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May 2, 2011 49145 $4.99

ROB LONG on Donald Trump

Ryan’s New Deal

JAMES C. CAPRET TA w RAMESH PONNURU $4.99 REIHAN SALAM w THE EDITORS 18

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MAY 2, 2011 | VOLUME LXIII, NO. 8 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 30 Ryan’s Medicare Fix Robert Costa on Wisconsin Of all the reforms in Rep. Paul Ryan’s p. 18 2012 budget, none is more politically charged than the proposal to transform BOOKS, ARTS Medicare into a “defined contribution” & MANNERS program with a fixed and predictable 45 A JUST WAR budget. “Radical.” “Extreme.” “Cruel.” Andrew Roberts reviews Moral Don’t expect the demagoguery to end Combat: Good and Evil in World War II, by Michael Burleigh. before November 2012. James C. Capretta 50 EASTERN LIGHT

COVER: THOMAS REIS John Derbyshire reviews The House of Wisdom: How Arabic ARTICLES Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the 18 HOW WISCONSIN WAS WON by Robert Costa Renaissance, by Jim al-Khalili. A close call in a proxy war with the Left. 51 THE PEOPLE’S MILITARY 22 A VICTORY—AND A WARNING by Henry Olsen Thomas M. Donnelly reviews U.S. Some worrisome trends are evident in Judge Prosser’s reelection. Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil- 24 TRIAL BY FIRE by Anthony Daniels Military Bargain, by Mackubin The world reacts to a Koran-burning. Thomas Owens.

25 VOICE OF THE RESISTANCE by Jay Nordlinger 53 SHADOW FIGHTS Dr. Óscar Biscet, in Cuba’s prisons for twelve years, speaks. Anthony Paletta reviews An Army of Phantoms: American Movies 27 PRESIDENT ME by Rob Long and the Making of the Cold Imagining a Trump administration. War, by J. Hoberman.

55 CITY DESK: COOL TOMBS FEATURES Richard Brookhiser muses over graveyards. 30 PAUL RYAN’S MEDICARE FIX by James C. Capretta How to improve health care and shore up the federal budget with one entitlement reform. SECTIONS 34 RYAN VS. THE MYTHMAKERS by Ramesh Ponnuru Spurious claims, debunked. 2 Letters to the Editor 6 The Week 37 BLAME THE NOT-TOO-RICH by Reihan Salam 42 The Long View ...... Rob Long Why Obama courts the upper middle class. 43 The Bent Pin . . . . . Florence King 44 Athwart ...... James Lileks 39 A NATION OF SHARECROPPERS by Kevin D. Williamson 52 Poetry ...... Daniel Mark Epstein From slavery to six figures. 56 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NATIONAL RevIeW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by , 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., 2011. 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. letters5-2--ready_QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/13/2011 1:35 PM Page 2 Letters

MAY 2 ISSUE; PRINTED APRIL 14 Rebutting Garfinkle

EDITOR The premise of Adam Garfinkle’s review of Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir Known Richard Lowry and Unknown (April 4, 2011) is that Rumsfeld evades responsibility for large mat- Senior Editors ters that did not go well by accepting responsibility for small matters that did not Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones go well. To bolster this, Garfinkle mentions an incident in which I was supposedly Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts involved. He writes that I “spoke with the secretary by phone” from Baghdad on Literary Editor Michael Potemra Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy the evening before the decision to disband the Iraqi army was announced. Garfinkle National Correspondent John J. Miller Political Reporter Robert Costa presents this as one piece of evidence that “Rumsfeld knew what was happening Art Director Luba Kolomytseva and approved it, without telling the president, Rice, or any other principal,” which Deputy Managing Editors Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson Garfinkle alleges that Rumsfeld denies in his memoir. Associate Editors Memory is a tricky thing. I do not remember the conversation that Mr. Garfinkle Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen Research Director Katherine Connell recounts. Beyond this, though, Garfinkle’s review approximates the offense of Research Manager Dorothy McCartney which he accuses his subject, by missing the rich forest of Rumsfeld’s life and Executive Secretary Frances Bronson Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos focusing on the trees right in front of him. Contributing Editors I acknowledge my own lack of distance and Robert H. Bork / John Derbyshire / Rod Dreher / David Frum ob jectivity. I had a close association with Rums - Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / feld during the Bush administration and since; he Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi cites me in the book as one of several readers of Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne drafts along the way to completion. But I think David B. Rivkin Jr. I’m owed a chance to offer some further perspec- NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez tive, since Garfinkle brings me in. Managing Editor Edward John Craig I was in Iraq in April and May of 2003 to assist News Editor Daniel Foster Editorial Associates Jay Garner, who led the reconstruction team; I Brian Stewart / Katrina Trinko Web Developer Nathan Goulding served as a policy connection for Garner back to Applications Developer Gareth du Plooy the Pentagon and the inter-agency team working Technical Services Russell Jenkins on post-conflict Iraqi political developments. EDITORS- AT- LARGE What I remember about the decision to disband Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan the Iraqi army does not include any discussions Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell with Rumsfeld. I recall speaking with Rumsfeld James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley from Iraq just once or twice in two months, and Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans not about this topic. I do remember flying with Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman Bremer and others from Kuwait or Qatar up to James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Baghdad—Garner had gathered some of us to go Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler down from Iraq to meet Bremer when he first arrived in theater. On the flight to David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Baghdad, I recall, Bremer was keenly focused on two things: His forthcoming Alan Reynolds / William A. Rusher Tracy Lee Simmons / Terry Teachout orders to 1) disband the Iraqi army and 2) effectively outlaw the Baath party. Taki Theodoracopulos / Vin Weber My impression then and today is that “Washington” was quite aware of these ini- Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge tial Bremer decisions. When it came to early Iraq policy, though, “Washington” had Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak two primary centers of activity. One was the policymaking apparatus, in which Business Services Paul Wolfowitz, Ryan Crocker, Steve Hadley, Zal Khalilzad, Doug Feith, Bill Luti, Alex Batey / Amy Tyler Circulation Manager Jason Ng and others were paying close attention to the political developments, the transition WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 from Garner to Bremer, and other such matters. Garner and I reached back to that SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 group multiple times a week for guidance, reporting, etc. Crocker and Khalilzad WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 also came to Baghdad to assist with the political discussions. Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd The other center of activity was around military employment, coalition-force Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet management, and the like. Rumsfeld, Gen. Dick Myers of the Joint Chiefs, Gens. ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett Tommy Franks and John Abizaid in CentCom, and their subordinate commanders PUBLISHER focused on this. There were a lot of issues under consideration, including a major Jack Fowler force rotation as combat-operations units that had been in theater for many months CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes in some cases were cycled out and their replacement units came in. This is not to suggest Rumsfeld and those occupied with force planning and FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. Continued on page 4

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Letters

Continued from page 2 command were unaware of the policy decisions being made, and I don’t think he intends to leave that impression in his memoir. What Rumsfeld is clear about, though, is that Bremer was granted significant authority by the U.S. government and by U.N. resolution, and that Bremer used that authority according to his own best judgment. Bremer also was in frequent contact with the policy/political appa- ratus of official Washington, including Condi Rice, Colin Powell, and possibly Wolfowitz, Hadley, and others at State, Defense, and the National Security Council. Rumsfeld in his memoir simply describes the way decisions were being made, for better or worse. Contrary to Garfinkle’s broader premise, Rumsfeld accepts responsibility for many big things, too. He devotes significant ink to things that he might have done better or differently, and devotes an entire chapter to the idea in “The Road Not The Catholic Traveled.” In that chapter, Rumsfeld talks about his and others’ overreliance on Shakespeare? legal advice at the expense of political sensitivity, in particular with respect to pres- idential war powers and enemy detention. Rumsfeld was aware of and engaged in June 10-12, 2011 these decisions, and acknowledges, “I, too, was guilty of thinking that the legal questions were preeminent.” Later, he says, “As a former member of Congress, I Portsmouth Abbey School, RI might have been better attuned to the need for congressional buy in on such poten- tially difficult and controversial matters.” Speakers will include: Dr. Glenn Arbery: The Problem of Catholic Piety in the Henry VI Plays Garfinkle seems to have missed Clare, Viscountess Asquith: As completely the arc of Rumsfeld’s You Like It and the Elizabethan consequential career. Catholic Dilemma Dom Aidan Bellenger, Abbot of This is just one example of many like it in the book in which Rumsfeld accepts Downside: The Blasted Heath: The responsibility not just for “small matters,” as Garfinkle describes, but for the most Death of Catholic England consequential matters the administration faced. Rumsfeld also describes the limi- tations of institutions, including the Department of Defense, in addressing the chal- Rev. David Beauregard: Shakespeare lenges we face today. He is both descriptive in acknowledging the Pentagon’s and and Religion: the Catholic, the his own shortcomings, and prescriptive in addressing what might be done about Protestant and Secular Dimensions them. The large matter Garfinkle seems to have missed completely in his review, Dr. John Cox: Are Shakespeare’s though, is the arc of Rumsfeld’s consequential career in both public and private life, Prayers Catholic? as covered in the book. As defense secretary in the 1970s, Rumsfeld was the essen- Dr. Gerard Kilroy: “Changing Eyes:” tial pre-Reagan Cold War check against the tendency to accept strategic parity with Faith and Fluctuation in Romeo the Soviet Union as envisioned by Nixon and Kissinger; he was an architect of U.S. and Juliet Middle East policy for Reagan, and reshaped the national-security apparatus for the post–Cold War challenges of the 21st century. In between all that, he was chairman Rev. Peter Milward: and CEO of two Fortune 500 companies and non-executive chairman of a third The Catholic King Lear company, a pharmaceutical start-up that is now a successful and important public Mr. Kevin O’Brien and company. Mr. Joseph Pearce in a Theater of the In setting up the premise of his review, Garfinkle cites La Rochefoucauld as Word production of Hamlet’s Agony an authority in the matter of ignoring large matters for small matters. A more dispassionate reading of Rumsfeld’s memoir might call to mind another La ... and more to come. Rochefoucauld aphorism: “Everyone complains of his memory, and no one com- plains of his judgment.” For information or registration: www.portsmouthinstitute.org Lawrence Di Rita or contact Cindy Waterman Potomac, Md. at (401) 643-1244 or [email protected]. Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n You know, we miss the days when he was anonymous, too.

n President Obama officially launched his reelection bid. He owed his win in 2008 to five factors. He was not Bush. He was historic (i.e. black). He would end global warming, and stop the rising of the seas (in the hopes of his most fervid supporters). He seemed politically unclassifiable (to independent—i.e., inatten- tive—voters). The economy was bad. Where does he stand on each point today? He is still not Bush, but Bush himself is off the table, enjoying retirement. He is still black, but he has already made history; the political dividends of that feat began to dimin- ish the moment he took the oath of office. The globe and the seas maintain their courses; the children who stormed to the polls hoping to change them have either grown up some or lost heart. He has revealed himself, for all his compro- mises (staying in Afghanistan, keeping Gitmo open), to be a dogmatic domestic liberal, willing to sink congres- sional Democrats in order to saddle America with a social- democratic health-care system. The econ omy is still bad. Many things could reelect him: an improving econo- my, Republican mistakes, some unifying national disaster, the sheer power of incumbency. But he can- not rerun his first game plan. The votes just aren’t there—because the 2008 Barack Obama isn’t there either.

n After Wisconsin’s state government curtailed public- union power, attention shifted to an election for the state The white upper middle class—the top 20 percent—marries, supreme court. The justice up for reelection was David works, and to a great extent practices some sort of faith. The Prosser, who votes with the court’s 4–3 conservative majority. white working class—the bottom 30 percent—reproduces Unions poured resources into the campaign of his liberal chal- without marrying, is unemployed, and stays home on Sundays. lenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg, and the left-wing carnival that How can the lowers improve? Not through the force of good had made Madison a big tent while the public-union law was example, since the upper middles “will not preach what they under discussion took to the streets. Conservatives feared that practice.” Murray calls this “non-judgmentalism.” The upper an organized minority could swamp an oddball judicial elec- middles do judge the lowers, however: They have increasing- tion and upend the law on appeal. A million and a half voters ly less to do with them as they bond and mate in associational turned out, almost double the normal number; a lead of a few purdah. That is what college is about these days (it certainly hundred votes shifted from Prosser to Kloppenburg on elec- isn’t about learning). Benjamin Disraeli subtitled one of his tion night and the morning after. Then Waukesha County novels “The Two Nations.” Murray is the modern Disraeli, announced that thousands of votes had been excluded from its employing statistics rather than Victorian plots. unofficial tally, giving Prosser a lead of over 7,000. The Left sometimes owns the streets, but people who have day jobs vote n President Obama has compared his political skills to the too. Rally and tally them all. The conservative resurgence basketball moves of LeBron James. But sometimes his politi- may have the staying power it needs to undo years of mis - cal skills look more like the basketball moves of a nerd on government. The Big Bang Theory. Speaking at a factory in Pennsylvania, Obama told a questioner who asked about rising gas prices that n Charles Murray gave the 2011 Bradley Lecture at the he should change his life. “I know some of these big guys, American Enterprise Institute. “The State of White America” they’re all still driving their big SUVs. . . . If you’re complain- highlighted one of the main themes of his 1994 book The Bell ing about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a Curve, while avoiding the race issue it evoked. America is gallon, you may have a big family, but it’s probably not that splitting into classes that are behavioral, as well as economic big.” Then something—good sense, possibly—made Obama

DARREN GYGI (as behavior diverges, the economic consequences increase). ask how many children his questioner had. The man answered,

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ten. Obama laughed, then added, “You definitely need a hybrid guards in Mazar-e-Sharif. In the wake of the Afghan violence, van.” Rude, clueless, mocking, patronizing: Obama incarnated Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed his disapproval of free speech a Republican attack ad on himself. All he didn’t do was ask in wartime, in which he was echoed by Gen. David Petraeus whether the poor voter clings to his God and his guns. (who has at least the excuse of being on the firing line). Meanwhile many on the right saw the riots as one more mani- n On the same day President Obama announced his reelection festation of Islam’s bloody essence. Lost in the shuffle is a bid, Attorney General Holder completed the administration’s cardinal fact: The riots, like the worldwide protests over the most blatant national-security reversal, announcing that Mohammed cartoons, were ginned up by political actors. In Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters will be Afghanistan, the guilty politician was Pres. Hamid Karzai, tried by military commission. The White House had previous- who condemned Jones’s Koran burning in order to shore up his ly said that the commission trials would resume, but had not Islamist flank against the day the Americans leave. Muslim given a straightforward answer when families of the victims societies are often described as theocratic. They might equally asked about the plans for these terrorists. Obama was trying to be called caesaropapist. The mullahs, so far from running thread a needle: a nod to convince the national-security Right the state, are run by it, to keep the faction of the day in power. that commissions were a viable option, and a wink to assure his For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also, as antiwar base that civilian trials would take all the big cases— another religion has it. in the hope of tucking the issue under the radar until after the 2012 election. But then defense lawyers for the 9/11 plotters n Conservatives who complain about the liberal media’s habit complained publicly that the Defense Department had denied of treating similar incidents differently for political reasons them funds to resume their preparation because, regardless have an a fortiori case with the Kill Team. This was a rogue of what the administration was claiming, the commission group of American soldiers who in 2010 murdered Afghan remained suspended. Obama chose to cut his losses. How civilians, mutilated their corpses, and took photos of it all. happy was Holder about all this? We’ve seen defendants plead Now, recall the Abu Ghraib scandal of 2004—which, terrible out with more grace. as it was, involved enemy combatants already in custody, who were abused but not killed. It inspired not just months of n The Rev. Terry Jones burned a Koran in Florida. Twelve front-page coverage and op-ed fulmination but art exhibits, days later, rioters killed U.N. staff workers and Nepalese plays, novels, academic conferences, and the whole panoply of Written a politically incorrect book? At last, new Conservative writers have St.John, is a writer himself and knows thousands of readers. Elderberry is a publisher of their own. Elderberry how hard it is to nd a publisher will- now accepting ction and nonction Press has published over 250 titles since ing to read your work. How does Dave submissions. Does your book deserve 1998. Reviewers include Je rey Hart, nd tens of thousands of readers for to be read by up to 50,000 readers? If William F. Buckley, Booklist, Library the Conservative books he publishes? so, maybe Dave St.John should hear Journal, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Elderberry authors are interviewed on from you. He’d like to hear about and Leatherneck. Elderberry books talk radio, promoted in Conservative your book. Tel: (541)459-6043. have been read by over a quarter mil- media, and their books are available in Or visit: elderberrypress.com lion readers this year. e editor, Dave all formats at aordable prices to grab Doesn’t your book belong here? Sons in the Shadow Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing Surviving the Brandy Portrait of an Liberalism Family Business Formula For Failure Intelligence O cer Dr. Clark Jensen Roy H. Park, Jr. Chuck Render

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THE WEEK leftist outrage, along with angry demands for resignations and Ryan plan? Maybe you’ll prefer what’s in the People’s Budget: impeachments. One would have expected the Kill Team to massive, massive tax increases, hundreds of billions of dollars’ cause an even stronger reaction, but after it broke in late worth. Top income-tax rates are raised to 47 percent, taxes on March, it was a modest one-day story in most media outlets; capital gains are increased, taxes on dividends are increased, gave it 700 words on page A4 and then the tax on death is increased, and, perhaps most destructive, the let the distasteful matter drop. Whatever could explain the tax on work is increased: Both the employer and the employee difference? sides of the payroll tax are raised substantially—an enormous tax hike on everybody fortunate enough to be employed and n All praise the House Progressive Caucus, which intends to a significant disincentive to future hiring. More new taxes on release an alternative to Rep. Paul Ryan’s fiscal program. businesses of all kinds—from banks to investment firms to They’re calling it “the People’s Budget.” (Strange how pro- manufacturers—round out the agenda. As for spending cuts: gressives continue to claim the mandate of “the people,” when National defense is gutted. And that’s about it. Instead of the people continue to not elect many of them.) Don’t like the putting the brakes on our out-of-control entitlement spending,

Attention Deficit

S I write this, the president is poised to give a explaining how Reagan’s deficits were a fiendish plot to A speech on tackling the deficit. Speculation on keep government from pursuing progressive goals. “Pres - what he is going to say runs the gamut from the ident Reagan killed the golden goose,” the head of a usual unserious “We need a serious discussion but I group called KidsPac told Dionne. won’t mention any specifics” to “Tax hikes for every- And of course, under George W. Bush the deficit went body!” up again and, again, we were told that this was a crisis of To listen to liberals, we are through the looking glass biblical proportions by the same people who today now. I heard E. J. Dionne on the radio champion a deficit X times larger than the other day bemoaning how the George W. Bush’s. How many times terms of the debate had changed in did we hear how outrageous it was to Washington. He’s still part of that old pay for two wars with deficit spend- “consensus” that says the govern- ing? Now we’re paying for three and ment should be regurgitating cash on that’s just fine. the American public the way a mom - This whole “starve the beast” thing my bird feeds its young. That we’ve turned out to be wrong. The beast, it suddenly abandoned the “more stim- seems, can get all the nutrients it ulus” era in favor of the “more cuts” needs from Chinese food. Second, the era has liberals like Dionne com - assumption that liberals would feel plaining like the kid who upon arrival constrained in their statist ambi tions at the Twine Ball Museum shouts, by a deficit was wildly optimistic. Ba - “But you said we were going to Disney World!” rack Obama’s first budget deficit was nearly as large as the One of the amusing things about all this is that the entire budget of 2000. same liberals used to say that ’s “mas- There’s hypocrisy on the right, too, of course. Con - sive” deficits—which paid for victory in the Cold War, servatives have been on every side of the deficit question. which in turn begat the “peace dividend” that fueled Bill But there’s an important caveat to be made on this point. Clinton’s deficit reduction—were the main reason why To say that small deficits aren’t that great a problem does- historians will view Ronald Reagan as a failure. At the end n’t make you inconsistent when you say that massive of the PBS “American Experience” documentary on deficits are a problem. Having a few too many beers at a Reagan, a saddened Anthony Lewis whines that we “paid barbecue isn’t a red flag. Waking up, with no memory of a terrible price” for the victory in the Cold War, those huge how you got there, in a flophouse with a toothless prosti- deficits: “And we are continuing to pay for it, and our chil- tute named Kandiii (“that’s the classy way to spell it!”) is dren are going to pay for it.” more of a concern. But if you once said that even a few too In 1988, when E. J. Dionne was a reporter for the New many beers is a grave problem, but now don’t have any York Times (please—it was just a coincidence that they objection to a Fleet Week getaway with Kandiii, well, picked someone with Dionne’s views to be their national hypocrisy barely covers it. GETTY / correspondent; no liberal bias here), he penned an essay —JONAH GOLDBERG ALEX WONG

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THE WEEK the People’s Budget spends even more. Rather than repealing Obamacare, as Ryan would, the People’s Budget complements it with a health-care system directly run by the federal govern- ment. Our sincere thanks to Representatives Nadler, Fattah, Rangel, and Frank, Senator Sanders, et al., for helping to spell out the options to the American people.

