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May 5, 2014 $4.99

ROSEN ON JOHN R. BOLTON: HOW TO COUNTER RUSSIA W. THE PAINTER DOUTHAT ON KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: THE NEW SAGEBRUSH REBELS NOAH

The Case Against MICHAEL MANN

THE HOCKEY STICK AND FREE SPEECH

$4.99 Charles C. W. Cooke 18

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MAY 5, 2014 | VOLUME LXVI, NO. 8 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 26 The Climate Inquisitor Climate scientist and opponent of free inquiry Michael E. Mann on George W. Bush, painter has built a noisy public career p. 23 sounding the alarm over global warming. Secure as he appears to be in his convictions, Mann BOOKS, ARTS has nonetheless taken it upon & MANNERS himself to try to suppress debate 36 THE POLITICS OF BANKING and to silence some of the “irra- Diana Furchtgott-Roth reviews Fragile by Design: The Political tional” and “virulent” critics, who Origins of Banking Crises and he claims have nothing of sub- Scarce Credit, by Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber. stance to say. Charles C. W. Cooke 38 A TEXAN TO THE RESCUE

COVER: M. D. Aeschliman reviews Seeking the North Star: Selected Speeches, by John R. Silber. ARTICLES 43 UNEQUAL TO THE TASK 16 A BETTER RUSSIA ‘RESET’ by John R. Bolton Joshua R. Hendrickson reviews We need a foreign policy equipped to deal with the Putin regime. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty. 20 GREATER GROWTH by Steps to reduce economic anxiety. 45 BLACKLISTED Peter Tonguette reviews The Selected 21 MIKE PENCE’S FEDERALISM by Eliana Johnson Letters of Elia Kazan, Does it have a future on Pennsylvania Avenue? edited by Albert J. Devlin with Marlene J. Devlin. 23 A FOR OILS by James Rosen The presidential arts of George W. Bush. 47 FILM: NOAH’S ARC reviews Noah. 24 ADVENTURES IN LEXICAL FASHION by Today’s progressive term may become tomorrow’s slur. SECTIONS FEATURES 2 Letters to the Editor 26 THE CLIMATE INQUISITOR by Charles C. W. Cooke 4 The Week Michael Mann’s campaign against free thought. 34 The Long View ...... Rob Long 35 Athwart ...... 32 SAGEBRUSH REBELS, AGAIN by Kevin D. Williamson 44 Poetry ...... Richard O’Connell Cliven Bundy and the case for saying “No.” 48 Happy Warrior . . . . .

NATioNAl RevieW (iSSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATioNAl RevieW, inc., at 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, inc., 2014. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATioNAl RevieW, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATioNAl RevieW, Circulation Dept., P. o. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATioNAl RevieW, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. PoSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATioNAl RevieW, Circulation Dept., P. o. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters -- READY:QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/16/2014 2:36 PM Page 2 Letters

MAY 5 ISSUE; PRINTED APRIL 17

EDITOR Richard Lowry Virtue and Verse Senior Editors / Jay Nordlinger Roman Genn, in your March 24 issue, drew a splendid cover illustration of the Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Republican symbol of trust and faithfulness astride a vociferous tool exem- Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Literary Editor Michael Potemra plifying productivity and change. It should stand as a serious contender for the Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson party’s rallying image next November and beyond. In a nation so clearly National Correspondent John J. Miller divided between the classes of energetic production and apathetic entitlement, Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors it extols the commendable dimension that can be released from within every Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz responsible voter. Associate Editors Patrick Brennan / Katherine Connell Too little is said of the virtuousness of work that instills the hope needed to sus- Production Editor Katie Hosmer Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace tain the common travails of life. The accomplishment and reward from complet- Contributing Editors ing a regular task, regardless of its complexity, as Kevin D. Williamson reveals Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn in his essay “To Work Is to Live,” must somehow be continuously ingrained in Jim Geraghty / / Florence King Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin us all. Students in particular must be led in the direction of earning and saving to / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne build secure lives and futures. Instead, they are overwhelmed with how to manip- / Robert VerBruggen ulate the systems that promote the sinecures largely cultivated by academia.

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE There is a poem that my eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. O’Hara, intro- Editor-at-Large Managing Editor Edward John Craig duced to us in 1962. That year was among the last of an era, long forgotten, News Editor Tim Cavanaugh when a California schoolteacher could freely require us to memorize the last National-Affairs Columnist Media Editor Eliana Johnson three stanzas of a virtuous literary piece without absurd criticism. How well Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke Associate Editors she knew, and how much I now cherish her leadership and direction. It’s time Molly Powell / Nat Brown to recall the philosophy of work conveyed in that poem, Henry Wadsworth Editorial Associate Andrew Johnson Technical Services Russell Jenkins Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life,” the final stanzas of which are below: Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Producer Scott McKim Lives of great men all remind us EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Footprints on the sands of time; Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner Footprints, that perhaps another, David Gelernter / George Gilder / Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, D. Keith Mano / Seeing, shall take heart again. Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons / Vin Weber Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Let us, then, be up and doing, Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak With a heart for any fate; Business Services Still achieving, still pursuing, Alex Batey / Alan Chiu Circulation Manager Jason Ng Learn to labor and to wait. WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 Rudy Cariaga WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Woodbury, Minn. Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet Correction Associate Publisher Paul Olivett In The Week (April 21), we commented on Alice in Arabia, the ABC Family Director of Development Heyward Smith Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell drama that was canceled after being criticized as Islamophobic. The com-

PUBLISHER ment ended: “‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense,’ Jack Fowler the Mad Hatter says in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. His world doesn’t CHAIRMAN seem so far removed from our own.” The quotation is actually from the 1951 John Hillen Disney film, not Lewis Carroll’s book, and it was spoken by Alice to her cat, CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes not by the Mad Hatter.

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

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n Vladimir Putin can count himself lucky that there are no tor- toises in Crimea.

n A heated showdown between the Bureau of Land Management and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy cooled several degrees when See page 6. the BLM vowed to resolve the matter “administratively and judi- cially.” Bundy’s family has been grazing federal land for over a century; his troubles began in 1993 with new rules to protect wild desert tortoises. He denies Washington’s power to promulgate them, acknowledging only the authority of his county and state. Suits and countersuits proliferated; by now Bundy’s back fees are over a million bucks. The BLM began confiscating his cattle, which brought a gaggle of soi-disant militia members to his side. The art of government is often the exercise of prudence, a virtue especially to be prized in standoffs in which the parties are armed. But just government must be ruled by laws. No man can pick which laws or which branches of government he chooses to obey. If the federal government owned less of Nevada and the American West, there would be fewer flashpoints. A point to remember at the polls—not on the range. the love that citizens owe each other: Employers, from tech gi ants to farmers, might employ more of their fellow country- n In 2008 and 2009, gave speeches suggesting that men. The profit motive inclines them toward loose immigration Dick Cheney had pushed for war in Iraq because of his connec- laws. But “the love of money,” as Saint Paul remarked, “is a root tion to . After the remarks came to light, Paul, now a of all kinds of evil.” senator, backtracked without renouncing them. In the first Bush administration, Cheney had favored leaving Saddam Hussein in n Speaking to an audience in New Hampshire, power after extruding him from Kuwait; in the second, he wanted decried what he regards as infringements on freedom of speech him deposed. What else could explain his change of views about and ill-conceived airport-security policies. He said, “My gosh, Middle Eastern politics but his corporate paycheck? What Paul’s I’m beginning to think that there is more freedom in North Korea reasoning excludes is an event that took place in September 2001 sometimes than there is in the .” North Korea is a and changed the way a lot of people thought about foreign policy. wicked state, a psychotic state, an Orwellian state. People are tor- Certain minds have an unhealthy attraction to conspiracy theories, tured to death there routinely. The entire population is enslaved to and the senator appears to be one of them. an ideological cult. The resemblance between us and North Korea is absolutely zero. Huckabee, a professional talker, should talk n Thomas Friedman, interviewing in a friendly better. manner, asked what her proudest accomplishment at the State Department was. Her answer: Leadership is “a relay race”; she n George H. W. Bush will get the John F. Kennedy Library represented us around the world while the president was pre - Foundation’s “Profile in Courage” award, given to politicians for occupied with the economy (he was?); and by bringing back eco- having done something of which liberals approve (in the case of nomic growth, “we really restored American leadership.” Our the award to for pardoning , it was former colleague made the point in the Washington something they were able to approve long after the fact). Bush will Examiner that none of this amounted to a specific accomplish- get it for breaking his promise not to raise taxes as president. ment, and got called sexist as a result. So in case you were won- Rewind the tape to appreciate just what is being honored. Bush dering what the 2016 campaign would be like, now you know. attacked tax cuts as “voodoo economics” in his failed 1980 run for president. In his successful 1988 run he pledged in his convention n In a speech at his father’s presidential library, said speech to veto tax increases: “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Then that many illegal immigrants come to this country to better the lot he signed a tax increase. Then, running for reelection in 1992, he of their families: “It’s an act of love.” So it often is, and enforce- apologized for it (“I regret it”) and approved a party platform that ment should weigh more heavily on gangsters or terrorists than called the tax increase “recessionary” and urged its repeal. If he on the aspiring. But there are many kinds of love. Love of one’s accepts the award, Bush will be taking his fifth position on this country includes honoring its laws; breaking the laws of a new issue. Bush is a decent, civil, public-spirited, and in many re spects

ROMAN GENN country in order to get in it is a bad way to begin. There is also exemplary man. His record on taxes is nothing to celebrate.

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THE WEEK n We know that any political party, and especially one without n The Supreme Court struck down a campaign-finance regula- accomplishments, needs villains, and so has anointed tion in April: the aggregate limit on the amount that individuals libertarian industrialists Charles and David Koch. But isn’t may donate to candidates for federal office. The Court has held abuse supposed to be amusing? Once upon a time Rep re sen - that campaign-finance regulation is compatible with the First tative Charles Ogle (Whig, Pa.) accused President Martin Van Amend ment if it prevents corruption or its appearance. But it Bu ren of sculpting the White House lawn into breast-shaped reasoned that if contributing the maximum allowed to an indi- hillocks and fitting out the presidential dinner table with vidual candidate could not corrupt him, contributing that maxi- “green finger cups . . . to wash his pretty tapering, soft, white, mum to many candidates could not corrupt all of them. The lily fingers.” Now we have the majority leader, looking like a aggregate limit simply made no sense except as an expression of cross between an undertaker and his products, speaking in his animus against money in politics, which is what pays for politi- flat-as-a-manhole-cover monotone, delivering catch phrases cal speech. Justice Breyer, in dissent, accused the conservative co-authored by Jim Messina focus groups and a random word justices of insufficient realism about the corrupting effects of generator. Come on, senator: The Steyer brothers can buy you donations. Breyer also warned of the “grave problems of demo- better than that. cratic legitimacy” that would develop if incumbent politicians were not allowed more leeway in regulating political contribu- n Team Tolerance has taken the scalp of Mozilla CEO Brendan tions. Which seems much the less realistic point of view. Eich, who was forced out of the company he helped launch for having made a donation in support of Proposition 8, the n To make the case for the twice-stalled election-year sop California ballot initiative that defined marriage as a union known as the Paycheck Fairness Act, President Obama and con- between one man and one woman. The Eich witch-hunt did vio- gressional Democrats are again trumpeting the factoid that the lence not just against fairness but against the English language: average working American woman earns 77 cents for every dollar One angry Mozilla employee explained that Eich must be cast her male counterpart earns. As the president surely understands, out and excluded because the firm maintains a “culture of open- and his economic advisers have admitted, most of this wage gap ness and inclusion.” Eich’s views were shared not only by the is due to the occupational choices women make: to work fewer majority of California voters, who approved Proposition 8, but hours than men, take more time off from their careers, and enter by such monsters of homophobia as , who op - lower-paying fields. Studies that correct for these factors find an posed Proposition 8 but repeatedly affirmed his commitment to unexplained male advantage of 5 to 7 percent. The proposed its definition of marriage. Mozilla should be free to dismiss its bill—which would require employers to report detailed pay data CEO for his political views (although California civil-rights law by sex, race, and national origin to the government, and make it seems to frown on the practice), and there are circumstances under easier for trial lawyers to reap benefits from class-action dis- which doing so would be proper. But endorsing a millennia - crimination suits—would do virtually nothing to close the gap. old view of marriage isn’t exactly “Heil, Hitler,” and the scalp- The president is betting that his spurious embrace of “equal pay ing of Eich comes at a time when the IRS is being used as a for equal work” will be a winning campaign issue. What the pro- weapon against conservatives. A “culture of openness” would be posal would mostly mean is extra work for employers and extra a welcome thing, indeed. Where to find one? pay for trial lawyers.

n The House Oversight Committee has voted to hold former n Kathleen Sebelius surprised nearly everyone by announcing IRS operative Lois Lerner in contempt. Lerner, formerly in she would step down as HHS secretary. She picked a moment charge of the IRS branch tasked with policing tax-exempt non- when she was getting her first good press in months. The number profits, is at the center of the investigation of the agency’s tar- of Americans with insurance seems to be increasing, and the geting and harassment of conservative groups before the 2012 exchanges sort of hit their enrollment targets. The press largely election. She has refused to answer Congress’s questions but ignored the questions of how many of the enrollees will actually now could be compelled to testify or face incarceration. A sepa- pay their premiums and how sick the exchange population is, to rate congressional action has referred her case to the Justice say nothing of larger questions about the cost-benefit ratio of the Department for criminal prosecution, though has law. Republicans should be preparing a long list of questions for shown no inclination to put duty over politics. The evidence sug- Obama’s nominee to succeed her: Sylvia Burwell, who has been gests that Lerner both abused her power for political purposes serving in his budget office. Columnist , a speech- and misled investigators about the case. She is not the only one: writer for President George W. Bush, notes that she would have Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on Oversight, previ- been consulted before the president’s many comments about how ously denied having encouraged the IRS to target certain con- people would be able to keep their insurance plans if they liked servative groups, but IRS records show that his staff was in them. Should make for an interesting hearing. regular contact with the agency regarding True the Vote, a -based group that targeted voter fraud and was in turn n The House narrowly passed ’s 2015 budget this targeted by the IRS. Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) and other month, a budget that is largely the same as the one he introduced Democrats also pressed the IRS to target tea-party outfits and last year. As before, the plan balances the budget in ten years. It other conservative organizations. Meanwhile, IRS agents in at continues to tweak Ryan’s Medicare reform, his most important least three offices are on the hook for misusing agency idea, and attempts to reverse the devastating defense cuts of the resources for political purposes, which violates the Hatch Act. last couple of years. The plan has its flaws: Ryan relies too much The Democrats are maintaining party-line opposition to inves- on discretionary spending cuts to achieve balance, and Re - tigating these crimes, so “Cui bono?” is no mystery. publicans need a plan to fix Social Security. The whole budget can

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Write Down This Date: July 1st, 2014 On this day, Title V of U.S. Bill H.R. #2847JRHVLQWRH̆HFW ,WFRXOGFRVWRUGLQDU\$PHULFDQVPLOOLRQVRIGROODUVRYHUWKHQH[WIHZ\HDUV Dear Reader, the number of people on food BUT I PROMISE YOU: This     stamps has basically doubled law will definitely affect you,     Hi, my name is Porter Stansberry.  9 since Barack Obama took your family, and your future, :   Fifteen years ago, I founded office… and when HALF of all no matter where you live… no Stansberry & Associates children born today will be on matter how old you are… and no purchases, and cannot exchange Investment Research – the largest food stamps at some point in matter how much money you have. more than $5,800 in a given firm of its kind in the world. We their life? period. specialize in financial research, Here are the simple facts you need to and serve hundreds of thousands ** Can things really be “normal” know: Governments around the globe pull of paid subscribers in more than in America when the U.S. Federal 1. In 2010, the U.S. these stunts over and over again... 120 countries. Reserve is still printing $55 Congress passed House of always right before a currency BILLION every single month, just Representatives Bill H.R. #2847. devaluation or collapse. You may know of our firm because to keep the economy afloat? of the work we did over the last Hidden within this bill is a And now… it’s happenings right decade – helping investors avoid ** Or when our government provision known as “FATCA,” here, in the United States of America. STILL has to borrow 40% of which stands for the Foreign the big disasters associated with So, what can you do? Wall Street’s last collapse. all the money it spends just to Account Tax Compliance Act. keep things operating… not to Title V of this bill goes into Well, obviously, I’ve only touched We warned people to avoid Fannie mention raising the debt ceiling effect on July 1st of this year. on the very basics here. But if you’re Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman every few months? 2. This bill forces all worldwide interested in learning much more Brothers, General Motors and about this situation, and exactly dozens of other companies. ** Can everything be “back banks to comply with the IRS to normal” when the federal if they have any transactions in what you can do, I encourage you to We even helped our subscribers government’s debt has nearly U.S. dollars. Because the U.S. take a few minutes to check out the find opportunities to profit from doubled since 2007? dollar is still what’s known as exhaustive research I’ve done on these moves by shorting stocks and the world’s “reserve currency,” this subject. buying put options. ** Or when the “too big to fail banks” that got bailed out in it essentially means ALL www.NewAmerica2.com To my knowledge, no other 2007 are actually 37% larger WORLDWIDE BANKS, except On my company’s website, I’ve research firm can match our than they were back then? for the smallest community posted a very detailed FREE record of correctly predicting the institutions, must comply. presentation, which explains catastrophe that occurred in 2008 – You see, the sad truth is, NONE And the repercussions are of the problems that caused the everything you need to know, and the rebound that has occurred enormous… including what’s going to happen since then. financial crisis of 2007-2008 have been fixed. 3. For one, it means many next, and the exact steps I But that’s not why I’ve written this countries and institutions will recommend you take right now. letter. In fact, nearly everything is in move AWAY from the U.S. dollar worse shape than it was 7 years Get the facts for yourself. And completely as a reserve currency, watch my presentation on my I reference our success and ago. making it potentially much experience with Wall Street’s website, FREE of charge. Just go to: As a result, today America is more harder for our government to latest crisis because we believe borrow money, print more money, www.NewAmerica2.com. there is an even bigger crisis fragile than ever. Another crisis is imminent. and keep interest rates low. This Sincerely, lurking – something that will will soon have devastating affects shake the very foundation of And I believe that a series of new st on our currency, the economy, America. laws, set to go into effect on July 1 of your savings, the stock market, the And we believe it will accelerate at an this year, are going to accelerate this housing market, the bond market, crisis... in very dramatic fashion. extremely rapid pace, because of a and more. Porter Stansberry devastating new law that’s about to go Even more importantly, these 4. This law also makes it Founder, Stansberry Research in to effect on July 1st of this year. new regulations set to take place st extremely difficult – if not I’ve spent a lot of my firm’s money on July 1 will make it nearly impossible – for the average to buy space in this newspaper… impossible for most Americans to American to protect his money, P.S.: This has become by far the and similar space in other legally protect their savings... so it’s savings, and future, against a most popular research presentation newspapers around the country. imperative that you get the facts, currency collapse. in my firm’s history. More than 20 learn what you can do, and take million Americans have already I’ve done this, because I believe our action before that date. This is a clear example of what’s watched, and many have taken is on the precipice of another known as “capital controls.” critical steps to protect themselves major crisis. What exactly is going to happen on July 1st… and why has this received This is what broke and desperate and their savings. Now I know… almost ZERO attention in the governments do when they know Ryan and Kathy R. told us: This Most Americans believe everything mainstream press? their currency is in major trouble. “video has changed my family’s life! is “back to normal” after the crisis For example, it’s why: Here are the Facts You educated us thoroughly on all of 2008. Cyprus citizens were prohibited the issues our country is facing, even But if you think that’s true, I have You Need to Know for writing checks for more than though many ignore them.” to ask you: Why this new law has received 300 per day from their accounts. Ron A. said: “I watched [your ** How can things be “normal” in almost no attention from the Iceland blockaded offshore presentation]… and have our country when, according to a mainstream press is a mystery. investors from selling $7.2 forwarded it to many friends and family. Thanks so much for all the recent study by Bankrate, roughly Maybe it’s because most journalists billion in assets. 75% of Americans are now advice and for the encouragement don’t understand the basic laws of Argentinians must pay an to implement it.” living paycheck to paycheck, finance, economics, and business. extra tax on vacations abroad. with essentially zero savings? Remember, it’s free. Go to And I suppose most people Ukrainians must now wait six ** How can things really be www.NewAmerica2.com to check mistakenly believe this new law working days before making it out for yourself. “normal” in America, when doesn’t affect them. any type of foreign currency week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/16/2014 2:41 PM Page 8

THE WEEK be dismissed as theater since it is going nowhere. But having a n The idea that a gunman might run amok on a military base majority of the House vote year after year to reform a third rail seems, on first inspection, to be preposterous; that such a thing of American politics is a virtuous habit. Senate Democrats aren’t might happen twice in the same place doubly so. And yet, in expected to introduce a budget. We have counseled that Re - April, Texas’s Fort Hood came under attack for the second time publicans make an affirmative case for themselves in this fall’s in five years—a lone shooter killing four and injuring 16 before elections, offering ideas rather than just running against the dis- turning his gun on himself. Along with last year’s massacre at astrous Obama presidency. Ryan has repeatedly shown he Wash ington’s Navy Yard, the incident finally prompted some knows this better than almost anyone. good questions: Why aren’t our soldiers armed? Why are the nation’s finest forced to shelter behind tables and wait for the n Addressing the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action police to arrive when their lives are put in danger? The surprise Network, Attorney General Eric Holder said that no attorney gen- expressed by the public and the media alike suggested that few eral or president had been treated as harshly as he and Obama were aware that the permissive concealed-carry regimes that now have been by the House GOP. (Holder should have a chat with obtain across most of the country do not extend to the nation’s or Ed Meese.) Then Representative Steve military bases. A rule issued during the George H. W. Bush Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign administration established the national standard that all military Committee, said, in commenting on Holder’s comment, that the personnel must be disarmed while on base, and it has never been GOP base “to a significant extent . . . does have elements that are updated. The military being a risk-averse sort of institution, this animated by racism.” And finally Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi arrangement seems unlikely to change anytime soon. opined that “race has something to do” with Republican reluc- tance to bring up an immigration bill. Race certainly has every- n “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive!” So thing to do with the Democratic campaign strategy this year. boasted at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. That 1950s Show

