The New England Uprising of 1689 19. Witchcraft in New England 20. Captives and Stories of Captivity 21. The Indians’ New World 22. Family Life and Labor in Colonial America 23. Smallpox, 1721—The Inoculation Controversy 24. France, Senegal, and Louisiana 25. Georgia—Dreams and Realities 26. The Atlantic Slave Trade and South Carolina 27. The New York Conspiracy of 1741 28. The Great Awakening 29. The Albany Conference of 1754 30. The Great War for Empire 31. Pontiac’s Revolt against the British 32. Imperial Reform—The Sugar and Stamp Acts 33. North Carolina Regulators Seek Local Rule 34. Virginia—Patrick Henry and the West 35. Destruction of Tea and Colonial Rebellion Explore the History of 36. Independence and Beyond

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