n Every so often the Supreme Court uses a good method to reach a good result. Such was the case when the Court dis- missed a recent challenge to an Arizona law that offered tax credits for donations to organizations that provide private- school scholarships. The plaintiffs claimed that letting people Making waves—Raúl and Jimmy receive a tax break in return for donations that help students n Jimmy Carter put on quite a performance in Cuba. Many attend religious schools violates the First Amendment. A 5–4 were hoping he would return with Alan Gross, the American majority of the Court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing aid worker who has been a hostage and prisoner since to bring the case: In other words, even if they were right, they December 2009. He did not. After visiting Gross, Carter said, had not suffered a harm that the Constitution empowers fed eral “He still seems to be in good spirits, professing his innocence.” courts to remedy. In her dissent, the newest justice, Elena That was unusual wording. Carter met with Fidel Castro, refer- Kagan, demonstrated that she has mastered the misleading ring to him as an “old friend.” He said that Castro “seems to be diction of modern judicial activism. The Court, she wrote, in good health,” for those who were worrying. Carter also had “damages one of this Nation’s defining constitutional com mit - the decency to meet with democrats. But, in a gratuitous twist, ments,” said commitment to lax standing rules having been he called for the release of the “Cuban Five.” These are Cuban made in a 1968 case. A win for judicial restraint, and for school spies, held in American prisons, after their convictions for choice. espionage and conspiracy to commit murder. Unlike Alan Gross, they have been afforded every legal protection. One of n President Obama concluded a free-trade agreement with them was convicted for his role in the Castro government’s Colombia—you know, the one Pres. George W. Bush negotiat- shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996. Those ed more than four years ago? If passed, the pact would elimi- planes were in international airspace, and three U.S. citizens, nate most Colombian tariffs on U.S. goods and, one estimate and one permanent resident, were killed. While in Cuba, Carter predicts, boost our exports by $1 billion per year. In 2008, met with Raúl Castro for six hours. Afterward, this Castro said, Obama swore to oppose the deal because of “violence against “Carter is an honest man.” He is something. unions” in that country. But Colombia was in a civil war; there was violence against everybody. Now, Pres. Juan Manuel San - n Maybe the Obama administration was right to avoid saying tos has promised to implement a labor-rights “action plan”—a we’re at war in Libya, since it’s not treating our military en - sop to Obama’s disgruntled union buddies. As is so often the gage ment with any strategic seriousness. The U.S. has backed case, Obama’s performance cannot truly have pleased anyone. out of much of the military operation and NATO is struggling to keep up the intensity of its strikes in our absence. If we are n The useful term “anarcho-tyranny” describes that stage of to have any hope of cracking Qaddafi’s government or forcing governmental dysfunction in which the state is anarchically a favorable diplomatic settlement, we have to keep up the hopeless at coping with large matters but ruthlessly tyrannical pressure on the ground and continue to destroy Qaddafi’s mil- in the enforcement of small ones. An example recently turned itary. The rebels are a shambolic lot in the best of circum- up in San Gabriel, a middle-middle-class, mostly Asian sub- stances, and are utterly hopeless without relentless strikes urb of Los Angeles. Following complaints from neighbors against the pro-Qaddafi forces arrayed against them. President about noise, police and building inspectors entered a row of Obama seems intent on maintaining multilateral form over connected townhouses and found a large “birthing center” function, putting U.S. non-leadership above our ultimate filled with women from mainland China. The women were goal of ousting Qaddafi. It’s no way to fight a war, or even a “obstetric tourists” who had flown in from China to give birth, kinetic military action. thereby securing the advantages of U.S. citizenship for their children. One Chinese website advertising such services enu- n For decades Syria has been a fiefdom of the Assad family. merates those advantages: tuition-free public schools, student Bashar, the current president, learned how to be a tyrant at the loans, consular protection, “preferential treatment in assum- knee of his father Hafez, the previous president. Specializing ing significant leadership positions in the US . . . access to all in war and terror, they turned the country into an agency of American social welfare measures and medical facilities . . .” Iran. Dissidents real and imaginary are murdered or disappear It was not this flagrant hawking of U.S. citizenship that into underground prison cells for most of their lives. When the NEWSCOM / caused San Gabriel to shut down the birthing center, though. Tunisian and Egyptian regimes fell, Bashar assured the world GETTY / Nor was it the shameless appeal to foreigners to come leech that he was a true representative of the Syrian people and there- AFP / off our welfare and public-education systems. No: The pro- fore safely in power for as long as he liked. A sort of rolling prietors had removed interior walls in violation of building wave of protest is breaking over Damascus, Latakia, Banias, codes. Some challenges to the rule of law the authorities and numerous smaller towns. Foreign journalists have been

ADALBERTO ROQUE cannot abide. thrown out or refused entry, and facts are hard to come by. The

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THE WEEK security forces are reported to have shot dead 170 demonstra- cars, but not in any “public space,” though freedom of worship tors, a figure that is almost surely too low, and to have ringed might permit wearing it near a mosque. A policeman, or better several towns with tanks and mortars. Bashar’s apologists put a policewoman, may invite a veiled woman to show her face for forward the standard conspiracy nonsense that foreign agents purposes of identification but it is forbidden to pull the veil off and saboteurs (read: Americans and Israelis) are behind every- in any circumstances. And much more small print besides. The thing. Syrians are showing exemplary courage in their deter- ministry of the interior judges that a mere 2,000 women are mination to be rid of a dictator who has no hesitation about affected, and most commentators think the law is only a gesture having them shot, if need be, by the thousands as his father on the part of a state proud to be secular. A handful of Muslim used to order. women hurried to be the first to be arrested, and the fact that the police did almost nothing suggests that the law starts out n Richard Goldstone is the former South African judge who as a dead letter. Someone of Algerian origin, Ab der rahmane wrote a report for the United Nations Human Rights Council Dahmane, gloried in the title of Sarkozy’s diversity adviser on the fighting in the Gaza Strip that began in December 2008. until he was fired. The current niqab to-do coincided with a The report was a travesty, laughable except that it has raised government-inspired debate on the role of Islam in France. A the campaign to ostracize and delegitimize Israel to a higher vengeful Dahmane condemned Sarkozy and his party as the level. Elementary legal principles were ignored. Such investi- “plague of Muslims.” He calls on Muslims to wear a green star, gation as there was served to blacken Israel. The report reached a reference to the yellow star the Nazis forced Jews to wear. the conclusion that Israeli troops had deliberately killed civil- Whether this should be sewn on the niqab he does not say. ians and were guilty of war crimes. Goldstone was thus en - dorsing the main plank of Hamas propaganda—that Israel’s n Dalil Boubakeur, France’s most prominent Muslim leader self-defense against terrorism is actually aggression. After an and head of the Grand Mosque in , wants the taxpayer to exhaustive Israeli inquiry into the conduct of its armed forces, fund a major mosque-building program. Sixteen other Muslim Goldstone has been obliged to reverse himself. In an op-ed in notables have a simpler proposal: They have signed a joint , he accepted that civilians in Gaza were petition asking for empty Catholic churches to be made over to not targeted intentionally. More than that, he wrote that if he them. As things stand, every Friday thousands of Muslims take had known then what he knows now, his report would have over streets to hold their prayers in the open. They close local been very different. Where does a country go to get its reputa- businesses, block traffic, and intimidate residents, trapping tion back? them in their homes. Marine Le Pen, the new head of the far- right National Front party, compares Muslims praying in the n Call it multilateral mission creep. Mere weeks after it suc- streets to the wartime Nazi occupation “without tanks or sol- ceeded in getting a no-fly zone established under U.N. aus- diers.” A shocked public seems to believe that churches con- pices to protect rebels in Benghazi, the Arab League has made verted into mosques would never be allowed to revert to a similar plea to the Security Council vis-à-vis Gaza. What Christianity, while in a Muslim country Christians could never events have transpired in that prison strip to justify a similar hope to convert a mosque into a church. Marine Le Pen is ex - “humanitarian intervention”? Israeli aircraft have targeted the pecting that same public to vote for her in the next presidential agents of Hamas and the tunnels through which they smuggle election—and they well might. Qassam rockets. Recently, more than 100 of these rockets were launched into southern Israel, and one of them struck a school n The classic Tour de France bicycle race is famously grueling, bus. If a truly humanitarian intervention were launched in pitting rider and bike against Alpine gradients and Mediterranean Gaza, we doubt it would be to the Arab League’s liking. heat. Cyclists seeking an even greater challenge might consider the Tour de Pakistan, a 1,000-mile race from Karachi in the south n The Chinese Communists are cracking down more intensely to Abbottabad in the north, up by the border with Kashmir. than they have for many years. The Middle East unrest has Competitors face atrocious road surfaces, makeshift accommo- spooked them, because it has inspired restless Chinese: Maybe dations, and Islamic disapproval of their bare limbs and tight they, too, can once more challenge their rulers? Ai Weiwei is shorts, along with the everyday hazards of just being in a nation one of the people who have been cracked down on. He is not yet as riotous as Pakistan. Unsurprisingly, the organizers’ main another anonymous dissenter. He is one of the country’s most problem is attracting foreign competitors. This year’s event famous artists, the designer of the “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadi- hosted just one team from um, for example. In recent years, he has been detained and beat- another nation: Afghan istan. en, beaten so badly that his brain has hemorrhaged. As of this The Af ghans were, however, writing, he has been “disappeared.” He was in Beijing Airport, mighty happy to be taking part. about to fly to Hong Kong, when he was dragged off. He has Their team leader, 24-year-old not been heard from since. The Chinese government is awfully Hashmatullah Tookhy, said bold, to “disappear” such a well-known personage. Then again, to : “In they have the current Nobel peace laureate in prison. Afghanistan the situation is not good, and the security is not n The ever-enthusiastic Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy has promoted a good. In Pakistan, the whole PPI / new law in France regulating the niqab, the veil that covers a time we relax.” Just as your woman’s face except the eyes. He thinks the veil makes them mother told you: There’s always

AFTAB AHMED “prisoners.” It’s to be allowed at home, in hotel rooms, and in someone worse off than you.

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THE WEEK n The U.S. Army’s former marketing slogan, “An Army of One,” was justly derided, but one British soldier comes close n “Snooki” is the stage name of 23-year-old Miss Nicole to embodying it. The British Army has awarded the Con - Polizzi, who shares a beach house with seven coevals in spicuous Gallantry Cross to Sgt. Dipprasad Pun, a Gurkha the reality-TV show Jersey Shore. Cast members in the show warrior from Nepal, who singlehandedly dispersed some 30 live the vacation lifestyle of young white-ethnic working- Taliban attackers besieging his guard post in Afghanistan last class Americans—clubbing, drinking, sunbathing, gossiping, fall. When the mujahideen appeared, he hauled a 50-pound fighting, and “hooking up.” For reasons unfathomable to us, machine gun off its mount and fired 400 rounds, then threw Jersey Shore has colossal viewing figures: 8.45 million for the gun’s mount at the attackers, tossed 17 grenades, and the 2011 season premiere. Snooki’s extramural activities have finally screamed “I will kill you” in Nepali while fending the included participation in a tag-team bout on Wrestlemania survivors off with a sandbag. That plus a Claymore mine that he set off were enough to disperse the Taliban. On the other (her team won) and a minor conviction (fine, community ser- hand, readers of The Week may recall a recent item about a vice) for being, in the words of the judge, “rude, profane, Gurkha soldier on a train in India who fended off three dozen obnoxious, and self-indulgent” on a public beach when armed robbers using only his sword. In view of that, it hardly drunk. This résumé so commended Miss Polizzi to the seems cricket to equip Sergeant Pun with WWII-level Programming Association of Rutgers weapons. University that they paid her $32,000 to appear in person for two Q&A ses- n John Steinbeck at his best—Of Mice and Men—was a force. sions with students. Over 2,000 people At his worst—The Grapes of Wrath—he was the liberals’ Ayn showed up at the events, to their ever- Rand, minus the fun parts. He also made up a lot of nonsense lasting shame. They heard such pearls of that he presented as fact, including a good deal of his celebrated scholarship as: “When you’re tan, you feel Travels with Charley: In Search of America. As the writer Bill better about yourself,” and: “Study hard, Steigerwald has discovered, the heart of that story—Steinbeck’s but party harder.” Annual tuition fees at solitary travels in 1960, sleeping in a cramped camper-truck Rutgers are $23,466. bed accompanied only by his faithful mutt—are a load of it. Mr. Steinbeck seems to have been one of the original champagne radicals, staying in expensive hotels accompanied by his actress n One of the lesser transient sensations of early April was the wife, consorting with the high-and-mighty “gay caveman” story, as follows. From the late Stone Age to rather than the down-and-out. (During the early Bronze Age (2900 to 2400 B.C.) northern and eastern one stop, Stei ger wald reports, Steinbeck Europe was dominated by peoples known collectively to had to be loaned a jacket and tie by the archeologists as the Corded Ware culture. These folk were hotel management, in order to satisfy very particular about proper burials. A male was customarily the dining room’s dress code.) Travels buried lying on his right side facing west, with weapons and with Charley is partly an indictment tools around him; a woman was buried lying on her left side of America—for racism, pollution, facing east, surrounded by necklaces, earrings, and household materialism, etc.—meaning that what pots. Imagine, therefore, the bewilderment of archeologists in Steinbeck is most guilty of is not just the Czech Republic on finding a Corded Ware male skeleton literary malpractice but fabricating buried female-style. “The man was probably homosexual or evidence. transsexual,” archeologist Katerina Semeradova told an April 5 news conference. Two British newspapers picked up the n In early April, gave concerts in Beijing and story and within hours the Internet was alive with commen- Shanghai. The performances included neither of his two signa- tary about the gay caveman. In vain did more conservative ture political-protest numbers, “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The archeologists point out that Corded Ware peoples were pas- Times They Are a-Changin’.” Coming as China’s Communist toralists and early farmers, several millennia removed from authorities were conducting their latest crackdown on dissent, paleolithic cave dwellers, and that determination of sex from this raised eyebrows, notably those belonging to Maureen skeletal remains is an approximate science. The story was Dowd of the New York Times op-ed page. Dylan had allowed “too good to check,” and offered too many opportunities for the Chinese government to pre-approve his sets, Dowd tasteless humor. alleged, on what evidence we do not know. Dylan’s defenders riposted that the man cut loose from his folk/protest roots in n Frank Lampl was born in 1926 in , in , 1965 and revisits them rarely and reluctantly. On a schedule of the son of a landowner. He was still a teenager when the around 100 concerts a year, Dylan last performed “Blowin’” in Germans deported him first to Auschwitz and then as a slave July 2010, “Times” in August 2009. Dylan has long been sunk laborer to Dachau. He was the only member of his family to in apolitical solipsism. It would have been gratifying, but survive. After the war, he was a “bourgeois undesirable” in the PICTURE GROUP

astounding, to hear him emulate Icelandic singer Björk, who eyes of the Czech Communists, and they condemned him to / called for Tibetan independence from the stage of a 2008 con- more slave labor in the mines. In the Spring of 1968 he cert in Shanghai. In any case Miss Dowd, if she wants to attack escaped to England, where he rose eventually to become SCOTT GRIES people for kowtowing to Chinese tyrants, might turn her gaze chairman of Bovis, turning it into a huge international con- :

across the page to Thomas Friedman. struction company. An extraordinary triumph in itself, this POLIZZI

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was also fitting revenge for so much earlier injustice and evil. Dead at 84, R.I.P. THE BUDGET I A Conflict of Fiscal Visions n Mike Campbell was a farmer and a proud african—and no less so because he was white. Robert Mugabe saw things differently. aul Ryan’s budget proposal for next year is the most In 2000, Zimbabwe’s dictator began a “land-reform program”— ambitious conservative initiative since—well, actually, the seizure of farmland possessed by white Zimbabweans and P since ever. It includes more than $6 trillion in budget expulsion of its owners. The seized land was awarded to Mugabe cuts over the next decade, as compared with Pres. Barack loyalists who lacked the ability to farm or the inclination to learn Obama’s budgets. If implemented, the plan would rapidly sta- how. Resisting Mu ga be is tempting death, so most white bilize the national debt and then pay it down. Ryan proposes to Zimbabweans resigned to fate. But Campbell wouldn’t cede his repeal Obamacare, take on the massive health-care entitle- edenic Mount Carmel. He appealed to Zimbabwe’s supreme ments, privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, pare back agri- Court, and was dismissed. so he appealed to the southern african culture subsidies, build on the success of welfare reform, and De vel op ment Community—and Mugabe loyalists kidnapped, overhaul the tax code. savagely beat, and retained in indoctrination camps him, his wife, not even a small fraction of this agenda can be achieved and his son-in-law—an ordeal that Campbell barely survived. while President Obama and senate majority leader Harry Reid Improbably, on nov. 28, 2008, the saDC ruled in Campbell’s retain their positions. The purpose of Ryan’s plan is to raise a favor, though his head injuries prevented him from understanding standard to which Republicans can aspire in 2012. In the best- the ruling. an african court declared Mugabe’s land seizure racist: case scenario, their presidential candidate runs on most of an important symbolic victory, but only symbolic—law alone these ideas, the party wins a mandate in the next election, and could not re strain Mu ga be. In april, the Campbells were beaten the work of making the government leaner and more sober can again; in september their house was burned, and the intimidation begin in earnest in 2013. became too much. They moved away, effectively dispossessed, People over 55 have spent their working lives in the expecta- though the son-in-law promises more litigation. Mike Campbell tion that the government would fund Medicare at a certain level, never fully recovered from his beatings. He died on april 6, at age and Ryan would keep that implicit promise. People under that 78, of brain injuries tracing to his kidnappings—a life sacrificed age would get a new deal. When they retire, they would be to the exposure of a tyrant. R.I.P. allowed to choose among health-care plans, with the government

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If the political risks are big, though, so are the potential rewards for the country. We have reservations about the Ryan budget, as is only to be expected in such a far-ranging docu- ment. We would like to see the details of the tax-reform plan that emerges from the Ways and Means Committee before making a final judgment. But on the whole, the Ryan plan puts the Republican party on record for a government that is more modest in its goals, more able to match means to ends, and more respectful of the initiative of the citizens it serves. The last two years have been a forced march toward European social democracy. Ryan is pointing the way back toward a republic, and we are pleased to join his advance.

THE BUDGET II Cut Now, Cut Later

n April 8, when Republicans and Democrats an - nounced a deal to keep the government open through O the end of September, our initial reaction was to hail it as a modest victory. True, the announced $38 billion in cuts fell short of the $61 billion House Republicans had earlier voted for. Yes, the deal did not include all of the policy “rid- ers” we wanted to see, such as a funding cutoff for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest abortionist. But the deal in - cluded a ban on the funding of abortion in the nation’s capital, renewed the school-choice program there, and reversed the pitching in to help them make their premiums. no longer would sharp upward trajectory of federal spending in the preceding the federal government attempt to micromanage the price years. The political risks a shutdown posed to the conservative of medical services; no longer would it encourage providers to cause, the relative puniness of the figures involved compared perform more procedures regardless of patient outcomes. with the size of the overall budget, and the limits imposed by The Ryan budget fixes the budgetary incentives in Medi - the Democratic Senate and White House all inclined us to give caid, too. At the moment, the power to make funding promises Speaker John Boehner the benefit of the doubt. is divorced from the responsibility to pay for them: The states As details emerged, the doubts began to dissolve, and not to set eligibility and benefit levels, and the federal government Boehner’s benefit. It appears that roughly half the cuts aren’t foots half the bill. Republicans would instead give the states a true cuts in discretionary spending, the rest being one-time fixed amount of money to spend on the medical needs of the savings and gimmickry. Even the best deals have some fakery. poor. By itself this reform would not make Medicaid a less We were not born yesterday. But this much? In the new Tea crummy program for its beneficiaries. (The program’s patient Party–infused Congress? Republican congressmen were put in outcomes are indistinguishable from those of people with no a very difficult situation. If they voted no, the costs of a shut- insurance at all.) But it would at least enable state-level down would be magnified by the public perception that they reforms and stop the fiscal bleeding. had reneged on a deal. If they voted yes, they would be ratify- The fights over the continuing resolutions to fund the gov- ing the business-as-usual that many of them had campaigned ernment through the end of September were just skirmishes. against. Republican leaders responded to the turmoil by con- Ryan’s budget begins a battle that will continue through the tinuing to trumpet the “historic” nature of the deal. Just three 2012 elections. The lines of attack on the Ryan plan are as pre- months into his speakership, Boehner has put a black mark on dictable as they are spurious. We will hear ad nauseam that his record. Republicans are savaging the poor and the middle class for the Conservatives should demand that Republicans do much fun of it—as though the spiraling interest rates, currency crash, better in their next test: the vote on raising the federal debt ceil- and slower growth that are the real alternative would advance ing. Any congressman or senator who has not proposed a plan the interests of the bulk of the population. We will be told to bring the deficit to zero immediately this spring has, we simultaneously that the Medicare proposal is heartless and that think, a responsibility to vote yes. But it would be irresponsi- Republicans will never follow up on it. The pro-growth tax ble not to couple that increase in the debt limit with reforms to reforms contemplated in the bill will come in for attack for put us on a sounder course. An updated version of the Gramm- favoring the rich. Rudman spending caps that worked until Congress eliminated AP

/ Demagoguery isn’t the only obstacle. Americans do not them; a cap on Medicaid spending; an end to the practice of know much about the federal budget, overestimating how automatically increasing discretionary spending every year: much of it goes to foreign aid and how easily waste and fraud Republicans should push for these reforms, and more. And can be rooted out from it. The fiscal crisis Ryan means to while they may not get all they ask for, they should not settle SCOTT APPLEWHITE . J preempt is not, for most people, a palpable reality. for fake reforms—or fake leadership.