OST Americans, consciously or unconsciously, that the recent—and possibly ebbing—wave of Mexican use the post–World War II era as their baseline immigration is not so unique a thing in American history. ‘M when analyzing the state of the nation. Con - But that’s a topic for elsewhere. servatives may pine for an era of Ozzie and Harriet domes- The social scientists didn’t merely take over higher edu- ticity, but social scientists (mostly liberal) are much more cation; they took over the government itself. Sure, that locked into the view that the United States from 1945 to process began a generation earlier, but by the 1950s they 1965 was ‘normal’ and that any deviation from its standards had the raw numbers to occupy the commanding heights represents an alarming deterioration in the conditions of and the lower ranks of every bureaucratic tower. Still, let’s American life.” not pin it all on the eggheads. TV came of age in the 1950s So writes Walter Russell Mead in the Winter 2013/14 and early 1960s. That, too, was a kind of Polaroid image of issue of the Claremont Review of Books. I think this is right. America at a particular moment. If TV had been in wide use But, if I may, I’d like to take a step back, a big step, and start in the 1930s (as Joe Biden thinks it was), or even the 1830s, from the fundament. In the metaphysical hierarchy of our collective assumptions about America’s progress things, when always struck me as more important, or at would be profoundly different. Conservatives may pine for least more interesting, than what. Ozzie and Harriet, but that’s in no small part because The The Heisenberg uncertainty principle holds that on an Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was a kind of cultural snap- atomic scale, you can determine the position of a thing shot of a specific moment. Imagine if the Nelson family lived (e.g., a particle) fairly precisely, but doing so means you in a tenement, or had a dirt floor and the kids had to work in can’t know its momentum with much precision (and vice the mill. Frankly, I’d watch that sitcom, but you get the point. versa). It’s like when you have a really good camera and About five years ago, Brink Lindsey, then with the Cato can take a sharp picture of a car barreling by, but you can’t Institute, wrote a wonderful little book called “Nostalgia - say very much about how fast the car is going, and know nomics” in which he argued that liberalism’s assumptions virtually nothing about what its final destination may be. At about economics are stuck in the 1950s (and conser- least metaphorically, something similar happens in life. vatism’s assumptions about culture are stuck there as well). Think about historic figures. You could learn a lot about Liberal complaints about economic inequality, corporate Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler, or Winston Churchill if you power, etc. were all hitched to a 1950s-snapshot under- could somehow talk to them, via time travel or a discov- standing of what America is, without any historical context. ered diary, when they were 16 years old. But we can all Lindsey is persuasive as far as he goes, but I would go far- agree that such snapshots don’t tell the whole story. ther. The postwar snapshot that liberals remember so Mead’s point about social scientists’ locking in assump- fondly was the time when their ideas were ascendant and tions about what constitutes “normal” America is well their authority was largely unquestioned. That’s no longer taken. But I think it goes broader and deeper than that—as, the case, and I suspect that’s why they miss the good times I should say, does Mead. His essay is about Michael of that 1950s show. Barone’s new book on immigration, in which Barone notes —JONAH GOLDBERG

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THE WEEK A true survivor, GM’s having a better run of it than a baker’s n Liberals love single-payer health care: It allows tremendous dozen of its customers, who were smashed to death as a conse- centralization of power, usually at someone else’s expense, with quence of the government-supported automaker’s engineering some real pecuniary benefit. At the cost of freedom and access, incompetence. GM was aware of hundreds of complaints about systems like the ones set up in Europe and Canada tend to hold its faulty ignition switches, with reports going back to 2004, and down health expenditures in a way the U.S. has never managed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was aware to. Thus, Vermont decided three years ago to adopt its own single- of problems going back to 2007, but no recall was ordered until payer system. As implementation moves along, reality has a decade after the first problems were seen. It is not insignificant proven less than encouraging: It will cost taxpayers $2 billion a that for a period of time in the intervening years, the majority year in a state that collected $2.7 billion in revenue last year. It shareholder in General Motors was none other than the U.S. should save on paperwork, but not as much as one hopes, since government, which managed to lose billions of dollars on that Green Mountain hospitals will still want to take out-of-state investment while largely protecting the entrenched company patients. It won’t have nearly the bargaining power a national manage ment from the consequences of its ineptitude. The GM health-care system does. That’s all pessimism, liberals say— bailout ensures that the federal government has a political stake in Canada, you know, started its single-payer health-care system in seeing the firm succeed, and thus the automaker’s scandal has one province, Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, though, Vermont has been handled rather more gently than, say, the BP spill was. The been essentially incapable of setting up its Obamacare exchange, formal bailout may be over, but we’ll be living with its conse- let alone constructing a fully public payment system. It’s almost quences for a long time. enough to ask if they’re in their right mind.

n The Export-Import Bank is crony capitalism in action. Unlike n “Poof, that was sort of the moment.” Secretary of State John the Obama-era innovations in this industry, it doesn’t even have Kerry was telling the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that a particular social purpose (not that that would be redeeming). It Israel’s approval of settlements had removed the possibility of just offers subsidized loans and credit insurance to companies successful negotiations to end the conflict between Israel and that wish to buy products made by U.S. firms, on the assumption the Palestinians. Actually it was never a possibility. Engaged in that boosting U.S. exports is an unalloyed good. Year after year, low-level fighting among themselves, Palestinian leaders one the Government Accountability Office has reminded Congress and all refuse to acknowledge the right of a Jewish state to exist. that the bank has a negligible effect on American exports. But it Engaged in high-level political power struggles between them- has a non-negligible effect on, for instance, the prices foreign air- selves, Israeli leaders refuse to accept the imposition of any- lines have to pay for their aircraft. With subsidized Ex-Im loans, thing like future risk for the nation. Right now, besides, there they can buy more Washington (State)–made Boeings than are immediate crises to the north in Syria, to the south in Egypt, American carriers can for the same amount of money, and that’s and to the east in Iran. All that Kerry was able to bring to nego- just the most obvious of the manifold distortions an institution tiations on which he’s staked his reputation and indeed his like the Ex-Im Bank creates. Its accounting is a mess, too: Rather career is the insistence that Israelis and Palestinians trust him than reporting its loans’ default rates every year, it just ballparks and the administration. “Poof” is the word. the numbers using industry figures. The bank’s balance sheet is more befitting a Chinese property developer than a taxpayer- n The Palestinians threatened to leave the current talks if the funded institution. Senator Mike Lee (Utah) has made a rousing Israelis didn’t release even more prisoners, something the latter call for a debate within the GOP on the matter—and on the issue were loath to do. So the White House dangled the release of of crony capitalism more generally. No doubt many Republicans, Jonathan Pollard, a traitor convicted of spying for Israel in one like most politicians, prize certain kinds of corporate welfare. But of the most serious espionage operations in modern American they are wrong, and Lee’s team should triumph. history and sentenced to a fitting punishment. Pollard should be left to rot indefinitely—until, let’s say, the peace process finally n It turns out that in New York State, tanning salons and restau- succeeds. rants are subject to more stringent health-inspection regimes than are abortion clinics. Documents released in April by the state de- n April’s elections in Afghanistan were a happy occasion for a part ment of health showed that only 25 of 225 abortion pro viders country that has had few such moments of late. While violence are regulated by New York and that, of those, eight had been in - has been rising in the capital, and the issued plenty of spect ed not at all and five were inspected just once over the last threats, millions of Afghans made it safely to the polls in defi- twelve years. At the clinics the state did inspect, numerous viola- ance of their medieval wannabe overlords. Fraud appears to tions were found, such as the reuse of disposable suction tubes to have been relatively subdued, and the results are encouraging. perform abortions and the failure to monitor patients during and All of the top candidates have rejected Hamid Karzai’s cheap after medical abortions. The heavily redacted information was anti-Americanism and eagerly pledged to sign a bilateral secu- un will ing ly divulged by the department in response to a Free dom rity agreement with the U.S.; Karzai’s successor candidate, who of Information Act lawsuit filed by the pro-life Chiaroscuro repudiated Karzai’s position, seems to have foundered, and the Foun da tion. One of the incidental revelations of the grand-jury opposition leader and a former World Bank official will be the report in the murder trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit runoff contestants. A peaceful transition of power is an exceed- Gosnell was that Pennsylvania had ceased to inspect abortion ingly thing in the Muslim world and in the developing clinics in 1993 “for political reasons.” If any Gosnells exist in world. Afghanistan has beaten the odds, for now, but one elec- New York, it seems that the pro-abortion establishment there tion hardly proves that democracy there will be durable. Given would likewise rather not know about it. what we have invested in the country, though, and the bravery

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THE WEEK the people there have shown, we owe them the continuing sup- ing that the question of whether a newborn lives or dies “should port we failed to provide in Iraq. be left up to the woman.” So why the fuss over the case of Utah’s Megan Huntsman, who killed six of the seven babies she gave n Most of us have, one year or another, gone to work, church, or birth to over a decade (one was stillborn) and stacked the little an appointment at the wrong hour due to daylight-saving time. bodies up like cords of wood in her garage? She strangled and But few of us have suffered for it as severely as the Dublin gang- suffocated her newborns on her own rather than having them ster who was planting a car bomb on the day Ireland moved its hacked to pieces in utero, but, given the moral tenor of the times, clocks forward. He set the timer for 11:00 P.M., not realizing it was what, exactly, is her crime? Practicing medicine without a license? already just a few minutes short of that hour, and the next thing Huntsman’s un sanc tioned killings are no different in kind from you know he was covered in blood and the Volvo SUV that had the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of state-sanctioned been his target was on fire. The non-detail-oriented perp was last killings that are carried out by duly licensed physicians every year seen getting into a taxi at New and Clanbrassil Streets, dripping in these United States, and all those who endorse the current moral gore all over the seat and no doubt invoking bitter imprecations framework of our abortion regime have a hand in this. Buy the on the head of Benjamin Franklin. ticket, take the ride. But you may not like where it goes.

n The Pulitzer board styles its prize as the recognition of journal- n It took a long time for the media to work up an interest in istic achievement. Increasingly, it is a circling of wagons around Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s crimes. The details of left-wing crusades and the progressive reporters who break news his case—such as severing babies’ spinal cords with scissors and about them. This year’s prizes for “public service” have been keeping the feet of aborted fetuses in jars—were harrowing and awarded to and the U.K.’s Guardian for sto- reporters didn’t want to touch them, lest they reflect badly on the ries based on the classified documents stolen by Edward Snowden, abortion industry as a whole. Thus, a year after his conviction for that champion of liberty who found a soft place to land in Putin’s murdering three babies, many Americans still don’t know who he Russia. Snowden purloined well over a million national-defense is. Filmmakers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer want to secrets. He has incalculably damaged our country, compromising change that and are crowdfunding a made-for-TV movie about the National Security Agency’s intelligence-gathering methods the Gosnell trial. After being asked by the popular crowdfunding and sources, while blinding the intelligence community to the site Kickstarter to make the project’s language less graphic hostile activities of terrorists and other enemies of America, and (removing the phrase “thousands of babies stabbed to death” and poisoning relations between the U.S. and nations that cooperate in similar descriptions), McElhinney and McAleer claimed censor- our security efforts at great risk to themselves. Is it really journal- ship and moved the project elsewhere—to Kickstarter’s rival site, istic achievement to render the nation less defensible? Indie gogo. At press time, the project had accumulated over 9,000 supporters who have pledged almost $800,000 of its $2.1 million goal. If the full $2.1 million is raised by May 12, the film will go n “Too much suffering, not enough hope. That is France’s into production and will be testament that Hollywood and the situation,” Manuel Valls, the country’s new prime minister, mainstream media don’t have all the decision-making rights tells the National Assembly. He should know. Previously about which stories get told. interior minister, he’s been a stalwart supporter of President François Hollande, whose Socialist government has brought n Honor Diaries is a documentary about the brutalization about the imbalance between suffering and women face in Muslim-majority countries. The production fea- hope that he’s complaining about. In tures Muslim women discussing their struggle for basic civil landslide local elections, the Socialists rights, with additional commentary from executive producer have just lost control of 150 towns. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others seeking to empower them. Though Valls is now cutting taxes for the low- blunt about “honor” killings, female genital mutilation, and paid. More extraordinary, he is freeing arranged child marriages, the film pulls punches about Islam, companies from employment costs finding root causes in “culture” and lack of education rather than and other charges worth billions of aspects of Muslim scripture and law that many influential sharia euros, and also reducing govern- jurists construe to endorse these misogynistic practices. Yet, as ment expenditure. This night follows day, professionally aggrieved Islamists, led by the French socialist might Council on American-Islamic Relations, have succeeded in not fit in Obama’s cab- shutting down screenings of Honor Diaries on American cam- inet: too right-wing. puses. CAIR, which arose out of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas support network (uncovered in the Justice Department’s 2008 Holy Land Foundation prosecution), acknowledged that n In February 2012, the Journal of Medical Ethics published an the film fairly treats a vital subject but claimed it should not be article titled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?” in seen because “Islamophobes” support it. Real change happens which “the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ only when ugliness is exposed, not enabled. (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.” In n Ayaan Hirsi Ali has faced a lot worse than a slap in the face by Canada, hundreds of babies born alive during attempted abortions Brandeis University. Somalia-born, she has been genitally muti- were left to die on the table, a practice that Planned Parenthood lated, beaten, and hounded from one country to another by Mus-

SIPA VIA APhas IMAGES defended in the U.S. context, with one of its lobbyists testify- lims, which has made her a fierce critic of Islam. In Holland, she

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made a film with Theo van Gogh, about the treatment of women prise anyone that she’s kind of dumb about it.” True, Dunst did in the muslim world. Van Gogh was murdered. The killer not major in women’s studies. Obviously she’s the dumb one. impaled a note to van Gogh’s chest, warning Hirsi Ali that she was next. She has since devoted her life to the cause of girls and n North Dakotans have long been proud of their state university’s women in repressive societies. It was for this reason that hockey team, the Fighting Sioux. At least, that’s what the team Brandeis decided to award her an honorary degree. But then the used to be called, until UND reluctantly abandoned its monicker “muslim community” made its objection clear, and, whaddaya and Indian-head logo in 2012 under threat of NCAA sanctions. know? Brandeis decided that an award to Hirsi Ali was not in Competing without a nickname, the team made this year’s college line with the university’s “core values.” Those values, by the championship, and as part of a university-sponsored contest to way, have allowed Brandeis to honor Harry Belafonte, a fervent support the anonymous icemen, a UND sorority hung out a ban- supporter of the Castro dictatorship and other brutal regimes. ner that read, “You can take away our mascot, but you can’t take Add appeasement to the list of those core values. away our pride!” The banner did not include the offending nick- name, nor did it contain any Indian iconography, yet this innocu- n professors at Rutgers have protested the scheduling of ous message caused university officials to reprimand the sorority, Condo leezza Rice as this year’s commencement speaker. order the banner’s removal, and issue the standard “we strongly professors at the University of minnesota have protested the support the First Amendment, but . . .” statement. (To be fair, this scheduling of Rice for another speech. These professors, at both sorority was a repeat offender: In 2007 it shocked the nation’s con- institutions, object to her participation in the George W. Bush science by holding a cowboys-and-Indians party, which earned it administration and do not wish to honor her. They need not a year’s suspension.) Just as has happened with same-sex mar- worry; their approval is no honor. riage, what yesterday was a vigorous controversy is today unmen- tionable, or in this case not even alludable. n Students at Dartmouth College occupied the office of the president, phil Hanlon, in April and confronted him about the 72 n Best of luck to Stephen Colbert as he replaces David Let ter - de mands they had issued back in February. Ever the liberal, the man as host of CBS’s perennial 11:30 p.m. runner-up The Late college president invited the radicals to reason together with Show. The Tiffany Network’s announcement that Colbert him, and they for their part also stuck to the script. What do they would compete with newly minted Tonight Show host Jimmy want? Racial quotas in admissions and faculty appointments. Fallon caused some political controversy— When do they want it? Now. Also, coverage of sex-change oper- called the choice of the longtime Bill O’Reilly parodist with the ations under the campus health plan and, while they’re at it, French-sounding surname a declaration of war on the heart- “gender-neutral bathrooms” and locker rooms. After an hour of land—but the move continues a 20-year tradition: Just as in the appearing to take the protesters seriously, Hanlon left. They long war between Letterman and Jay Leno, CBS will pit an stayed and camped out overnight. “Their grievance, in short, is “edgy” hipster favorite against an affable, eager-to-please that they don’t feel like Dartmouth is fostering a welcoming everyman (though a remarkably talented one in Fallon). If any- environment,” Hanlon said the next day in a statement. “I deeply thing, the political import of CBS’s move is toward moderation: empathize with them.” Reenactments of the springtime campus Colbert is less left-leaning than Letterman, whose dreary revolts of the 1960s are a tradition across college campuses this Connecticut-limousine-liberal politics took center stage as he time of year. It is just about the only they have left. shed the punkish anti-comedy that made his Eighties late-late show great. The competition will most likely be a sideshow in n Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays the lead in a television series called the ever-more-crowded field of late-night talkers. Veep, portraying a vice-president much like Joe Biden except for being female and smart. To promote the series, she posed naked n Fergus Reid Buckley, the youngest brother of our founder, is for the cover of Rolling Stone with the start of the Constitution best known to longtime readers as the face in the advertisement photoshopped on her back. Unfortunately, at the bottom of the of the Buckley School of public Speaking. But many will also text was the signature of John Hancock, who never signed the remember him, and rightly so, as a fine writer, in these pages and real Constitution and in fact didn’t like it very much. We would those of other conservative magazines. Often mistaken for Bill in suspect the error was done intentionally for publicity if we appearance and polysyllabicism, Reid was fun, and as charming thought anyone at Rolling Stone knew the difference between the a man as you could meet, brandishing joy, a thousand-watt smile, Con sti tu tion and the Declaration of Independence. and exotic duds—you learned not to be surprised when he showed up at NR’s offices in a cape and lederhosen, carrying a n The actress Kirsten Dunst shared some thoughts about femi- walking stick, and donning an Alpine hat adorned by a big feather. ninity and relationships in the may issue of the U.K. edition of As nephew Christopher Buckley put it, “Reid is . . . Reid.” A Yale Harper’s Bazaar. “I feel like the feminine has been a little under- grad and, like brother Bill, a debate phenom, he left the U.S. after valued,” she said, expressing appreciation for the “valuable thing” a stint in the Air Force, trying the life of a writer (and a pal of Ava created by her stay-at-home mother. She added: “Sometimes, you Gardner) in Spain. He returned after a decade and a half as the need your knight in shining armor. I’m sorry. You need a man to expatriate to set up camp in Camden, S.C., at his parents’ old be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s why relationships winter estate, thrilled to embrace their Southern roots, and to work.” Dunst’s comments were immediately met with mockery train mumbling, slouching, and “uhh”-ing out of Fortune 500 and derision on feminist and Twitter. A blogger for Jezebel executives who attended the school, which is just what one wrote that Dunst, an “actress and blonde who looks good in would ex pect of the author of the acclaimed Speaking in Public. clothes,” is “not paid to write gender theory so it shouldn’t sur- When he wasn’t teaching, he was writing. His final years were a

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THE WEEK health struggle—emphysema (again, so like Bill)—that eventu- ally claimed him. He leaves his love, his wife, Tasa, their ten children and many grandchildren, and many more nieces and nephews and friends, including those of us at NR, to whom he will be ever be loved. R.I.P.

n Mickey Rooney first hit the silver screen in 1927, and 85 years later was still applying the greasepaint, in a seemingly endless and iconic career that entertained many millions. If movies are the way generations from Topeka to Timbuktu have learned, for better or worse, what America is, then few have educated as many as has Rooney. The sawed-off, multi-married, Oscar-nominated (four times) actor was America’s top box-office draw in the late Thirties and early Forties; his dozen-plus Andy Hardy movies and Judy Garland–sidekickings celebrated an America where folks were honest, responsible, hard-working, patriotic, hopeful, happy, respectful, and fun, where home was indeed sweet home, where aw-shucks girl-crazy teens thrilled to steal a kiss from Polly. Rooney could be a ham, but he could also be brilliant: His perfor- mances in The Human Comedy and Requiem for a Heavyweight were exquisite. He’ll be rightly remembered as a hard-working and occupation of Ukraine outside Crimea is fraught with mas- and talented man who played a central role in forming America’s sive risks for Moscow; that prospective members of his Eurasian most prominent cultural product. Dead at 93. R.I.P. Union, such as Kazakhstan, now show a marked reluctance to join; and that Russia is facing the serious threat of a gradual FOREIGN POLICY Western economic decoupling from its needy economy. How Ukraine and the Crisis of the West long will an authoritarian kleptocracy remain popular as these trends play themselves out? N a drop of rain can be seen all the colors of the rainbow.” Compared with Putin’s crisis, the others are modest. NATO is This remark of the historian Lewis Namier is apposite to divided: The Franco-German-Italian bloc, risk-averse and un - ‘I the current international crisis: Ukraine is the raindrop, willing to spend more on defense, resists the more proactive and the colors of the rainbow are a spectrum of crises in Russia, approach of the U.S., the U.K., and other states that seem pre- NATO, and the American Right. The apparent stability of the pared to consider bolder measures. This is a situation tailor-made post– world has been shattered by President Putin’s for bold American leadership; unfortunately, it was U.S. policy annexation of Crimea and subversion of Ukraine. We now live since 2009—the pivot to Asia—that created the power vacuum in a world determined by military force and economic competi- that Putin has exploited. Since the crisis began, moreover, tion. And it will take at least a decade to put Humpty Dumpty Washington has seemed schizophrenic, making strong assertions together again—if that is even possible. of principle but proposing what are as yet only cautious responses Though Putin’s Russia seems at present to be the victor, Rus - and hinting that Kiev might have to concede ground to Russian sia’s crisis is in fact the deepest and most toxic one. Russia’s demands. These contradictions may be defensible diplomatic government is an authoritarian kleptocracy that has failed to use maneuvers, but they give little confidence to the Ukrainians and the lavish energy revenues of the last 20 years to reform and little anxiety to the Kremlin. diversify its economy. Its population declined over the past few Unfortunately, American conservatives too are divided decades because of, among other things, its diminished life ex - between those who favor a bold response and those who fear pec tan cy, which itself can be traced to rampant alcoholism. And being drawn into a conflict. This conflict, however, is one that its justifying ideology is a semi-czarist combination of Great will determine whether the West’s victory in the Cold War Russian chauvinism and Orthodoxy. remains standing. America must therefore adopt a policy Some Western conservatives find that ideology attractive, but aimed at defeating Putin’s ambitious revanchism even if it it is largely a fraudulent one. Russia is a Chekist state owned by takes a long time to succeed. Such a policy would have two its in telligence services, which manipulate ideologies to suit the arms. Its military-strategic arm would include such policies as au di ence and occasion. And the appeal and longevity of the cur- reviving the placement of anti-missile installations in Poland rent ideology are dependent on continued successful expansion. and the Czech Republic; placing NATO infrastructure and per- PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE , That may well suit Putin for the moment, but his problem is that sonnel in Central and Eastern European countries and the Baltic this strategy is failing. Until a few months ago, he seemed to states; and in general raising the potential costs of Russian mil- have conscripted Ukraine into his proposed Eurasian Union. itary adventurism. The second arm would be to make it clear Today, having lost Ukraine, he has chosen a second-best strategy that the U.S. will accelerate the process whereby Europe is MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV , of an nex ing Crimea and destabilizing eastern Ukraine. gradually reducing its dependence on Russian energy supplies. Putin still has a short-term tactical advantage in a region where The crises afflicting Europe and America are largely self- NOVOSTI - RIA

/ Russia is the local superpower. But those shortsighted Western inflicted; Putin’s crises are presented to him by history. He is commentators who see him as the victor ignore several important dealing with them boldly and ruthlessly; we are hesitating and

AP PHOTO facts: that Putin has lost most of Ukraine; that a Russian invasion debating. If he wins, we will have given him the victory.