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hands clasping the top of the wooden frame. “Seven weeks ago, this looked like a very sleepy campaign,” he recalled, al - most wistfully. “This race is now the most significant judicial race in the country.” Prosser had long been expected to coast to another ten-year term on the bench, especially after he won a convincing 55 percent showing in February’s nonparti- san primary, in which candidates of all political stripes competed for two spots on the general-election ballot. Kloppen - burg had placed second, with 25 percent, earning herself a slot; an unknown attor- ney for the state with a few unremarkable academic appointments, she was hardly in a position to surge. Besides, springtime skirmishes are usu- ally sleepy affairs in the Badger State, with turnout on average below 20 percent. Prosser knew that he would have to go through the motions, debating Kloppen - burg and cutting a couple of ads. But a bloody brawl? No way. How Wisconsin Was Won Then Madison erupted. Gov. Scott A close call in a proxy war with the Left Walker, a Republican, began to unveil his budget agenda. He went to the mat against the public-sector unions, pledging to strip BY ROBERT COSTA them of their collective-bargaining power. Democrats, depressed after their poor Appleton, Wis. highway, rain and ice pelted his wind- 2010 showing, suddenly began to exhibit AvID PROSSeR awoke near dawn shield. There was a gnawing sense among alarming signs of life. on Sunday, April 3, stretched the tight-knit team that the obstacles were For the three ensuing weeks, swarms of his 68-year-old muscles, and getting Biblical: First came the unions, protesters, huddled like carolers, screamed D flipped on his cell phone. He then the personal attacks, now the very outside of Walker’s office deep into the frowned. His campaign had booked a heavens. Prosser’s crew arrived safely night; dreadlocked undergraduates glee- bruising 48-hour itinerary of flying and on time at a small hotel on the frozen fully papered the capitol’s marble halls around the state in the election’s last lip of sprawling Big Green Lake, where with anti-Walker messages scrawled on hours. But with an unruly hailstorm fast local Republicans had gathered in a flag- cardboard posters. Prosser, who thought approaching, senior adviser Brian Nemoir draped ballroom for their annual Lincoln he had left partisan politics behind in had nixed the twin-pistoned plan. Day dinner. Mark Slate, a county-judge 1998 when he was appointed to the state Nemoir, a lanky, fast-talking politico, candidate decked out in a stovepipe hat, supreme court by then-governor Tommy had a nightmarish vision of the headline: welcomed Prosser at the door. Heavyset Thompson, found himself smack in the “Supreme Court Justice Prosser, Others town officials milled nearby, making middle of a proxy war. vanish over Wisconsin.” As he reminded good use of the cash bar. Once Walker’s budget bill passed in me, a scheduled passenger on those skip- Prosser, a former GOP legislator who mid-March, after much wrangling and hop flights, “No one wants to be the briefly served as speaker of the state lefty hysterics, progressives decided to ‘others’ in that story.” assembly, turned on the charm, moving make toppling Prosser their cause célèbre. Prosser donned his on-the-trail uni- from the county chair to the handful of Tripping up Walker’s legislation in the form—dark suit, starched white shirt, and Young Republicans, thanking them for courts was their only option with the Reagan-era spectacles, the thin-rimmed their support. everyone was kind to the GOP holding both legislative chambers. type with a metal top-bar between the gray-haired judge—patting him on the So comrades in the Dane County govern- frames—then jumped into a car, making shoulder, exchanging quips—but anxiety ment promptly filed suit, claiming that the his way south toward Green Lake, a fish- hung in the air. bill’s passage procedure violated the ing town. On the road, he was going to Prosser was locked in a tight reelection state’s open-meeting laws. have to hustle, especially if he wanted to fight, battling JoAnne Kloppenburg, an Their case was weak, not that it mat- make it back north by nightfall to get his environmental lawyer, to keep his seat. tered. All 14 Democratic state senators mug on the evening news in the state’s Green Lake conservatives were nervous had fled to Illinois once Walker unfurled conservative upper swaths. about his chances. Prosser took to the podi- his bill, hoping to postpone a final vote

As he zoomed down an empty rural um for some extemporaneous remarks, his with their absence. But while they were DARREN GYGI

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busy bragging on MSNBC about their GWC’s allegation as an outright lie. In crews. An hour past midnight, as even the great escape, a Senate clerk approved the Green Lake, Prosser lamented how the most ardent backers began to drift away, GOP-only quorum, enabling the bill to race had devolved into union-fueled hor- Kloppenburg emerged from behind a pass. It was an utterly aboveboard maneu- ror. “Sometimes,” he sighed, “I feel like droopy black curtain, in casual garb, to ver, but a county judge sympathetic to the David against the whole empire of the declare . . . nothing. Democrats put the brakes on the law’s Wisconsin Left, and the Left from other “It’s not over yet,” Kloppenburg ex - implementation. parts of the country who are coming into plained softly, wearing a grim smile. “We The Walker administration, appalled, this state to try to determine this race.” just heard from the AP that they’ve said immediately urged a state appeals court to As Election Day neared, Madison the race is too close to call. There are pock- strike down the circuit court’s ruling. But activists and their allies were out in full ets of votes still to be counted around the the appellate panel threw up its hands and force, walking arm-in-arm with Jesse state.” She urged the throng to go home to kicked the bill to the state supreme court. Jackson down State Street, singing union bed. On the other side of the state, at the Since then, pressure has mounted on the ditties and Woody Guthrie songs. Kloppen - Seven Seas restaurant in Hartland, Prosser seven-member high court to weigh in. So burg was closing in on the incumbent. The relayed a similar message. far, the court has resisted. mood among the dreadlocked and the Wednesday morning was another head - Prosser gives judicial conservatives a marching schoolteachers was upbeat, ache for Brian Nemoir, who found him- 4–3 edge on the bench, so liberals target- even jubilant. self a key player not only in a race that had ed the April election as an opportunity to Knowing her base, Kloppenburg swung gone national, but also in an extended flip the court and declare the result a through the capital for a final get-out-the- vote count that was sure to be contentious. career-threatening referendum on Walker. vote rally at the Edgewater Hotel, which “There is no playbook for this,” he told The governor had beaten them at the polls overlooks Lake Mendota. She gave a reporters. and in the legislature. To topple his signa- long-winded oration as dusk settled upon The unofficial tally had Kloppenburg ture law, they needed a black-robed coup. the white granite capitol down the street. up by 204 votes, an astonishingly slim Millions poured in to help the effort. Tall and thin, the 57-year-old promised lead. On Wednesday afternoon, she for- After the most intense month of his career, David Prosser had thought it was over, only to find out, in a shocking reversal, that he had won.

The liberal blogosphere alerted activists a landslide on April 5 as her supporters, mally declared victory. Then Madison across the country. Their brethren in Wis- decked in anti-Walker paraphernalia, erupted, again. A tabulation error in consin began to organize on the ground, roared. Waukesha County, a GOP-heavy region, eager for fresh drama and another excuse Watching from afar, Governor Walker was discovered. Prosser, thought to have to picket Capitol Square. was worried. On Monday night, hours lost a heartbreaker, suddenly netted more The Greater Wisconsin Committee, a before voters headed to the polls, he told than 7,000 additional votes, two days leftist group with deep union ties, fun- me in his capitol office that she could win. after the election, and one day after his neled millions into anti-Prosser advertis- “Two weeks ago, I was extremely worried opponent had thanked him “for his ser- ing, taking relentlessly to the airwaves. about Prosser,” he said. “A little bit less vice.” “They are the Left’s biggest political play- so now. But I know that it all comes back It was almost too much. After the most er in the state,” notes Brett Healy, the to turnout.” Kloppenburg supporters, he intense month of his career, Prosser had president of the MacIver Institute, a acknowledged, “clearly have a real big thought it was over, only to find out, in a Wisconsin-based think tank. “They run motivator: anger.” shocking reversal, that he had won. the ads that no one else wants to run.” Tuesday morning saw Wisconsinites A recount is likely in order, and the Indeed. The GWC first aired ads that turn out in historic numbers: Nearly 1.5 final outcome may not be known for tied Prosser to the budget bill. “Prosser million showed up, approximately 35 per- weeks. In the meantime, stunned Dem o - Equals Walker” was the usual theme. But cent of the electorate. Prosser, wearied by crats, such as U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, those attacks were fluff compared with the onslaught, was blunt about his chances are calling for state and federal investiga- the group’s biggest smear, a dimly lit, as he prepared to watch returns. “Some tions into the Waukesha surprise. Prosser, creepy spot that cast Prosser as soft on people want to send a message—‘Prosser for his part, is keeping a low profile, pedophilia. That ad alleged that Prosser, Equals Walker’ or ‘Stop the Bill.’ But I pleased with the turn of events and ready as an Appleton-area district attorney three think the message to the country, if [Klop - to return to his quiet court life. decades ago, failed to properly prosecute penburg] is elected, will be: Wisconsin has Nemoir, of course, is keeping busy, a Catholic priest accused of molesting gone insane.” tangling with enraged leftists. But as he several boys. After the polls closed, Kloppenburg glances at Prosser’s upcoming sched- Prosser was furious, and the victims supporters mingled at her makeshift head- ule, he doesn’t need to check the fore- in the case rallied to his side, going on quarters in Madison, sipping cocktails cast. It is sunny, with a strong chance of statewide television to denounce the beside the klieg lights of local television victory.

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what enables public-employee unions to live, also saw lower-than-average drops, obtain their generous compensation ranging from 19 to 29 percent. A Victory— packages and pensions, collective bar- These figures suggest that the fight gaining is essentially a state-level ver- over collective-bargaining repeal ener- And a sion of an entitlement. gized liberal voters but did not excite the In selling his plan, Walker argued that marginal voters who turned out in force Wisconsin’s def i cit crisis was too large for Re pub li cans in 2010. This indicates Warning to ignore and could be faced only by that the GOP’s 2010 turnout advantage, cutting spending. He pointed out that which may have added a couple of points Some worrisome trends are evident collective bargaining was the biggest to its nationwide margin, will likely not in Judge Prosser’s reelection dri ver of spending, and that public- persist if liberal Democrats believe enti- sector workers would still retain signifi- tlements are seriously endangered. BY HENRY OLSEN cant protection. His spending reforms, The decline in conservative support in he asserted, would boost economic the west and center of the state is more ONSeRVATIVeS are right to growth and bring jobs to Wisconsinites. ominous. This area of Wisconsin, along cheer Wisconsin supreme- The good news for conservatives is that with the southern county of Ke n o sha, court justice David Prosser’s the voters didn’t flinch when asked to en- has traditionally been a bastion of white C apparent reelection, but it’s dorse this version of entitlement reform. working-class Democrats. In 2010, such worth looking closely at the results. Throughout the state, most voters who Democrats nationwide shifted dramati- While his victory was encouraging, backed Walker in November backed cally toward the Re pub li cans. This hap- Pros ser won only because turnout among Prosser in April, and they turned out in pened in Wisconsin, too. Fourteen of the Milwaukee’s black voters was signifi- large enough numbers to carry the day. 27 counties that voted for John Kerry in cantly lower than the statewide average, The vote was especially encouraging the very close 2004 election voted for and because his percent of the minority in the state’s Republican heartland. The Scott Walker in 2010. If one removes vote was nearly three times as high as suburban Milwaukee counties of Wauke - four liberal or minority-dominated Gov. Scott Walker’s was in 2010. Two sha, Ozaukee, and Washington regularly Dem o crat ic counties from this list, 14 of other 2010 GOP advantages—higher- deliver 65 to 70 percent of their votes the 23 white working-class Democratic than-normal GOP turnout and strong to competitive GOP candidates. They counties switched sides. support from white working-class Dem - gave nearly 74 percent of their vote to Last week, 11 of these 14 counties ocrats—were absent. These facts should Prosser. Staunch GOP counties to the switched back. Furthermore, virtually concern conservatives who think the pub - north of Milwaukee, up the shore of every other county in this area voted sig- lic is already prepared to embrace wide- Lake Michigan, and in the Green Bay nificantly less strongly for Prosser than it scale entitlement reform. region also gave Prosser higher percent- did for Walker, suggesting that the white Normally, results in Wis con sin judi- ages than they gave Walker. working-class Democrats in those coun- cial races do not closely follow parti- Yet one reason the election was so close ties reverted to their normal voting pat- san voting patterns, but this one did. was that turnout in most staunchly Dem - terns. Ac cord ing to Bert Kritzer, a University ocratic counties was higher (relative to As I wrote in NATIONAL ReVIeW last of Minnesota law professor, there was a historic levels) than that in Re publi can year (“Blue Collars, Red Voters,” No- 90 percent correlation between a coun- counties. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel re - vem ber 29), white working-class voters, ty’s voting results for governor in 2010 porter Craig Gilbert notes that in 2010, particularly in the North and Mid west, and its results from last week, the highest the reverse was true: Turnout in GOP are the primary group that switches par- correlation in Wis con sin history. Con - counties was higher than normal, while ties in Republican wave years. While servatives and liberals are do ing battle that in Democratic counties was lower they oppose progressive liberalism, they nationally over whether entitlement than normal, chief ly because Republi - are motivated as much by their fear of programs should be reformed to re - cans were enthusiastic about voting, economic loss as by their hope of eco- duce the federal debt, and Prosser and while Democrats were not, and the nomic gain. This makes them particu - Kloppen burg were the vehicles by which Repub licans attracted most independent larly sensitive to policies that seem to those groups could register their opin- voters. threaten the lifetime stability that they ions on the same question at the state Statewide turnout in the judicial race believe entitlements like Social Security level. was 32 percent low er than in 2010, but and Medi care provide. If their reaction in In a recent speech at the American the decline was not uniform: In most the supreme-court race is any indication enterprise Institute, New Jersey gov - Republican counties, the decline was a of how they will view proposals to ernor Chris Christie said that public- couple of percentage points more than reform federal entitlements, conserva- employee pay and benefits are to states that, while in staunch Democratic coun- tive Re pub li cans will have a much hard- what entitlements are to the federal gov- ties, it was a few points less. For instance, er time winning in 2012. ernment. Since collective bargaining is liberal Dane County, home to the state It would be unwise to dismiss these capital (Madison) and the University of data simply because Prosser won. Mr. Olsen is a vice president of the American Wis con sin, saw only an 18 percent drop, Prosser was able to overcome adverse Enterprise Institute and the director of its National and surrounding counties, where many trends only because of unusual returns Research Initiative. government and university employees from minority-dominated Milwaukee

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precincts that are unlikely to be replicat- injured. Who bears the responsibility for ed in a presidential year. Mil waukee’s these deaths? minority populations turned out in sig- Trial by Fire That the Reverend Jones had a legal nificantly lower numbers and gave right to burn the Koran seems indisputable Prosser a significantly higher percentage The world reacts to a Koran-burning (give or take the objections of the Gaines - of the vote than would normally be the ville fire department’s regulations, which BY ANTHONY DANIELS case in a partisan election. In the core prohibited him from burning it outdoors). African-American-dominated precincts, But in a free society, obedience to the law turnout was down 43 percent from 2010, HE greatest advocate of book- does not constitute the whole of morality; compared with a 32 percent drop state - burning in history was probably an act that is legally permissible may not wide. Scott Walker received only 4.2 per- the skeptical philosopher David be permissible in any other sense. cent of the vote there in 2010, but David T Hume. In his Enquiry Concern - Generally speaking, a man may be said Prosser received 17 percent in 2011. ing Human Understanding, he wrote: “If to have willed the harmful consequences Other minority-dominated precincts we take in our hand any volume; of divin- of his actions if they were reasonably fore- behaved similarly. In those, turnout was ity or school metaphysics, for instance; let seeable by him. But the fact that he willed down by 40.6 percent, and Prosser re - us ask, Does it contain any abstract rea- the foreseeable consequences does not ceived 22.9 percent versus Walker’s 13.3 soning concerning quantity or number? absolve those who brought them about of percent. Had turnout in these black No. Does it contain any experimental rea- their own responsibility. and minority-dominated precincts been soning concerning matter of fact and exis- Did Jones incite or provoke? Legally equal to the statewide average, and had tence? No. Commit it then to the flames: speaking, he did not. He did not incite, Prosser done only as well as Walker, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and because he did not call on or encourage Kloppenburg would have increased her illusion.” people to harm anybody else or to destroy lead there by over 19,000 votes, more Hume was employing his famous and property. He did not provoke, because than enough to erase Pross er’s current habitual irony, of course: He did not really provocation by definition is an act to 7,700-vote lead. expect people to set fire to whole libraries which any reasonable person might react Barack Obama’s presence at the top of as a result of reading his words, nor did by doing something illegal and out of the ticket should ensure that blacks turn he want his own book committed to the character. Moreover, provocation, even out at a much higher rate in 2012. Re - flames, as it would have been if anyone where it exists, is not a legal excuse; it is publican candidates are also unlikely to had been literal-minded enough to carry only a partial defense or mitigation. A man receive levels of support anywhere close out his injunction. Indeed, were anybody who kills when provoked is not innocent to those Prosser obtained. The supreme- to burn books of school metaphysics or of all crime; he is merely guilty of a lesser court race was non par tisan; neither can- divinity after reading Hume we should crime than murder. didate was identi fied on the ballot as consider him a humorless dolt. It is there- But who is a reasonable person? This belonging to one party or the other. In fore to be hoped that the Rev. Terry Jones, is said to vary according to culture and to 2012 the ballot will clearly label which of Gainesville, Fla., never gets round to the prevailing mores of society. More - candidates are Dem ocrats and which are reading Hume. over, the orthodoxy of one age becomes Republicans. The Wis con sin data suggest Since Heine first suggested (in 1821) the heresy of the next, and vice versa. that black voters who turn out only in that where they burn books they will end But in this case it hardly matters, because years with high-profile races are strongly up burning people, the world has devel- even in Afghan istan there were people partisan people who primarily vote the oped and become more technologically who regarded the killings as indefen - party line. sophisticated. Heine thought that the sible, and therefore as not the acts of Wisconsin’s results do not mean con- same people, or the same kind of people, reasonable but provoked men. Even if servatives should abandon entitlement would burn both books and people, President Karzai was not entirely sincere reform, but they should expect an ener- which turned out to be the case in Nazi in his denunciation of the killings, which gized Democratic base that will fight Germany. But the Internet has changed is highly likely, his words of reprehen- with all its might. They will need to talk all that: The causal connection between sion were sufficient to deprive the perpe- persuasively about what entitlement re - the burning of books (or of a single trators of any defense of provocation. form means. It is not simply a way to book) and the burning of people has Moreover, the rioters were a mi nority, reduce the debt and grow the economy; become more tenuous and convoluted, even in their own towns; therefore they they should stress that it is absolutely and the conflagration of people can now chose to react murderously, and you can- necessary to preserve the lifetime secur - take place thousands of miles away from not choose to be provoked. ity that entitlements provide. the conflagration of books, at the end of Emerson said that every book that was For decades, conservatives have been a complex chain of causation. Such is burned illuminated the world, and Pastor wrongly tagged as caring only about the progress. Jones’s incinerated Koran has certainly rich. The fight over entitlement reform The Reverend Jones was fully aware done that, though what has been revealed and our nation’s fiscal future requires us that his action might result in violence, as by its light is not at all reassuring. His to confront and defeat this bogeyman indeed it did: at least 20 dead and others primitive criticism has called forth an even once and for all. Wisconsin’s results sug- more primitive rebuttal; there are still gest a way to do that, and also show us Mr. Daniels is the author of Utopias Elsewhere people in the world who are prepared to what could happen if we fail. and other books. defend to the death (mostly other people’s

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death, of course) their right to suppress sumption, he called upon the U.S. to pros- opinion. ecute the Reverend Jones. Unfortunately, Jones’s action will only Whatever President Karzai’s true be - Voice of the have reinforced a fetishistic attachment liefs, if he has any, he must be assumed to to a text that, for all those who do not know, better than any foreigner, his own Resistance believe in its divine provenance, seems people’s state of mind, their culture, tastes, irredeemably dull, flawed, and riven by and predispositions. He would know that Dr. Óscar Biscet, in Cuba’s prisons contradiction. Carlyle’s description of it as there were few Voltaireans among them for twelve years, speaks a confused, wearisome jumble that could who believed that truth is most likely to be read by a European only from a sense emerge from the free interplay of oppos- BY JAY NORDLINGER of duty still seems accurate. ing opinion, and that there is a right to But one does not go to the trouble of error and foolishness. On the contrary, in nEEd to get to work,” says dr. ceremonially burning a book that one their political and social philosophy it is Óscar Elías Biscet. Are you fa - deems unimportant. Jones, who in the past the duty of authorities to impose truth in miliar with him? He is perhaps has been accused by his own minuscule ‘I the foremost Cuban democracy the form of orthodoxy and virtue in the church of being a publicity-seeker, ac- form of conformity, and when someone activist, a symbol of the general resistance cused the Koran of responsibility for every within their jurisdiction utters a heresy or to the Castro dictatorship. Has he been kind of crime, thereby himself making a declines from virtue the authorities have neglecting his work? not exactly. For the fetishistic object of it, but an object with an failed, and must resort to restorative pun- past twelve years, essentially, he has been exactly opposite moral valency from that ishment. On this view, the authorities are in prison, suffering the things that the ascribed to it by the Afghani mob. (I wish responsible for everything that goes on regime’s prisoners have always suffered. that he had shot or drowned it, as he had within their jurisdiction, a view that is George W. Bush gave him the Presidential threatened to do, rather than merely implicitly totalitarian. Medal of Freedom in 2007. The recipient burned it: That would have made a You - If Karzai’s view of his own population’s could not accept it in person, of course. Tube video worth watching.) culture and state of mind is correct, he is in But he has now been released from prison. Muslims will easily interpret Jones’s effect admitting that the kind of liberal The day, so long hoped for, by so many of primitive action as fear of the Koran, not democracy in whose name he was brought us, was March 11. I spoke to him three because of its alleged crime-provoking to power and now rules has no social foun- weeks after. properties, but because of the supposed dation whatever in Afghanistan, and in - Biscet was born in 1961 and has a wife, truths that it contains that undermine the deed is in fundamental opposition to the Elsa Morejón Hernández, and two chil- claims of his own Christianity and indeed mores of his society. It is at best a thin crust dren. He became a physician in the mid- of Western civilization as a whole. It is an over a geological formation that, in the cir- 1980s, specializing in internal medicine. A unfortunate fact that people often judge cumstances, combines the properties of a few years later, he embarked on human- the truth of a belief that they hold by the volcano with those of quicksand. rights activism. In 1994, he was charged practical lengths to which other people The problem is not confined to Afghan- with “dangerousness,” a very common are willing to go to oppose it. Geert istan. The Catholic archbishop of Lahore, charge. It means that the individual in Wilders’s call to ban the Koran will Pakistan, Lawrence Saldanha, called upon question will not submit meekly to dic - only have strengthened this impres- the American government to detain Jones tatorial rule. In 1997, he established the sion. Banning and burning books is, “for some time,” and the Pakistani interior Lawton Foundation for Human Rights after all, to pay a backhanded compli- minister called upon Interpol to treat the (“Lawton” being the name of the Havana ment to their power, influence, and impor- burning of the Koran as a “violent crime.” neighborhood in which he lived). The tance. He, and the senators of Pakistan who organization, of course, is banned. In Whatever else it might have illuminat- passed a unanimous motion calling for 1998, he spoke out strongly against abor- ed, the burning Koran lit up an important punishment of Jones, clearly are more tion, particularly late-term abortion: In his and for the moment unbridgeable gulf be - emotionally exercised over the burning work as a doctor, he saw ghastly things. tween pre- and post-Enlightenment politi- of a book than the killing of people, or (to The authorities responded harshly to his cal philosophy. After the book burning and take another example) the condemnation protest. the subsequent killings, President Karzai to death in their own country of a woman After being detained repeatedly—26 (who did much to publicize Jones’s stunt, for having said uncomplimentary things times—Biscet was arrested in 1999 and perhaps in an attempt to boost his Islamic about Mohammed in the course of a thrown in prison for three years. He was and nationalist legitimacy) had to perform quarrel. released on Oct. 31, 2002, and had 36 days a balancing act, appealing to two con- The Rev. Terry Jones is about to test outside of prison. during this time, he stituencies at the same time: first to the America’s commitment to the First worked on his “democratic Principles for United States, without whose support he Amend ment to the maximum. He wants to Cuba” and a civic project called “Club for would soon most likely be hanging from hold a trial of Mohammed for crimes Friends of Human Rights.” He was again the nearest lamp-post, and second to against humanity. To soothe the savage arrested on dec. 6, 2002, and underwent the population of Afghanistan, whose breasts, General Petraeus may then have his ordeal until last March 11. ap proval he must nevertheless continue to do more than call the Koran “the Holy I found it somewhat amazing to hear his to seek. For U.S. consumption, he con- Koran,” as he did when denouncing voice, after reading about him and writing demned the killings; for domestic con- Jones’s essay into fiery biblioclasm. about him for many years. His voice was

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low, grave, and resolute. We spoke by this fate. He had international support, too being recognized with the medal. The phone, Biscet in Havana, his questioner in (including multiple nominations for the American people saw in me the suffering New York. Serving as translator between Nobel peace prize). Instead of exiling him, of the entire Cuban nation.” And the medal us was Aramis Perez, of the Directorio the government released him on a kind “helped change the way the world thought Demo crático Cubano in Miami. of parole. Biscet is serving out his prison about Cuba.” One day, Biscet would like Biscet has felt “a kind of ambivalence” term beyond the gates of prison itself. to meet Bush and “thank him for every- in the last few weeks. Those are his words: His continued freedom depends on his thing he has done for Cuba’s freedom.” “a kind of ambivalence.” “I’m happy to be “good conduct.” Why was he so set Why was abortion so important to him, able to return home to my wife, but I’m against exile? “Because I love the people early in his dissidence, and why is it unhappy to see an entire people still with- of Cuba and want them to be free. I want important now? “The fundamental duty of out freedom.” In his view, Cuba as a whole basic human rights to be respected, so that a physician is to defend life.” Biscet also is “the big prison” while El Combinado the Cuban people can develop themselves links abortion to the question of human del Este, where he and so many other dis- and their talents fully.” rights more broadly. What about the Men and women of Biscet’s makeup Cuban health-care system, as a general always resist exile, no matter how terrible proposition? One of the myths of the rev- are the conditions at home. Remember olution is that it has provided health for all. that Solzhenitsyn did not leave the Soviet This is not a myth that works on Biscet, Union voluntarily; he was expelled, a fate who, as a Cuban doctor, knows too much. he considered a tragedy. What about another myth, then—the Somewhat gingerly, I ask what it was myth that Communist rule has been a boon like inside prison. For years, we heard to blacks? Biscet himself is black, as are reports of the torture that Biscet was en - many other leaders of the opposition. His during. He answers me very, very briefly contempt for this myth is unconcealed. (and I don’t press him): “My experience “Completely false,” he answers. “We was very traumatic. I was forced to live know that the Cuban dictatorship is anti- among criminals,” meaning common American, anti-Semitic, and anti-black.” criminals, thugs, not prisoners of con- And if you would like to know what the science, like Biscet himself. And he was dictatorship thinks of black Cubans, “you indeed tortured—“primarily between need only go to Cuban prisons.” 2002 and 2006.” He immediately adds, “I It is natural to ask Biscet what he thinks also gained a lot of wisdom, because I of a contentious issue in the United States: studied a great deal and drew closer to the longstanding sanctions on the Cuban the Biblical God.” Biscet is a devoted regime, known collectively as “the embar- Christian. The authorities allowed him a go.” He says, “The embargo has helped Bible, although he could not share it with the Cuban people both politically and On the day of his release anyone, or pray with anyone. If this hap- morally.” He wishes that all “free and civ- sidents have been confined, is “the little pened, the other prisoner would be pun- ilized countries would boycott Cuba, the prison.” “We who live under this dictator- ished and transferred to another cell. way they did racist South Africa.” The ship look to the sea and know that the sea Biscet is a steadfast advocate of nonvio- world made South Africa a pariah state. is our prison bars.” Biscet further says, lence: a nonviolent struggle for political The American embargo should be lifted, “This great, beautiful island of Cuba has change. We have always heard that his says Biscet, “when the embargo against been converted by the Castro brothers into models are Thoreau, Gandhi, Martin Lu- the Cuban people’s human rights,” im - their own personal estate.” ther King, and the Dalai Lama. Is this so? posed by the dictatorship, “is lifted.” Why, in his estimation, did the govern- Yes, says Biscet, but there are others, As he sees it, “civilized countries” have ment choose to release him? “Because coming from the Bible. He cites Moses— given the dictatorship “life” and “oxygen” of the economic crisis, coupled with the “who led the first nonviolent revolution.” for the past 20 years—i.e., since the col- social and moral crisis. The government He then mentions the three Hebrew boys, lapse of the Soviet Union. And when he offers false expectations of democratic Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. says “civilized countries,” does he mean change. They do this so that free countries “When a king tried to force them to bow Western Europe, which has sent so much will give them economic support. My down before an idol, they refused. They cash Havana’s way? “I mean civilized release is part of the effort to create false knew that God would help them—and countries in Europe, Latin America, and expectations.” The government’s over - even if He did not, they would never bow North America” (which is to say, Canada riding goal is “to be financed. They want down to an idol.” While in prison, Biscet and Mexico). more money, even as they impoverish the “kept them close, because they are exam- Recently, Jimmy Carter was in Cuba, Cuban people, and, with money, they will ples of freedom of expression and freedom seeing the Castro brothers and others, GETTYNEWSCOM / remain in power.” of religion.” And they were, of course, including some democracy activists, Bis - AFP / The government intended to exile delivered. cet among them. During his stay, Carter Biscet to Spain, not release him in Cuba. For the Presidential Medal of Freedom, referred to Fidel Castro as an “old friend.” They have exiled many prisoners in recent he will not take any personal credit. “I felt This is appalling to Biscet, as to other

ADALBERTO ROQUE months. But Biscet kicked hard against honored, but I wasn’t the only person democrats. “One can have different ideas,

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andtheyshouldberespected.Buttocalla tyrantafriendistrulyhorrible.”Manyin theworldhavetriedtomakeaheroout President ofCastro.And“weshouldnotencourage thecreationoffalseheroes.” Me ThenwehavethequestionofBiscet’s future:Whatwillhedo?Hesaysthathis Imagining a Trump administration immediatetaskisto“recoverpsycholo- gicallyandphysically”fromhistwelve BY ROB LONG yearsindarknessandhell.“Ihopetobein thebestpossiblecondition,”todothe ere’s howtokeeptrackofthe workhefindsitunavoidabletodo.Does toptwocontenders,according heexpecttoberearrested?“Anythingis toarecentCNNpoll,forthe possible,”buthewillworkwithoutfear. H 2012republicanpresidential Hebelievesthattheisland’sdemocratsare nomination:Onlyoneofthemhashis basically united, although “we do live ownsignaturebrandofchocolates. underatotalitariandictatorshipthatuses Mike Huckabee, the brandless and allofitsresourcestoattempttodestroyus, downscaleformergovernorofArkansas, whichmakesitdifficulttoprogressas can’thelpbutfeeloutclassedwhenhe quicklyaswewouldlike.”Thatisproba- compareshimselfwithhisnearestrival, blytheunderstatementofthehour—the thetornadoofnoiseandhairthatis hourofourtimetogether. DonaldJ.Trump. TheCubanpeopleare“enslaved,” Trumphasitall:atelevisionshow,heli- Biscetsays,“but,hereinCuba,theslaves copters,buildings,bottledwater,resorts,a willrevolt,”astheyhavedoneelsewhere. clothingline,ahome-furnishings collec- HementionsChina,Iran,andLibya.And tion,hotels,casinos,and,oddly,hisown hedescribesagreatchallengeoftheoppo- brandoftea.(Youdon’tthinkofTrump sition:toshapeatransitiontodemocracy asateadrinker,doyou?)He’sanun- withoutaTiananmensquare.Withouta stoppablelicensingmachine,andhashis massacrebytherulers,whowillnotgive nameonmorethingsthanaCentral uppowersweetly. Asiandictator—hefloodsthezone WhatdoeshewantfromAmerica?He withTrump-thisandTrump-that,untilit wantspeopletorecognizejusthowbad almostdoesn’tmatterwhetherhe’sas theCubandictatorshipis.Andhewants richashesaysheisorasbrilliantatbusi- solidarity.“TheAmericanpeoplecanhelp ness,becauseonceyougettotheTrump theCubanpeoplebydrawingclosetous teaandtheTrumpdining-roomset,it’s inoursuffering.Thoseofyouwholive allsoexhaustingyou’rereadytoaccept infreedomhavetheabilitytodothis.” theTrump version ofTrump without Aboveall,hesays,donotprovidethe debate. regimewiththe“oxygen”itneedstosur- DonaldJ.Trumpisanunembarrassable vive.HeseestheObamaadministration self-lovemachine.Arelentlessname- makingconcessionstotheregime.Andit stamper.Aroaringgluttonforcreditand isincomprehensibletohimwhy“civilized praise.Inotherwords,DonaldJ.Trump anddemocraticcountries”shouldlenda possesses,alongwithhisresortsandhis handtosuchpeople—shouldgiveoxygen chocolates,everythingittakestobe tothepersecutorsofsomany,persecutors presidentoftheUnitedstates. whoareripeforagreatpush. WhateveryoucansayaboutDonaldJ. AfterwehungupwithBiscet,Italked Trump—he’samalignantnarcissist;he’s forawhilewithAramisPerez,whohad aserialfantasist;he’sabadcreditrisk; translated.HowdidhethinkBiscethad he’sashamelessself-promoter—you sounded?“sereneandcollected.Hespoke canalsosayaboutalmosteverysingle outofsuchconvictionthathedidnotneed member of the United states senate. toemphasizehiswords”—theyallhad Whatisthesenate,afterall,buta100- authority.everynowandthen,youfeel membercollectionofTrumpyegos, thatyouhaveencounteredagreatman. Trumpybluster,andTrumpyhairdos? someonewhomakesupforsomemea- AndwhateveryoucansayaboutDon- sureofhumaniniquityandindifference. aldJ.Trump—he’schildishlyneedfulof PerezandIfeltthisaboutBiscet.sowill attention;he’shilariouslyignorantof manyothers,aroundtheworld,iftheyget worldaffairs;he’sawfullyfree-spending toknowhim. whenit’ssomeoneelse’smoney—you

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convinced that Barack Obama was born on American soil. Well, that’s not quite fair. The quin- tessential aspect of most birthers is their total refusal to express an opinion about that one way or another. “I’m just ask- ing—where’s the birth certificate?” they usually say, voices fluttering in disin- genuous bafflement. “I mean, where is it?” “Are you saying that you think Obama’s not constitutionally qualified to be president of the United States?” “I’m not saying that. I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying, where is it? That’s all I’m saying. I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying.” It doesn’t seem like a very Trump-like plank. What you might expect from a Donald J. Trump is a robust denunciation of the Obama Debt. Or a fierce America Firstism. Or, maybe, a tax-cutting cru- sade. Birtherism seems like a low-class neighborhood from which to base the political rise of Donald J. Trump. And yet: There are lots of people in America who do, actually, want to know where the birth certificate is, and, for now, following the strategy of Me Every - where, that’s a great place to start the The maxi-Trump ball rolling. No serious political figure in America is taking up the birther cru- can also say about most of the men who barrassing. Every shred of media atten- sade—it’s tacky, for one thing—but then, have served as president of the United tion gets used to drive a higher price for no serious political figure in America States. some piece of the Trump Universe. On has his own brand of neckties. And that What none of those mini-Trumps had, good days, I guess, it helps him make makes it a perfect issue for Donald J. though, is the maxi-Trump’s instinct for better deals with creditors and share- Trump. The Trump rule is: First, grab the public attention. Trump is a practitioner holders. On less good days, it probably spotlight; then, monetize. of the Me Everywhere school of market- just moves some chocolate. Either way, Donald J. Trump is a man of mystery, ing—the goal of which is to be always in Trump is making money. of course, and we have no way of know- the spotlight, always in the news, and to The sophisticated crowd may be ing whether he’s really running for pres- use that attention as leverage in his appalled at his grasping tackiness, but ident or just trying to sell some home Trump-name licensing deals. Lending Trump knows what they don’t—“tacky” furnishings. I’d submit that he doesn’t his name to a resort development fetches is a word that has no meaning in Amer - know, either, for sure. It may make finan- a higher price if his television show is ica in 2011. In fact, “tacky” may never cial sense, down the line, to actually popular (it is), and his television show’s have meant anything—America, after make a run for it—think of the licensing! popularity helps plump up book sales, all, was built partly by blowhards and think of the Trump Presidential Seal on which in turn gets him media attention, foghorns like Donald J. Trump. What golf towels and pain relievers!—and which drives up his presidential buzz, is unspeakably low-rent on Tuesday— spend some time monetizing the Oval which makes his show more popular and tattoos, illegitimacy, the word “any- Office. On the other hand, it’s a time- his name more valuable, which sells ways”—becomes acceptably normal by consuming and inefficient use of the (presumably) more Trump Vegas condos Thursday. The folks at NPR and The Trump name, which goes so effortlessly and boxes of Trump tea. New Yorker don’t know that. Trump on buildings and men’s suits and gold- In this perfectly efficient system, no does. bar-shaped chocolates. amount of attention or notoriety is ever Which is why the signature issue of They come in three flavors, by the AP / really harmful—not the past financial the Donald J. Trump ’12 campaign way. Milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and trouble, not the Dairy Queen twist of hair seems to be, for now, the exact location my favorite, deluxe nut. on his head—because all of it can be of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Deluxe nut. Which I think might make used to recharge the batteries of Donald J. Trump, to be blunt, is a “birther”—one a wonderful Secret Service code name,

CHARLES REX ARBOGAST Trump. Nothing is ever shameful or em - of those folks who simply cannot be should it come to that.

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Paul Ryan’s Medicare Fix How to improve health care and shore up the federal budget with one entitlement reform

BY JAMES C. CAPRETTA

F all the sweeping reforms in Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2012 great: a federal budget without crushing tax hikes, and a health- budget, none is more politically charged than the pro- care system that works for patients, not the government. posal to transform Medicare from what it is today— Even the Obama administration agrees that Medicare is at the O an entitlement with no spending bounds—into a heart of the health-care-cost problem. Everything it claims will “defined contribution” program with a fixed and predictable bud- “bend the cost curve” of health care is a change in how Medicare get. “Radical.” “Extreme.” “Cruel.” “The end of Medicare as we works and pays for care. know it.” The ink wasn’t dry on Ryan’s plan before groups in the That’s no small concession. For many years, Democrats were Democratic political orbit began launching their rhetorical in complete denial about Medicare’s cost-raising features. They attacks. And don’t expect the demagoguery to end before likened Medicare to a railcar attached to a runaway freight train: November 2012. The only way to slow down Medicare would be to slow down the Why did Representative Ryan include in his budget plan a whole train—that is, to make health care cheaper for everyone. controversial entitlement reform, giving Democrats something to But now there is widespread recognition on both sides of the aisle exploit for political gain? Certainly Ryan wasn’t unaware of what that Medicare is the train’s engine (or, at a minimum, the most was coming. He grabbed hold of the third rail of Social Security important engine). and Medicare reform more than three years ago, when he pro- American health care has virtues. We have highly skilled posed his precursor to this year’s Republican budget, “A Road - physicians and capital-intensive inpatient institutions, and our map for America’s Future.” Since then, his opponents have system is open to medical innovation in ways that other systems thrown everything—and the kitchen sink—at him. So why is he around the world are not. now asking his Republican colleagues to join him on his lonely But there is no denying that health care in the U.S. is highly crusade? inefficient. The system is characterized by extreme fragmenta- The answer is straightforward: They have no choice. Fixing tion. Physicians, hospitals, clinics, labs, and pharmacies are all the federal budget—the raison d’être of the new Republican autonomous units that are financially independent. They bill sep- House—is impossible without slowing the increase in health- arately from each other when they render services to patients. care costs. And that can’t be done without a thorough restructur- What’s worse, there’s very little coordination of care among ing of Medicare. It’s a daunting challenge, but the reward will be them, which leads to a disastrous level of duplicative services, and often to low-quality care. The bureaucracy is maddening, the Mr. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was an associate paperwork is burdensome and excessive, and there is very little

director at the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004. regard for the convenience and comfort of patients. DARREN GYGI

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You deserve a factual look at . . . A Most Stalwart and Reliable Ally Is Israel indeed America's unsinkable aircraft carrier?

In previous hasbarah (educating and clarifying) messages, we made clear what a tremendous asset for our country Israel is. We gave many examples of its contribution to American safety in that important area of the world. But there is much more.     loathsome Khaddafi. Turkey, once a strong ally, has cast its lot Turmoil in the Middle East. There is upheaval in the Middle with Iran. East. Governments shift, and the future of this vital area is up A stalwart partner. Israel, in contrast, presents a totally in the air. In those dire circumstances, it is a tremendous different picture. Israel’s reliability, capability, credibility and comfort to our country that Israel, a beacon of Western values, stability, are enormous and irreplaceable assets for our country. is its stalwart and unshakable ally. Many prominent military people and elected representatives Unreliable “allies.” Egypt, a long-term “ally” of our country, have recognized this. Gen. John Keegan, a former chief of U.S. is the beneficiary of billions of dollars Air Force Intelligence, determined of American aid. Its dictator, Hosni “What a comfort for our country that Israel’s contribution to U.S. Mubarak has been dethroned. As of intelligence was “equal to five CIA’s.” now, it is unclear who and what will to have stalwart and completely Senator Daniel Inouye, Chairman of be Egypt’s new government. It is the Senate Appropriations widely assumed, however, that it may reliable Israel in its corner...” Committee, said that “The be the Muslim Brotherhood. Far from intelligence received from Israel being a religious organization, as its name would imply, it is exceeds the intelligence received from all NATO countries dominated by fanatical radicals, ardent antagonists of the West, combined. The Soviet military hardware that was transferred obsessed anti-Semites, and sworn enemies of the State of by Israel to the USA tilted the global balance of power in favor Israel. If the Muslim Brotherhood would indeed come to of our country.” power, a bloody war, more violent than anything that has come In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. While at first before, is likely to ensue. condemned by virtually the whole world – sad to say, including Saudi Arabia, a tyrannical kingdom, is another important the United States – it saved our country a nuclear confrontation “ally” of the U.S. It is the most important source of petroleum, with Iraq. At the present time, US soldiers in Iraq and in the lifeblood of the industrial world. It is, however, totally Afghanistan benefit from Israel’s experience in combating unreliable and hostile to all the values for which the United Improvised Explosive Devices, car bombs and suicide bombers. States stands. The precedent of Iran cannot fail to be on the Israel is the most advanced battle-tested laboratory for U.S. minds of our government. The Shah of Iran was a staunch ally military systems. The F-16 jet fighter, for instance, includes of the U.S. We lavished billions of dollars and huge quantities over 600 Israeli-designed modifications, which saved billions of of our most advanced weapons on him. But, virtually from one dollars and years of research and development. day to the next, the mullahs and the ayatollahs – fanatical But there is more: Israel effectively secures NATO's enemies of our country, of Israel, and of anything Western – southeastern flank. Its superb harbors, its outstanding military came to power. Instead of friends and allies, Iran’s theocratic installations, the air- and sea-lift capabilities, and the trained government became the most virulent enemy of the United manpower to maintain sophisticated equipment are readily at States. Could something like that happen in Saudi Arabia? It is hand in Israel. not at all unlikely! Israel does receive substantial benefits from the United States Other U.S. allies in the region – Jordan, the “new” Iraq, and – a yearly contribution of $3 billion – all of it in military the Gulf emirates – are even weaker and less reliable reeds to assistance, no economic assistance at all. The majority of this lean on. Libya, which once, under King Idris, hosted the contribution must be spent in the US, generating thousands of Wheeler Air Base, became an enemy of the U.S. under the jobs in our defense industries. Israel is indeed America's unsinkable aircraft carrier. If it were not for Israel, thousands of American troops would have to be stationed in the Middle East, at the cost of billions of dollars a year. In contrast to the unreliable friendship of Muslim countries, the friendship and support of Israel are unshakable because they are based on shared values, love of peace and democracy. What a comfort for our country to have stalwart and completely reliable Israel in its corner, especially at a time when in this strategic area turmoil, upheaval and revolution are the order of the day. Yes, Israel is indeed America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East.

          %  &** #& !"!#$"& '&"!   "$!,&"! &% #'$#"%%&$%$!#' &"!"&&%$$!( "# !&%! &  %&!*#"%! %#$"#!&& &$ &!&$%&%" & !& &&% ! &%  % ! && $ " & )"$ "'$&*'&  "!&$'&"!%$) " +! '%&"#'$%'&%" %!&"#' % #"    $## "# &% %%%!!&"! !)%##$%! ,!%(($&' +!"  %  ! "   "($ "%& ""'$$(!'#+%"$"'$'&"! )"$"$&%  $+! %%%!"$$ &$&   !!  !" # 125 To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 2col_QXP-1127940309.qxp 4/12/2011 8:43 PM Page 32

At the heart of all this dysfunction is Medicare—and more pre- phone) are simply not accommodated by the payment rules, cisely, its dominant fee-for-service (FFS) insurance structure. which in some cases were written two decades ago. Even small Medicare’s FFS insurance is the largest and most influential changes can take years to implement; often, a multi-year test is payer in most markets. As the name implies, FFS pays any required. Providers are thus reluctant to invest in new approach- licensed health-care provider when a Medicare patient uses ser- es, no matter how promising, that will pay off only if Medicare vices—no questions asked. More than 75 percent of Medicare accommodates the change. The result is that today’s fragmented, enrollees—some 35 million people—are in the FFS program. dysfunctional, and costly system is virtually frozen in place—for Physicians, hospitals, clinics, and other care organizations most all users of U.S. health care, not just Medicare patients. often set up their operations to maximize the revenue they can earn from FFS payments. vEr since House republicans introduced their 2012 bud- In June 2009, Atul Gawande wrote an influential article for The get plan, liberals have been howling about the supposed New Yorker in which he contrasted the high-use, high-cost care E cuts in health care for seniors that would happen under the provided in McAllen, Texas, with the less costly and higher- ryan Medicare reform. But what they never mention is that quality care provided at institutions such the Mayo Clinic. But Obamacare capped overall Medicare spending. what Gawande did not explore is what allowed a delivery struc- That’s right. Obamacare imposes an upper limit on Medicare ture such as McAllen’s to develop in the first place. The answer spending growth every year, beginning in 2015. This is not yet is Medicare. Without Medicare payments for every physician- widely understood among voters, probably because the Obama prescribed diagnostic test and surgical procedure, the expensive administration doesn’t want it to be. And, for some Americans infrastructure that was built in McAllen would never have been (and reporters), maybe it is just too hard to believe that the most viable. liberal Congress in a generation placed a spending cap on one of For FFS insurance to make any economic sense at all, the the Left’s iconic entitlement programs. patients must pay some of the cost when they receive health care. But make no mistake: That’s exactly what it did. Beginning in At the heart of all the health-care dysfunction is Medicare—and more precisely, its dominant fee-for-service insurance structure.