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tion. We need not relitigate this history to conclude that Russia is pursuing its own national interests, not conveniently accommodating itself to ours. We should rather be urgently reassess- ing how to conduct relations with Mos - cow, a rethinking that is, unfortunately, essentially certain not to happen during what remains of Obama’s term. His near- total inattention to Ukraine for the past five years is entirely consistent with his general indifference to threats to American national security worldwide. His flaccid response to Putin’s adventurism—whin- ing about violations of international law and imposing trivial sanctions—does not foreshadow bolder strategic thinking. What should be the broad elements of a new U.S. strategy toward Russia? What are the conceptual underpinnings required to protect our interests, and A Better Russia ‘Reset’ those of friends and allies, as Russia pur- We need a foreign policy equipped to deal with the Putin regime sues its new brand of adventurism? First, we must remember that competi- BY JOHN R. BOLTON tion and conflict between major powers is inevitable. Obama says derisively that OSCOW’s military takeover of increase the prospective cost of hostile the Ukraine crisis is not “some Cold War Crimea, its continuing threat behavior toward these countries, and chessboard in which we’re in competi- to Ukraine, and its disdainful deter Vladimir Putin from acting else- tion with Russia.” Indeed it is not. It is M response to token Western where as he did, with impunity, in instead a return to the 19th century—and sanctions all bode poorly for other, now- Ukraine. The United States in particular the thousand prior centuries of human independent former Soviet republics, could do far more to demonstrate both history, which neither Obama nor his and for European peace and security strength and resolve in opposing Mos - ideological cohort understands any bet- generally. Moreover, as Russia success- cow’s aggression. At press time, pro- ter. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson was naïve fully dismembers and re-annexes portions Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine to say, “There must be, not a balance of of a neighboring country on northern were locked in a standoff with the power, but a community of power; not Europe’s great plain, the lessons are Ukrainian government, with little re - organized rivalries, but an organized clear: The forces of global stability, led sponse from the president besides an common peace.” And Obama was naïve by the United States, are weakening, and expression of “grave concern.” to say, in 2009, “More than at any point in prospects for the predators are rising. Doubtless there are other steps the human history, the interests of nations While the West’s responses to Russia’s West could take. But as we consider such and peoples are shared. . . . In an era when aggressiveness in Ukraine thus far have steps, however worthy they may be, we our destiny is shared, power is no longer been weak and ineffectual, there are many must not get lost in a tactical forest. a zero-sum game.” more-robust alternatives available, such Instead, we should recognize that we Moreover, recent months are not sim- as significantly expanding economic sanc- have entered into a new phase in relations ply an aberration in the seamless spread of tions and repositioning North Atlantic with Russia. Under President George W. global democracy. By capturing Crimea, Treaty Organization military assets to Bush, Washington hoped to establish a Russia has put to rest for the foresee- Poland and the Baltic republics. Raising “new strategic framework” with Mos- able future the idea that it is prepared to the economic costs of the Crimea annexa- cow, a post–Cold War relationship that become a truly Western nation. Putin’s tion to levels far beyond the current pin- emphasized common interests against popularity is near all-time highs. The prick sanctions could dissuade Moscow international terrorism and rogue states Western foreign-policy establishment’s from undertaking further land grabs in seeking weapons of mass destruction. favorite former Soviet leader, Mikhail Ukraine or other former Soviet territories. Moscow had its chance to enter this new Gorbachev, has hailed Putin’s coup de Increased NATO military capabilities in strategic framework but chose not to. main. Pro-Russian sentiment in southern states abutting Russia would dramatically Under President Barack Obama, who and eastern Ukraine, long dormant, is vigorously pressed his policy “reset” now rising, and not just because Mother Mr. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United button to overcome the deterioration in Russia has undoubtedly sent in “outside Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise U.S.–Russian relations, the idea of strategy agitators.” Institute. He is the author of Surrender Is Not all but disappeared in a fog of rhetoric Moreover, the knee-jerk resort to diplo-

an Option. about “common interests” and negotia- macy is no panacea. Negotiation, like all ROMAN GENN

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human activity, has costs as well as bene- more broadly than just to the Muscovite nuclear and its conventional capabilities. fits, which must be weighed carefully, Rus. Even mere “regional powers” can work particularly when dealing with authori- Second, although we need a reinvigo- their will in their own backyards when tarian states. In Ukraine, as in so many rated NATO, we must recognize that we confronted with international apathy or other cases (including failing or failed may not get it. Russia’s seizure of Crimea weakness. More to the point, Russia’s Middle Eastern negotiations over the constitutes an existential threat to NATO, nuclear capabilities remain second only to Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the war in and the alliance’s response to date is not ours. Syria, and Iran’s nuclear-weapons pro- encouraging. NATO’s European members Obama erred badly by abandoning U.S. gram), too many Americans, including rejected President Bush’s 2008 proposal national missile-defense programs in those in the Obama administration, to put Georgia and Ukraine on a clear Poland and the Czech Republic and by reflexively ask, “What can it hurt” to try path to membership. Four months later, cutting missile-defense research and diplomacy? The answer is that the very Russia invaded Georgia. Today, Europe development. Moscow is modernizing its act of negotiation can affect the course of is even more dependent on Russian oil nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities, events, as can the timing, scope, number and gas supplies, and its political leaders and China’s nuclear arsenal is also grow- of parties (bilateral or multilateral), and are even less resolute than before. ing rapidly. Given recent Russian and Chinese belligerence, we should consider going beyond President Bush’s rationale America needs a national debate on for withdrawing from the 1972 ABM the future of its relations with Russia Treaty (to develop limited national missile- defense capabilities against rogue states), and the wider world. by expanding the scope of national mis- sile defense to counter threats larger than duration of negotiations. The potential If Europe steps up to its NATO respon- just the likes of Iran and North Korea. costs and benefits of proposed talks must sibilities, much is possible. If Europe While we need not move immediately be compared with those of the available remains weak and fearful, however, then to Reagan’s original notion of compre- alternative uses of national power and even steps like expanding Ameri can oil hensive national-defense capabilities, persuasion. None of that changed because and gas exports will mean little. Con - we should fashion a scalable program of Woodrow Wilson, and most assuredly tinued NATO vacillation will mean that with the potential to reach that point ulti- none of that has changed because of the Baltic states become truly defenseless mately. Moreover, Washington should Barack Obama. (rather than merely extraordinarily diffi- immediately serve notice of withdrawal The vagaries of negotiation and the cult to defend, as they are now), and that from the New START treaty, truly a relic persistence of national interests used to the prospect of reviving the 2008 mem- of Cold War thinking, since we no longer be well understood. In Present at the bership proposal for Georgia and Ukraine face a bilateral nuclear threat environment Creation, Dean Acheson quotes a British will be lost, perhaps forever. and our capabilities are aging. We should ambassador to Moscow in the 1950s, Sir The Europeans now have a choice: also reject the Comprehensive Nuclear William Hayter, on Russia’s concept of They must either support an effective Test-Ban Treaty unequivocally, and re - diplomacy: NATO, capable of maintaining trans - sume limited underground nuclear test- at lantic peace and security, or be pre- ing to assure the safety and reliability Negotiation with the Russians does pared for U.S. support for NATO to of our nuclear stockpiles. Supporters of occur, from time to time, but it requires eva porate under rising isolationist pres- Obama’s Ukraine policy argue that no particular skill. The Russians are not sures. It is painful and unfortunate to Russia is acting out of weakness rather to be persuaded by eloquence or con- discuss NATO’s future in the midst of than strength. The foregoing steps would, vinced by reasoned arguments. They rely on what Stalin used to call the an isolationist revival here, but in truth at a minimum, test that proposition, proper basis of international policy, the we cannot be more European than the because Russian weakness and bud- calculation of forces. So no case, how- Europeans. We cannot protect countries getary constraints would inevitably and ever skillfully deployed, however clearly on the Russia–NATO frontier without rapidly become clear if Russia tried to demonstrated as irrefutable, will move European material and logistical coop- keep up with us. them from what they have previously eration. Of course, Washington has also Of course, much more must be done decided to do; the only way of changing been delinquent, especially under Obama. than is outlined here. Most fundamen- their purpose is to demonstrate that they All NATO members need substantial tally, America needs a national debate have no advantageous alternative, that defense-budget increases; if that means on the future of its relations with Russia what they want to do is not possible. cutting domestic welfare and entitlement and the wider world. Our politicians have Negotiations with the Russians are there- programs, so be it. not provided either effective leadership fore very mechanical; and they are prob- ably better conducted on paper than by Third, whatever happens with NATO, or strategic thinking for the past five word of mouth. Washington must reassess the Russian years, and that must change. While no nuclear threat. Deriding Russia as merely substantial improvement in America’s Acheson himself said of Moscow’s a “regional power” acting from weakness utterly inadequate current performance diplomats: “Theirs is a more primitive rather than strength, as Obama did, may on the foreign-policy stage is likely while form of political method.” And this char- satisfy a misplaced sense of superiority, Obama remains president, we can at least acterization of “diplomacy” applies far but it vastly underestimates both Russia’s restart the debate.

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deregulation, tax cuts, declining public employee compensation went up, but the investment, and government hostility to extra money went to health benefits rather Greater unions have created an economy where than wages. Then came the crash. median the very richest take all the rewards. This household income, again adjusted for Growth model of economic development—and inflation, fell 9 percent from 2000 to particularly the lax oversight of the finan- 2012. Steps to reduce cial industry it entailed—is what caused Conservatives have generally lacked a economic anxiety the crash of 2008. coherent and persuasive response to the It follows that we need to reverse disappointing economic performance of course. raise taxes, especially on the very the last decade and a half. They spent the BY RAMESH PONNURU rich; increase the minimum wage; expand middle part of the last decade talking public investment in industries that show about “the Bush boom.” When it ended in ames monroe had the third eight- the potential to create jobs, such as green disaster, conservative politicians did not year presidency in a row, a period energy; and reinvigorate public oversight, do much to counter the prevailing liberal called “the era of good feelings” especially of the financial industry. narrative about deregulation as the cause. J for its lack of partisan rancor. We each of these matters inspires argument Instead they moved pretty rapidly to criti- are now finishing another string of three without end. But there is good reason to cizing the obama policy agenda. While back-to-back eight-year presidencies, reject both the liberal diagnosis and the that criticism was often justified, it some- but Barack obama’s america is experi- prescription. a higher minimum wage times had the effect of making it sound as encing something closer to an era of bad will not do much one way or the other for though conservatives thought that the feelings. most people, but will likely retard job economy was basically doing fine before Gallup in early march asked americans growth, especially for those with less January 2009, and wanted only to reverse whether they were “satisfied or dissatis- schooling. subsidies for green energy will the obama policies instituted afterward. fied with the way things are going in the probably yield more boondoggles than sometimes conservatives have rein- United states at this time.” The nays had breakthroughs. Unionization has declined forced that impression of complacency it, 73 to 25. an nBC news/Wall Street more because unionized companies found even when they have taken a longer view. Journal poll taken at the same time asked it impossible to compete with non-union They have been so eager to defend the whether “things in the nation are gen - companies than because elected officials reforms of the 1980s that they have over- erally headed in the right direction” or turned against them. looked more recent trends. Their eco- “are off on the wrong track.” results: 65 maybe most important, the economic nomic program has not adapted much percent for tracking wrongward, 26 per- numbers look pretty good for the 1980s to changed circumstances. It remains cent rightly headed. Pew put the question and 1990s. median household income focused on reducing the top income-tax in terms that often bring out american rose 19 percent after inflation from 1980 rate: Congressional republicans have optimism: “Do you think the country’s to 2000. The statistics were reflected in repeatedly voted for budgets that declare best years are ahead of us or behind us?” how people felt at the time. In the late a goal of lowering it to 25 percent. It was a closer call, but nostalgia beat 1990s, 71 percent of people told pollsters The traditional supply-side argument hope 49–44. for that they thought for lower rates—that improving incen- much of this pessimism seems to the next generation would have better tives to work, save, and invest will in - be related to economic insecurity. a lives. crease the economy’s long-term growth mcClatchy-marist poll in February found more recently, though, economic pro - rate—still has some force. That force has that 68 percent of respondents believed gress has slowed—if not halted. Growth diminished, however, for several reasons. that these days, “people who work hard” since 2000 has been weak. In the middle reagan was successful at bringing the top have “a hard time maintaining their stan- of the last decade, economic growth did rate down: Cutting it from 70 percent to dard of living.” eighty percent thought not translate into higher take-home pay. 40 raised after-tax returns on effort a lot that it took more effort “to get ahead” than more than cutting it from 40 to 25 would. it did in previous generations. The vast We have changed too. Labor-force par- majority of americans—86 percent in ticipation was increasing in the 1980s as that poll, comparable to the number in women entered the work force. It has other surveys—define themselves as been falling in recent years. educational middle class. But polls also find wide- attainment was rising rapidly too, where it spread fear of falling out of the middle has now slowed down. The median age class. Confidence that “today’s youth was younger then. Cutting tax rates was will have a better life” has plummeted more likely to yield growth for that popu- over the last 15 years. lation than for ours. Growth, in turn, was Liberals have both an explanation and a more likely to generate wage gains, since remedy at hand. The economic optimism health-insurance premiums were a lower of post–World War II america, they say, percentage of compensation. rested on a compact between big busi- Three sets of reforms could help turn ness, big labor, and big government that “You can’t just lie in there, kid—you have to lie like things around for today’s middle-class broke down around 1980. since then you mean it.” households. We need measures to in -

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crease economic growth, to safeguard do not feel as though they are getting that growth against the risks of fiscal ahead even when GDP rises. disaster, and to ensure that this growth Raising children is an investment in the Mike Pence’s translates into rising living standards for future that the federal government dis- everyone. courages by failing to recognize it ade- Federalism To promote growth, we should reduce quately in the tax code. The government the tax code’s bias against saving and counts on parents to make the financial Does it have a future on investment. In particular, we should make sacrifices needed to raise the next genera- Pennsylvania Avenue? it attractive to invest in the United States tion of taxpayers while also taxing them by adopting expensing for all business as though they had not made those sacri- BY ELIANA JOHNSON investment—that is, letting companies fices. Twenty years ago, write off the cost of investments immedi- and a Republican Congress created a tax IkE PENCE was elected gover- ately, rather than making them follow a credit for children, moving federal policy nor of Indiana in November complicated depreciation schedule. in the right direction. That credit is much 2012 almost under the radar. A pro-growth agenda should not, how- M Other events attracted more too small, however, to offset the burden ever, stop with taxes. The misuse and entitlements place on parents. The credit attention, particularly the state’s Senate overextension of the patent system seems should be expanded. race, which attracted national attention to be undermining the innovation it is Federal tax and regulatory policy has after Richard Mourdock, the Republican meant to encourage. In Room to Grow, a swollen health costs, too, reducing take- nominee, knocked off six-term senator forthcoming collection of essays from the home pay. Obamacare seems unlikely to Richard Lugar in the GOP primary and YG Network about needed conservative improve matters and may well make then threw away any chance of winning reforms, James Pethokoukis argues that them worse. We should try a different by saying that pregnancies stemming federal support for the financial industry approach, or rather the same one we use to from rape are “something that God in - is discouraging business innovation as get value for the dollar in the rest of the tended to happen.” Then there was Mitch well. In both of these areas, the federal economy: competition and choice. In - Daniels, Indiana’s popular two-term gov- government is promoting the interests of stead of being rewarded with bigger tax ernor, whose legacy hovered over Pence some businesses rather than the economy breaks for buying more expensive in - as he campaigned. Pence had no catchy as a whole, and it should stop. surance policies, people should get a tax campaign slogans, only talk of taking the Runaway debt is a potential threat to credit that helps them pay for coverage Hoosier state from “good to great” and economic growth. The deficit is declin- but encourages them to economize. “from reform to results.” ing for now, but Medicare, Social People who do not have access to company Before his run for the governorship, Security, and other entitlements contin- plans should be able to use this credit to though, Pence had turned heads. The ue their remorseless growth. The federal get coverage for themselves. Weekly Standard’s urged him government should continue to help Every year higher education seems to to run for president in 2012. So did Club senior citizens afford health care and become less of an engine of opportunity for Growth president Chris Chocola and secure re tirements, but in a more re- and more of a bottleneck in the economy. FreedomWorks president Matt kibbe, sponsible way than it does today. Social A degree is necessary for a lot of jobs; but two prominent free-market leaders. Pence Security grows over time so that the it does less than it once did to guarantee a is a favorite of social conservatives, too. retirees of 2040 get much bigger checks good job. And the costs keep rising. We He is perhaps best known for his oft- than the retirees of 2010. It should be need more paths to opportunity. We repeated statement that he is “a Christian, adjusted so that benefits keep up with should let people sell shares of their future a conservative, and a Republican—in that inflation, but grow no faster than that. earnings to finance their educations, pro- order.” At the Value Voters Summit in Medicare should be changed along the mote online learning, break the colleges’ 2010, he won the straw poll for both pres- lines that congressional Republicans have accreditation cartel, develop certifica- ident and vice president. Frequently men- repeatedly voted for: Seniors should be tion tests that allow many career-minded tioned as a dark-horse candidate for the able to pick a coverage plan, with the fed- kids to bypass college altogether in 2016 Repub lican presidential nomina- eral government defraying the cost of a favor of other forms of training, and pur- tion, he is among a handful of Republican set of basic benefits. That way seniors sue other strategies to make traditional governors said he’d like to would have an incentive to choose plans colleges both more affordable and less see vie for it. that offer the best value for money, and necessary. Pence spent a decade (1990 to 2000) as companies to offer them. None of these problems—slow growth, a radio talk-show host after mounting Neither higher growth nor a reduced metastasizing entitlements, the rising cost two failed bids for Congress, in 1988 and federal debt load, as important as they are, of important parts of the American 1990, and he is conversant on political will make households feel richer unless dream—was caused by President Obama. issues across the spectrum. He is also the government also does something All of them pre-date his administration. unusual among politicians for having about the costs it has imposed on them. He has not done much to address the moved from a media career into politics Federal policy makes the costs of raising problems, however, and has in some rather than the other way around. In radio, kids, purchasing health care, and getting respects made them worse. In all of these he says, he gained confidence in the good an education higher than they should be, areas, we ought to give conservative solu- sense of his fellow Hoosiers. “People which is an important reason Americans tions a try. would call me from the back of tractors,