Otherwise, there is no financial check against the understandable 2015, growth in per capita Medicare spending will be limited to inclination to agree to all of the tests, consultations, and proce- a fixed rate, initially set at the midpoint between general inflation dures that a doctor offers to perform, no matter how small the in the economy and inflation in the health sector. Starting in 2018, expected benefit. it will be set permanently at per capita–GDP growth plus one But Medicare’s FFS system does not have effective cost-sharing percentage point. at the point of service. Yes, the program requires cost-sharing, To enforce the cap, Obamacare’s authors resorted to a favor - including 20 percent co-insurance to see a physician. But the vast ite liberal solution: a board of technocrats. The 15-member majority of FFS beneficiaries—nearly 90 percent, according to Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, is charged the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission—have additional with coming up with ways to hold Medicare spending below the insurance in the form of Medigap coverage, retiree wrap-around annual caps. plans, or Medicaid, and it covers virtually all costs not covered by To hit its budgetary targets, IPAB is strictly limited in what it FFS. Further, Medicare’s rules require providers to accept the can recommend and implement. It can’t change cost-sharing for Medicare reimbursement rates as payment in full, effectively pre- covered Medicare services. Indeed, it can’t change the nature of cluding any additional billing to the patient. the Medicare entitlement at all, or any aspect of the beneficiary’s In the vast majority of cases, then, FFS enrollees face no addi- relationship to the program. The only thing it can do is cut tional cost when they use additional services, and the only way Medicare payment rates for those providing services to the for health-care providers to earn more is to provide more. So it is beneficiaries. not at all surprising that Medicare has suffered for years from an Obamacare’s apologists argue that this cap will spur innova- explosion in the volume of services used by FFS participants. tive “delivery system” reforms that will cut costs with no pain to The Congressional Budget Office reports that the average bene- the program’s participants by steering patients to higher-quality, ficiary used 40 percent more physician services in 2005 than the lower-cost providers of care. But this is wishful thinking in the average beneficiary did eight years earlier, and spending for extreme. The federal government has never shown any capacity physician-administered imaging and other tests was up approxi- to build and maintain what might be called a high-quality deliv- mately 40 percent in 2007 compared with 2002. ery system in Medicare. Indeed, the whole point of the Medicare FFS also stifles much-needed service-delivery innovation. The FFS model is that beneficiaries get to see any licensed provider payment rules, established in regulation, reward higher use of last they choose, to whom Medicare pays a fixed reimbursement rate. year’s services, offered by last year’s list of qualified providers. When attempts have been made to steer patients toward preferred New service-delivery organizations, pricing approaches, and physicians or hospitals, they have failed miserably. Politicians ways of taking care of a patient (such as over the Internet and and regulators have found it impossible to choose among hos -

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pitals and physician groups, because the available quality mea- However, the goal is not to shift rising premium costs onto sures are disputed. beneficiaries, but rather to set in motion an entirely different Instead, Congress and Medicare’s regulators have cut costs the market dynamic that will achieve greater efficiency. With cost- old-fashioned way: with across-the-board payment-rate reduc- conscious consumers looking for the best value for their money, tions that apply to every licensed provider, without regard to any cost-cutting innovation would be rewarded, not punished as it is measures of quality or efficiency. Tellingly, that’s exactly how today. Physicians and hospitals would have strong financial Obamacare cuts Medicare spending, by nearly $500 billion, over incentives to reorganize themselves to become more productive the coming decade, and that’s exactly how IPAB will meet the and efficient and thus capable of capturing a larger share of what new Medicare cap under the law in the future. would become a highly competitive marketplace. That’s the The risks to Medicare’s participants from this approach to cost- only way to slow the growth of health-care costs without harm- cutting are very real. The chief actuary for the Medicare program ing the quality of care. has warned repeatedly over the past year that Obamacare’s cuts The government plays an important oversight role in Ryan’s will drive scores of providers from the program because pay- Medicare-reform plan, as it should. Participating insurance com- ments will be too low to cover their costs. He expects 15 percent panies must offer transparent pricing and meet minimum-benefit of the nation’s hospitals to drop out of the program by the end of and -quality standards. But decisions about where to put limited the decade. At that point, Obamacare’s cuts would have driven resources should be made by individual consumers, not the average Medicare payments below those paid by Medicaid, federal government. which are notoriously low. The Obama administration would like to see high-quality, low- The Obamacare “solution” for Medicare is nothing of the sort, cost networks form in every region of the country. That’s a wor- and nothing new at all. It’s an approach that has never worked thy goal. But the federal government has no capacity to make that to control costs in the past, and it won’t work this time. All price happen. Those networks will form only when it is attractive and controls ever do is drive out willing suppliers, after which the profitable for them to do so, on their own, organically and in the The Ryan alternative starts from an entirely different premise. Its solution is not top-down cost-cutting but a more productive and efficient health sector.

only way to balance supply and demand is with waiting lists. communities in which they operate. And that means unleashing the power of competition to reward innovators and entrepre- He Ryan alternative starts from an entirely different neurs. premise. Its solution is not top-down cost-cutting but a Medicare’s prescription-drug benefit became the first truly T more productive and efficient health sector. The only way competitive market in the program when it was enacted in 2003. to slow the rise in costs without compromising the quality of Beneficiaries get a fixed-dollar entitlement that they can use to American health care is by getting more bang for the buck: mak- buy coverage from a number of different competing plans. The ing the provision of services to patients more efficient each year. insurers understand that they have to keep costs down to attract That can be achieved in health care the same way it has been price-sensitive enrollees. And the government has no role in set- achieved in other major sectors of the American economy: with a ting premiums or drug prices. And how is it working? Costs are robust, well-functioning marketplace, filled with cost-conscious now expected to come in 47 percent below original expectations consumers. That’s the centerpiece of the Ryan Medicare reform. over the first decade. Beginning in 2022, new Medicare enrollees would get their entitlement in the form of a “defined contribution” or “premium He federal government’s health-care administrators support” payment from the government (those who turn 65 have been trying to micromanage Medicare to control before 2022 would be exempted from the switch). Initially, the T costs for four decades now. They haven’t succeeded, entitlement would be set at roughly the average cost of Medicare yet Obamacare doubles down on their failed model, this time coverage. In future years, its value would grow at the rate of gen- with an arbitrary cap on spending that poses great risk for eral inflation. Beneficiaries would be given a menu of insurance beneficiaries. options on which they could spend their entitlement. Importantly, Paul Ryan has a different vision and solution, grounded in the the value of the entitlement would be set independently of what- American experience. He understands that the best way to help ever insurance plan they selected. If beneficiaries selected plans the program’s future enrollees is to give them more control. with higher-than-normal premiums, they would pay the extra When the beneficiaries, not the government, direct the entitle- cost themselves. If they selected less expensive options, their out- ment, the entire health-care system will reorient itself to deliver of-pocket expenses would reflect the lower price of coverage. what they want and need at an affordable price. That’s the way to Critics argue that this change would do nothing to control patient-centered care. That’s the way to rewarding productivity health-care costs, but would shift the risk of rising costs onto indi- and efficiency in the health sector, and making health care more viduals because the government’s support would no longer keep affordable for everyone, including the uninsured. It’s the most pace with premium growth. important step toward fiscal sanity, too.

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and other spending programs in order to reduce deficits and avert a tax increase. Ryan vs. the Second, Chait’s claim that Ryan’s plan “includes a massive, regressive tax cut” is certainly true only on a very specific def- inition of “regressive.” The plan assumes that the tax reform reduces tax breaks and lowers the top tax rate to 25 percent. If MYTHMAKERS you’re among the very richest Americans—in the forbes 400, for example—then your tax bill will certainly fall. You’ll lose Spurious claims, debunked some tax breaks, but you’ll gain more from keeping a higher share of your income above the threshold for the top tax bracket. BY RAMESH PONNURU On the other hand, a lot of Americans who are well-off could end up paying more under such a reform. Progressives who f you’ve been following the debate over the House care about the distribution of the tax burden between the rich- Republican budget proposed by Wisconsin congressman er half of taxpayers and the poorer half will have to wait and Paul Ryan, you have probably heard that it savagely cuts see what tax plan the Ways and Means Committee devises I programs for the poor in order to fund tax cuts for the rich, before making a judgment about it. Progressives who primari- that its numbers don’t add up, and that in the short run it ly worry about how the super-rich are doing relative to the expands the deficits. These claims, though asserted confident- upper middle class, on the other hand, already know what they ly, either depend on highly contestable assumptions or are need to know. But it’s not at all clear that this definition of demonstrably untrue. “regressive” is the most important one. l David frum writes in The Week that Ryan’s “debt reduc- l Annie Lowrey writes in Slate: “The theory is straightfor- tion plan actually increases the debt over the medium term— ward enough: Tax cuts to wealthy Americans foster prosperity by even more [than] President Obama’s budget would.” that moves millions of (less wealthy) Americans back to work, The CBO’s actual projections for the Ryan plan show a debt with increasing wages. High earnings and employment bolster level in 2021 that is $4.7 trillion lower than its projections for tax revenue. When combined with huge cuts in domestic Obama’s budgets. Ryan’s plan is designed to rapidly stabilize spending and radical changes to Medicaid and Medicare, the federal debt as a share of the economy: That percentage peaks budget balances out in about 20 years.” She says that Ryan’s in year three and then starts falling. The CBO projections for plan “relies” on economic forecasts that are too optimistic. Obama’s budgets just show the number rising higher and high- Which they almost certainly are. But that has nothing to do er over the decade. with whether Ryan’s plan reduces the debt as he says it will. l “In fact, the [Congressional Budget Office] finds that over The plan’s projections for debt reduction do not assume that the next decade the [Ryan] plan would lead to bigger deficits any extra revenue comes in from higher economic growth. The and more debt than current law,” writes Paul Krugman in the CBO applies the same economic assumptions to Ryan’s plan New York Times. that it applies when making projections about Obama’s budget What Krugman doesn’t mention is that current law includes and current law. Lowrey and like-minded critics have identi- automatic tax increases, including middle-class tax increases fied a flaw in the plan’s marketing, not its design. that both parties have consistently said they want to avoid. l David Brooks, who finds many things to like in Ryan’s Current law includes cuts in payments to Medicare providers proposal, criticizes it because it “doesn’t have an answer to that both parties oppose and have acted against in the past. It rising health care costs.” On “controlling health-care costs,” includes the expansion of the Alternative Minimum Tax to hit writes Ezra Klein in the Washington Post, “the reality is that more and more middle-class taxpayers, which—well, you get Democrats have a plan and Ryan doesn’t.” The Democratic the idea. Krugman is comparing the Ryan plan with an alter- plan to which Klein refers is to allow all the allegedly cost- native that is both unrealistic and much more painful than he saving reforms in the new health-care law to take effect. lets on. Ryan’s plan could have gone further in controlling health- l Jonathan Chait writes in : “[Ryan] is care costs by, for example, changing the tax treatment of health making a choice—not just [to] cut Medicare to save Medicare, insurance. But its reform of Medicare (and to a lesser extent but also to cut Medicare in order to cut taxes for the rich.” Medicaid) could impose quite a bit of cost control by encour- Krugman, again, cites the CBO to write that “a large part of the aging the senior citizens of tomorrow to be more cost-conscious. supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce James Capretta makes this case in detail elsewhere in this issue the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts.” (“Paul Ryan’s Medicare fix,” page 30). These claims are misleading in two ways. first, Ryan’s plan The Congressional Budget Office assumes that Medicare assumes that Congress enacts a tax reform that keeps revenues will go bankrupt in 2021 even if the Affordable Care Act (a/k/a slightly above historic averages. It is “revenue neutral” with Obamacare) remains the law. It certifies that the Ryan plan pre- respect to the tax code as it exists following Bush’s tax cuts. vents bankruptcy. In a January hearing, Rick foster, the chief Current law automatically raises the tax rates to pre-Bush lev- actuary of Medicare, was asked about the relative potential of els in 2013. So if you’re comparing the tax level with current Obamacare and Ryan’s plan to control costs: “I would say that law, including that automatic tax hike, Ryan’s plan represents the Roadmap”—Ryan’s plan, that is—“has that potential. a tax cut. If you’re comparing it with today’s tax rates, on the There is some potential for the Affordable Care Act price other hand, it’s not a tax cut. If you adopt the latter perspective, reductions, although I’m a little less confident about that.” what Ryan is proposing is to restrain the growth of Medicare l William Galston complains in The New Republic that the

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Ryan plan does not allow the governmental share of the econ- Milbank also suggests, as many other commentators have, omy to rise with the aging of the population and that it that if deficit reduction were really Ryan’s primary concern he shrinks the discretionary share of the budget to unacceptably would raise taxes. But deficit reduction isn’t Ryan’s stated pri- low levels. mary concern: American prosperity is. That’s why he calls his note the sleight of hand. Entitlements as a share of GDP plan “the path to prosperity.” He doesn’t want to raise taxes, should grow because the population is aging, but at the same because he believes doing so would at best address his sec- time discretionary spending as a share of the budget should ondary concern at the expense of his primary one. Perhaps he not fall below some arbitrary number. In other words, as has also reviewed research by Kevin Hassett, Andrew Biggs, the population ages, the correct amount of federal spending and Matt Jensen of the American Enterprise Institute, which on roads, Head Start, and everything else should rise. Why? shows that tax increases have played little role in successful Other, that is, than because the growth of government is a budget-balancing efforts abroad (“successful fiscal consolida- positive good? tion consisted, on average, of 85% spending cuts”). l According to too many sources to quote, the plan is cruel l Too many commentators to quote, again, have argued that to the poor. Replacing Medicaid with capped block grants to Ryan’s plan shows the need to raise taxes. the states will force states to reduce benefits for some low- The government could, of course, raise taxes on the wealthy income people and end them entirely for others. to pay for somewhat higher benefits for the middle class and There are many assumptions involved here. One is that the poor than it could otherwise afford. But to really protect either Washington would enact the Ryan plan but shrink from future benefit levels for middle-class retirees we would have to enacting other conservative reforms to make health insurance raise taxes on today’s middle-class workers—and it is not at all more affordable to the working poor, or these reforms would obvious that it makes sense to do so. It is even less obvious prove ineffective. Another is that states would engage in a that, stated honestly and directly, this point of view would “race to the bottom” in benefit levels. That is the exact claim prove popular among the middle-class people involved, many Dana Milbank suggests that if deficit reduction were really Paul Ryan’s primary concern he would raise taxes. But deficit reduction isn’t Ryan’s stated primary concern: American prosperity is.

that opponents of welfare reform made when that program was of whom would surely prefer to pocket the money themselves converted into a system of block grants to the states in 1996, and save it for their own retirements. and they threw around terms such as “cruel” and “heartless” as well. They were wrong then, and they could be wrong now. It is worth remembering that patient outcomes show no differ- nE argument against the Ryan plan falls in a special ence between having Medicaid benefits and having no health category for bad faith. This is the criticism that Ryan insurance at all. O unfairly exempts today’s senior citizens from cuts. l Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post that Ryan’s Who can doubt that if he cut their benefits, too, most of the plan “isn’t a serious budget proposal because it fails at the cen- people who have made this claim would add it to their indict- tral mission of ending the deficit and taming the debt”: It adds ment of him as extreme? They would say that it is unfair to cut to the debt over the next decade and ends the deficit only in benefits for people who had been given no time to prepare for future decades. He compares it to the bipartisan Bowles- the policy change—and they would have a point. none of the Simpson commission’s plan, which would “reduce deficits by liberals who have made this criticism have spoken a word in $4 trillion through 2020, stabilize the debt by 2014, and keep rebuke to those Democrats who have done everything in Social Security solvent for 75 years.” their power to convince today’s senior citizens that the Ryan Milbank gets one thing right here: Ryan’s plan doesn’t plan is an abomination because it cuts their benefits. Allyson address Social Security, and probably should. But the rest of Schwartz (Pa.), the second-ranking Democrat on the House his critique is unserious. The plan does indeed “tame” the debt Budget Committee, wrote an op-ed on the Ryan plan accurate- by stabilizing it by 2014—just like Bowles-Simpson. The ly summarized by its headline: “Seniors, Say Goodbye to Your Bowles-Simpson plan doesn’t end the deficit until the 2030s, Healthcare.” Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the new head of just like Ryan’s plan. Bowles-Simpson achieves more deficit the DnC, says the plan would “literally be a death trap for reduction early because it has front-loaded tax increases, seniors.” while Ryan relies on phased-in spending cuts. But Bowles- It’s bad enough that Ryan’s critics do not have good ideas Simpson’s spending cuts are left vague. And there is no bipar- of their own for solving the country’s fiscal problems. For the tisan plan—and certainly no Democratic plan—that reduces most part, they don’t even have solid criticisms. If they prevail the deficit and the debt more aggressively than Ryan’s does politically, it won’t be because of the strength of their argu- over the long run. ments.

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life is dominated by the ultra-rich. The recent obsession with the billionaire Koch brothers is only the most vivid example of this BLAME THE phenomenon. In Winner-Take-All Politics, the political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson link the evolution of the U.S. economy from the late 1970s through the present to the rising Not-Too-Rich political influence of the top 1 percent of the income distribu- tion. In their view, key members of this group have actively sought to deregulate the economy, to undermine the power of Why Obama courts the upper middle class organized labor, and to advance regressive tax policies. The end result, they argue, has been a policy environment hostile to the BY REIHAN SALAM interests of the middle class. Naturally, conservatives will object to Hacker and Pierson’s T is widely understood that the American middle class has take on the decades-long effort to free the American economy, fuzzy boundaries. Many relatively poor and relatively rich which we see as crucial to American prosperity. In the absence people identify as middle-class. In an ambitious 2008 sur- of deregulation, the declining influence of organized labor, and I vey, the Pew Research Center found that an extraordinary 53 a tax policy designed to spur work, conservatives generally percent of Americans described themselves as middle class. Yet believe that the country as a whole, including the working and it’s also clear that within this diverse, sprawling middle class, middle classes, would have fared far worse in a more competi- there are some households that are better off than others. College- tive global economy. Indeed, if there is a social group that has educated households, for example, have largely been spared the been a barrier to good public policy, one can make a strong case scarring effects of unemployment and underwater mortgages. that it isn’t the ultra-rich but the upper middle class, a group And upper-middle-income households, a group that overlaps we’ll loosely define as households earning between $100,000 fairly closely with the college-educated middle class, have seen and $250,000. fairly healthy improvements in their standard of living in recent There is no denying that Americans in the top 0.01 percent of years. This is a group that has a great deal, and a great deal to lose. the income distribution have more potential for political influ- In recent years, a number of progressive historians and politi- ence than those earning $150,000. This influence is channeled cal scientists have been making the case that American political through campaign donations and also through charitable giving, particularly to nonprofits devoted to shaping the ideological Mr. Salam is a policy adviser at Economics 21. environment. Just as the Koch brothers have donated to various

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libertarian causes, their opposite numbers at the Ford Foun - is aware of how economically damaging it would be to balance dation, Atlantic Philanthropies, the Soros Foundations, elite the budget through tax increases on over-$250,000s. A far less research universities, and countless other lesser-known organiza- economically damaging strategy would involve curbing tax tions have devoted themselves to providing intellectual support expenditures for all households, a policy Rep. Paul Ryan has en- for the expansion of the welfare state. It is very difficult to tease dorsed. But that would cost the upper middle class, and so the out which side has had the most cumulative influence over time. president has stayed true to his campaign strategy. What we can say with confidence is that in any given election After the debut of Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, a proposal the top 0.01 percent has less collective political weight than the designed to keep federal spending in line with the current tax bur- upper middle class, simply by virtue of the fact that there are den, the White House released a deficit-fighting plan of its own, more voters in the upper middle class. These voters tend to be with a heavy emphasis on tax increases. Among other things, the more active as volunteers and as small donors than other president calls for lifting the cap on the amount of income subject Americans, and they are heavily concentrated in professions— to Social Security payroll taxes and curbing tax expenditures media, the upper echelons of the public sector, higher educa- such as the mortgage-interest deduction for households earning tion—that further magnify their influence. In Red State, Blue more than—you guessed it—$250,000. Note, however, that the State, Rich State, Poor State, Columbia University statistician mortgage-interest deduction, which will cost $637 billion over Andrew Gelman and his colleagues found that Republicans in the next five years, overwhelmingly benefits affluent households heavily Republican states tend to win elections with a coalition at a staggering cost to the Treasury. What the president has real- of middle-class and upper-income voters, while Democrats in ly proposed is to preserve this tax break as a gift for households heavily Democratic states tend to win elections with a coalition earning between $100,000 and $250,000, since under-$100,000 of voters drawn from all income groups. In effect, upper-middle- households are far less likely to itemize their taxes. class voters are always represented in the winning coalitions, As Matthew Yglesias of the left-leaning Center for American regardless of region. Progress has argued, Obama’s strategy on taxes has a serious Voters in households earning more than $100,000 constituted 26 downside for the progressive cause. “A platform of no tax percent of the 2008 electorate. By any standard, President Obama increases for the bottom 95 percent can win elections, but it rein- performed very well with this bloc in 2008. In the 2010 House forces rather than debunks the right’s fundamental view of the elections, in contrast, voters in over-$200,000 households chose tax question—that public services aren’t worth paying for—and Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 64 to 34 percent, merely suggests that the correct answer is to get someone else to while $100,000 to $200,000 households favored Republicans by a pay for them.” Rather than persuade voters to embrace a grand more modest 56 to 43 percent margin. The president’s political bargain of higher taxes for more public services, the Obama advisers are keenly aware of the fact that Democrats need to campaign promised a more appealing bargain of more public improve their performance with these voters or face defeat in 2012. services at no cost. This was also the central premise of the pres- This helps explain the profound irrationality of the Obama admin- ident’s health-care-reform push, when the White House tried to istration’s approach to key public-policy questions. convince the public that painless Medicare cuts and unobtrusive One of the most fascinating aspects of the Obama era has been tax increases on the rich would generate enough revenue to pay the elevation of a $250,000 annual household income to an for an enormous new entitlement program. almost mythical status. The magic number was first introduced One could argue that the failure of Democratic voters to by Hillary Clinton in 2008, when she defined $250,000 as the accept the need for higher taxes reflects pervasive political upper bound of the middle class. That same year, Barack Obama immaturity. But that’s not quite fair. In 2008, the median house- pledged to cut taxes on all households earning less and to raise hold income was $52,029. This number masks the fact that there them, ever so slightly, on those earning more. Given that 49 out is a rising number of single-person households, but it does give of 50 households earned less than $250,000 that year, there is no a crude indication of how a large number of American house- question that the cutoff number chosen was politically shrewd. holds are faring. During the 2008 election, 37 percent of voters As the Democratic nominee promised a panoply of new social lived in households earning less than the median. An additional programs, ranging from a health-care entitlement to an expensive 36 percent lived in households earning between $50,000 and effort to foster a green economy, he also made it clear that only $100,000. It is easy to accept the argument that these voters, one out of 50 households would pay for all that new spending and many of them young and upwardly mobile but buffeted by rapid for reducing the deficits that had widened during the Bush years. economic change, should be insulated from tax increases. These Over-$250,000 households were expected to earn 24.1 per- voters aren’t the problem. cent of income in 2009 and to pay 43.6 percent of personal fed- But if one believes, as the president emphatically believes, eral income taxes, a number that does not include payroll taxes. that we need to dramatically expand the scope of government, it Because over-$250,000 households tend to be concentrated in makes far less sense to argue that households earning between high-tax state and local jurisdictions, this figure tends to under- $100,000 and $250,000 should be completely exempt from tax state their total tax burden. In an essay titled “Desperately increases. Very bluntly, President Obama and his congressional Seeking Revenue,” Rosanne Altshuler, Katherine Lim, and allies aren’t protecting these upper-middle-class households out Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center found that achiev- of a deep commitment to social justice. Instead, they’re protect- ing a budget deficit of 3 percent of GDP by 2020 through tax ing them because this is a class with outsize political power and increases on over-$250,000s would require doubling their rates, interests that are very much in tension with those of the Amer - kicking the top rate to 76.8 percent. Suffice it to say, marginal tax ican economy as a whole. The end result could be that the United rates at these levels would have a powerfully negative impact on States will end up with tax policies that seriously undermine our work incentives. It’s hard not to conclude that President Obama growth potential.

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specialists. In the cotton-farming regions in West Texas, it is not unusual to meet a farmer in possession of several combines, each A Nation of of which costs about as much as a mid-range Ferrari, contracting out his harvesting services to a number of landowners in exchange for a percentage of the crop’s profits. Which is to say, they are sharecroppers—but being a sharecropper isn’t what it used to be. Sharecroppers Cotton-farming is a famously fickle business, reliant upon un - predictable fluctuations in the weather and global markets, but From slavery to six figures the better 21st-century sharecroppers can do very well for them- selves, with incomes into the six figures. If you happen to visit a BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON John Deere dealership, you might be surprised by how many of the older gentlemen inspecting the new wares there are million- aires. Cotton money does not usually act like Wall Street money, n the 1950s, when cotton was still king in Texas, picking it though I do know of one farmboy who goes booming down dusty was a common form of casual employment. Cotton-pickers farm-to-market roads in a Maserati. were paid by weight, and though the gin had long since It is a remarkable evolution: In 100 years, cotton-picking went I mechanized the process of seeding cotton, bringing the bolls from being a job for slaves to being a job for the rural working in was still done in the ancient fashion: by hand and burlap sack. class, and in the next 50 years became a job that produces a high- Children getting out of school, men and women finishing their ly desirable income. Same work—picking cotton—but a drama - regular jobs in the afternoon, and otherwise unoccupied people tically different wage. This does not have to do with the value of would make a little extra money picking cotton, and in other sea- cotton: Cotton prices are very high just at the moment, but adjust- sons they would harvest pecans or other crops. ed for inflation they are less than what they were in 1810. Cotton- These were not, it should be noted, remarkably poor people. picking wages have climbed radically while the value of the crop They would seem poor to us, but they were the lucky kind of itself has mostly declined. Cotton-harvesting employs far fewer poor: mid-century rural Americans who did not regard them- people than it once did, but I do not suspect that many Americans, selves as poor. one of the remarkable features about farm-town even unemployed ones, are eager to pick cotton in the 1950s fash- Americans of that generation is that there seems to have been rel- ion for a 1950s wage. atively little socio-economic self-comparison—with the excep- The question, then, as unemployment remains high and wages tion of a few “uptown people,” most everybody they knew lived stagnate: How do we make America into a nation of share - more or less the same way. Do not mistake this for an idyll: rural croppers? How do we use capital to multiply the value of life in the 1950s is romanticized only by people who did not American labor, particularly for those workers who are not well endure it. When I speak to men of my father’s generation, they situated to compete in a global market in which raw, unspecial- sometimes laugh about the conditions in which they grew up— ized labor in many cases provides a standard of living inferior to no shoes in the summer, no running water in the home, etc.—and that provided by the American welfare state? they shake their heads in wonderment at how much things have Investment in physical capital and innovation certainly is one changed in the course of their lifetimes. They speak less often of critical factor, and it has shaped the growth of wages in many the brothers and sisters who never made it to adulthood. Too occupations. Consumer-goods companies that used to employ much is made of the residual stoicism of the children of the vast sales forces to service wholesale customers now do so with Depression, but this much is true: They do not take their comforts inventory-management networks administered by a few highly for granted. paid nerds. At your local newspaper, one graphic artist today does only 100 years before the opening of that great symbol of the work of 20 men: compositors, paste-up artists, press-plate postwar modernity, the Astrodome, cotton-picking was work makers, and typesetters. And while large gains in per capita pro- performed mostly by slaves. White people, even poor rural white ductivity have been associated in many industries with reduc- people, did not pick a lot of cotton. Cotton-picking was reserved tions in the total number of workers employed—THe roboTS Are to the lowest of the low, to a despised caste of human beings who TAkIng our JobS!—that is not always the case. A nurse today were not even considered human beings. Then there was a funda- enjoys much higher wages than a nurse did a generation ago, mental restructuring in the labor market for cotton-picking, in no again because of the force-multiplier of capital, but the number small part the result of events at gettysburg and Appomattox. of nursing jobs has grown. Digital document-processing has made lawyers and pharmacists considerably more efficient at their work, but few of them are unemployed. egInnIng in the 1950s, there was a second radical restruc- turing in the labor market for cotton-picking, this one the b result of massive investment in capital. The first mechan- HAT leads us to our second important variable: tradability. ical cotton-strippers began to appear on Texas farms in the 1950s. American farmers cannot offshore their cotton-picking to Today, one cotton farmer with a high-tech harvester can by him- T a low-wage jurisdiction, though in some parts of the agri- self work extensive tracts of land. The work that once demanded cultural business that fact is made moot by the importation of ille- hundreds of slaves or laborers today can be done by one or two gal labor from low-wage jurisdictions, in essence offshoring within our own shores. In general, nontradable sectors are heav- Mr. Williamson is author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism ily insulated from globalization: nurses, lawyers, pharmacists, (Regnery). retail workers, and those in the construction trades do not com-

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pete much with offshore labor, because their jobs mostly have to tive size of the public be done in a particular place. sector, this supplemen- The ultimate nontradable job is government work: Our bureau- tary welfare state will cracies may not do much, and what they do may be of question- not absorb all it has able value, but whatever it is they do, they do here. (NATIONAL absorbed in the past. RevIeW contributor Conrad Black is too fond of FDR and the Those workers once WPA, but say this for those old-school public-works projects: des tined for govern- every now and then, we got something for our money.) Trada - ment jobs will hit the bility underlies the paradox explored at some length by the econ- private labor market, omists A. Michael Spence and Sandile Hlatshwayo in their and they will be poorly much-remarked-upon paper, “The evolving Structure of the prepared to compete in American economy and the employment Challenge,” published it. We will have to do in March and expertly illuminated for readers of this magazine by something about that. Reihan Salam in the last issue. The authors found that while prac- tically all of the productivity gains in the past decades have been in the tradable sector, all of the job growth has been in the non- T is not likely, tradable sector. As a practical matter, that means that while the giv en economic broad economy has made significant gains in productivity, the I realities and the job growth has been in the less efficient sectors of the economy. reli ably dysfunctional Practically all of the growth has been in health care and govern- character of American ment, which are not really two separate sectors but are complex- government institutions, that a larger or more efficiently run wel- ly entwined. Spending on health care and government already is fare state will absorb them. But even if we could afford it and putting severe stress on the American economy—left unre- wished it, high levels of full or partial welfare-state dependency formed, Medicare and Medicaid will bankrupt us—so it is im - are in and of themselves destructive; the dollar cost of the welfare probable that there will be much new job growth there, either: state is not its only cost. A society in which a significantly large even if the demand were there (and I am not sure that anybody population lives at the expense of another is not destined to be really wants a marginal IRS agent or deputy assistant undersec- stable or peaceable. Beyond politics, there is a human price at the retary of health or senior associate community-relations public- bottom of it all: For the man who wants to work and earn a liv- information officer), there simply is not the money for it. ing—and I use the sex-specific form with intent—there is a spe- This brings up the uncomfortable fact that the public sector cific and concentrated sort of despair in unemployment, instantly presently serves as a supplementary welfare state. For a person of recognizable to anybody who has experienced it. For the talent- average intelligence and the endurance to muddle through at the ed, skilled, or highly educated, long-term unemployment is a local community college, the surest route from real poverty to the relatively remote prospect. But that is not the case for a great middle class is a government job. And it’s not just welfare for the number of Americans. poor: For the middle-class person of modest ability, government I can think of no gentle way to write this: People of modest work offers above-market compensation and glorious shelter intellectual ability are the biggest part of the unemployment from the Darwinian competition of the global marketplace. problem. Most people are of approximately average intelligence, While there is no shortage of anecdotal evidence that govern- and, as the joke reminds us, half of us are of below-average intel- ment work attracts disproportionately those not endowed to ligence. But the people who make policy are more or less uni- thrive in more competitive markets (you have visited your local formly members of what Charles Murray called the “cognitive department of motor vehicles?), there is hard evidence, too. elite,” high-performing, high-g people of precisely the sort who High-school seniors who intend to major in education come are equipped to thrive in a highly competitive global marketplace largely from the bottom third of the SAT distribution, and, while marked by instantaneous flows of capital and globally inte - many of them will not become accredited teachers, those who do grated supply chains. I suspect this is why practically every are a scarcely more impressive bunch: The average SAT verbal employment-policy proposal I can remember having read is ded- and math scores of students who pass accreditation exams to icated to the subject either of how to get more poor people into Ivy become elementary-school teachers is just over 500 in each cat- League law schools (the liberal program) or of how to convert egory. The average SAT math score for students who pass exams them into successful entrepreneurs (the conservative program), as to become math teachers is under 600. (If you are curious about though the only models for advancement in American life were the effect of affirmative action, the SAT math and verbal scores Clarence Thomas and George Jefferson. Once we set aside the of black and Hispanic students who pass their teacher exams are elected officials and the television entertainers, the political debate less than 500 in each category.) At the University of Texas at in the United States is largely an intramural dispute between two Austin in 2009, freshmen entering as engineering or architecture factions of the same high-IQ class, which is largely blind (proba- majors scored on average more than 200 points higher than those bly willfully so) to the narrowness of its own class interests. The entering as education majors, who lagged behind every cohort on cognitive elite is practically alone in its libertarian attitude toward campus except nursing students, whom they edged out by only a immigration, for instance, and still it has its way. The black under- ARIE REINHARDT TAYLOR , few points (something to ponder as government and health care class is avid for reform of the public schools (while middle-class become more deeply conjoined). Government workers in non- white homeschoolers have checked out of the system entirely), credentialed positions very likely are even lower achieving. but reform never comes, because for the people who have

THE COTTON FIELD As the ratchet of financial reality forces us to reduce the rela- the power to make reform happen, “public schools” are a

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happy abstraction to True, it is more lucrative to be the guy in Silicon Valley who be defended on demo - designs the iPod than the guy in China who puts the parts to - cratic principle, not a gether—but there are many American workers who are not suit- grotesque reality to be ed to becoming high-end electronics designers and who cannot survived. be educated into it. There are limits on the development of human But the fellow making capital. And so we are stuck. $100K+ picking cotton in Texas is not Stephen Hawking—and neither onSerVATiVeS spend a good deal of time thinking about is he Forrest Gump. how to please the middle class, but there is an element of He’s a regular guy do - C cynicism to that. What conservatives want to do is to ing a job that regular enact the conservative agenda, and political realities make it prof- people can do, and itable to bring the middle class along—pretending to give them a mak ing a very good ride when we were going that way, anyway. Sometimes conser- living at it. Likewise, vatism will serve the interests of the middle class, and sometimes there is real money to it will not—but almost always, it will be presented in terms of be made in providing middle-class interests. (Which is fair enough; American conser- high-value-added vatism, unlike its european cousins, is a middle-class philoso- goods and services that phy.) But it is not the established middle class that most needs do not require a mas- our assistance—it is the poor. The right-hand side of the socio- ter’s degree to produce—we live in the age of the celebrity butch- economic bell curve can mostly take care of itself—during the er, one in which the most successful sales associates at neiman worst of the financial crisis, the unemployment rate for college Marcus can command six-figure salaries. (Yes, both of those graduates never hit 6 percent; the rate for high-school dropouts examples entail providing high-end goods to the wealthy. But if topped 15 percent, and the rate for recent dropouts runs over 40 we are going to have some redistribution of wealth, isn’t that the percent. our public policy ought not so much to be directed at ideal model?) So, let’s have some more of that. But how? cultivating the next Google or the next Pfizer—politicians have neo-Malthusians like my friend John Derbyshire worry that no ability to do that, anyway—but at maximizing the value of we do not have enough work for our population to do. This is Americans’ labor. exactly backward: Almost all people have valuable labor to con- Unfortunately, conservatives do not have a lot of convincing tribute to the economy. The list of things that i would rather have ideas on that front. (neither do liberals. neither does anybody.) other people do for me is very long: clean my home, do my laun- There are a great many things that conservatives already want to dry, shop for my groceries, keep my calendar, answer my tele- do—improving the tax and regulatory environment, reforming phone, organize my bills, etc. Would i like a personal assistant? education to allow people not inclined toward becoming liberal- Are you kidding? it is only republican manners that keep me arts weenies to do something rewarding with their labor, maxi- from contemplating a punkawallah in the hellish new York mizing the flexibility of domestic labor while ceasing to flood the summer. Labor is valuable—but price matters. lower end of the market with unskilled immigrants—that proba- Another way of saying that is: Productivity matters. no 19th- bly would help the poor. (And by “poor,” i mean the people century cotton planter was going to spend $150,000 per capita per we’ve come to call the “working poor,” people who have the abil- annum maintaining his slaves. no 20th-century cotton planter was ity and inclination to hold regular employment. The class of going to spend $150,000 per capita per annum paying hundreds of chronic welfare-state dependents is a different problem, and in laborers to pick his crop. But a 21st-century cotton-picker may some ways an easier one to manage.) And the repeal of very well earn that. Labor gets a say, too: i would not much like to obamacare would open up at least the possibility of reversing the work cleaning hotel rooms. But if cleaning hotel rooms paid merger of state and medicine in such a way that large productiv- $1,000 a day, it would be attractive supplemental work. ity gains might be had in the field of health care, which, com- our politicians talk a lot—far too much, in fact—about cre - bined with an aging population, might open up an avenue of ating jobs, saving jobs, protecting jobs, and jobs’ going overseas. employment growth in a critical nontradable sector. So, fine, yes, But it is foolish to try to create jobs. To create a job is to create an let’s do all that. And let’s also do what we can to disabuse our pol- expense, not value. We could create many thousands of jobs in icymaking elites of the notion that to work for a living in a job that agriculture tomorrow by seizing everything painted John Deere does not require a bachelor’s degree amounts to failure. green and dismantling it. But the spectacle of Americans return- But it probably isn’t going to be enough—and by “enough” i ing to the fields to pick cotton by hand is not one i hope to see. mean sufficient to create conditions under which a 21-year-old no company really wants to create 1,000 jobs. it is only when the man of average intelligence with a high-school education and a marginal worker creates more value in output than he consumes bit of training can achieve a standard of living decisively more in compensation that he is hired. attractive than welfare dependency or the immediate gratifica- But as the tradable-nontradable divergence shows, overall tions associated with underclass dysfunction. His troubles are productivity is not all that matters. in fact, the very efficiency troubles for us, too, and until conservatives have something more of globally integrated supply chains ensures that low-skilled persuasive to say to him than we do now, don’t expect him to lis- American workers will increasingly compete head-to-head ten. Without a credible way forward, his main attractions will be against low-skilled workers overseas, even when most of the the sedative of dependency or the stimulant of underclass moral value-added for a particular good is added in the United States. anarchy, and we cannot afford much more of either.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

POTUS hands SOH some tissues, numbers for the unused stimulus reminds SOH that they still haven’t funds for construction, then jots some counted the unspent census funds. figures, does some addition, scribbles SOH seems cheered up by this, and for a while, mutters to self, then looks TO: Archives demands those funds be counted. up and remarks that he’s shocked to FROM: West Wing Staff SOH then renews calls to cut funding see that they’ve already cut $25 bil- RE: Attached notes for Planned Parenthood, high-speed lion from the federal budget, and he rail, implementation of FCC Internet compliments the SOH on his relent- Please file these contemporaneous regulations dubbed “net neutrality,” less negotiating skills. notes of the latest budget negotia- and a collection of other programs tions. Marked CLOSE HOLD. and services. Seriously, he says, John, you took me to the woodshed. Props to you. It Thank you. POTUS replies that these cuts go wasn’t pretty, but I think we know too deep. Conversation gets heated. who the big winner is, here. You can POTUS claims SOH and his party are report to your tea-party supporters trying to renege on crucial bonds that I, POTUS, have been schooled. Meeting begins. between people, government. SOH replies that POTUS has outspent SOH seems upbeat, then his eyes Present: POTUS, Speaker of the every president in history and has narrow. He demands to look at PO - House, Mr. Plouffe, others. refused to cut even a small part of his TUS’s calculations. He reviews them budget. SOH reminds POTUS that for a moment. Then demands more. POTUS begins by reminding SOH the people are demanding austerity; We need to find another $13 billion that government shutdown would be POTUS responds that it’s not the peo- from this, he says. bad for everyone. Devastation, etc. ple, it’s his people—the Tea Party and Family vacations ruined by federal- their ilk—who are demanding dra- POTUS slaps his forehead. He forgot park closure, sad kids, etc., etc. conian cuts in a budget that contains to add in the unused census funds. SOH reminds POTUS that his fami- necessary and effective programs. SOH says he thought they counted ly never had vacations—too poor, SOH excuses himself to confer with it at the beginning. POTUS says he etc.—but that he understands on an his colleagues. meant to, but in all the heavy negoti- intellectual level that they’re impor- ating, he was too battered to remem- tant. SOH becomes emotional, asks They return to demand further cuts in ber. POTUS once again compliments for a moment to regain composure. public broadcasting, the Department SOH on his tireless focus and im - of Agriculture, and foreign aid. movability. SOH returns to room and demands further cuts to Planned Parenthood POTUS demands to know the full POTUS adds in unused census funds, and assorted other budgetary items. extent of SOH’s required cuts. Re - reaches $38 billion in savings. Asks POTUS refuses to give way on sev- minds SOH that in fact, they’ve SOH if this is enough. SOH looks at eral of them, but reminds SOH that already cut several billion from the the worksheet, then at POTUS, then there’s unspent census money that budget when the census funds are at the assembled crowd in the nego - technically counts as a cut and they added in. tiating room, and he thanks them all could simply call that the cut and for their hard work, and reminds have a drink and call it a day. SOH SOH replies that he thought they had them all that it’s the economic future demands further cuts in Pell Grants already counted the census savings. of the country that’s at stake, that this and AmeriCorps. POTUS looks confused and says that just isn’t about politics. As his lower no, they hadn’t. SOH asks where they lip begins to tremble, staffers begin POTUS counters that Pell Grants are are if the census funds are counted. moving away. sacred—provide college education SOH starts jotting figures on a pad for the poor and underprivileged. when his pen gives out. Asks to bor- SOH weeps uncontrollably. POTUS SOH recalls his own underprivileged row a pen; POTUS instead says he’ll asks if they have a deal. SOH snif- upbringing—no one ever offered do the math. POTUS adds up figures fles, reaches out a hand. They shake. him a grant, or an AmeriCorps job. for several moments, asking occa- Staff exit quickly to prepare press SOH becomes emotional. Sobs qui- sionally for clarification in re: unused release. POTUS and SOH alone in etly for a moment. census-fund numbers, then asks for room.

4 2 | www.nationalreview.com MAY 2 , 2 0 1 1 florence--READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/12/2011 8:33 PM Page 43

The Bent Pin BY FLORENCE KING The Late Liz, Upstaged

HE Married the Men She Slept With, She Slept Butterfield 8 was a big disappointment because, as a with the Men She Married, and All of Her true-crime buff, I knew too much about its inspiration: the Children Had Surnames . . . never-solved Starr Faithfull case of 1931. Renamed “Gloria S As epitaphs for Elizabeth Taylor go, this cap- Wandrous” in the John O’Hara novel and the movie, Starr tures the instinctive couth she always held onto and dis- was a carnal prodigy whose promiscuity was set in motion played in every earth-moving scandal. She might have been by Andrew J. Peters, mayor of Boston during the 1919 around the track but she never posed for a mug shot, never police strike, who began molesting her when she was 11, lived with anybody, never got beaten up by a one-night stand, paid hush money to her status-driven parents who flaunted and never became a “single mom.” Compared with today’s it as family wealth, and rejected her when she was 17 morally bedraggled movie stars she was practically a saint. because she was by then “too old” for him. Her favorite What she was not, for me, was “special.” Like everyone, I hobby was crashing bon voyage parties on the trans-Atlantic was struck by her beauty, but I never had a crush on her as I liners in hope of pulling off a stowaway with the help of did on Jean Simmons, nor did she inspire the filial longing some willing male passenger. She was last seen alive being that came over me when I watched Alice Faye. I enjoyed dragged down the gangplank and put ashore. Her body was most of her movies but, unlike her many eulogists who found on a Long Island beach during a slow summer news claimed they couldn’t even look at anyone else while she was week, and when bored reporters learned that the Faithfulls on-screen, I could. Three movies in particular come to mind: were neighbors of New York mayor and ladies’ man Jimmy In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I couldn’t take my eyes off Judith Walker, they pounced. Anderson as Big Mama. An Australian-born Shakespearean I hated to see all this reduced to a high-priced call girl who actress equally at home in the classical repertoire of Euri - steals a mink coat and dies in a car wreck. To see the movie pides, Anderson also terrified the entire English-speaking that might have been, read Sandra Scoppettone’s novel Some world with her portrayal of Mrs. Danvers, the malignant Unknown Person. Its confrontational scene between the housekeeper in Rebecca, yet her Big Mama perfectly cap- pedophilic Mayor Peters and Massachusetts governor Calvin tured the perpetual hysteria of the Southern woman who Coolidge at the height of the police strike makes a persuasive believes everything will be all right as long as she keeps on argument that Starr Faithfull put Coolidge in the White talking—captured it, moreover, in a flawless Southern House. accent, something Taylor never quite managed. Many of Taylor’s friends spoke fondly of her bawdy In Beau Brummell, with Stewart Granger in the title role, streak. The equally beautiful Vivien Leigh was said to be she played a generic Regency beauty to give the story a foul-mouthed in private but it never came through on the female lead because Brummell didn’t have a lady love (and screen; in Waterloo Bridge, her portrayal of a streetwalker may not have wanted one). He paints his bedroom violet to suggests a perfect lady playing charades; she was incapable match her eyes, but my eyes were on Peter Ustinov as the of sauntering. Taylor, on the other hand, could walk the walk Prince Regent, later George IV, especially in the scene in and talk the talk that went with it. She could have starred in which he is nearly choked to death by his insane father, a remake of 1947’s Forever Amber, whose fictional title George III, played by Robert Morley. Ustinov was a dead character was based largely on Nell Gwyn, mistress of ringer for the monstrously self-indulgent “Prinny,” who did Charles II. One day as she left the palace, Nell’s carriage was have a historically factual lady love: Maria Fitzherbert, attacked by a furious anti-Catholic mob who thought she was reduced in importance here but played by the superb actress the king’s other mistress, Barbara Castlemaine. Unperturbed, Rosemary Harris. With Ustinov, Morley, and Harris to watch Nell stuck her head out the window and shouted, “Calm it was hard to remember that Liz Taylor was even in the yourselves, I’m the Protestant whore!” That’s a Liz Taylor movie. line if ever there was one. A Place in the Sun seems to have been Chris Matthews’s But did she have a sense of humor? One of the overviews favorite Taylor movie. He almost choked up over her effect of her life contained the story of the day she met Richard on “young men’s dreams,” but to me, the high point was Burton, whose first words to her were “Has anybody ever Shelley Winters in the rowboat urging Montgomery Clift to told you that you’re a very pretty girl?” look on the bright side of marital entrapment. “It’ll be all Taylor’s interpretation: “Here’s the great lover, the great right,” she assures him, and starts piling on the platitudes: wit, the great intellectual of Wales, and he comes out with a “Money doesn’t buy happiness . . . count your blessings . . . line like that!” She didn’t get it. The dual citizenship that it’s the little things in life that matter . . . we’ll have each should have given her a British sense of dry, poker-faced other . . .” By the time she finally stops we don’t blame understatement had let her down. Burton must have felt Montgomery Clift a bit. In fact, wrote one critic: “I wanted like Eleanor Gehrig when she advised Lou on how to handle to drown her myself.” So did I. his quest for 2,000 consecutive games. “Stopping at 1,999 would be more interesting,” she said, but her dimpled Iron Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, Fredericksburg, VA 22404. Man had no idea what she meant.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Dreams of My Carwash