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they would call me between sales calls, “realignment of government.” The senior ative caucus within the House. He hassled they would call me from their kitchen aide says that behind this goal is an appre- the Bush administration to the end, voting tables,” he says. A senior aide says part of ciation of and enthusiasm for competitive against the $700 billion Troubled Asset the reason that The Mike Pence Show federalism, the idea that states are in con- Relief Program in late 2008. In 2009, as took off—ultimately it was syndicated on stant competition with one another for the voice of an increasingly disgruntled 19 stations—is that Pence “would always people and investments. The states “know coterie of small-government conserva- meet people at the highest level.” He they’re all part of a great league, but they tives, he was elected chairman of the developed a reputation for listening and compete with one another, like the NBA,” Republican Conference, the third-highest being fair-minded. the aide says. GOP leadership position. In 2012, a presidential bid would have One of Pence’s first acts as governor Back in Indiana, Pence continues his been tough: James Garfield was the last was to rename the state’s Office of Fede - fight against the federal government. He man to jump directly from the House of ral Grants and Procurements the Office of negotiated with a resistant Health and Representatives to the presidency. Pence State Based Initiatives. “Even when we Human Services secretary Kathleen ran for governor instead. It was a close can get money from Wash ington,” he Sebelius in 2013 to secure a one-year race: He won by 2.9 percentage points. says, “we apply a cost-benefit analysis.” waiver permitting Indiana to continue the Come 2016, Pence’s résumé would The website of this office, which is still Healthy Indiana Plan, a health-insurance serve him well. The former six-term con- devoted to securing federal funds, pro- program for low-income residents, rather gressman would bring both legislative claims that its policy goal is to “promote than expand Medicaid as most states did and executive experience to a field likely Hoosier solutions to Hoosier problems” under the provisions of the Affordable to be filled by those with one or the other. and that “Indiana must take the lead in Care Act. The plan requires contributions Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is the pushing back against federal mandates to a health savings account (HSA) and only other likely candidate to boast both that stifle Hoosier ingenuity in finding has a record of success. When I ask him credentials. While Pence has been in solutions to public policy problems.” about it, Pence is quick to note that HSAs Indianapolis, the ever-present tension His commitment to reviving federalism were the brainchild of J. Patrick Rooney, between the conservative movement and made Pence one of the Bush administra- “a visionary Hoosier”; he calls Indiana the Republican party—tension that a tion’s chief Republican foes. He has the “home court of HSAs in the country.” politician like him could potentially recalled arriving in Washington to find The plan’s ultimate goal is to end tradi- ease—has only grown. that the GOP’s top legislative priority— tional Medicaid in Indiana for all but the In his office on the second floor of one that George W. Bush had campaigned aged, blind, and disabled. Indiana’s statehouse, Pence is surrounded on in 2000—was the No Child Left On Pence’s watch, Indiana became the by portraits of former Indiana governors, Behind Act, which ushered in a large first state to withdraw from the Common a photograph of himself as a congres- expansion of the federal government’s Core Standards. The education bench- sional candidate with a smiling Ronald role in education. Pence was one of just marks, adopted by 44 states, have pro- Reagan, and a painting of Abraham 34 Republican congressmen to vote voked outrage from conservatives who Lincoln, who, Pence is quick to point out, against the bill, which passed the House worry that the measure would water down spent his formative years in Indiana. The 384–45. The party’s top legislative pri- curricula and weaken local authority. 54-year-old governor is soft-spoken, the ority in the next Congress was Medicare Other states may follow Indiana’s lead— rare person who conveys enthusiasm by Part D, the expansion of Medicare to Oklahoma already has. On April 15, the lowering his voice rather than raising it. cover seniors’ prescription drugs. Pence Pence administration issued proposed He is unabashedly hokey: He talks often was one of just 19 Republicans to vote no. academic standards that it says are better of “everyday Hoosiers” and of doing The bill passed by one vote. than any the state has ever had. things the “Indiana way.” In a speech at As 2016 approaches, Pence will no Pence tells me that his experience in in 2004, Pence lauded Bush’s leadership doubt again be entreated to run. “People Washington has made him a better gov- in the War on Terror but described the have said to me, ‘Should the next presi- ernor, although his dozen years in the president’s domestic initiatives as evi- dent be a governor?’ Obviously, I’m sym- nation’s capital seem mostly to have dence that the conservative movement pathetic to that thought,” he says. “That’s reinforced his distaste for the federal had faltered. “The conservative move- meant to be funny.” The Indiana governor government. “People say to me, ‘When ment today is like the tall ship with its knows what he wants to hear from the is Con gress going to be able to lead?’ I proud captain: strong, accomplished, but GOP nominee. “I’ll tell you what I’m lis- know those people,” he says. “Congress is veering off course into the dangerous and tening for just as a citizen and a voter,” he never going to be able to lead. Congress uncharted waters of big-government says. “I don’t want to hear somebody who isn’t designed to lead.” Republicanism,” he said. says, ‘Send me to Washington, D.C., and Pence has long pushed for a “renewed That kind of talk, and his penchant for I’ll run the government like I ran my state.’ federalism” that would restore to the broadcasting his views on national televi- Washington, D.C., is not a state, literally states their rightful powers. More than sion, did not win him many friends among and figuratively. What I’m listening for is once, he mentions Reagan’s 1982 speech administration officials, who told him he somebody that says, ‘Send me to Wash - to a joint session of the Indiana state leg- would stagnate in Congress. But he did ington, D.C., and I’ll work to make it more islature in which the 40th president not. Four years after joining Congress, in possible for the next person running my vowed to return responsibility for more 2005, he was elected chairman of the state to run it with more freedom and than 40 federal programs to the states, in a Republican Study Committee, a conserv- more flexibility.’ That’s a message.”

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A War For Oils The presidential arts of George W. Bush

BY JAMES ROSEN

nvEILInG original paintings of the world leaders he has known, George W. Bush flouts U convention with a daring he only occasionally displayed as president of the United States. First, it is excep- tional to see art—a manifestation of emotionalism and, more fundamentally, Bush the civilian conqueror who ven- whom the element of caricature steals in of hu manism—come from politicians. tured so boldly and controversially into from the top, in an exaggerated widow’s Shouldn’t they be off somewhere carving the Middle East, staring into the Middle peak sure to stir consternation in the for- up congressional districts, or, if retired, Distance, neither contented nor broken, mer British prime minister; and of Ehud attending funerals? The practice of oil still assessing it all, and—as he surely Olmert, the Israeli prime minister from painting, which Mr. Bush says he took up wishes—still to be assessed. The painter 2006 to 2009, convicted in two separate on the posthumous advice of Winston has captured in himself, as in several of corruption cases over the past two years. Churchill, speaks to a certain sensitivity, the other portraits, a characteristic dis- Mr. Bush’s Olmert looks up at his inter- a desire to commune with representation, cernible in many faces whereby one eye locutor, mouth agape, as if the wily Israeli shapes and shades, not often found in appears more closed than the other. In Mr. had just reviewed another incriminating political animals. What’s more, it is as if Bush’s reckoning with himself, this dual- document at the witness table, the com- the 43rd president had declared that, ity of vision surely speaks to the mixed plex of forehead wrinkles belying another unlike his predecessors, he will not con- legacy he left as president, and—in tortured explanation of the evidence. fine his renderings of his contemporaries historiographical terms—to the man’s Of all the portraits, vladimir Putin, in to written memoirs, or to interviews in acknowledgment that it was so. art as in life, has captured the greatest promotion thereof; rather, he shall enjoy Mr. Bush’s framing of himself as a fig- attention on the part of the public. In this a third term as portraitist, this time in oils ure not readily understood comes even case, it is because the Russian president is on canvas. more sharply into view when the painting the only subject of Mr. Bush’s paintings The Art of Leadership: A President’s is contrasted with that of George H. W. into whose soul, via the eyes, the artist has Personal Diplomacy, which opened at the Bush. A veteran of war, politics, and the claimed to peer deeply. Such concentrated Bush Presidential Library and Museum intelligence community’s “wilderness of focus should by all rights have yielded in Dallas early in April, represents, not mirrors,” the 41st commander-in-chief is an exceptional rendering, at least of the surprisingly, a breakthrough more pro- presented here as post-political: puffy, aforementioned eyes; but this Putin, nounced in form than in substance. As a benign, smiling. That last fact doesn’t while suitably stony, disappoints in its portraitist—and even allowing for the make Bush 41 unique in his son’s gallery. bluntness, its inability to reckon with the fact that all portraiture involves an ele- Silvio Berlusconi, simpatica canaglia, human complexity the artist so readily S PERSONAL DIPLOMACY ment of caricature—Mr. Bush proves can be observed barely containing his grasped in himself. The much-vaunted ’ himself a capable if unremarkable begin- glee, presumably at his next conquest; eyes are half-lidded and heavy, but do

ner. His works resemble the illustrations and even Angela Merkel, once adjudged not offer the promised window into the A PRESIDENT : one might have found in Reader’s Digest by the 43rd president, in a public setting, essence of humanity: Putin’s elusive soul. or Scholastic Books, had the likes of to be urgently in need of massage therapy, By contrast, a smidgen of affection nouri al-Maliki ever attracted attention manages here a wan grin. But once again, creeps into the presentation of Maliki, in such precincts. But there is much in two-term son proclaims himself dramati- the Iraqi president who was surely as THE ART OF LEADERSHIP the paintings that merits our attention. cally different from one-term father, and vexatious an ally, in his way, as Karzai. / The former president’s self-portrait is at we are obliged to agree. Per haps Mr. Bush sympathized with the once the most complex and the most re- Least accomplished is the face of delicate burdens of Shiite and Sunni poli- vealing of the two dozen entries. Here, in Hamid Karzai, so bad that the best that tics that the former scholar and newspa- a subtle blend of light hues, is George W. can be said for it is that the man depicted perman was at all times forced to balance BUSH PRESIDENTIAL CENTER

could plausibly appear in a police lineup in Baghdad. It is in this painting that . Mr. Rosen is the chief Washington correspondent for for the Afghan president. The two closest Mr. Bush, the unabashed neocon, betrays

Fox News and a professional caricaturist. likenesses are those of Tony Blair, in his disregard for realism—whether pur- GEORGE W

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poseful or accidental—with a noticeably oh: Will they say it?” Will they sing asymmetric rendering of the two halves “Don we now our gay apparel”? They of Maliki’s eyeglasses. If purposeful, Adventures did not. They did not sing merely a “asymmetric” may have been precisely replacement word, but a whole replace- the word on Mr. Bush’s mind. In Lexical ment lyric. Thus had a traditional carol Where affection is in shortest supply been airbrushed, Bowdlerized. is in the one entry in which caricature Later, I wondered, “Will there be any hijacks portraiture: Pervez Musharraf. Fashion dubbing of the Flintstones theme?” You uniquely, the former Pakistani presi- Today’s progressive term may become remember the theme song of this ’60s sit- dent—whose help to the united States tomorrow’s slur com. It ends, “We’ll have a gay ol’ time!” after 9/11 was neither cheap nor alto- They mean a happy, festive, fun time. gether convincing—finds the top of his BY JAY NORDLINGER And what about Zorro? Will he continue head truncated by the picture frame, his to be known as the “gay blade”? Gay distracted face excessively jowly and ou may have noticed, as I have, Brewer, the late golf champion, was born presented in a close-up so unflattering as that the word “homo sexual” is in 1932. If he had been born in, say, 1982, to be worthy of . By contrast, becoming verboten. It is enter- his mother surely would have named him in the very next exhibit space, India’s Y ing the territory of a slur. Last something else. Manmohan Singh gets some space, in a year, Maureen Dowd of the New York When I was a kid, I knew a man named respectful head-and-shoulders treatment. Times wrote a widely noticed column that Shirley—he was retired from the FBI. A It is the Musharraf painting that adds began, “I’m worried about the Supreme genuinely tough guy. He said to me most to the extant record of Mr. Bush’s Court.” It continued, “I’m worried about once, “Everything was just fine until that dealings as leader of the free world. how the justices can properly debate Shirley Temple came along.” From then “over time,” he wrote in same-sex marriage when some don’t on, everyone took “Shirley” to be a girl’s (2010), “it became clear that Musharraf even seem to realize that most Americans name, rather than one that swung both either would not or could not fulfill all his use the word ‘gay’ now instead of ‘homo- ways. promises.” This cardinal sin in Mr. Bush’s sexual.’” Further down in the column, In the ’60s—at the same time new eye is surely reflected in his depiction of Dowd quoted a friend of hers, who said, episodes of The Flintstones were being the distrusted Pakistani general as ob - “Scalia uses the word ‘homosexual’ the aired—there was a progressive term for scured, withheld—literally, more than way used the word “homosexual”: “homophile.” In fact, meets the eye. ‘Negro.’ There’s a tone to it. It’s humili- there was a North American Conference Some have suggested that the former ating and hurtful.” of Homophile organizations. There have president’s newfound enthusiasm for art GLAAD, the gay activist group, has a always been insults and slurs, of course. reflects no real demonstration of human- “Media Reference Guide,” which in - And sometimes people “own” those ism, just another attempt, however novel cludes “offensive Terms to Avoid.” slurs. That is, they adopt them, in part to and labor-intensive, to reshape the repu- “Homosexual” is at the top of the list. take the sting out of them. The activist tation of a leader widely vilified, in his “Please use ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ to describe group Queer Nation was founded in own time, as a warmonger. This criticism people attracted to members of the same 1990. Four years later, a gay activist ran misses the mark. First, it fails to engage sex. Because of the clinical history of for mayor of Washington, D.C., using the the works on their own terms. Second, it the word ‘homosexual,’ it is aggressively moniker “Luke Sissyfag.” fails to recognize the fact that, were Mr. used by anti-gay extremists to suggest The counterpart of “gay” is “straight.” Bush bent on softening his image, he that gay people are somehow diseased And often people speak of the “gay com- would have chosen subjects likelier to or psychologically/emotionally disor- munity” and the “straight community.” steer the mind away from the Afghan and dered.” GLAAD goes on to say, “Please This second term cracks me up a little: Iraq than Messrs. Karzai, Musharraf, also avoid using ‘homosexual’ as a style the “straight community,” as if the vast and Maliki. variation simply to avoid repeated use of majority of mankind lived in a neighbor- George W. Bush is not running for the the word ‘gay.’” That’s vigilance. But, hood somewhere, with a church, a bar, a presidency, but he is also not running unlike most political language cops, they school, and an Elks lodge. from his presidency. His oil works con- say “please.” As GLAAD’s instructions indicate, stitute a unique supplement to his mem- “Homosexual” aside, I slightly regret “lesbian” is still kosher, although les- oirs, an attempt to record the men and the loss of the word “gay,” in the older bians are known as “gays” too. Those women he worked with—and sometimes sense. I still use it, where I strongly feel ubiquitous letters “LGBT” (sometimes against—as he remembers them. In it’s the mot juste. But I often add, “in the the string is longer) make a split between branching out to another medium to do so, older sense.” “gay” and “lesbian.” Spare a thought for he asserts over his contemporaries the Shortly after Thanksgiving last year, I the residents of Lesbos, all 100,000 of dominance he probably found frustratingly attended a ceremony on a village green. them. In 2008, some of them filed suit difficult to project when they shared the Nicely Rockwellesque. The village’s against a group on the mainland, the world stage. The artist arrays unto him- Christmas tree was being lit. (The saga Gay and Lesbian Community of Greece self, in retirement, a new, but familiar, of the word “Christmas” is another essay.) (there’s that word “community” again). kind of power: once again, George W. A school choir sang carols. When they They alleged that the term “lesbian,” to Bush is The Decider. started “Deck the Halls,” I thought, “uh- mean a female homosexual, held them up

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to ridicule, and violated their human announcers had no way to report that rights. Their suit went nowhere. fact—because they were forbidden, The term “same-sex marriage” is apparently, to say “black.” So they fashionable. (For instance, Maureen wound up saying, “She’s the first Dowd used it in her column.) This African American from any country is interesting, because the word to win a gold medal!” “gender” has largely replaced “sex,” Woe to anyone who enters the where male and female are con- choppy waters between “Hispanic,” cerned. My guess is, people like the “Latino,” “Chicano,” and related alliteration of “same-sex,” whether terms. There are people who feel they’re conscious of it or not. strongly—hotly strongly—about What’s more, same-sex-marriage those words. In 2012, the New York campaigners have hit on the term Times invented an expression for “marriage equality,” to describe George Zimmerman, the shooter in what they’re after. That is a master- the Trayvon Martin case: “white stroke, politically—but not quite Hispanic.” Evidently, the editors Gay Brewer, who has just won the 1967 Masters tournament, is helped as ingenious as “pro-choice,” to into the green jacket by Jack Nicklaus, the previous year’s champion. were trying to honkify the man who describe support for legal abortion. shot and killed a black teen. One day in 2004, the governor of New We had a slogan, “Black is beautiful.” I There came a day—I can’t give you a Jersey, Jim McGreevey, announced, “My suppose I thought “black” was here to precise date, but I think it was in the mid- truth is that I am a gay American.” That stay. But it was supplanted, to a consider- ’90s—when “Oriental” was out and is a very contemporary sentence—in- able degree, in the late 1980s, by “African “Asian” was in. From this day forward, cluding the “my truth” part. Also, the American.” One day (or so I remember), “Oriental” was a slur, except perhaps phrase “gay American” has a civil- rightsy Jesse Jackson announced that, hencefor- when used in reference to vases and rugs. ring: “black American,” “Japanese Ameri - ward, black people would be known as I once used “Oriental” past its expiration can.” A few years ago, some people “African Americans,” and, lo, everyone date—in a totally innocent way—and a started to refer to illegal aliens as “un - complied. It was as rapid a social change friend—a friend, mind you—berated me documented Americans.” To question as I’ve ever seen—even rapider than the for it. I was shocked, frankly. By the way, these document-impaired individuals, stigmatization of smoking. I remember the British use “Asian” to mean “South you see, would be unpatriotic. people around me—white people—turn- Asian,” as in Pakistani, Indian, etc. When it comes to race, we have gone ing on a dime, saying “African American” “Retarded” was once a progressive through evolution upon evolution. where they had always said “black.” The word—a wonderfully progressive word. “Colored” was once a progressive term. A term seemed awkward in their mouths, at It implied that the afflicted person was remnant of it can be found in “NAACP”— first. All those syllables! merely delayed. Long before that, there the National Association for the Ad - Plenty of people prefer “black,” and were “homes for idiots.” The people who vancement of Colored People, established one of them is , as she founded, ran, and staffed them were not in 1909. The term “colored people” is told me in an interview years ago. One of hateful. On the contrary, they were among now radioactive and ugly, but the term her reasons was this: “Black” is parallel the most loving and humane people on “people of color” is rather cool. In other to “white.” But some have seized on a earth—probably more loving and humane languages, there would be no difference parallel to “African American”: “Euro - than you and I are. Eventually, “retarded” between the two terms (gens de couleur). pean American.” Al Sharpton is one who people became “developmentally dis- We in America shave things very close. uses that expression. abled,” “physically challenged,” “differ- “Negro” rode high for a while, and a I find it a little amusing to hear “Euro - ently able,” “handicapable” ... “Special” remnant can be found in “United Negro pean American” as a stand-in for “white.” is a perennial—as in “Special Olympics,” College Fund,” established in 1944. The I think of a friend of mine, an Italian and “special needs.” last person I heard use the word “Negro” American, who grew up in Kansas City. Honestly, as I sit here today, I can’t tell was Justice Thurgood Marshall, who There were mothers who wouldn’t let their you what the respectable, approved word proudly, defiantly used it until he died in daughters date him, because he wasn’t for “retarded” is. I just can’t. Whatever it 1993. Actually, the majority leader of the “white.” Now he lives in L.A. and is con- is today, it may change tomorrow. U.S. Senate used it far more recently—in sidered an “Anglo.” He remarks, “I can’t Yes, today’s progressive, ultra-correct 2008. Speaking privately, Harry Reid tell whether that’s a demotion or a pro- word may become tomorrow’s slur. said that he had high hopes for Barack motion.” “Gay,” for example, is preferred now, Obama’s electoral success: because the “African American” can cause prob- even sacrosanct. But say it tomorrow, candidate was “light-skinned” and had lems, as it did, hilariously, at the 2002 and you may be a bigot. As a rule, I think “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to Winter Olympics. An American named people ought to be called what they want have one.” When these words were re - Vonetta Flowers was part of a two- to be called. But they should be maybe a ported, Obama gave his fellow Democrat a woman bobsled team. She and her partner little patient with people who aren’t pass, saying, “I know what’s in his heart.” won the gold, making Flowers the first keeping pace. A little gentleness is called “Afro-American” was a contender for a black person ever to win a gold medal at for—and that particular quality is not a

AP PHOTO while. And then “black” reigned supreme. the Winter Games. But the poor NBC hallmark of our age.

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The Climate Inquisitor Michael Mann’s campaign against free thought

BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE

VeRYoNe is in favor of free speech,” winston headline blares, mimicking New York subway warnings and sug- Churchill once wrote. “Hardly a day passes with- gesting a not-so-subtle parallel between the dangers of global- out its being extolled.” And yet, he added dryly, warming “denial” and the murderous terrorism that brought ‘E “some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say down the Twin Towers. In the opening paragraph of the piece, what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an Mann castigates his critics as “a fringe minority of our populace” outrage.” who “cling[] to an irrational rejection of well-established sci- This aphorism, generally applicable as it is, could easily have ence.” These aristarchs, Mann contends, represent a “virulent been issued to describe the attitude of one Michael e. Mann, a strain of anti-science [that] infects the halls of Congress, the climate scientist and opponent of free inquiry who is currently pages of leading newspapers and what we see on TV, leading to suing NATIoNAl ReVIew for libel. the appearance of a debate where none should exist.” Alas, such Mann, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State comparisons are commonplace. In the rough and tumble of University, rose to prominence for his “hockey stick,” a graph debate, climate-change skeptics are routinely recast as climate- that purports to depict global temperature trends between the change deniers, an insidious echo of the phrase “Holocaust years A.D. 1000 and 2000. The graph takes its name from its deniers” and one that has been contrived with no purpose other shape, which shows a mostly flat line of temperature data from than to exclude the speaker from polite society. the year 1000 until about 1900 (the handle of the hockey stick), Secure as he appears to be in his convictions, Mann has followed by a sharp uptick over the 20th century (the blade). nonetheless taken it upon himself to try to suppress debate and to Based on this graph and related research, Mann has built a noisy silence some of the “irrational” and “virulent” critics, who he public career sounding the alarm over global warming—a claims have nothing of substance to say. To this end, Mann has plague, he argues, that has been visited upon the earth as a filed a lawsuit against NATIoNAl ReVIew. our offense? Daring to result of mankind’s sinful penchant for fossil fuels. publish commentary critical of his hockey-stick graph and disap-

In the course of his evangelizing, Mann has shown little toler- proving of his hectoring mien. STEVE HELBER / ance for heretics. A recent op-ed he penned for the New York ostensibly, Mann’s litigation against NATIoNAl ReVIew is the

Times is illustrative. “If You See Something, Say Something,” the product of a post written by back in 2012, in AP PHOTO

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which Steyn provided commentary on a separate article (written maliciously, willfully, and with the intent to injure Dr. Mann, or by Rand Simberg and published on the Competitive enterprise to benefit [NatIONal RevIew] and Steyn.” In other words, it Institute’s blog) that had drawn a crude analogy between Mann charges that all of the critics Mann is suing are guilty of the and Jerry Sandusky, the convicted child molester and former narrow form of libel that american law prohibits. It has made no assistant football coach at Mann’s employer, Penn State. Steyn difference that NatIONal RevIew has made abundantly clear quoted a passage in which Simberg had stated, “Mann could be that, “in common polemical usage, ‘fraudulent’ doesn’t mean said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that honest-to-goodness criminal fraud,” but instead means “intellec- instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data tually bogus and wrong.” Incredibly, Mann’s complaint contends in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic that the phrase “intellectually bogus” itself is legally actionable. consequences for the nation and planet.” Distancing himself Mann’s feelings have been hurt, the theory appears to go, so his from the Sandusky analogy, Steyn averred that he was “not sure critics’ words must have been illegal. I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr. Simberg does.” “But,” Steyn con- tinued, “he has a point.” after all, “Michael Mann was the man N a case such as this one, there is no room for the neutral to behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph, the hedge his bets: One is either in favor of a broad regime of very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus.” (this “tree-ring” remark I free expression or one is on the side of the censors. while it refers to Mann’s reliance on controversial “proxy” data to gauge must be tempting for the more insecure and sensitive among our historical temperatures—about which more below.) public figures to attempt to silence anybody who has the temerity In a case such as this one, there is no room for the neutral to hedge his bets: One is either in favor of a broad regime of free expression or one is on the side of the censors.

Shortly after the publication of Steyn’s post, Mann’s lawyer to joke, criticize, or “question [their] intellect and reasoning” (in sent NatIONal RevIew a letter, demanding a public apology and the words of the D.C. Superior Court that refused to dismiss the a retraction. NatIONal RevIew responded to the missive with the case at the outset), this is not what the legal system is for—nor is reminder that the blog post was “fully protected under the First such an attitude consistent with the values of a free nation. amendment” and, later, NatIONal RevIew’s editor, Richard as a seminal Supreme Court case, New York Times v. Sullivan, lowry, invited Mann to “get lost” and to “go away and bother outlined in 1964, using the law of libel to drag journalists into someone else.” In lowry’s view, Mann’s threat to submit Steyn’s court for expressing their sincere views on matters of major pub- commentary to judicial resolution under the libel laws was noth- lic importance is entirely inconsistent with our “national com- ing short of preposterous. Steyn’s disagreement, lowry argued, mitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be was with the validity of Mann’s scientific work—his words serv- uninhibited, robust, and wide open.” Inevitably, a culture that ing as a contribution to the question of whether Mann’s statistical prizes free expression will find its discourse marked by “vehe- methods and his reliance on “proxy” data give a valid picture of ment, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks.” But, as historical temperature trends, or instead his work is flawed, false, Justice Brandeis wrote nearly 90 years ago in Whitney v. and misleading. as lowry put it, “In common polemical California, “the remedy to be applied” for speech that some may usage, ‘fraudulent’ doesn’t mean honest-to-goodness criminal deem offensive “is more speech, not enforced silence.” this is no fraud. It means intellectually bogus and wrong.” In a free and less true in the realm of scientific inquiry, in which no authority open society, the correct way to respond to the accusation that can claim a monopoly on the truth. the very purpose of the sci- one’s work is “intellectually bogus and wrong” is to attempt a entific enterprise is the pursuit of knowledge, and uninhibited rebuttal, not to file a lawsuit. NatIONal RevIew stands on the debate is the means by which that knowledge is pursued. Here, as side of free and open society. much as anywhere else, Justice Kennedy’s recent admonition in evidently, Mann does not. true to his threats, he filed suit United States v. Alvarez applies: “Our constitutional tradition,” in D.C. Superior Court against Steyn and NatIONal RevIew Kennedy wrote, “stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s (along with both the Competitive enterprise Institute and Ministry of truth.” Rand Simberg), alleging libel and intentional infliction of the law of defamation is useful for awarding civil damages emotional distress. Per the complaint, both Steyn and lowry’s against those who peddle outright lies—that is, against those who writings, which were published on NatIONal RevIew ONlINe, do real damage to a person’s reputation by abusing plain facts that are unlawfully defamatory because they “tend[] to injure Dr. can be easily verified and adjudicated in court. In such cases as it Mann in his profession because [they] falsely impute[] to Dr. is claimed that Jones beats his wife or Smith is a drug addict, the Mann academic corruption, fraud and deceit as well as the relevant facts fall easily within the competence of a civil tribunal, commission of a criminal offense, in a manner injurious to the and litigation does not threaten to impose a chill on the public dis- reputation and esteem of Dr. Mann professionally, locally, course. But when a plaintiff files a libel suit involving a matter of nationally, and globally.” political or scientific controversy, the calculus is quite different More specifically, it charges that, “in making the defamatory indeed. when the merits of a libel claim implicate contested statement, [NatIONal RevIew] and Steyn acted intentionally, questions of science and statistical methodology, judges and

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juries are so ill suited to pronounce a verdict that allowing the ome of mann’s colleagues in the academy appear instinc- public authority to have the final say is inconsistent with the very tively to understand this. Judith Curry, the chairwoman of concept of free inquiry. The whole point of the scientific enter- S Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of earth and prise is to resolve controversies through open debate, not through Atmospheric Sciences, an outspoken climate-change skeptic and the final decree of government officials. one of the many scientists whom mann has berated in public, has even where no verdict of guilt is ultimately pronounced, been accused of being a “serial climate-disinformer” and “anti- allowing litigation over criticisms of the validity of scientific science”—quite the charge to throw at an academic. Never - research has a deleterious effect on the public discourse. It theless, Curry has made it clear that she believes the best way prompts critics to trim their sails in order to avoid the cost and to ensure that tit-for-tat exchanges do not embroil us all in end- headache of a lawsuit, thus establishing a climate of fear and less legal battles is to recognize that questions of public import quiet rather than of boisterous agitation and open discussion. are best debated outside the courtroom. “I would like to stand Hanging the prospect of punishment above the heads of par- up for michael mann’s right to make insulting and defamatory ticipants in scientific disputes serves not to yield greater accu- tweets, statements in op-eds, etc.,” Curry has written on her racy but to invite censorship, the toning down of rhetoric, and blog. “As an American, I am pretty attached to the right to free the avoidance of hyperbole—of anything, indeed, that could speech.” invite a libel complaint. Which is to say that it shuts up the dis- So, too, is Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter, who con- senters. siders himself to be an ally of mann’s on practically all ques- Linguistically, mann exhibits an approach that is best tions except for his understanding of free speech. “As a described as “hyperbole for me but not for thee.” Apparently, the believer in the First Amendment,” Carter wrote recently in two terms that prompted his present litigiousness were “fraudu- Bloomberg View, “I am troubled” by mann’s conduct. “I would lent” and “intellectually bogus”—a pair of judgments that his rather that name-calling weren’t a regular part of our public legal team contend to be beyond the pale of lawful discourse debate, but it is.” regarding his work on . But mann himself has “Indeed,” he continued, used these terms liberally when it has suited him. In a Mother Jones interview from 2005, he assured his readers that, “as it I should note for the uninitiated that “molested and tortured data” plays out in the peer-reviewed literature, it will soon be evident is the sort of molested and tortured prose that academics com- that many of the claims made by the contrarians [i.e., skeptics of monly inflict on each other (and the great unwashed beyond the the global-warming hypothesis] were fraudulent.” Likewise, in campus) in this unenlightened era of discourse. . . . of course we need defamation law. But our constitutional tradition correctly his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, mann hoped makes it difficult for public figures to prevail. Close cases should that “those who have funded or otherwise participated in the go to the critic, no matter how nasty or uninformed. The preser- fraudulent denial of climate change” will be held “accountable.” vation of robust dissent allows no other result, and robust dissent “Bogus” got a good airing, too. Journalists who do not meet is at the heart of what it means to be America. mann’s approval were charged collectively with being “willing to act as little more than stenographers for the constant stream of It is also at the heart of what it means to be a scientist, as the bogus allegations being fed them”; was accused of conduct of those in the profession reveals. In 2010, a Berkeley forwarding “a litany of bogus allegations”; and it was suggested physics professor and somewhat capricious climate-change skep- that Congress would not care were it to learn that its conclusions tic named Richard muller gave a much-publicized lecture that were “based on a bogus analysis.” eventually went viral on YouTube. In his address, muller accused As illustrated by mann’s own vocabulary, there is plenty of mann and his cohorts of flubbing their data and publishing mis- room in the cut and thrust of public debate for people to use terms leading results. “As a scientist,” muller told his audience after such as “fraudulent” and “bogus”—and in a manner that cannot referencing mann by name, “I now have a list of people whose give rise to any legal cause of action. When used in a polemical papers I won’t read anymore. You’re not allowed to do [what sense, such words do not carry any narrow, specific meaning. mann did] in science. This is not up to our standards.” muller has Instead they denote a broad intellectual condemnation: to pro- subsequently changed his mind on the broader question of anthro- nounce that creationism or evolutionary theory is “fraudulent” is pogenic climate change, but his criticism of mann remains. to assert that it is specious, deluded, dubious, wrong-headed, fal- ed Cook, a scientist at Columbia University, presented a lacious, or misleading. In the realm of climate science, where his- brutal judgment of mann’s seminal 1998 paper, co-authored torical temperatures are reconstructed based on controversial with Raymond Bradley and malcolm Hughes and colloquially proxy data and statistical modeling, the assertion that one’s work known as “mBH”: “I am afraid that mike [mann] is defending is “intellectually bogus,” “fraudulent,” or based on “molested something that increasingly can not be defended,” Cook wrote and tortured data” is a harsh critique, to be sure. But it is not one in an e-mail that was published after a FoIA request and that can be subjected to legal punishment. The old saying has it formed part of the “Climategate” affair. “He is investing too that if you torture the data long enough, they will confess to any- much personal stuff in this and not letting the science move thing. Nevertheless, what counts as “torturing” data, as opposed ahead.” Tom Wigley, a fellow of the American Association for to sound statistical analysis, is a matter of opinion and legiti- the Advancement of Science, contended that “at the very least mate dispute. The truth or falsity of such assertions should no mBH is a very sloppy piece of work—an opinion I have held more be resolved in court under the libel laws than should the for some time.” Raymond Bradley had equally harsh words for truth or falsity of such statements as that “evolutionary theory his former colleague’s subsequent work. “I’m sure you agree,” is a fraud” or “intelligent design is fraudulent.” Fighting over Bradley wrote, that “the mann/Jones GRL [Geophysical the validity of such claims is what public debate is for. Research Letters] paper”—in which Bradley was not in -

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volved—“was truly pathetic and should never have been pub- Mann that requires us to believe that this era’s estimations rep- lished. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year ‘recon- resent the immutable truth. A healthy skepticism as to the value struction’ [of temperature data].” (Note the scare quotes.) of endeavors to reconstruct climate history is thus necessary— Reading these remarks and the reams of others like them that even before we dive into the detail. Tree rings can certainly be are to be found in the e-mails, one might draw two conclusions. a useful indicator of temperature. Still, one has to be careful First, that Carter’s characterization of academics as sharp- about how much faith one puts in the method. Liebig’s law elbowed is based in fact; and, second, that there is plenty in teaches us that tree growth is not solely the product of temper- Mann’s work to inspire skepticism and to invite critique— ature, but also of available space, water, sunlight, soil nutri- from his colleagues, from the media, and from the public at ents, and so forth, and that growth is limited by whatever large. “This is a case,” NATIoNAL RevIew’s defense brief holds, resource is least available. Because a variety of environmental that has been “brought by a disgruntled scientist who wishes to factors affect growth, separating out the effect of temperature litigate a contentious scientific battle not suitable for judicial from that of the other variables is difficult, and conclusions resolution, but properly belonging in the arena of public that rely on the process ought to be taken with a grain of salt. debate.” Indeed so. That public debate continues to rage. There Questions still abound. Just ask skeptical Canadians Stephen is no justification for attempting to stifle it. McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, a pair of apostates who have spent the last eleven years critiquing the hockey stick, and who have drawn a considerable amount of blood in the process. S for Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” in particular, McIntyre, a mathematician and former minerals prospector, there is a great deal left to discuss. Despite the prema- says he first became interested in the question when he saw a A ture conflation in which its advocates rather embar- leaflet featuring the hockey stick and was reminded of the un - rassingly indulged, the hockey stick and anthropogenic climate realistic sales projections that hucksters in the mining industry change are by no means one and the same thing, or presumed were known to use to scam naïve investors. McIntyre con- to be so. where once the hockey stick was used as a dramatic vinced Mann to share his data (reluctantly, according to promotional tool, now it is buried in the noise—damaged by McIntyre) and, with McKitrick, an economics professor at the years of scrutiny and made brittle by its creators’ dubious University of Guelph, set about analyzing them. Their research methods. wisely, climate-change evangelists have begun to led them to issue a host of criticisms, including skepticism remind their critics that Mann’s hockey stick could be entirely about the validity of Mann’s process, the discovery of alleged wrong without damaging their wider claim about global warm- flaws in the way that tree rings have been used by Mann and ing. or, as Scientific American put it: others to “reconstruct” past temperatures, and a rejection of the statistical means by which the hockey-stick shape was gener- The case for anthropogenic global warming originally came ated. McIntyre and McKitrick’s ongoing investigation has gar- from studies of climate mechanics, not from reconstructions of nered a great deal of attention and a good deal of praise, and past temperatures seeking a cause. warnings about current even inspired a book, The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate warming trends came out years before Mann’s hockey stick and the Corruption of Science. graph. even if the world were incontrovertibly warmer 1,000 years ago [than the hockey stick says it was], it would not change the fact that the recent rapid rise in Co2 explains the current episode of warming more credibly than any natural factor does—and that no natural factor seems poised to offset further warming in the years ahead.

As this rather defensive qualification implies, there is a world of difference between those who examine the ther- mometer data from the last 150 or so years and establish that the earth is warming, and those who attempt to infer the tem- perature hundreds and even thousands of years ago from the various “proxies” on which, absent any thermometer data, we must unfortunately rely. Ultimately, what scientists like Mann are attempting to do is to draw meaningful data about past tem- peratures from a handful of variously dependable and sparsely available tree rings, bristlecone-pine cones, pollen levels in sediment, and oxygen isotopes entrenched in polar caps, only a few of which go back even 600 years. They then graft these findings onto the record of actual temperatures as recorded by modern instruments—some of which, alarmingly, contradict the proxy data: In some data sets, tree rings from recent times indicate a different temperature than do thermometers and other surface measurements—in order to attempt to show us HIROSHI HIGUCHI / how the climate has changed over the past millennium or so. Mankind is constantly updating its impressions of the past,

GETTY IMAGES and there is nothing about either our current age or Michael

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or their part, neither Mann nor his colleagues have done suggests on its own. There is little doubt that some of the infor- much to inspire public confidence. In 2009, a hacker mation with which the group was working has proven to be F obtained thousands of e-mails that had been sent between inconvenient. Per some of the tree-ring results, temperatures scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic research have declined in the second half of the 20th century; per the Unit (CrU) and other climate scientists around the world. Inter instrumental record, however, temperatures have gone up. Thus alia, the missives appeared in the eyes of some to show their have Mann and Co. seen fit to drop certain proxy data that imply authors manipulating data through questionable statistical such a decline, and to add in certain instrumental data that show methods, spinning results, suppressing inconvenient findings, an increase. Most egregiously, in the 2001 IPCC report—which and thwarting their critics by refusing to cooperate with routine unleashed the hockey stick on a shocked world—Mann and his requests. (Stephen McIntyre was clearly on the scientists’ minds: co-authors simply removed the declining post-1960 proxy data He is referenced in the e-mails repeatedly.) collected by Keith Briffa (thus “hid[ing] the decline”) but left in Phil Jones, the director of the CrU, was caught apparently his colleagues’ more convenient proxy findings, thereby making advising Michael Mann to delete correspondence with col- the proxy reconstructions appear more consistent and accurate leagues Keith Briffa and Gene Wahl and to find ways of avoid- than they really were. ing his data’s being picked up and processed by critics: “Don’t All of which raises some serious and troubling questions— leave stuff lying around on ftp [file-transfer protocol] sites,” the most important of which is, If some of the recent proxy data Jones counseled; don’t correlate with the recent instrument data, why exactly should anyone be expected to believe that the older proxy data you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been are accurate? Inexplicably, the attitude here seems to be that after the CrU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a even though recorded temperature data show some of the more Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the recent proxies to be wrong, the earlier proxies couldn’t be giv- file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days?—our[s] does! ing us bad information about the past because . . . well, because The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We they just couldn’t be. also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. As for those crying foul: They do have a case. The 2001 IPCC report that thrust the hockey stick into prominence made no Later, Jones asked Mann, “Can you delete any emails you may mention that Briffa’s data showing declining temperatures had have had with Keith re Ar4 [the fourth IPCC Assessment been cut off after 1960, nor was the graph that accompanied the report]? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also email Gene and report clear enough for observers to notice that the line repre- get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.” senting his findings ended abruptly. Instead, Briffa’s incomplete Most famous perhaps is this passage, which was part of a mes- line ended underneath the other lines, which gave the unavoid- sage sent by Jones in 1999 to the three co-authors of the hockey- able impression that there was no meaningful divergence among stick paper, a group that included Mann: “I’ve just completed the different scientists’ proxy data. The decision to excise Mike’s . . . trick of adding in the real temps [that is, those recorded Briffa’s data didn’t just have an aesthetic impact on the graph: by instruments] to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 The authors also omitted Briffa’s data from the archive they sub- onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” mitted to the peer-review process, thus making it more difficult Mann’s defenders vehemently deny that these words are in any for reviewers to object and making it all but impossible for the way problematic. “real temps” does not refer to suppressed data press to raise questions. but to temperatures taken from modern instruments such as ther- The leaked e-mails suggest that some members of the IPCC mometers rather than from proxies such as tree rings and pine were well aware of these inconsistencies—and even may have cones; “trick” is simply a term of art that describes a mathematical sought to conceal them. Long before the hockey stick was pro- process for manipulating and smoothing the data in an honest and mulgated, its champions were fighting over its presentation. legitimate way; and “hide” was but a poorly chosen word—noth- Following an IPCC authors’ meeting in 1999, Keith Briffa ing to do with the removal of evidence. What is being discussed noted that he understood “the pressure to present a nice tidy here, therefore, is an uncontroversial process: first the comple- story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thou- menting of data with more data, then the removal of outlying data sand years or more in the proxy data’” but acknowledged that that, for whatever reason, are believed to be erroneous. “in reality the situation is not quite so simple.” In the e-mails, Critics of Mann’s work, by contrast, charge that this e-mail is Briffa seemed well aware that inconsistency among the proxy a smoking gun: that it calls into question the integrity of the data might cast doubt on the accuracy of the estimates. “[There methods underlying the hockey stick, that it is directly linked to are] some unexpected changes in response that do not match the a controversy over the 2001 IPCC report, and that the removal recent warming,” Briffa wrote. “I do not think it wise that this of proxy data to “hide the decline” seriously misleads readers issue be ignored in the chapter.” about the deficiencies of proxy reconstructions. At the very least, it appears that Briffa wished to ensure that The University of East Anglia’s official report about the leaked the IPCC’s presentation contained a caveat conceding that there e-mails concluded that “opposing interpretations can be obtained were some proxy data that contradicted the rest. But, in leaked from the same statement.” But even if we give those involved the e-mails, Mann is seen downplaying Briffa’s concerns, arguing benefit of the doubt—presuming that “trick” and “hide the that it is important not to give “fodder to the skeptics.” “The decline” mean precisely what Mann’s defenders insist they problem we all picked up on,” Mann confirms, is that “everyone mean—the episode still suggests something important: that in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem Mann and his colleagues have processed their data in a way that and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably con- makes global warming appear more severe than the evidence census viewpoint we’d like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann

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Mann et al series.” Mann suggested that publishing and featur- highest scientific authority in the United States, and given a ing in the graph the contradictory proxy data would lead to the clean bill of health.” “The statistician on the panel,” Mann con- “skeptics [having] an [sic] field day casting doubt on our ability tinued, “Peter Bloomfield, a member of the Royal Statistical to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, Society, came to the opposite conclusion of Prof Hand.” can undermine faith in the paleoestimates.” “I don’t think that Embarrassingly for Mann, Peter Bloomfield refuted this char- doubt is scientifically justified,” Mann concluded. The contra- acterization: “A quick rereading of the report,” Bloomfield dictory data were not published. wrote in an e-mail to Hand, “didn’t reveal any place where I, or any other member of the [NAS] committee[,] reached any conclusion with which you would differ. If you’re aware of UITE why any objective observer would presume Mann any, I’d be glad of a reminder!” to be a paragon of virtue has never been adequately With his frank hostility to free inquiry, Mann has behaved less Q explained. In the past few years, he claimed that he was like a scientist than like a religious figure who feels he has been a Nobel Prize laureate until the Nobel Committee explicitly said given the final interpretation of the Bible, knows the Eschaton to that he is not; attempted to claim that the National Academy of be imminent, and has resolved to enforce the blasphemy laws lest Sciences and CRU investigations into his conduct and his work anyone risk losing his soul. have fully vindicated him and his hockey stick when they have in The passions of men are perennially unknowable things, and fact done no such thing; and has routinely reserved prerogatives our age has yet to discredit Elizabeth I’s famous observation for himself that he is unwilling to extend to anyone else. Mann’s about the folly of making windows into men’s souls. But our critics are not merely bloggers and contrarians. Professor David instincts are as they always were: to accrue power and prestige, Hand, the former president of the Royal Statistical Society who and to vanquish our opponents by any means possible. There are was charged with investigating the “Climategate” scandal, few who demonstrate this with as much chutzpah as Michael accused Mann of having “exaggerated” the climate-change threat Mann. In his Notes on the State of , Thomas Jefferson and said Mann had given him an “uneasy feeling” by using “inap- posed a question to the opponents of free expression. “It is error propriate statistical methods.” “Had they used an appropriate alone which needs the support of government,” Jefferson con- technique,” Hand said, “the size of the blade of the hockey stick tended. “Truth can stand by itself.” “Subject opinion to coer- would have been smaller.” cion,” he asked, and “whom will you make your inquisitors?” Mann rejected Hand’s assessment, claiming in an interview The answer, Jefferson concluded, was “fallible men”—“men with the London Telegraph that his hockey-stick work had governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons.” been “reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences, the That’s about the size of it, eh Michael?