N a recent issue of Vogue, actress Reese Witherspoon In the Nineties this would have been a romantic comedy says she sits in her car and cries sometimes, because she called “Bench Memo,” written by Nora Ephron. A man-of- misses her privacy. In a recent interview with Hearst the-people prez, tired of D.C.’s cesspool of ambition and per- I Newspapers, politician Barack Obama says he misses fidy, longs to dissolve in the zesty gumbo of honest common grocery shopping, taking walks, and other humble diversions folk. He contrives a way to slip the surly bonds of office and private citizens take for granted. But he doesn’t tell everyone sit on a bench incognito, where he meets a spunky but diffi- to deplane Air Force One ahead of him, he’ll be right along, cult young woman (Helen Hunt) who teaches him about the so he can have a good cathartic sob into his hanky—so he’s need for federally subsidized day care. Oh, it seems mean to not exactly like the star of Legally Blonde. Still, you have to hoot at such a simple, understandable desire of a man who feel for the guy. Stardom is lonely: finds himself dogged by dull duty, but it’s hard to imagine him ever sitting on a park bench doing nothing, except figur- The president said he loves his life in the White House but ing out how to run for office as the Mayor of That Other, doesn’t enjoy some of the ways of Wash - Larger Park Bench Over There. ington, such as the “kabuki dance” among Once upon a time presidents could walk political partisans before serious policy dis- cussions begin. around without fear that some anarchist would perforate their innards. Citizens It’s difficult to imagine perma-tanned knew their leaders only from somber illus- Boehner in Japanese whiteface, but we’ll trations in which the president has a sour take his word for it. expression, as if smelling burnt kraut. Even - tually the president’s world constricted, and He also regrets his loss of personal privacy. even post–White House life was conducted “I just miss—I miss being anonymous,” in the bubble. Some presidents went home; he said at the meeting in the White House. “I Nixon spent two decades in an underwater miss Saturday morning, rolling out of bed, lair off the California coast; Bill Clinton not shaving, getting into my car with my girls, driving to the supermarket, squeezing the fruit, getting ascended to the clouds and occasionally reappears to make my car washed, taking walks. I can’t take a walk.” speeches. Reagan and George W. Bush, though, had it figured out: They had a ranch. You can sympathize. When you become Leader of the Free If you have a ranch, you can forgo shaving for weeks, World you give up normal life forever; your existence amble out to the garden to squeeze whatever looks ripe, wash becomes a cruise ship that never docks. On the other hand: the pickup with a hose and a bucket, take long walks, abjure 1. He did, if memory serves, volunteer for the job. Pre - kabuki similes. But Obama isn’t a ranch guy. He’s at home in sumably with full knowledge. To many observers, he seemed the glorious scrum of urban life, where everyone recognizes keenly interested in the position, too. (At the time.) you and likes you and wants to shake your hand and encour- 2. According to the White House website, the number of age you to keep fighting, or at least keep voting “present” with items on the president’s agenda for Saturday and Sunday a resolute look on your face. Those days are gone. was, at press time, zero. It’s possible he could roll out of bed Solution: He needs a fake city. A Chicago-style Potemkin and not shave. The kitchen could deliver a fine selection of ward. A place with narrow streets and brick buildings and fruit to be palpated. Driving to the supermarket is possible, coffee shops, a park with a special bench. A theme-park- but it would require a motorcade, a six-block frozen zone, style village populated by actors and government employ- careful pre-event vetting of the produce staff to ensure “Joe ees who don’t take pictures, don’t ask for autographs, give the Organic Mango Restocker” can’t ask him about food him a hearty wave as he power-walks, don’t point and inflation, so forget about that. If there’s one plaintive note laugh when he bikes around wearing mom-jeans and that that shows you how the job wears on a fellow, it’s nostalgia helmet. A place where a guy can thump a cantaloupe with- for sitting in line on Saturday afternoon waiting for a car out having to make a damned speech about it. Some say it’s wash. Back to the interview. To keep his spirits high, he not ripe, but I reject the false choice between unripe melons golfs. But and bananas at their peak of freshness. But hey, these kiwis look good. he says he enjoys golf but is not the fanatic that some have por- In the Oval Office Reagan probably daydreamed about trayed. “It’s the only excuse I have to get outside for four hours striding to the woodpile with an axe to reduce trees into small- NEWSCOM / at a stretch,” he said. er, useful portions. Sweat and labor and grit and frontier His impossible dream: “I just want to go through Central GETTY / traditions. Barack Obama, one suspects, just dreams of being Park (in New York) and watch folks passing by . . . spend the AFP / day watching people. I miss that.” in a restaurant, finishing his waffle. Another cup of coffee would be great, too. Fair-trade and shade-grown, and no Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. cream or sugar. Wife’s orders. EMMANUEL DUNAND

4 4 | www.nationalreview.com MAY 2 , 2 0 1 1 books5-2_QXP-1127940387.qxp 4/12/2011 2:36 PM Page 45 Books, Arts & Manners

used poison gas against the Iraqis in the he liked to hand out autographed copies to 1920s, when every scholar of the period his guests. . . . He dispensed cigars from A Just knows it was actually tear gas that he was luxury humidors on which his castle was proposing to use. If Churchill were alive depicted. Trumpet blasts greeted his birth- War today he would garner millions of dollars day mornings. In addition to dozens of in libel settlements alone, from writers uniforms, adorned with all his insignia ANDREW ROBERTS and medals, Frank had 120 suits. a red who are too lazy or politically biased to carpet was to be unrolled wherever he go to the serious and substantial works of trod. history on the subject. one of these serious and substantial as for Frau Brigitte Frank: “Through - works is Michael Burleigh’s magisterial out her sojourn in Poland, she would roll Moral Combat, which examines in detail up at furriers in the Jewish ghettos, where, the ethics of the entire conflict—from leaving her youngest son to stick his Hitler’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, tongue out at starving Jewish children 1939, to Japan’s surrender six years later. from behind the car window, she would With wit, incisive analysis, and the cer- strike very hard bargains with the propri- tainty of a moral philosopher who has etors.” This is history writing at its best. spent half a lifetime examining this sub- as well as covering the obvious issues ject, Burleigh utterly skewers the moral regarding occupation, resistance, area equivalists, and effectively closes down bomb ing, the Holocaust, and so on, Bur- Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II, the argument. He proves beyond any but leigh examines those aspects of the war by Michael Burleigh (Harper, the weirdest conspiracy theorist’s doubt that are often skipped over, such as Soviet 672 pp., $29.99) that the Western allies fought the war anti-Semitism even as the death camps according to a far higher moral code than were being liberated, or the 15 million orld War II has always the axis, and there is simply no need Chinese who died—that’s over half as been presented as “a good to indulge in the tortured mea culpa that many as the russians lost, but they have war” from the point of self-hating americans and Britons have received only a fraction of the historical W view of the allies, who so long and so noisily been prescribing for coverage—and the conventional bombing strove to destroy the undeniably great evil us. of Japanese cities, which killed far more of Fascism, but was it? a number of re- Far from being a dry theological tome, than the atomic bombs. He deploys statis- visionist historians have attempted in this book is full of surprising aperçus, tics superbly to illuminate the controver- recent years to portray the allied destruc- exquisite pen portraits, and even jokes, sies. (For example, only 7,000 people tion of dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki which might not be expected considering joined the Free French in 1940, in defiance as being morally equivalent to the Nazi the subject matter. Burleigh has the envi- of Vichy’s poster of Marshal Pétain that and Japanese atrocities, with the intent able ability to get to the core of an issue or asked: “are you more of a Frenchman of arraigning Western leaders such as personality, and to furnish us with pre - than him?”) Franklin roosevelt and Winston Churchill cisely those little details that illuminate it Burleigh takes strong stances on almost as war criminals. Scarcely a month goes perfectly. “despite all the high-minded every controversy of the war, writing of by without another attempt of this nature, babble about German Kultur,” he writes, “the central role of Emperor Hirohito” and and they rarely fail to find sympathetic for example, “the realities of occupation “the false SS-army dichotomy.” one sub- reviewers in the liberal press. were grimly sordid: drunkenness, inter- chapter about the U.S. army air Forces’ Very recently, a highly tendentious and service brawling, brutality, rape, graft, bombing of Japan is titled “Had to Be factually flawed book about the Bengal extortion and theft being the everyday done.” only once does he write, “This Famine of 1943—Churchill’s Secret War: norm, along with some starving girl hitch- author neither approves nor disapproves The British Empire and the Ravaging of ing her skirts in a dark alley in return for of this development,” and that is apropos India During World War II, by Madhusree a half-loaf of bread.” of the way in which, in post-war conflicts, Mukerjee, which seeks to blame Churchill To illustrate the monstrous narcissism human-rights lawyers and the media have personally for the deliberate starvation of of Hans Frank, the Nazi governor-general effectively become an independent non- 3 million Indians—received a positive of Poland, Burleigh focuses on the manner combatant arm. Yet even there it isn’t hard review in the New York Review of Books; in which he “cast himself in the leading to discern disapproval. and a New York Times review of another role in his own historical pageant”: The chapter covering the work of the recent book about Churchill argued that he SS Einsatzgruppen (death squads) in Mimicking royalty, whenever Frank was Poland and russia emphasizes how the Mr. Roberts’s The Storm of War: A New in residence in his castle the swastika bil- Nazis did not attempt to abolish the con- History of World War Two will be published by lowed overhead. . . . His photograph hung cept of morality altogether so much as HarperCollins in May. in every room opposite where he sat, and try to erect a competing sense of aryan

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THE NATIONAL REVIEW Sailing November 12–19 on Holland America’s luxurious M S Eurodam 2011 Post-Election Cruise Join James Q. Wilson, Bernard Lewis, Victor Davis Hanson, S. E. Cupp, Tony Blankley, John Yoo, Andrew Klavan, Cal Thomas, James Lileks, Mona Charen, Ralph Reed, John Sununu, Rich Lowry, Andrew McCarthy, Elliott Abrams, Jonah Goldberg, Dinesh D’Souza, Jim Geraghty, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jay Nordlinger, Michael Walsh, Deroy Murdock, Charles Kesler, Sally Pipes, Kathryn Lopez, Bob Costa, John O’Sullivan, Rob Long, Kevin Hassett, Kevin Williamson, John Derbyshire, John Miller, Tracie Sharp, & Charmaine Yoest

as we visit Grand Turk, San Juan, St. Thomas, Half Moon Cay, and Ft. Lauderdale his is your special opportunity to participate in one of Murdock, Fox News commentator S. E. Cupp, terrorism and the most exciting seafaring adventures you will ever legal experts Andrew McCarthy and John Yoo, political guru T experience: the National Review 2011 Caribbean Ralph Reed, social critic and humorist James Lileks, domestic- Cruise. Featuring a cast of all-star conservative speakers (that policy expert Sally Pipes, best-selling conservative authors will expand in coming weeks), this affordable trip—prices start Andrew Klavan and Michael Walsh, ace economist Kevin at only $1,899 a person—will take place November 12–19, Hassett, State Policy Network executive Tracie Sharp, 2011, aboard Holland America Line’s MS Eurodam, the Americans United for Life president Charmaine Yoest, and, acclaimed ship of one of the world’s most respected cruise lines. from NR, editor Rich Lowry, Liberal Fascism author Jonah From politics and policy to economics and foreign affairs, Goldberg, NRO editor-at-large Kathryn Lopez, senior editors there’so much to discuss. That’s precisely what our array of con- Jay Nordlinger and Ramesh Ponnuru, NRO “Campaign Spot” servative speakers, writers, and experts will do on the Eurodam, blogger Jim Geraghty, “Exchequer” blogger Kevin D. your floating luxury getaway for scintillating discussion of major Williamson, contributor John Derbyshire, National current events and trends, and the upcoming 2012 elections. Correspondent John J. Miller, former NR editor John You could spend the week of November 12th raking leaves O’Sullivan, and political reporter Bob Costa. and cleaning gutters. Instead, opt for seven sunny days and cool The “typical” NR cruise alumnus (there are thousands) has nights sailing the balmy tropics, mixing and mingling with the gone on four of our voyages, and knows NR trips are marked by crew of exemplary speakers we’ve assembled to make sense of riveting political shoptalk, wonderful socializing, intimate din- politics and the day’s top issues. We’re happy to announce two ing with our editors and speakers, making new friends, rekin- new speakers for NR’s 2011 Caribbean Cruise: former New dling old friendships, and grand cruising. That and so much Hampshire Governor and Bush 41 Chief of Staff John Sununu, more are in store for you on the National Review 2011 and NR columnist Rob Long. They’ll be joining our tremendous Caribbean Cruise. line-up of conformed speakers: Islam scholar Bernard Lewis, There are many reasons to come, but none better than the historian Victor Davis Hanson, esteemed academics James Q. luminaries who will be aboard. This extraordinary gathering is Wilson, Dinesh D’Souza (now president of King’s College), and one of the best ensembles we’ve ever had on an NR cruise. We Charles Kesler, foreign-policy expert Elliott Abrams, columnists guarantee fascinating and informative seminar sessions. Tony Blankley, Cal Thomas, Mona Charen, and Deroy aSome of our primo past cruise experiences have been the informed interchanges between JOIN U S FOR SEVEN BALMY DAYS AND COOL C ON SERVAT IVE N IGHT S Bernard Lewis and Victor Davis DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT Hanson on the brutal revival of the SAT/Nov. 12 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 5:00PM evening cocktail reception age-old struggle between Islam and the West. These academic giants, SUN/Nov. 13 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars and terrorism experts Andy MON/Nov. 14 Grand Turk 7:00AM 3:00PM afternoon seminar McCarthy and John Yoo, will pro- “Night Owl” session vide their razor-sharp insights on TUE/Nov. 15 San Juan 1:00PM 11:00PM morning seminar America’s dealings in the Middle late-night smoker East and the Muslim world. WED/Nov. 16 St. Thomas 8:00AM 5:00PM morning seminar aWatch Tony Blankley, Ralph evening cocktail reception Reed, S. E. Cupp, Cal Thomas, “Night Owl” session Mona Charen, Deroy Murdock, THU/Nov. 17 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars John Sununu, and Charmaine FRI/Nov. 18 Half Moon Cay 8:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminar Yoest provide expert analyses of the evening cocktail reception the conservative movement, the SAT/Nov. 19 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 7:00AM Debark GOP, and the day’s top issues. aEnjoy insightful social com- caribbean 2-page spread march 2011_carribian 2p+application.qxd 4/13/2011 12:10 PM Page 3

Sailing November 12–19 on Holland America’s luxurious M S Eurodam

PRICES START AT JUST $1899! WE’RE HOLDING OUR 2010 RATES!

Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and great entertainment await you on the beautiful mS Eurodam. Prices are per-person, based on double occupancy, and include port fees, taxes, gratuities, transfers (for those booking airfare through Holland America), all meals, enter- tainment, and admittance to and participation in all NR func- tions. Per-person rates for third/fourth person (in same cabin with two full-fare guests): mentary on American culture from Andrew Klavan, James Ages 6 months to 17: $658 Ages 18 and over: $1,108 Lileks, Rob Long, and Michael Walsh, and an honest look at DELUXE SUITE Magnificent luxury quarters (528 the academy than from James Q. Wilson, Dinesh D’Souza, and sq. ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge Charles Kesler. and personal concierge, complimentary laun- aPicture Elliott Abrams and John O’Sullivan discussing dry, pressing and dry-cleaning service. Large private verandah, king-size bed foreign relations, and Kevin Hassett and NRO “Exchequer” (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool Kevin D. Williamson tackling the economy. That’s in store for bath/shower, dressing room, large sit- you. So is Sally Pipes explaining the latest domestic policy ting area, DVD, mini-bar, and refrigerator. machinations of the Obama administration. And expect Tracie Category SA Sharp to give an informed rundown of what ideas are percolat- DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,499 P/P ing at conservative state think tanks. SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 6,999 aThey’ll be joined in all the elucidating and analyzing by SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (392 sq. NR’s editorial heavyweights, including Rich Lowry, Jonah ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed Goldberg, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Kathryn Jean (convertible to 2 twin beds), whirlpool bath/shower, large sitting area, DVD, mini- Lopez, Jim Geraghty, John J. Miller, John Derbyshire, and Bob bar, refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling windows, Costa. and much more. As for the ship: The Eurodam offers spacious staterooms and countless amenities. And it’s affordable—prices start as low as Category SS DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,499 P/P $1,899 a person. No matter what cabin meets your individual SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,799 tastes and circumstances, you can be assured the Eurodam and its stellar staff will offer you unsurpassed service, sumptuous DELUXE OUTSIDE Spacious cabin (241 sq. ft.) cuisine, roomy accommodations, and luxury. features private verandah, queen-size bed (convert- And don’t forget the fantastic itinerary: St. Thomas, Grand ible to 2 twin beds), bath with shower, sitting Turk, San Juan, and Holland America’s private island, Half area, mini-bar, tv, refrigerator, and floor-to- ceiling windows. Moon Cay (with a must-see-it-to-believe-it blue lagoon!). Our 2011 Caribbean Cruise will be remarkable—but then Categories VA / VB / VC every NR sojourn is. With a winning program of seminars (we’ll DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 P/P SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,399 have eight), cocktail parties (three are scheduled—they’re great opportunities to chat and have photos taken with your favorite conservatives), late-night poolside smokers (featuring LARGE OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters (190 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin world-class H. Upmann cigars and cognac), and dining with beds), bathtub with shower, sitting area, tv, large our editors and speakers (on two nights)—it’s all something ocean-view windows. you really must experience. Category D Take the trip of a lifetime with some of America’s preemi- DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,399 P/P nent intellectuals, policy analysts, and political experts. Sign up SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,899 now. Use the handy application form on the following page, visit our dedicated website, www.nrcruise.com, or call The Cruise Authority (M-F, 9AM to 5PM EST) LARGE INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters (185 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin beds), at 1-800-707-1634. See you on the Eurodam bathtub with shower, sitting area, tv. this November!

Category J DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 1,899 P/P SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,399 REGISTER NOW AT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM. CALL 800-707-1634 FOR MORE INFORMATION. SEE FOLLOWING PAGE FOR APPLICATION FORM. 2011 caribbean application for magazine_carribian 2p+application_jack.qxd 3/30/2011 12:42 PM Page 1

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morality above the Judeo-Christian one. Arthur “Bomber” Harris and his American cations center that by February 1945 lay At SS training schools, the common counterpart Curtis LeMay, whom he pre- close to the front line. They did what they denominator for selection was involve- sents as far more complicated figures than had to do. ment in neo-fascist activities even in their caricatures. Similarly, the atomic bombings of peacetime, for as Burleigh puts it: “These As for Dresden, the high death toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ably de - were the missionary elite of National over 25,000—though nothing like the six- fended by Burleigh on ethical grounds, Socialism, with a dualistic view of the figure one claimed by Joseph Goebbels although he does quote LeMay as saying: world and no vestiges of the Christian and David Irving—came not as a result of “We just weren’t bothered about the upbringing or humanistic education many deliberate Allied policy so much as a num- morality of the question. If we could short- of them had passed through before acquir- ber of accidental factors. Dresden was one en the war, we wanted to shorten it.” ing a more compelling and narrower set heavy raid among a whole, deadly se - Burleigh does bother himself about the of values.” Toughness and loyalty were quence of massive raids, but for various morality, however, and comes to the fol- prized above all other human virtues, with unpredictable reasons—wind, weather, lowing conclusion: “The U.S. could have the result that “their signature approach to lack of defenses, and, above all, shocking simply continued the conventional bomb- pacification was to hang people from deficiencies in air-raid protection for the ing of Japan, which had already caused lamp-posts.” general population—it suffered the worst. 30 times the devastation of the bombs Since the Combined Bomber Offensive, When the Nazi gauleiter of Dresden, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, undertaken by the RAF’s Bomber Com - Martin Mutschmann, fell into Allied though without the long-term radiological mand Wing and the USAAF against hands, he quickly confessed that “a shelter- harm to the population. How many that German-occupied Europe, is often pre- building program for the entire city was would have killed can be surmised, sented as the most morally questionable not carried out,” since “I kept hoping that although the survivors would not have aspect of the Allied war effort, Burleigh nothing would happen to Dresden.” (He been dying from obscure cancers decades covers this issue in penetrating detail. He had a shelter built for himself, his family, after the event.” concludes, of the philosophical argument and his senior officials, however.) We learn that when the Enola Gay B- that the offensive was morally comparable Quite why Mutschmann thought that, 29 bomber—whose somewhat incon - to the Holocaust, that “no serious person alone of large German cities, Dresden gru ous call sign was “Dimples Eight The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ably defended by Michael Burleigh on ethical grounds.