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of consanguinity.” In that, they were really not so different from Mohandas K. Gandhi a century or so later—legally a British Sagebrush subject, but a member of a different nation, one with its own interests. Charged with sedition in 1922, Mr. Gandhi understood that whatever it was that was on his side, it was not the law. He pleaded guilty to the charges, offered no defense, and argued that Rebels, Again the judge was morally bound either to resign his post or to impose the harshest possible sentence—if he truly believed the Cliven Bundy and the case for saying “No” system of laws he was entrusted with administering to be just. Mr. Gandhi was in the intellectual debt of Henry David Thoreau, whose Civil Disobedience is the second great American BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON text on the issue. Thoreau’s ideas were even more disconnected from the particulars of the law than are Mr. Bundy’s, but he LIvEN BuNDY is a Nevada cattle rancher around whom touched upon a question intimately linked to the drama playing has coalesced a small campaign of armed but not as of out in Nevada. “This American government—” Thoreau asked, yet violent resistance to the federal Bureau of Land C Management (BLM), the heavily armed property what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to agent for the absentee landlord that is our federal government, a transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing near-monopolist that claims ownership of some 87 percent of all some of its integrity? . . . It is a sort of wooden gun to the people the land in Nevada and practically all of the land suitable for graz- themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the peo- ing cattle. Take it as given that the law is against Mr. Bundy, who ple must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. . . . Yet has been involved in 20-odd years of fruitless litigation against this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the federal government over his family’s 130-odd years of enjoy- the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the ing grazing rights on public lands, a concession originally offered country free. It does not settle the West. in the 1870s as an inducement to settlers and interrupted in 1993 by concerns over the welfare of the Mojave population of the Who does settle the West? desert tortoise. When the tortoise was listed as “threatened,” the Expanding the frontiers toward the Pacific was the great BLM insisted on renegotiating the terms of Mr. Bundy’s deal, national project of the first period of American history. The and he objected. He objects to a great many things, including to Founders had this in mind, too, complaining in the Dec lar a tion the very idea that the federal government has the right to manage of Independence that His Majesty had “endeavoured to prevent public lands within Nevada. While Mr. Bundy is full of eccen- the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the tric legal rationalizations, characteristic of the western insurrec- Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others tionists who preceded him for generations, this confrontation is to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions at its heart an exercise not in litigation but in civil disobedience. of new Appropriations of Lands.” It was a matter for policy Civil disobedience is a complicated matter in a republic that and poetry both, from the Home stead Acts to Walt Whitman’s (1) is dedicated to the proposition that we shall be ruled by laws paean to “western youths / so impatient, full of action, full of and not by men and (2) was founded by violent revolution. The manly pride and friendship . . . // We primeval forests felling / challenge of the American system—and hence of American con- We the rivers stemming, vexing we, and piercing deep the servatism—has always been balancing the principle of liberty mines within; / We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin with the pragmatic imperative of general obedience to civil soil upheaving / Pioneers! O pioneers!” Pushing back the fron- authority, the elusive quest for ’s “ordered liberty.” tier was no small thing—it was, in fact, a dangerous mission. The question of civil disobedience, of which the revolution of Along with homesteading allotments, the federal government 1776 is an extreme example, is only another expression of that encouraged the settlement of the West by offering grazing most basic American dynamic, the ongoing dialogue between rights on public lands. The BLM acknowledges that national Madison’s law and Washington’s muskets. policy was “designed to promote the settlement of the West”— The ur-document of American civil disobedience is the for a time. Today, the BLM says, its brief is managing “live- Declaration of Independence, in which the Founders, out of stock grazing in a manner aimed at achieving and maintaining “decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” laid out their revo- public land health.” “Public land health” naturally means lutionary rationale, faulting King George for arbitrarily setting whatever the federal government needs it to mean. aside or refusing to enforce duly passed laws and usurping the power of the judiciary, using extraordinary rendition against sus- pected enemies and disposing of them without the benefit of a E have been here before. declared him- jury trial, attempting to subordinate the judiciary, creating new self a “sagebrush rebel” in solidarity with the western regulations and new regulators without legal warrant, interfering W land-reform activists of his time (William Perry Pendley with trade, and much more that will be familiar to the modern published a study of Reagan the environmentalist under that title reader. But the familiarity of King George’s multitude of sins is last year), but the original sagebrush rebels were a different sort: not the remarkable thing about the Declaration; what stands out not President Reagan’s think-tankers and gubernatorial candidates, is that the Amer i cans already regarded themselves as a separate but actual rebels, closer to the Bundy model, prone to the occa- people—Eng lish men, but a new nation of Englishmen apart from sional blast of undisciplined gunfire. Having settled in the West their British cousins who proved “deaf to the voice of justice and in the middle of the 19th century, they were enraged by a series of

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acts passed during the Harrison-Cleveland years that cut them off desert tortoises supersede those of family ranchers, but that does from millions of acres of public land and resources. Men who had not make it right. Of course land and the resources associated thought of themselves as pioneers suddenly became trespassers. with it are scarce, and not every piece of public land can be made The western settlers found themselves at the mercy of eastern open to the public for whatever purpose. This is why public land politicians who had never set foot upon the lands that they dis- is such a bad idea to begin with, and why governments should be posed of with so many pen strokes—not one member of President obliged to reduce their geographic footprints to no more than what Cleveland’s forestry commission had ever visited the land they is required for military bases, office buildings, parks, and the like. were managing—and being at the mercy of eastern politicians The question of civil disobedience could be made partially meant being at the mercy of eastern business interests. The put- moot if the federal government simply followed the economi- upon inhabitants of the mountain states in many ways saw them- cally rational course of action here and deeded the land over to selves as being in a position similar to that of the Founders: under the state of Nevada or auctioned it off to such individuals as wish the thumb of a consanguineous but effectively alien people, their to acquire it. That doesn’t mean Yellowstone would be turned own political interests and their own economic interests made into a Walmart, but it does mean that having Uncle Sam act as subordinate to a haughty class of rulers who regarded them as an absentee landlord in a state in which it controls 87 percent of There are times when neither the law nor the electorate is on your side but still you are compelled to act.

contemptible rustics. Formal representation in Congress was cold the land is desirable to nobody except BLM managers and those comfort to westerners who were not only outside the eastern whose political bidding they do. establishment but in direct financial competition with it. And there’s why it won’t happen. The critical factor was this: Unlike the eastern states, the western states had in most cases been obliged to sign over the bulk of their public lands to the federal government as a con- UT what, finally, to make of Mr. Bundy and his skirmish? dition of statehood—nobody had ever dreamt of imposing on There are many ways to contest the scope and arrogance Ohio such conditions as were imposed on Nevada and Colo ra - B of the ugly and stupid thing whose heart is in Wash - do. (Texas, where 97 percent of the land is privately held, was ington. Charles and David Koch have invested fortunes in the practically alone in escaping that fate.) The western narrative, cause of liberty, often at the expense of their own business inter- which informs the region’s politics to this day, holds that the ests. (This contra the rhetoric of Harry Reid, next to whom Ne - states of the West allowed the federal government to take up va da’s whorehouse operators look like Johnny Ed wards, and I management of their lands on the understanding that public mean the Puritan preacher, not the Democratic vice-presidential lands and their resources would continue to be made available to candidate and sex-tape auteur.) The litigants in cases such as the public, and that the federal government cynically changed Heller (gun rights), McCutcheon and Cit­i­zens­United (free the rules when the interests of its most powerful factions called speech), Hobby­Lobby (religious liberty), the often pro bono for doing so. As one Coloradan declared in a letter to the eastern law yers advancing those suits, the state attorneys general chal- conservationists offering expert policy advice on land they had lenging the illegal portions of the Af ford able Care Act—all never seen: “You may have the power, but it is not right.” deserve our thanks and praise for the work they have done for Colorado eventually called for open defiance of the govern- our country, as do those people who go through the unpleasant ment in the form of a state convention that would consider the (unpleasant if you are not a borderline psychopath) business of question of whether federal overseers were constitutionally seeking and holding political office. And blessings be upon the entitled to act as a commercial landlord on public lands within think-tankers, the institution managers, the fundraisers, the rally the state. But Teddy Roosevelt was too big a bear to wrestle, and organizers, and all of the people for whom the idea of citizenship the insurgency collapsed. means at the very least rousing themselves from this season’s There were some acts of violence associated with the original Real­Housewives for occasions other than Election Day. Sagebrush Rebellion, though, as with its successors in the 1970s But there are times when neither the law nor the electorate is and (as of this writing) in Nevada, there was more violent on your side but still you are compelled to act. Whatever Mr. rhetoric than violence per se. The 19th-century pro test ers, their Bundy is about, it does not seem to be that he is too cheap to pay 20th-century echo, and their 21st-century revival in the Bundy his grazing fees. Mr. Bundy is no doubt breaking the law, just as dispute have a great deal in common. All were using public lands those lawless veterans were when they disregarded President on the assumption that they were members of the public. Just as Obama’s theatrical barricades during the government shutdown. the 19th-century homesteaders became vagabonds and squatters No good society can afford to make Mr. Bundy’s example the overnight, Mr. Bundy was a rancher until the day he became a general rule, but somewhere between his ranch in Nevada and tortoise-harasser and a trespasser upon his own land. the North Bridge in Con cord is the place at which we say, Not “his own land,” some will protest, but “federal property.” “Enough.” The terror of that is in the fact that every Timothy And that goes to the heart of the matter: If the government is our McVeigh thinks himself a Paul Revere—but still there are Paul instrument, and not the other way around, then Woody Guthrie’s Reveres, and times for Paul Reveres. A little sedition from time law applies: This land is our land. The government may have the to time is like fireworks on the Fourth of July: inspiring, illumi- power to declare that the interests of the lonely Mojave band of nating, and—do not forget it—dangerous.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

Instagram and Twitter with your fol- Here beneath the trees of Harvard lowers . . . Yard, on this perfect May morning, we take a moment, we take a breath, and From the Brandeis University Com - we mark the passing of the Class of mencement Address, Delivered via 2014 from one step to the next. ToleranT and Satellite by Sheik Faraz Al-Hamzad Harvard, as you all know, is a Progressive Rasul, Operating Director of Al- place of great tradition, but also a Qaeda International: place of great unity and tolerance. CommenCemenT Good morning, friends. I hope you Students come here from all places, sPeeChes, 2014 can all hear me okay! And that the all backgrounds, to learn and grow in satellite picture isn’t too ziggy and an atmosphere of diversity, tolerance, From the Stanford University Com - zaggy! Modern technology, huh? As and shared experience. Harvard is a mence ment Address, Delivered by the you can see from the background, I am very special place. And you are all Commencement-Speech-Algorithm in an anonymous location pretty much now a part of its glorious tradition of Project of the Computer Sciences unidentifiable. Am I in Pakistan? Am I excellence and inclusion. Give your- Department: in Egypt? Who knows? What’s impor- self a hand. You’ve earned it! Greetings, agender, androgyne, tant is that I’m here today, in front of all For the rest of the commencement androgynous, bigender, cis, cis gender, of you wonderful young people, to exercises, please report to the loca- cis female, cis male, cis man, cis share a little about what I’ve learned tion appropriate to your race, gender, woman, cisgender female, cisgender through my many years of trying to or ethnicity: male, cisgender man, cisgender kill people, Jews especially, and wipe Hispanic and Latino/Latina stu- woman, female to male, FTM, gen- the State of Israel off the face of the dents, please move quickly to the der fluid, gender nonconforming, earth. You know, they call it “com- buses now waiting for you on the gender questioning, gender variant, mencement” because it really is a kind other side of Wigglesworth Hall. genderqueer, intersex, male to fe - of a beginning. For some of you, this They will convey you and your male, MTF, neither, neutrois, non- day marks the end of childhood and guests to the ¡Graduación! event, on binary, other, pangender, trans, the beginning of a life spent im - Cambridge Common. Shirts and shoes trans*, trans female, trans* female, morally working for the Jew hege- are not required for this very special trans male, trans* male, trans man, mony worldwide. To you I say, “I’m event. trans* man, trans person, trans* per- gonna getcha!” No, but seriously, you African-American students, please son, trans woman, trans* woman, may be asking yourselves why a tradi- follow the signs marked by an up - transfeminine, transgender, transgen- tional and proudly Jewish institution raised black fist as they guide you to der female, transgender male, trans- would invite someone such as myself the African-American commence- gender man, transgender person, to speak to its graduating class. I mean, ment, for which an equal but distinct transgender woman, transmasculine, hey, what gives, am I right? I’ve asked budget has been devoted. There you transsexual, transsexual female, trans- myself the same thing. I said, “Sheik will find speakers and refreshments sexual male, transsexual man, trans- Faraz, why would those crafty Jews that address your experience in this sexual person, transsexual woman, invite you, a dedicated hater of Jews still-tinged-by-slavery culture. and two-spirit students! And wel- who actively plots the destruction of Gay students are invited to stay come, too, to their parents, guardians, Israel, to speak at Brandeis of all here, in Harvard Yard, and rearrange self coaches, spirit guides, hatcheries, places?” And you know what I came the chairs into a more fun and nurturers, gender-non-specific moth- up with? Nada. Zip. Old snake eyes. intriguing pattern. The flowers and ers, trans fathers, non-binary elders, Yes, of course, you all in the West bunting are also available for adjust- genderqueer non-generationally spe- want to be “tolerant” and “open” and ment. Following that, the rest of the cific responsible adults, composting “accepting,” but don’t think for a commencement will be performed aides, nonsexual partners, and gen- minute I’m fooled by that “we embrace by the Hasty Pudding Club. der-fluid mentors of choice! It gives all viewpoints” nonsense. You’re up to Asian-American students with the currently broadcasting non- something, you people at Brandeis. No strong language skills are asked to animate algorithm enormous syn- one is that stupid. I mean, am I right? lead the Asian-national students to thetic satisfaction to model the the Airporter Express buses that will class- liberated and anti-colonial hu - From the Preamble to the 2014 take them back to China. man behavior of joy at the successful Harvard Commencement Address, This concludes this portion of the completion of your Stanford educa- Delivered by Harvard University 2014 Harvard College Commence - tion. Please down load the appropriate President Drew Gilpin Faust: ment. Please move quickly to the app for your customized commence- Welcome students, alumni, parents, ethnic area and racial zone to which ment experience. Share this day via and friends. What a wonderful day! you have been assigned.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Dancing Athwart History

LADImIR PuTIN’S effortless ingestion of Crimea its dusty labyrinths. Like most museums, it has paintings in has produced some novel responses, and while storage—about 3 million, by some estimates. So a cultural one usually wouldn’t expect English lefty news- boycott is like trying to starve out someone who has a six- V papers to get all frowny and harsh, Guardian arts story basement filled with canned goods. columnist Jonathan Jones has his dander up: We could forbid them Western movies, I suppose. Thieves and hackers being a robust element of eastern economies, Perhaps you disagree that Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous though, they probably screened the latest Captain America man in the world right now, but if I am right to be shocked and movie in the Kremlin before it showed up at the White House scared by Russia’s current course, the question that follows is the one Lenin asked: what is to be done? theater. matthew Bourne has just offered one answer by refusing to A threat to withhold Western art might be more effective if tour his gay Swan Lake to Russia. we produced much art that anyone really wanted. The gay Swan Lake is a perfect example of politics over substance; the fact Well, that’ll learn ’em. The author calls for a total artist boy- that everyone’s gay is utterly unremarkable. Whether they can cott of Russia, which would deploy the West’s most powerful dance, now that’s the rub. This sort of rejiggering is so com- weapon: passive-aggressive symbolic disapproval. monplace you expect a theater director to announce they’re You can imagine Putin’s rage, can’t you? It’s one thing to find staging Othello in a new way to shock modern audiences: The yourself described in unflattering terms by editorial writers who hero will be black, and Desdemona will be a white chick. couldn’t fire a water pistol without dislocating their shoulder, Putin will not back down unless the personal costs are too but to learn that an all-male Swan Lake has turned up its col- great, and as far as I can tell, the biggest hit he’s taken so far lective nose—well, that must have been poorly received. is the diminished number of pro-Putin funny pictures on the Internet. For a while he was cast as a Chuck Norris type, his Scene: Kremlin hallway. Sounds: glass breaking, books thrown cartoony macho exploits given a playful—and somewhat around behind the broad door of the president’s office. admiring—tweak by the vacant males who sit around and put Putin Aide #1: In the name of Saint Isaac, what’s going on in captions on pictures. (Also known as “the dominant form of there? entertainment on the planet at the moment.”) They had fun with a guy who flew helicopters bare-chested, but compared Putin Aide #2: The boss just learned that the homoerotic re - with all the neutered Euros who plod along passing laws codi - imagining of Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet will not be arriving. fying sausage diameters, he had panache. He was looking forward to a modern staging that recast our no - tions of gender and classical Russian art, and took into account That seems to have died down since they figured out that the competing narratives of the composer’s own sexuality. invading a sovereign country is “kind of a douche move,” in their parlance. Putin Aide #1: Doesn’t he have that on Blu-Ray? You could say it’s typical of a supine and deluded culture Putin Aide #2: Nekulturny idiot! Our rich culture must be to suggest that an artists’ boycott “hits Putin where it hurts.” communally experienced! Just kidding, he was looking for- If you’re wearing hobnail boots and he has his bankbook in ward to having the theater blown up and blaming it on his underpants, you might be able to hit him where it hurts, Estonian nationalists. but otherwise no: An artists’ boycott sounds like an unpaid Putin Aide #1: Really? blogger who decided to penalize a TV-critic website by not Putin Aide #2: Really. You want to see Westerners’ heads posting recaps of that Dark Shadows DVD. spin, watch them criticize Putin for invading a country to The correct way to push back at this point is to give full- avenge a gay ballet troupe. throated support to the nations that got out from under the Soviet heel, kick Russia out of every international organiza- The merits of the revised Swan Lake aside, Russia could tion, and stop selling it things its moneyed classes want. But survive an arts boycott. It’s not like Sergei down at the motor the administration seems to think it can shame Putin out of pool is going to protest the postponement of a Warhol exhibit. future aggression with some Very Stern Rhetoric. Dammit, I have a life expectancy of 51! I’d like to see a crude “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th-century lithograph of a soup can before I die, is that too much to ask? fashion by invading another country on completely trumped- The author of piece seems to undercut his own up pretext,” Secretary of State John Kerry said to CBS News. point with this observation: “Russia . . . is also a land that Well, they did. This may explain President Obama’s tweet the loves visual art. There is no greater museum on earth than St other day about history: History does not always move for- Pe ters burg’s Hermitage, with its masterpieces that reflect the wards, but sometimes backwards and sideways. deep love of art by Russian collectors.” Deep. And sometimes counter-clockwise and katty- The Hermitage is unparalleled, and it takes weeks to explore whompus as well. You want to boycott theatrical exports to Russia? Tell the Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. administration to stop dancing.

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or references. It is really six books in States has seen 14 banking crises, com- one—the banking histories of Britain, pared with two in Canada. More recently, The Politics the United States, Canada, Mexico, and since 1970 the U.S. has seen two bank- Brazil, and an analysis of how banks ing crises, which puts it on a par with Of Banking operate. But in order to understand how countries such as the Central African competing interests affect the stability Republic, Chad, and Uruguay. DIANA FURCHTGOTT- of banks, it is vital to see how different The fundamental problem is not just ROTH structures evolved. And at less than six that governments are needed to charter cents a page, the book is a bargain. banking systems, but that governments few know, for example, that national also fall prey to parochial interests that chartered banks developed when gov- end up weakening that banking system. ernments wanted to raise money. The These interests vary by country. The Bank of England, set up in 1694, was authors call this “the Game of Bank started by William of Orange and Bargains.” The U.S. had to compromise Parliament to pay for a government that with more interested parties than did wanted to spend more than it raised in Canada, and the compromises resulted taxes, because England was at war with in the stream of U.S. banking crises. france. In Brazil, in 1808, Dom João Satisfying local interests also weakened founded a monopoly bank, the Banco banks in Mexico and Brazil. Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking do Brasil, to issue inflationary paper Although Alexander Hamilton set up Crises and Scarce Credit, by Charles W. money to repay his debts to the British. a system of a limited number of banks Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber The Civil War, with its financing needs, that received charters, this fell apart in (Princeton, 624 pp., $35) substantially changed the U.S. banking the early 1800s, partly because these system. banks would not lend to farmers. So f you have time to read only one The actions of Treasury secretary banks in the United States developed in book about the causes of the Salmon Chase during the Civil War the early 1800s as the product of an 2008 financial collapse, read this show that “incompetent treasury secre- alliance between “unit banks”—banks I one. You will discover that the taries are not just a recent phenome- with no branches—and agrarian pop- banking crises that occur in some coun- non,” in the words of the authors. Under ulists. tries but not others are part of the “fragile Chase, the government started in 1862 Because unit banks have no branches design” of the banking system. They are to issue “greenbacks,” pieces of paper to spread risk, they are inherently un - not simply random occurrences, but that had the status of currency, in order stable. “In 1914,” write Calomiris and come about as the product of political to bail out the banks. The government Haber, “there were 27,349 banks in the systems, part of a bargain among com- could pay for the war with paper rather United States, 95 percent of which had peting political interests. than gold. We get a sense of déjà vu no branches.” In comparison, in 2012, Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen reading the following: “The problem according to the federal Deposit In- H. Haber, professors at Columbia and facing Secretary Chase—the potential surance Corporation, there were 6,096 Stanford respectively, have written an collapse of a group of major East Coast banks and 83,709 branches—an aver- exhaustively researched and readable banks—could not be solved . . . without age of nearly 14 branches per bank. volume. It compares banking systems undertaking bold new steps. He had to The Glass-Steagall Act and other reg- in five countries and shows why some create a mechanism to bail out the banks ulatory “reform” laws of the 1930s made are more stable than others. (full dis- that he himself had sunk, and thus, con- bank consolidation and branch banking closure: Calomiris is a member of the stitutional or not, the greenback was extremely difficult. In the 1970s, unre- Shadow Open Market Committee, a declared legal tender.” stricted intrastate branch banking was partner of the Manhattan Institute’s Chase changed his mind once he found in only twelve states, and no bank Economics21.org project, of which I became chief justice of the Supreme had branches over state lines. Interstate am the director.) Court. In 1869, in Hepburn v. Gris - banking started in 1982, in response to Admittedly, the book is hefty. Al - wold, he voted against making paper the savings-and-loan crisis, when Con- though written by economists, it does money legal tender for private dollar- gress allowed failed banks to be taken not economize on words, or footnotes, denominated contracts. President Ulysses over by banks in other states. In 1994, Grant stacked the Court with two more Congress allowed both intrastate and Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the justices to reverse the decision in 1871. interstate branching. U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Chase’s problems during the Civil Branch banking gave more stability Manhattan Institute. She is the author of Women’s War are, unfortunately, a microcosm of to the U.S. banking system. But the Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the U.S. banking history and not an aberra- confluence of political interests that had Economic Progress of Women in America. tion. Over the past 180 years, the United caused banking crises in the past did not

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just disappear. Activists placed condi- moderate-income communities.” This In addition, regulators relaxed the tions on mergers that weakened the meant that community organizers could amount of capital required to be held by fabric of the system, so that fragility hold up mergers by complaining that banks. So when the crash came, banks was, and still is, the name of the game. they did not do enough to help the poor. that had invested heavily in loans of One of the most fascinating parts of Since the poor often had lower credit dubious quality did not have sufficient the book is the documentation of the ratings, banks processed loans of dubi- resources. It was a crisis ready to hap- grand bargains that were struck be - ous quality to get higher CRA ratings. pen, and all it took was for interest rates tween activists and banks in the 1990s For instance, write Calomiris and to rise and real-estate values to fall. to allow the mergers that were legally Haber, “agreements included a $760 Those on the left and on the right who permitted to go forward. Reasonable million agreement from the Bank of warned of the crisis, including Fed people might think that if banks were New York to ACORN, an $8 billion chairman Alan Greenspan and activist allowed to merge, then they would agreement between Wachovia Bank and Ralph Nader, were overruled or ignored. merge, if both banks consented. But it New Jersey Citizen Action, and a $70 Politicians, including New York senator was not so simple. The 1977 Commu- billion commitment between the Bank Charles Schumer, a Democrat, received nity Reinvestment Act encouraged of America and the California Rein - substantial campaign contributions from banks to serve their local communities, vestment Coalition.” These were just Fannie and Freddie. As House speaker, and banks received grades of “outstand- three of 376 agreements between 1977 Newt Gingrich defended them from ing,” “satisfactory,” “needs to improve,” and 2007. By 2008, banks had $2.78 regulation, and, after he left Congress, and “noncompliance.” Activist groups trillion in CRA commitments. he received over $1.6 million in consult- such as ACORN, now disbanded Banks also contributed directly to ing fees from Freddie. Between 1998 owing to financial shenanigans, and activist organizations. As of 2000, total and 2008, Fannie and Freddie spent $79 the National Community Reinvest- payoffs came to $9.5 billion, according million and $95 million respectively on ment Coalition used the law as a means to the Senate Banking Committee find- lobbying. of extorting banks to get additional ings cited in the book. Calomiris and Haber write: “Neither subprime loans and funding in ex - At the same time as activists were the aggressive subsidization of mort- change for letting the merger proceed. shaking down the banks, “no-docs mort- gage risk that resulted from federal A guide published by the NCRC in gages,” in which the borrower does not housing-finance policies and programs 2007 stated: “Merger and acquisition have to verify income, became more nor the costly failure of prudential reg- activity presents significant opportuni- common, and the down payment re - ulation would have been tolerated by ties for community groups to intervene quired to buy a home declined from a the political system if those two policy in the approval process. . . . Even standard of 20 percent of the home’s pur- choices had not been made together, as changing a rating from Outstanding to chase price to 3 percent. Government- part of America’s peculiar Game of Satisfactory in one state or one part of sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Bank Bargains.” the exam can motivate a bank to in - Freddie Mac bought these loans, and In contrast, Canada has few banks, crease the number of loans, invest- they were repackaged and sold to unsus- and these banks have nationwide ments, and services to low- and pecting investors. branches, allowing them to spread the risk over many customers and cut ad - ministrative costs. Further, Canada reg- ularly reviews its bank legislation and renews the charters to its banks. Until 1992, this took place every decade, and, since 1992, it has occurred every five years. This allows a periodic reevalua- tion that limits the power of special interests. Canada’s parliamentary sys- tem, similar to Britain’s, limits the power of states and political activists over economic policymaking, so the re- newal process is not subject to the polit- ical forces that hold sway in the United States. Fragile by Design shows that banking systems are not created in a vacuum. In order to avoid repeating past mistakes, we need to look at the fundamental rea- sons for U.S. banking crises. With great literary sensibility uncommon to econo- mists, Calomiris and Haber have per- formed a public service by painstakingly identifying these root causes.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS long and influential but ambiguous and Urban Education Reform, a 2009 tenure of Charles William eliot as presi- volume of essays gathered by the young A Texan to dent of harvard (1869–1909). eliot scholar Cara S. Candal.) shares with John Dewey most of the in addition to working on head Start The Rescue responsibility for the educational confu- and the Chelsea initiative, the conserva- sion and incompetence that have plagued tive Democrat Silber was a great friend M. D. AESCHLIMAN the U.S. over the past century: in gutting to educational opportunity and reform in the harvard undergraduate curriculum, boston itself and throughout Massa - eliot ultimately collaborated with the sen- chusetts, of whose board of education timental “progressive” naturalist Dewey he served as a very effective chairman in dumbing down and betraying the fun- for several crucial years in the late 1990s. damentally decent and sound American longtime Democratic boston mayor educational system that had been in - Thomas M. Menino said of Silber: “his spired by the natural-law ideals of the passion for education spanned every Founding Fathers and devoted to equality corner of our state. . . . The City of of opportunity. boston could not have asked for a better Just as hutchins and his assistant and friend.” in a very important book that ally Mortimer Adler tried to reverse this the liberal, anti-Silber Boston Globe decline at Chicago in mid-century, John never re viewed, Reforming Boston Seeking the North Star: Selected Speeches, by John Silber brought to bear his own extraordi- Schools, 1930 to the Present (2008), the R. Silber (Godine, 306 pp., $29.95) nary intelligence, will, executive and nationally eminent Massachusetts edu- administrative abilities, and eloquence cation scholar Joseph Cronin showed ohn Silber (1926–2012) and to defend, recover, and vindicate the Silber’s benefactions to the city in new York senator Daniel Patrick pro mise of American education. born detail. Moynihan (1927–2003) were small, crippled (only one functioning Why then the hatred—no other word J probably the most serious first- arm), and poor in Texas in 1926, he will do—of Silber by political and edu- order intellectuals to commit themselves interested himself in education at all cational “liberals” and the left? The sal- effectively to high public service in levels, including preschool: he was one vation and then vast improvement of the the United States since World War ii. of the original theorists of head Start once-tottering boston University under Journalist Steven r. Weisman performed and all of his life advocated for the pro- Silber’s long tenure—1971–2003—is a a public service by editing and publish- vision of decent educational opportuni- matter of public record. he built the uni- ing, in 2010, Daniel Patrick Moynihan: ties for poor, minority, and immigrant versity’s endowment from “$18.8 mil- A Portrait in Letters of an American children in the United States. lion to $430 million [even as] its Visionary; and we now should be grate- one of his several important ventures physical plant more than doubled” (i ful to have a similar volume of Silber’s was the unique educational partnership quote here from the same Boston Globe speeches over a 40-year period. Though between boston University and Chelsea, that is antipathetic to Silber). he attracted Silber never succeeded in reaching the Massachusetts, in which the improving scholars of national and international high public office that Senator Moy nihan but far-from-rich private bU invested in renown to the university, once the poor did—he narrowly lost the gubernatorial taking over—and rescuing—the K–12 relation of its cross-river neighbors election in Massachusetts in 1990—his public schools of Massachusetts’s poor- harvard and MiT—including such lumi- various services to the American republic est school district, the bankrupt and naries as sociologist Peter l. berger; elie deserve close attention and high com- crime-ridden Chelsea, a haven for immi- Wiesel and Saul bellow (nobel-laureate mendation. grants and their children. (The Common- writer-moralists); Sheldon Glashow John Silber should rank with nicholas wealth provided most of the funding for (nobel laureate in physics); the poets Murray butler (president of Columbia the effort, but bU provided both the ideas Geoffrey hill, robert Pinsky, and University from 1902 to 1945) and robert and the management.) rosanna Warren; literary critics Christo - Maynard hutchins (president of the This is a story that educational “pro- pher ricks and roger Shattuck; and University of Chicago from 1929 to gressives” do not like to hear about: it education-policy specialists Kevin 1951) as one of the great, benign univer- forced a university education school to ryan and Charles l. Glenn. he intro- sity presidents and educational states- “put up or shut up” by focusing its con- duced sound programs and vastly men of the last 150 years in America, all ceptions, personnel, and expertise on a improved the quality of the student three being in salutary contrast to the real-life, proximate educational prob- body through, among other things, the lem—a whole, actually impoverished risky tactic of purposely downsizing it Mr. Aeschliman is professor emeritus of education at school district. no other university or at the cost of millions of dollars of Boston University, professor of Anglophone culture at education school or teachers’ college has tuition income. This alone would have the University of Italian Switzerland, author of imitated this public-spirited educational caused the firing of nine out of ten uni- The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and initiative, but it has attracted international versity presidents by boards of trustees. the Case Against Scientism, and editor of attention and praise. (The story is well Yet the boston University trustees sup- paperback editions of novels by Charles Dickens and told in Partnering for Progress: Boston ported Silber through thick and thin, Malcolm Muggeridge. University, the Chelsea Public Schools, even in the face of aggressive, insulting,

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well-publicized student and faculty opposed his moral and political out - Among the other highlights: “The protests. spokenness and traditionalism, and from Need for Honesty in Confronting the While dean of the College of Arts and those resentful of his high financial com- World,” a judicious 1995 address in Sciences at the University of Texas pensation (he had seven children). He Hiroshima, Japan, delivered to a largely (1967–70), Silber had improved that hated euphemism and verbal inflation. Japanese audience, carefully but clearly university academically, worked against Having been bullied as a small, one- defends President Truman’s decision to the death penalty, worked for the racial armed schoolchild in Texas, he was ever drop the two atomic bombs. A 1971 integration of the university, and refused ready to contest browbeating, peer pres- “Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.” prais- to cooperate with meddling by the right- sure, and the “moral inversion” of intel- es the ethical depth and personal courage wing chairman of its board of trustees, lectuals whose ethical relativism failed of Dr. King, a Boston University alum- Frank Erwin, who fired him in 1970. to prevent them from indulging in furi- nus. “Ethics and Corporate Responsi - The crumbling Boston University hired ous moralism in favor of their pet causes. bility,” given in Zurich in 2003 to a him partly owing to his reputation as a Perhaps there are two keys to under- convention of Swiss bankers, is a bril- liberal. standing Silber’s combative courage and liantly sustained example of applied phi- But as Silber later wryly noted, what his achievements: He was a Texan and he losophy, with ominous implications for was decent liberalism in very conserva- was a Kantian. He was keenly aware of capitalist societies that lose or subvert tive Texas turned out to be conservatism the evils of the old South, including their own enabling moral framework. in the increasingly radical and libertine Texas racism and segregation, and pain - There are 22 other speeches of great point Northeast of the Sixties and after (bril- fully aware of the privations of the and power. liantly documented in his friend Saul American Depression of the Thirties, in Raised as a fervent Protestant, John Bellow’s 1970 novel Mr. Sammler’s which the architectural practice of his Silber studied Kant for his Ph.D. at Planet), and especially in Boston, “the immigrant German father dried up, pro- Yale and then taught philosophy there, Athens of America.” Like Moynihan, jecting the family into near poverty from in Germany, and at the University of and like Silber’s hero which it was rescued only by his Metho - Texas. While in Germany he discov- at Columbia University, Silber was a dist mother’s schoolteaching. But some- ered that his deceased immigrant father “liberal” in the 19th-century or tradi- thing of the decency, hopefulness, and had actually been a German Jew, one of tional sense, the sense in which Burke, promise of American life, especially by whose sisters perished at Auschwitz. Hamilton, Tocqueville, Lincoln, Glad - comparison with the history of other Kant’s moral universalism, with its stone, Lord Acton, Chesterton, C. S. major nations in the 20th century, Judeo-Christian and stoical roots, would Lewis, Herbert Butterfield, Hutchins, always seemed to animate Silber: per- give Silber his lifelong intellectual bal- Adler, and educational reformer E. D. haps some of the hardiness of the fron- last and compass, his “North Star,” as Hirsch are “liberals”: believers in the tier and Texans’ life and consciousness. he called it. He became a fearless man, essential values of the American found- He thought the academic and political and this quality evoked both admira- ing documents, including equality under Left’s contemptuous critique of Ameri - tion and loyalty, on one hand, and, on the law, due process, limited govern- can life—as in the writing of Zinn and the other, hatred and fear. Shortly ment, fiscal prudence, free speech, free Chomsky—ludicrously disproportionate before his death in 2012, he finished assembly, , and pious moral in light of the realities of comparative and published his book Kant’s Ethics: self-regulation. Despite Silber’s advocacy modern history. And he never shied away The Good, Freedom, and the Will. The for the poor and marginalized—repre- from taking on Marxists or followers of book has a most profound and moving sented as much in deeds as in words—he decadent French follies such as decon- appendix, the essay “Kant at Auschwitz,” hated “political correctness” and rest- structionism. in which Silber carefully considers the less, volatile, anti-American, left-wing The present volume contains Silber’s horrifying claim of the Nazi functionary moralizing (often consisting of what lucidly argued speeches on a wide vari- Adolf Eichmann, at his trial in Israel, Montaigne called “supercelestial talk ety of philosophical, educational, and that in dutifully following the orders of and subterranean conduct”). In the political topics. It rightly starts with his his Nazi superiors he was being true to unflattering mirror of Silber’s actions, celebrated 1971 inaugural address as Kant’s fundamental principle for citi- achievements, and policies, the political president of Boston University, “The zens, that they should defer to legally and educational Left could not help but Pollution of Time,” in which he argues constituted authorities. Carefully inves- see itself as Caliban, raging against the strongly against “a quasi-religious” ide- tigating Eichmann’s appalling claim to civilizing, normative traditions of mind, ological “scientism,” with its blindness have acted in accordance with the funda- rationality, literature, language, the liberal to human proportion and duration, and mental principles of the greatest secular arts, and common human decency. for a historical, cultural understanding of moral philosopher since Aristotle, Silber Complaints against Silber came the human person. He would return to concluded that Eich mann’s claim was from the many academics whom he this theme in 2005 with “Science vs. credible, for Kant recognized no right to annoyed by firing or failing to promote Scientism,” delivered at the invitation of revolution. Like Socrates, Silber, even at or flatter, from those whose ideas of Sean Cardinal O’Malley of Boston and the gates of death, followed the argu- collective decision-making his bold printed in . He cri- ment fairly where it led, giving even the leadership and risk-taking offended, tiques reductionistic, scientistic dogma- devil his due. from hard-edged left-wingers (Howard tism for its “unrelenting assault on the If there be a God, this Texan pleased Zinn, Noam Chomsky), from those who dignity of the human spirit.” Him.

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Sailing November 9–16 on THE NATIONAL REVIEW Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas 22001144 PPoosstt--EEleeccttiioonn CCrruuiissee New Speaker ALLEN WEST joins Victor Davis Hanson, Fred Thompson, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Kyl, Luis Fortuño, John Yoo, Brent Bozell, Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, Ralph Reed, Bing West, Rich Lowry, Tim Phillips, , , Brian Anderson, Ned Ryun, Charles Kesler, Andrew McCarthy, Sally Pipes, Cleta Mitchell, Kathryn Lopez, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, , Charles Cooke, Kevin Williamson, Rob Long, James Lileks, , Michael Walsh, John Fund, Jim Geraghty, John Hillen, Ed Whelan, Cal Thomas, John Miller, William Jacobson, Christian Robey, Roman Genn, & Jennifer Marshall

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1930s and early 1940s, but began rising Nonetheless, Piketty uses this theory again in the late 1970s and early 1980s. to make predictions, arguing that growth Unequal to This pattern of inequality is not confined is likely to be lower in the near future to one particular country, but rather is than it has been in the recent past and that The Task broadly apparent across developed coun- this is likely to exacerbate the increase in tries over the course of the 20th century. the capital share of income. However, J O S H U A R . Piketty notes that the rise in income one is left to wonder what happens to the HENDRICKSON inequality is also coincident with a rise rate of return on capital when the growth in the capital-to-income ratio (i.e., the rate of the economy changes. Perhaps, as ratio of the stock of capital to total Piketty assumes, the rate of return on income) over the same period, and capital can be held constant. Nonethe - argues that the two phenomena are related less, it would be preferable to understand in a precise way: When the rate of return the dynamics by which the growth rate

on capital rises faster than the rate of of the economy and the rate of return on     economic growth, income from capital capital are determined in equilibrium, rises more than total income.  As a  result,given  how  important they are to Piketty’s the share of income that goes to owners framework and predictions. of capital rises at the expense of the  Piketty believes that the increasing share of income that is going   to wage  importance   of inheritance is problematic. earners. Piketty supports this claim  by He suggests   that a greater reliance on Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas presenting evidence that the capital  inheritance is inconsistent with free, Piketty (Harvard, 696 pp., $39.95) share of income has been rising for  the  democratic, and meritocratic societies. past few decades. As the capital share of But does this mean that all inheritance        N the mid 1950s, Simon Kuznets income rises, wealth and inheritance should be eliminated? If not, what  published historical data on the become a substantially more important types of policies should be enacted to distribution of income in the source of income relative to wage in- curb an excess dependence of income I United States, covering a 35-year come. on inheritance? Piketty says that the period beginning in 1913. This was the Overall, this presents a bleak vision of best tool to “avoid an endless inegalitar- first time any such statistics had been the future. According to Piketty’s view, ian spiral and to control the worrisome compiled for analysis, and they showed a if the capital-to-income ratio continues dynamics of global capital con cen tra - sharp reduction in inequality over that to rise, we are likely to continue to see tion” is a global tax on capital. This period. In subsequent work, Kuznets rising income inequality and an ever- would be a progressive tax, in that it argued that income inequality is likely greater importance of inheritance and would tax larger fortunes more heavily to increase when countries begin to wealth. Nevertheless, lost in the midst of than smaller ones. industrialize and experience economic the volume of historical evidence is any Piketty’s policy solution is logically growth, but that eventually the trend in notion of what is optimal. Certainly the consistent with his concern regarding the income inequality begins to reverse. This presence of perpetually increasing in- growing importance of inheritance, but it bell-shaped relationship between eco- come inequality is undesirable, but just is inadequate. A better conceptual frame- nomic growth and inequality became how much inequality is too much in - work for devising tax policy—and one known as the Kuznets curve, and it equality? What will be the result, and that is consistent with the theoretical lit- broadly represented evidence that eco- what does it imply for policy? erature in this field—would be the fol- nomic growth would ultimately and While there are places in the book lowing: Some people are born to wealthy automatically solve problems of income where Piketty gives hypothetical bench- parents, and others are born to poor par- inequality. marks of potentially desirable alloca- In his new book, Thomas Piketty com- tions, these benchmarks are entirely piles data on income inequality across arbitrary. His theoretical framework is “Rated One of New York City countries and across much longer time ill-equipped to determine the optimal ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats horizons than Kuznets did. For some level of inequality, and one could argue countries, he presents centuries of data. that it is similarly ill-equipped to make What Piketty finds is that while Kuznets predictions about the future. The reason was correct about income inequality for for this is that what Piketty presents as a the period he examined, the implications theory is really an accounting identity: of the Kuznets curve do not hold. Using His conclusions simply follow from the the share of income earned by the top 10 definition of the capital share of income. New York’s all suite hotel is located in percent of income earners as his measure the heart of the city, near corporations, When the rate of return on capital rises theatre & great restaurants. Affordable of inequality, Piketty shows that income faster than economic growth, the numer- elegance with all the amenities of home. inequality declined beginning in the late ator (the capital stock) rises more than the denominator (total income). This 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 Mr. Hendrickson is an assistant professor of implies that capital income is rising Reservations 1-800-248-9999 Ask about our special National Review rates. economics at the University of Mississippi. faster than total income.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS ents. This is what is known as an “idio- about when discussing inheritance and clear how a global tax on wealth would syncratic risk.” The government might inequality are explicitly taken into produce substantially different results. want a tax policy that insures individuals account. The preceding arguments cast doubts against this risk; this would tend to be a A separate but related issue is the on Piketty’s policy prescriptions. A sepa- policy that has high taxes on inheritance. persistence of wealth. Economists rate question is whether the empirical On the other hand, high taxes would dis- Gregory Clark and Neil Cummins claims he makes hold up under close courage the accumulation of wealth. The have tracked individuals with the scrutiny. For example, Piketty’s main government therefore must balance the same surnames in England over the argument is that inheritance is becoming desire to insure individuals against the period from 1858 to 2012, and found a more important determinant of income, lottery of birth with the desire to encour- that wealth is indeed highly persistent that this is evident from the rising capital age the most productive members of across generations. This would seem share of income, and that this trend is society to be as productive as possible to provide support for Piketty’s view likely to continue. But what if he’s and, in the process, accumulate wealth. that the growing importance of inheri- wrong about the capital share of income? The implications of this framework tance is likely to exacerbate inequality Using data compiled by Gregory Clark are at odds with the policy solutions that in the income distri bution; but in fact, from every decade in England from 1200 Piketty suggests. Specifically, while this these findings cast doubt on the effec- to 1860, I calculate that the average cap- framework suggests that the optimal tax tiveness of his preferred policy solution. ital share of income has been roughly on inheritance should be progressive, it Specifically, as Clark and Cummins 21.6 percent—a percentage not substan- also implies that the marginal tax rate note, the persistence of wealth across tially lower than the most recently should be negative. In other words, the generations is roughly constant over observed figures. Even after we update optimal tax policy for inheritance is to time, and robust in the face of very sig- these data using decade averages since subsidize inheritance and to reduce the nificant changes in institutions and tax 1860, the average does not change. size of the subsidy with the size of the policies. In addition, with various other The fact that today’s capital share of inheritance. It is easy to understand the co-authors, Clark has found that these income might be of a different magni- intuition behind this conclusion: Sub- results hold across several countries. As tude than average is not sufficient to sidizing inheritance prevents the deter- the authors note, the high degree of per- argue that the capital share has actually rent effect of taxation, and the greater sistence in wealth across generations changed. In reality, one must demon- subsidization of inheritance for children and tax regimes is probably owing to strate that today’s capital share of in - of poor parents reduces the risks associ- the fact that the inheritance of wealth is come differs from the historical average ated with birth. correlated with a great deal of other by more than what can be explained by This conclusion is important not family-dependent traits, such as family randomness. The capital income share only because it differs from the policy structure, work ethic, and genetics. observed today in England is not differ- outlined by Piketty, but also because it Given that widely different tax policies ent in a statistically significant way from is derived from a framework in which across generations have had little effect the average over this period, so what the idiosyncratic risks that one worries on the persistence of wealth, it is un- Piketty depicts as a rising trend might in fact be simply the result of randomness. Given the central role that the capital TO BETA, COSMICALLY CONSIDERED share of income plays in Piketty’s expla- nations and predictions about income If relic radiation bathes the spheres inequality, caution about his theses ap - Isotropically, as water is to fish, pears to be in order. To an observer here or in Andromeda, Despite these criticisms of Piketty’s Time has an arrow sharp as Cupid’s kiss. theoretical framework and policy recom- mendations, one should not dismiss the If all is that primeval fireball contribution he has made with this book. Exploding yet beyond the verge of sight, Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a We’re genesis and apocalypse ourselves— significant contribution to our under- Galactic cousins, catastrophic flesh. standing of the distribution of wealth and income—in particular, in his evidence Let us junk tyrannical cyclopean clocks suggesting that there is no inherent ten- Geared to the worm-work of industrious forebears dency for the distribution of income and Who added pittance by the pendulum— wealth to become less unequal as coun- Only to leave their wealth to wastrel heirs. tries grow. In addition, the sheer vol- ume of data Piketty has compiled and Let us accept that arrow in our hearts summarized in this text is a significant Transfixing us, targets of joy and tears; contribution to economic science. None - The stars may see how in our spendthrift love the less, there is much work to be done We keep a better time by keeping theirs. in understanding the mechanisms that lead to inequality, and the policy impli- —RICHARD O’CONNELL cations thereof.

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together—had not yet been born. It would be hard to understand their long faces Blacklisted except for the fact that their industry had made a sport of kicking around Elia PETER TONGUETTE Kazan for so long that it had become something of a rite of passage, and they were manifesting an L.A. variant of Jung’s collective unconscious. I M P O R T A N T Not that any of this bothered the man there to get an Oscar. Looking quite N O T I C E placid, surrounded by introducers Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro as well as to all National Review his third and final wife (who escorted him), Kazan acknowledged the Academy subscribers! for its courage and generosity, spared the audience a litany of unnecessary thank- you’s, and concluded by saying, “I think I The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan, edited by can just slip away.” Albert J. Devlin with Marlene J. Devlin In the letters gathered in this wonder-       We are moving our (Knopf, 672 pp., $40) ful, addictively readable new collection, Kazan is often tempestuous and moody, subscription-fulfillment      ELEN HUNT wasn’t smiling. but he displays a similar tone of tranquil    office from Neither was Lynn Redgrave, confidence when it comes to what hap- or Steven Spielberg. Well, at pened with HUAC. In the spring of Mount   Morris, Ill. H least they were clapping— 1952, he wrote an admiring letter to    to Palm Coast, Fla. others didn’t even go that far. On March philosopher , praising his Please continue 21, 1999, Elia Kazan was given an hon- anti-Communist pamphlet “Heresy,    orary Oscar at the Academy Awards, but Yes—Conspiracy, No!” and going on to to be vigilant: when the 89-year-old film director arrived bemoan the company he had once kept.      There are fraudulent onstage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, “The phrase ‘ritualistic liberal’ was illu- Hollywood’s crème de la crème seemed minating,” he wrote. “I didn’t realize until agencies   soliciting less than thrilled to see him. Nick Nolte I began looking around me with this your    National Review had his hands ostentatiously wrapped phrase in mind how hidebound and big- around his elbows, while Ed Harris rested oted and self-blindfolded are a great mass subscription !  renewal his hands in his lap. But, as I mentioned, of New York’s intellectual set.” Kazan without    our authorization. even many of those who gave Kazan always balked at the oft-repeated sugges- Please reply only to applause did so mournfully, as though tion that he testified because of career   saluting the man who made Gentleman’s expediency, and references in private cor- National Review Agreement, A Streetcar Named Desire, respondence to anti-Communist sages    renewal notices or and On the Waterfront was a chore rather like Hook and pro-     than a privilege. vide evidence for his sincerity. bills—make sure the Of course, the cause of Kazan’s less- Also in 1952, in a letter to his first wife,     return address is than-warm reception that night was his Molly, Kazan wrote that Chambers’s 1952 testimony to the House Committee book Witness “had a tremendous effect     Palm Coast, Fla. on Un-American Activities (HUAC), in upon me” and that the Alger Hiss de- Ignore   all requests for which he divulged the names of Com - scribed by Chambers “sounds like a terri- renewal that are not munists with whom he had once worked. ble liar. And a smoothie.” Time did not     directly payable Yet that didn’t fully explain the thinking fundamentally change Kazan’s certitude     of the aforementioned unhappy campers, that his decision was right. In 1984, he to National Review. few of whom could have remembered wrote to his daughter Katharine about his     Kazan’s decades-old wickedness. After state of mind. “I’m in excellent health If you receive any mail or all, in 1952, when Kazan was “naming and have no conscience problems,” he telephone     offer that makes names,” Nick Nolte was eleven, Ed said. “I think people who supported the    you suspicious contact Harris was two, and Helen Hunt—who USSR after the Stalin Hitler pact, after looked as though she had lost her best Khrushchev’s speech denouncing Stalin, [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. friend as she meekly brought her hands they, not I, should have bad consciences.” Your cooperation In his deeply revealing, elegantly writ-     Mr. Tonguette’s criticism has appeared in the Wall ten autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life      is greatly appreciated. Street Journal, , and (1988), Kazan suggested that his testi- elsewhere. He is writing a book on Peter Bogdanovich. mony, and the icy manner in which he

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS was received by some colleagues, domi- sion thick. “We often underestimate the Kazan is bursting with advice and, nated his thoughts for years. “Here I am, intelligence of people,” he says under- sometimes, admonishment for his pen 35 years later, still worrying over it,” he standingly. “We can talk to them and pals, telling off cinematographer Haskell wrote, adding that any guilt or embarrass- they’ll listen.” But “they” don’t. Then, as Wexler, with whom he worked ran- ment subsided within a year of his testi- now, some people don’t want what their corously on America, America (“You mony. More surprisingly, perhaps, the betters have to offer them. As Kazan told know I think you’re a good cameraman. experience altered the form and substance Osborn, “The old lady has what she wants. But under these circumstances I simply of his films. In a passage from A Life She knows what she wants concretely.” can’t take you. I resent you and I don’t quoted by the present volume’s editors, After Wild River, Kazan had a huge hit want to see you”); scolding Warren Albert J. Devlin and Marlene J. Devlin, with Splendor in the Grass, which at first Beatty for his behavior on another direc- Kazan claimed that “the only genuinely blush seems altogether less political (and tor’s set (“I really do like you, and it dis- good and original films I’ve made, I made shallower) than its immediate predeces- heartens me when I hear from the after my testimony.” Kazan also wrote sor. Yet Kazan wrote in A Life that the underground that you are giving every- that “the thing was to be hardy, no matter film’s apparently tragic ending—in which body a bad time in Maryland”); offering what the ‘weather,’ not to expect the com- Natalie Wood is briefly reunited with her Edward Albee both praise for, and a list of things that “troubled” him about, his play The Death of Bessie Smith (“It’s like Kazan is bursting with advice and, a circle of hell, your script”); and even sometimes, admonishment for chiding Williams for wanting to cast star actors in a particular play (“Imagine his pen pals. Eugene O’Neill running after Faye Dunaway?”). forts of position, the constant flattery of former inamorato Warren Beatty, who is As the above suggests, the Kazan who praise or the false assurances of comrade- toiling on a chicken farm with a trashy comes through here is exceedingly sharp- ship”—as though testifying liberated him, bride and a rugrat underfoot—as express- witted—a must for any book of letters in his films, to challenge a multitude of ing a moral of sorts: “That you have to expected to hold our interest. In 1967, he left-wing premises. accept limited happiness, because all hap- repeats a rumor to James Baldwin about In Wild River—his brilliant, under - piness is limited, and that to expect per- Marlon Brando’s not being able to re - appreciated 1960 movie about the human fection is the most neurotic thing of all; member his lines (“I wonder what he does toll of the Tennessee Valley Authority— you must live with the sadness as well as all day? Where he moves and why? I’m Kazan makes a hero (or is it an antihero?) with the joy.” This is a profoundly conser- worried about him”), while in 1976, dur- out of a figure straight from his days as an vative sentiment—that there is more to ing the shooting of his final, unfairly eager New Dealer: Chuck Glover (played life than romantic flights of fancy. neglected film, The Last Tycoon, he by Montgomery Clift), an official from In this collection, an apparently never- grouses to producer Sam Spiegel about the TVA who must prevail upon an elderly, mailed letter to Kazan’s son Chris, in the production’s wasteful largesse (“Here implacable Tennessean (Jo Van Fleet) which the young man is taken to task for we are, filming a tiny scene in a car and her kinfolk to sell their island, which being rude to his mother (“She takes the between two people, just a small intimate is standing athwart a dam (and history, trouble to call you about your painting talk and a little psychological play be - too). “He comes down absolutely sure of and you sound—so she tells me—as tween the eyes perhaps, and we had one of every conviction (you might say: preju- though you resented her calling you. the largest caravans of equipment since dice),” Kazan wrote screenwriter Paul What the hell! Common courtesy man”) World War II”). There is also great ten- Osborn as the project was being prepared. also casts a fresh light on Splendor’s derness, as when, anguishing over losing “He meets up against some people who many instances of parents’ locking horns Barbara Loden to cancer, he confesses to are from a certain point of view (his) with their mutinous offspring. Recall the director Joshua Logan his resentment at crazy. And wrong. And worthless.” But, scene in the film in which the Beatty char- seeing people living their lives as Loden Kazan added, the character finds that he is acter exhorts his sister (a terrific Loden, has been deprived of hers: “Frankly, I fond of the people he was sent to boot out: again) to “be decent” to their doddering look at the other people walking the street, “You might oversimplify the story thus: A mother. most of them, and I distrust life, its fair- man is assigned to kill someone. He falls One of the book’s abiding pleasures is ness.” in love with them. And then cant [sic] kill tracking the ongoing correspondence These letters contain too much else them. Instead he joins them.” between Kazan and his friend and col- to summarize—I haven’t even touched Before that happens, though, the film laborator Tennessee Williams. We feel on his correspondence with Clifford paints a devastating portrait of the guile- like witnesses to history when reading Odets, or his instructions to designer Jo lessness of government workers certain Kazan’s condolences to Williams upon Mielziner about the set for Death of a that they have the public’s interests at the death of his mother, whom Kazan says Salesman, or the on-location drama of heart. Unpersuaded by a fellow TVA Williams “immortalized”—a reference, making America, America in Turkey— employee (played, in a trenchant cameo, the Devlins explain in one of the helpful but the most memorable of them show by Kazan’s second wife, Barbara Loden) editorial annotations they include after us someone content with being an out- that the Van Fleet character “won’t budge each letter, to the character of Amanda lier, and with the choices that rendered an inch,” Chuck lays on the condescen- Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. him one.

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the film that don’t work, and elements Film that deserve Nicolosi’s schlock-and- cheese dismissal. But it’s also beautiful Noah’s Arc and appropriately strange in many places, and centered by a great performance from ROSS DOUTHAT a bearded, often-sopping Russell Crowe. And both dramatically and theologically, he religious reception of ’s most important departure Aronofsky’s Noah—a weird from the Biblical narrative is more com- art-house/blockbuster hybrid, pelling—theologically as well as dramati- T part Malick and part Bruck - cally—than his critics are acknowledging. heimer—has moved in three broad The basic plot you know, but here are Russell Crowe in Noah waves. First, long before the movie some of the embellishments. Aronofsky Now unless you want to portray screened, there was anxiety among the eschews the expected Middle eastern Yahweh as a Zeus-style potentate, weigh- religious, fanned by allegations that backdrop in favor of an ashy, ravaged, ing options on a cloud, such divine am - Aronofsky had turned the flood story into post-industrial landscape (the movie was bivalence is an awfully difficult thing to a crude environmentalist tract. Then, after filmed in Iceland). he has the Creator dramatize. So what Aronofsky has done is various attempts at outreach and damage speak in visions rather than directly, with take the ambivalence—which, again, is control, there was a burst of more favor- Noah’s grandfather Methuselah (a crusty clearly there in Scripture—and project it able publicity, segueing into an initial crit- Anthony hopkins) serving as a kind spirit onto Noah instead, making the human ical reaction—from religious and secular guide. he gives Noah an antagonist—a protagonist embody what the text portrays reviewers alike—that judged the movie bruiser named Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), as God’s uncertainty about how to handle an interesting, if flawed, success. descendant of you-know-who, part thug the height and depth of human wicked- But since then, there has been a reli- and part humanist—and supernatural ness. gious backlash, on aesthetic and theolog- assistants, those aforementioned rock I think that this move is truer themati- ical grounds alike. The movie has been monsters, who are really fallen angels cally to Genesis than some critics have attacked, predictably, for taking liberties (loosely based on Genesis’s mysterious suggested. As for whether it’s theologi- with Genesis: For making God more hid- Nephilim) imprisoned in stone for their cally correct . . . well, that’s a tricky ques- den, for making Noah more morally con- rebellion, and who help Noah build the tion, since the reality is that the entire flicted, for inserting large rock monsters ark for penance. portrait of God in the early books of into the first half of the story (more on And then, most controversially, Aronof- Genesis doesn’t always fit neatly into the that below). And, more seriously and sig- sky creates a third-act drama around the fully developed theology of later Judaism nificantly, its religious defenders have pregnancy of Shem’s ladylove (emma and Christianity—a theology in which the been accused of trading their birthright “Don’t Call Me hermione” Watson) and Absolute cannot, by definition, actually be for a mess of pottage—of praising a the increasingly unhinged Noah’s convic- changeable or ambivalent or inclined to movie that’s schlockier than the “worst of tion that God wants him to ensure the final regret his own decision-making. the cheesy Biblical movies made in the extinction of the human race . . . even if it So for serious believers, there has to be fifties,” as Barbara Nicolosi, a screen- means finishing the job on his own grand- some interpretation, some midrash, to rec- writer and widely respected authority on child, and with his own hands. oncile theology and text. And Aronofsky’s and hollywood, wrote recently, I would not defend all of these embel- interpretation implies one not-implausible just because they don’t want to seem lishments. (The rock monsters/Nephilim reconciliation, by suggesting that what the unhip, and of being “lured into a defense of have come in for particular mockery, and Biblical text portrays as God’s ambiva- the indefensible because they are so afraid the mockers have a point.) But I will lence is actually supposed to be our own, of the charge of ‘unreasonableness.’” defend the big “Noah as potential bad and that the encounter with the divine As Nicolosi’s formulation suggests, guy” twist, because I think it actually should make us feel something of what the Noah controversy is probably about makes the movie work. Crowe’s Noah feels: a deep revulsion at something bigger than a two-hour adap- Stories turn on conflict, and the only hu man wickedness, a sense that justice tation of the flood story. The movie has explicit conflict in the language of Genesis really could demand our deaths, which has dropped into a Lenten landscape where is within the mind of God himself. Read to be acknowledged and wrestled with conservative believers feel beleaguered with a strict literalism, the flood story fea- before mercy can break in. and beset, afflicted by a sense of culture- tures a Deity struggling to figure out how I’m not saying that the movie is ulti- war defeat. So it’s become a synecdoche to deal with the fruits of original sin—first mately a small-o orthodox reading of for much bigger disputes about engage- despairing of his own creation (“and the Scripture. But at the very least, I think that ment with American culture: Dislike LoRD was sorry that he had made man on Aronofsky’s twist is more theologically Noah, and you’re a self-segregating reli- the earth, and it grieved him to his heart”) interesting and potentially plausible than gious philistine; like it, and you’re a com- and then, once the floodwaters recede, some of the film’s religious critics have promised sellout who doesn’t recognize seeming to come to terms with the situa- been willing to admit. And where today’s when you’re being played. tion, making a covenant with mankind hollywood is concerned, low bar that it Cards on the table: I liked it. even though he knows that man’s heart may be, a theologically interesting treat-

PARAMOUNT PICTURES Not unreservedly: There are things in still remains “evil from his youth.” ment of the Bible deserves applause.

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Happy Warrior BY KYLE SMITH Bureaucratic Warfare

IRCA 1965, when the War on Poverty was just Cliven Bundy might well be dead if he had had as little about to be won and total federal spending access to the media as David Koresh. Exactly 21 years stood at $118 billion, a Woody Allen routine before the Bundy standoff, Koresh, along with his cult fol- C called “The Police” went as follows: “I was lowers, the Branch Davidians, was awaiting final resolu- once sitting home in my house, and a lot of cars pulled up tion of a dispute with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and around the house. They shined in searchlights, and I heard Firearms over alleged modification of legally obtained a voice over the loudspeaker say, ‘We have your house sur- firearms. The bureau would serve notice that its decision rounded. [Pause.] This is the New York Public Library.’” was unfavorable by attacking Koresh’s compound near Here the audience on a classic recording of the act can be Waco, laying siege for 51 days, and then attacking again, heard breaking into laughs, which grow as Allen waxes ever using armored vehicles to ram the buildings and fire hun- more absurd: “They wanted their books back. . . . The little dreds of rounds of CS gas, both the projectiles and their librarian was lobbing grenades over the house. . . . They took poisonous payload being potentially lethal in enclosed me down to the main branch on Fifth Avenue in New York, areas. The climactic raid was ordered by Attorney General and they took away my glasses for a year.” Janet Reno, who in turn had been given the green light by Happy days, when the idea of armed librarians was President Clinton. farce. It’s been a couple of years since most of us learned Reno claimed her hand was forced because “babies were that more than 70 federal agencies have habitually armed being beaten” but later admitted under oath that there was themselves, including the EPA, the Department of Edu - no evidence of this. Clinton said some of Koresh’s many cation, the Federal Reserve Board, the National Oceanic brides were underage. Then why did his colectivo swarm and Atmospheric Administration, the IRS, and (at least the entire compound, knowing that its twitchy residents until 2009) the Library of Congress. You may think of the were paranoid and armed, instead of picking up the cult regulatory octopus as a gentle blob of bureaucratic cor- leader while he was out jogging? pulence that blocks out the sun, but octopi don’t order The final onslaught was suffused with a comic style 174,000 rounds of hollow-point bullets each year the way worthy of Allen: Voices on loudspeakers attached to the the Social Security Administration does. Every bureaucrat military vehicles proclaimed during the assault, “This is is, ultimately, backed by lethal force. All that firepower not an assault.” Just about everyone inside the compound, creates an itchy federal trigger finger. including 26 children and 50 adults, wound up dead. A few Down in Venezuela they have a nice word for the armed survivors were charged with aiding and abetting murder, pro-government mobs that render political disputation in which is one of the nutty jokes you tell when you’re the Latin America so high-caliber: They’re “colectivos.” Reuters government and someone fails to die in your attack. helpfully explains that these roving armed bands “view In response to previous inquiries about whether he was themselves as the defenders of revolutionary socialism but unlawfully turning semiautomatic weapons into automat- are denounced by opponents as thugs.” For those searching ic ones, Koresh had invited regulators to come inside and for a catchall term for American Rambocrats, check and look. But “Local Kook Arrested over Firearms Modifi - check. cations” was too wan a headline for the ATF, which Unlike their colectivos, though, ours are official gov- instead envisioned a merry adventure it code-named ernment agencies. In Nevada, one of them, the troops “Show time.” The month before the February 28, 1993, from the Bureau of Land Management, seemed eager to raid, 60 Minutes had aired a report painting a highly stage Waco II: electric boogaloo against a rancher named unflattering portrait of sexual harassment in the agency. Cliven Bundy over cattle-grazing fees. As in Caracas, Corre spondent Mike Wallace later said that nearly all of though, when colectivos arrive, individual rights depart. the ATF agents he had interviewed believed Operation When Bundy attracted support from locals, the BLM Showtime had been staged to refurbish the agency’s ordered the quarrelsome corralled in what it labeled, image, which is why a local TV station was invited to with an almost adorable inability to dissimulate, “First cover the fun. One cameraman wound up filming ATF Amendment Areas.” Even the BLM wasn’t dumb enough agents who beat and kicked him when the raid went sour. to try to fence off a “Second Amendment Area,” though, That’s how things can go when you saddle up with gov- so the agency stood down from its own armed standoff ernment desperados and go riding into trouble with guns when its actions appeared likely to set off a full-blown a-blazin’. range war less than 80 miles from Las Vegas. Even in a This summer we’ll observe the 40th anniversary of the region aswoon over the new Olivia Newton-John resi- only presidential resignation. Maybe someone will tote up dency at the Flamingo, that might have attracted some the dead bodies resulting from Waco vs. Watergate, and the press. level of direct presidential authority known to be involved, and the levels of power abused, and remind me: Which of Mr. Smith is a film critic for the . these brought greater shame to our republic?

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The Great Tours: Greece and Turkey, from Athens to Istanbul TIME ED O Taught by Professor John R. Hale T FF I E     IM R L    70% 1. Touring the Cradle of Western Civilization 2. Athens—Around the Acropolis and Parthenon

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