can compare the hard-fought bombing should have been immune to Allied bomb- Two”—dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, campaign with slaughtering innocent ing is a mystery, because it was a nodal there were 43,000 Japanese soldiers sta- civilians in circumstances where the only point in the region. Large railway mar- tioned below as well as the 280,000 civil- risk the perpetrators ran was to be splashed shalling yards were situated there, as well ians, and that the weather was a balmy 27 with blood and brains in some ditch in the as a conglomeration of war industries, par- Celsius, just before “the city was blasted Ukraine.” ticularly in the vital optics, electronics, and with a light momentarily brighter than The motto of the 44th (Rhodesia) communications fields. And the bombing several suns.” One man who survived squadron of the RAF’s 5th Bomber worked politically: The respected German Hiroshima went home to Nagasaki, and Group—the first squadron to fly the Avro historian Götz Bergander believes that then astonishingly survived that too. Lancaster—was “The King’s thunderbolts whereas before Dresden the concept of This book is full of poignant nuggets of are righteous,” and that is Burleigh’s con- accepting unconditional surrender was information—on the day Mussolini left clusion too. At one point he describes the considered unthinkable by ordinary Ger- his villa for the last time, for example, his 55,000 volunteers who died in Bomber mans, “the shock of Dresden contributed 18-year-old pianist son Romano played Command operations as “heroes,” a re - in a fundamental way to a change of Duke Ellington’s “Saddest Tale” in an freshing value judgment to find in a seri- heart.” The attack on Dresden was propor- upstairs room—but easily its greatest ous work of history. Burleigh emphasizes tionately less deadly than those on places strength lies in the wise, civilized, but that if the Nazis had evacuated non- such as Pforzheim and Würzburg, but unshakeable moral certainty of its author. essential people from their cities, the death Dresden’s architectural beauty was unde- When next you hear someone argue that toll would have been much reduced, that it niable. Nor has anyone ever denied the Dresden or Hiroshima was on the same is easy to underestimate how much fight horror of what happened there on the night moral plane as the Holocaust or the the Germans still had left in them even of Feb. 13, 1945; the thousand-degree heat Bataan Death March, this is the book to though their cause was objectively lost, from the firestorm could be felt by the show him. It should reshape the entire and that “the Allied aim was to destroy RAF aircrew at more than 10,000 feet terms of the debate back in the Western military and industrial targets, their work- above the city. But brave men such as Allies’ favor. Moral equivalism, which forces included, to defeat an evil system Mike Tripp and Bruce Wyllie of Bomber is encroaching into the study of history that enjoyed overwhelming popular sup- Command and Alden “Al” Rigby of the despite having nothing whatever to con- port.” Nor does he have much truck with USAAF attacked a functioning enemy tribute to it, clearly has a doughty foe in the traducing of personalities such as Sir administrative, industrial, and communi- Michael Burleigh.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS exhibition website) “a model of a ninth give his name to a useful word; but century flying machine.” how many could describe the algebraic Eastern On opening this book, my suspicion achievements of Descartes, or the astro- was quickly confirmed. The first thing I nomical discoveries of Herschel? What Light read, on the front inside leaf of the dust do our schoolchildren know about jacket, was the sentence: “The Arabic Lyell’s geology or Vesalius’s anatomy? JOHN DERBYSHIRE legacy of science and philosophy has In the matter of transmitting under- long been hidden from the West.” What standing to the rising generation, get- nonsense! My own very ordinary mid- ting them acquainted with the seers of 20th-century English education gave medieval Islam seems to me a long way full credit to Arabic scholarship. We down the priority list. were told that the words “alkali,” “alco- By the time I settled down to read this hol,” and “algebra” were of Arabic ori- book I was therefore contemplating it gin. Popular children’s science books by from the bottom of a deep pit of skepti- authors like Lancelot Hogben dwelt at cism. It is to Jim al-Khalili’s credit that length on non-Western contributions. by the time I put the book down at last he When the word “algorithm” came into had hauled me some of the way out of common usage around 1970, everyone that pit. Yes, this is a work of “identity” was told that it was drawn from the special pleading; and yes, where there is Latin name of the Muslim mathema - reasonable doubt about historical facts, The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science tician al-Khwarizmi. (Not, as school- our author takes the Muslim-triumphalist Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the children of today are probably taught, position. It’s not the worst thing of its Renaissance, by Jim al-Khalili (Penguin, that it is a tribute to .) If we kind I have seen, though. Al-Khalili is 336 pp., $29.95) later picked up a work of popular phil - partial wherever there is scope for par- o sophy—in my generation, usually tiality, and trespasses into groundless usED to attend regularly at an Ber trand Russell’s History—we soon speculation once or twice, but he is at office of the gov- en countered Averroes and Avicenna. least intolerant of the gross exaggera- ernment to transact some business “Hidden,” indeed! tions too often found in ethnic booster- I with a very pleasant young female some Internet browsing then turned up ism. African-American city employee. On the the fact that Jim al-Khalili, the author of The website for that “1001 Inventions” wall of her office was a poster listing, in The House of Wisdom, has been one of exhibition, for example, introduces us to quite small print, all the scores of inven- the boosters of that “1001 Inventions” “Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham), the Arab tions and discoveries that, according to exhibition (which, by the way, is merely polymath who invented the camera the poster, African or African-descended one aspect of a much larger phenome non obscura during the 10th century.” In The peoples had made: the alphabet, the mag- that, to date, includes a 2006 coffee-table House of Wisdom our author, in spite of netic compass, airplanes, X-rays . . . It book, a 2009 BBC-TV documentary having lent his name to that same exhibi- used to make me think of the joke current series presented by al-Khalili, of which tion, shows more respect for the truth: among intellectuals in the late-stalinist this book is a by-product, a 2010 movie, ussR, when the authorities were push- and probably other ventures that have What I find disappointing—as is often ing the idea that Russians had invented escaped my attention). the case with this subject—are the inac- or discovered absolutely everything: In any case the notion being ad - curacies and errors one reads about Ibn “Russia—home of the elephant!” dressed here, the notion that we—and al-Haytham’s life and achievements. For instance, it is widely stated that he in - With this in mind I approached particularly our youngsters—don’t vented the pinhole camera to explain the The House of Wisdom with suspicion. know half as much as we should about workings of the eye, and that he beat the Insecure peoples will often make exag- medieval Islamic science and technolo- Europeans to the law of refraction by six gerated claims about the achievements gy, is open to doubt. I am sure that very hundred years. Both of these claims are of their ancestors. Given the manifold few high-schoolers could tell you any- wrong . . . pathologies of the Islamic world today, thing that al-Khwarizmi did, other than thoughtful persons in, or from, that world It helps that al-Khalili is himself a can be forgiven for nursing some civi- working scientist—a professor of theo- lizational insecurity. They salve their hurt retical physics at an English university. with dreams of ancestral prowess; and His mixed background—Iraqi father, they are encouraged to do so by the British mother, educated through high clumsy noblesse oblige condescension of school in Iraq—gives him the cultural multiculturalist Western elites. The New equivalent of stereoscopic vision. It prob- York Hall of science recently ran an ably helps even more that he is irreli- exhibition for schoolchildren titled “1001 gious: “As an atheist my interest in Islam Inventions—Discover the Golden Age of is cultural rather than spiritual.” Muslim Civilization,” chockablock with “When I accepted full responsibility, Furthermore, his motives in writing such spurious items as (to quote from the that was just a manner of speaking!” are worthy and humane: to turn young

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Muslims in the West away from religious of Diophantus (of whom I am one) fanaticism by showing them their ances- point to the breadth and difficulty of tral heritage of reasoned debate and the problems he tackled and his use of The People’s empirical inquiry. I suppose this might a rudimentary literal symbolism. Al- work; though one is bound to wonder Khwarizmists note the absence of gener- Military why, if Muslim youngsters cannot be al methods—algorithms!—in Diophan tus, assimilated to Western civilization with- and scoff at his symbolism as mere syn- THOMAS M. DONNELLY out distorting our school syllabi in their copation. favor, we allow Muslims to settle in our Al-Khalili gives fair coverage of the nations in such numbers. They have, after issue, though naturally from an al- all, 57 nations of their own (i.e., in the Khwarizmist point of view. Diophantus’s Organization of the Islamic Conference) notation is, he says, “very far from full where presumably they would be more at symbolic algebra.” That is true, but we ease. What advantage has any Western proceed by baby steps. As far as Dio- nation gained from mass Muslim settle- phantus may have been from a modern ment? system of notation, al-Khwarizmi was And while The House of Wisdom is not yet farther, expressing everything in the more obnoxious kind of ethnic boost- words. Diophantus’s symbolism con- erism, it still has a bill of goods to sell. In tained the germ of a wonderful idea, the U.S. Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: stretching the known facts to accommo- idea of using a, b, x, and y for the quanti- Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain, date his own partiality, al-Khalili occa- ties given (data) and quantities sought by Mackubin Thomas Owens sionally stretches them to breaking point. (quaesita). Taken up 14 centuries later by (Continuum, 224 pp., $22.95) The circulation of the blood, for example, European mathematicians, notably Viète was first correctly described by the and Descartes, that idea transformed ARADOxICALLy, the post–Cold English physician William Harvey in a mathematics and civilization. And while War “unipolar moment” of book he published in 1628, after decades al-Khwarizmi may have the advantage in Amer ican power has also been of tireless experimentation. Ah, says having spelled out general methods, gen- P a period of constant crisis in American civil-military relations. Even Operation Desert Storm, now romanti- In stretching the known facts to cized as a golden moment of the prudent use of armed force, had moments of ex - accommodate his own partiality, treme tension and uncertainty. We won’t al-Khalili occasionally stretches them know the details of the Obama adminis- tration’s debates over Libya for some to the breaking point. time, depending on how soon we get the next Bob Woodward fly-on-the-wall al-Khalili, but “the groundwork for eralizations of Diophantus’s actual prob- book, but it’s a safe bet that the story will [Harvey’s] discovery was laid by the lems would readily and naturally occur to be similar. Syrian physician . . . Ibn al-Nafis anyone reading his book. One famously Adding further to the paradox is the (1213–88). . . . All this just goes to show, did so to Pierre de Fermat. amazingly successful experiment of the once again, the gradual and cumulative The scientific revolution that took All-Volunteer Force. The AVF was some- process of scientific progress.” place in Europe from the 17th century thing of a hasty, ad hoc creation of the Does it? Did Harvey know of Ibn onwards was a unique event. Necessary end-of-Vietnam era, but it has proved al-Nafis, then? Al-Khalili: “There is conditions for it included prosperous, itself remarkably resilient and adapt- evidence that [Ibn al-Nafis’s] work, consensual societies with mature notions able—in a word, professional—in ways translated into Latin, may have been of liberty and law; low levels of respect never previously imagined. Its ability to known to sixteenth-century European for religious authority; a high “smart reinvent itself as expert in the kind of physicians such as [list of names], all of fraction” of curious and intelligent citi- irregular, counterinsurgency warfare that whom would in turn influence Harvey.” zens; and a broad base of transmitted might have led to a different outcome in Oh come on: That doesn’t even rise to the knowledge. Vietnam gives the AVF tale a kind of level of circumstantial evidence. Some of that knowledge came from cyclic completeness. On the vexed question of to whom the the ancients via medieval Islam; some In sum, Americans find themselves in title “Father of Algebra” most properly smaller portion originated in Islam itself; possession of a beast many of the founders belongs, al-Khalili not surprisingly some had more exotic origins in India would find abhorrent: a standing army. declares himself a partisan of the afore- or China. No one has ever denied these It’s an “imperial” army, too: U.S. forces mentioned al-Khwarizmi, floruit early things, nor “hidden” them from students. defend immensely far-flung frontiers, ninth century. The other principal con- The conditions for the take-off were, eastward across Eurasia to the Hindu Kush tender for the title is Diophantus, who though, peculiarly Western. If we are to lived in Roman Alexandria in either the traffic in ethnic triumphalism, let’s teach Mr. Donnelly is director of the Center for Defense first, second, or third century. Champions our kids about that. Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS and westward across the Pacific to Japan mercials: They pictured not a “band of civilian world. The traditional American and Korea. And it’s a remarkably small brothers” but a hard-bodied athlete run- citizen-soldier ideal is of military service force: While its mission is global and even ning alone in a vast desert. In contrast to that is essentially, as Owens puts it, “tem- extraterrestrial, it draws on less than 1 per- the lifetime service of the horse soldiers porary and provisional.” By contrast, cent of the population, even if the over- who served with John Wayne in Fort today’s professional identity is all but worked “reserve” is included. Apache, promotion and upward mobility permanent—“Once a Marine, always a One definition of paradox is “some- are not only possibilities for today’s sol- Marine”—and frequently passed from thing that can’t go on forever”—and there- diers but actually requirements, as are generation to generation. fore Mackubin T. Owens’s study of U.S. decent pay and lifetime benefits. These To some degree, these traits are inherent civil-military relations, and his sug- may be the justly earned rewards of ser- in what Owens describes as the All- gestions for “renegotiating the bargain” vice and potential sacrifice, but they also Volunteer Force “bargain.” As a society, between American soldiers and American can make for a kind of “special interest” in we have agreed to tolerate a standing society, deserve the close attention of stu- tune with, but distinct from, the broader army, a large and professional military, to dents of military affairs and geopolitics. In national interest. It will be interesting to meet the needs of defending a world’s strategy and war, the means of power are see, for example, whether—in the effort to worth of strategic interests at a minimum inseparable from the ends of power, and restrain entitlement spending—military cost and with the least disruption to the the principal tools of American state- entitlements such as medical TRICARE civilian pursuit of happiness. But the craft—despite all the popular talk about for life are on the table along with troop cumulative effects of post-9/11 operations “soft power” and “smart power” and “ret- and weapons cuts. in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the coinci- icent power”—are suffering from neglect: Second, the notion that the military rep- dent rise in civil-military strife, suggest material neglect, as measured in aging resents a true demographic cross-section that this bargain needs to be renegotiated, weapons, insufficient manpower, and bud- of American society is fictitious, as the even rewritten from scratch. get restrictions, but especially the political repeal of the don’t-ask-don’t-tell law pre- From the 2006 “Revolt of the Generals” neglect of the elite classes. venting open homosexuals from serving calling for then–defense secretary Donald As Owens observes, the link between reveals. Harvard may, in turn, have Rumsfeld to resign to the agonizing citizenship and military service is increas- repealed its ban on Reserve Officers’ months of the Obama Afghanistan re - ingly tenuous. “With the end of the draft,” Training Corps units on campus, but Ivy- views of 2009 to the multiple general- he writes, “the United States military type universities aren’t soon likely to be firings by current Defense Secretary has assumed a character closer to that of a major commissioning source; it’s been Robert Gates, the strains of a decade of the long-term enlistee on the Western generations since American elites be - constabulary, counterinsurgency combat American frontier or serving in China or lieved they had an obligation to take up seem to be widening the longtime gap the Philippines during the early twentieth arms in service to their country. And the between civilians and the military. For its century than to the true citizen-soldier military will not be enthusiastic about part, the Obama White House has been who serves during an emergency and then investing precious recruiting dollars in the nearly paranoid about the political influ- returns to civilian life.” Northeast. It’s much easier and more cul- ence of generals, particularly the surge Three chief characteristics make our turally congenial to look for young officer star, Gen. David Petraeus; despite his current volunteers different from the candidates in the South and Southwest. many denials, the prospect of a Petraeus revered citizen-soldier ideal. First, mili- Third and finally, the 35-year history presidential bid has put the administration tary service is too often institutionally of the All-Volunteer Force has created on edge, as Woodward chronicles in regarded as a kind of self-actualization a deeply rooted identity among people Obama’s Wars. therapy. Think of the “Army of One” com- in uniform that divides them from the But the most dangerous fissure in civil- military relations is probably occurring at a lower level, among the mid-grade offi- cers who have been most heavily en - HE MAKES HIS MARK gaged in constant operations and thus for Nathaniel even more distanced from the currents of domestic politics. A recent article in the Back when only holy men could write, professional journal Joint Forces Quarter - The farmer or squire who signed himself ly by Marine colonel Andrew Milburn With the letter X, St. Andrew’s cross, suggests what may be going on under Would bow and put his lips to it, the general-officer surface. The article, Reverently, in proof of his good faith. “Breaking Ranks: Dissent and the Military Now: here’s a boy knows only goodness Professional,” advances an expanded un - And honesty. Nature has denied derstanding of professionalism that in - Him the gift of reason, yet he has made fringes on civilian supremacy and calls His mark in the world. Guide into question the need to obey lawful The pen as he scrawls, and bear witness. orders. His argument is detailed and com- His cross shall serve for a name and a kiss. prehensive, but its faulty premises are apparent in the conclusion. “Military lead- —DANIEL MARK EPSTEIN ers,” Milburn writes, “are committed

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to challenge their civilian masters if [their] domestic films that had a hope of wide policy appears to be unconstitutional, im- exposure; so, theoretically, the agreement moral, or otherwise detrimental to the Shadow of a handful of executives could shape the institution.” Officers are, of course, not nation’s whole cinematic output. Such bound to follow an immoral order; but Fights agreement did in fact come about for questions of constitutionality are not to enforcement of the Hays Code (setting be decided by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ANTHONY PALETTA moral rules for films) and the issuing of And “detrimental to the institution” is an the Waldorf Statement (the root of the exception that puts the good of the service famous blacklist of Hollywood Commu - above the good of the state, the Army nists). Yet, as the book makes clear, these before America. agreements were exceptions to the rule: Military leaders may well raise such Hoberman’s outline of the era’s vibrant questions in private deliberations over pol- cinema stands as a sure retort to the all- icy, but only in the context of what Owens, too-common sketches of that period as following Eliot Cohen’s book Supreme one of creativity crushed under McCar - Command, describes as the “unequal dia- thyite censorship. logue” between soldiers and statesmen, in Moviemakers did endure a certain which discussion may be open but the amount of lobbying, in a variety of forms. decisions are the responsibility and the job Government figures had pressed for bald- of the civilians. Yet Milburn contends that faced World War II pro-Soviet propagan- officers have a “moral obligation to dis- An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the da such as Mission to and Song pute” orders they deem unconstitutional or Making of the Cold War, by J. Hoberman of Russia, and, after the war, for overheat- detrimental to their institution, and “to dis- (New Press, 432 pp., $29.95) ed Red Scare pictures such as The Red sent in a manner that has the best chance of Menace and I Married a Communist (the averting those consequences.” That is, the O temptation seems more irre- titles alone supply essentially everything end justifies the means. sistible to film critics than the you need to know). Yet plenty of room for If this is what some officers now con- pithy summation of a decade maneuver existed even in cases near the sider the nature of the “bargain” of the N in movies. Ask a critic about a government thumb: Sam Fuller got his All-Volunteer Force, it is no wonder Mac cinematic year and you’ll get a top-ten gritty Korean War drama Steel Helmet Owens wants to renegotiate. However, it list. Ask about a decade, though, and into theaters without the approval of the may also be that the rot has gotten deeper you’ll likely get a broad political correla- Breen office (the movie industry’s moral- than Owens thinks. He rightly argues that tion: can-do Depression cinema, alienated ity watchdog at the time), and with the use healthy civil-military relations entail more Nixon cinema, or flashy Reagan cinema of Signal Corps stock footage, even as a than just civilian control, but takes for (Democratic presidents do not earn nega- Department of Defense memo character- granted that the principle of civilian con- tive correlations). Critics will make these ized the film as “subtle communist propa- trol—the premise that frames the “unequal zeitgeist assertions given the barest ex - ganda.” dialogue”—is “accepted without question cuse, asserting that the political spirit of While the production world of that time in the officer corps.” Milburn may indeed an age has, through intention and circum- may have been less complicated than be an extreme case, but there has been stance, ineffaceably insinuated itself into today’s, it certainly wasn’t simple: Many a trend in his direction in recent years; the its movies. individuals were capable of leaving an widely acclaimed writings of Army In recent years, as this tendency has ideological stamp on a film, and govern- colonel Paul Yingling, notably in a num- become increasingly ridiculous—a 2006 ment was far from the only party with an ber of Armed Forces Journal articles, echo article in Interview magazine conscripted ideological agenda. Hoberman offers few some of Milburn’s themes. the comedies Sideways and Broken judgments in his matter-of-fact account of In the end, any effort to bridge the civil- Flowers in support of its thesis that “road the blacklist and the House Un-American military gap depends not only on the will- movies are back in vogue, perhaps be - Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings; ingness of military leaders to obey cause alienation is as common in Bush’s his approach leaves some valuable con- commands they may not like (but that are America as it was in Nixon’s”—it has text unexamined, but is nonetheless a nonetheless lawful and moral), but on been easy to forget that there was a time welcome deviation from most treatments civilians’ educating themselves and con- when these characterizations made more of the blacklist, which paint the black - stantly involving themselves in the details sense. J. Hoberman’s new book, An Army listees in few shades other than those of of tactics and the conduct of military oper- of Phantoms, about the early Cold War complete innocence. (The most promi- ations. The dialogue ultimately may be era, describes a case in point—but even in nent recent film on a member of the unequal, but it needs to be a two-way, this case, there are serious limits to the Hollywood Ten blacklistees, 2007’s semi- informed dialogue, not a monologue, and broad characterizations. documentary Trumbo, neglected to men- the process itself is critical. The art of In the period Hoberman is discussing, tion that its hero, screenwriter Dalton civilian command of military force, em - only eight studios produced nearly all Trumbo, was in fact a member of the ploying the most terrible power of a state, Communist party.) is best grounded in an empathy that Mr. Paletta is an editor for the Center for the Hoberman, in a detail often skirted in demands constant effort. American University at the Manhattan Institute. other accounts, makes clear how active

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and was attacked, from different quarters, as both left-wing and McCarthyite. In - vasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), too, “lent itself to both right- and left-wing read- ings—either a drama of Com - munist subversion or a parable of suburban conformity, unfold- ing in a hilariously bland atmos- phere of hypervigilance.” Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957) “parodied college-educated fellow travelers” while also stand- ing as a “generic antifascist scare film—stridently dramatizing, in a suitable popular form, everybody’s worst fears regarding the American culture industry.” The book features many fascinat- ing vignettes about the intertwining of politics and the movie industry. Actor Robert Montgomery helped to tweak Dwight Eisenhower’s the Hollywood Ten were in crafting much Edward Dmytryk: “The reason behind the television ads: “Montgomery replaced of the narrative of their fates that endures attack was never verbally expressed, and Eisen hower’s eyeglasses, powdered his today. In 1953, the CBS TV series You Are it took me some time to recognize it: fore head, and supervised the mise en There premiered. It dramatized episodes Rossen was really getting hell for expos- scène of these twenty-second spots.” from history, many of which had to do ing the evils of dictatorship, the rock on Dore Schary, MGM’s production chief, with persecution: the Salem witch trials, which the Communist party was found- served as the entertainment director for Joan of Arc, Galileo, Socrates, and the ed.” the 1956 Democratic convention, where, Dreyfus case. Who were the authors? Whatever fate the blacklist entailed “at the suggestion of TV newsman Ed - None other than blacklistees Arnold for those listed, another fact Hoberman ward R. Murrow, [he] recruited Senator Manoff, Abraham Polonsky, and Walter makes valuably clear—this is a book John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts to nar- Bernstein, writing through a front. Most about movies, after all—is the dizzying rate the Democrats’ keynote film The histories of the period have explicitly range of films still under production Pursuit of Happiness. The 39-year-old sanctioned such self-serving persecution amidst the HUAC proceedings. The Kennedy was subsequently put forth as a analogies, and the historiography collec- black list stalled or smashed some careers, candidate for vice president, and although tively resembles nothing so as much as a but HUAC even at its most fearsome he lost out to Estes Kefauver, he was Foxe’s Book of Martyrs for the modern wasn’t strong enough to stop a tide of tabbed as an obvious up-and-comer—and Left; it’s useful to be reminded that the films inflected by the experience: for ex- even as a frontrunner for the 1960 nomi- blacklistees themselves wrote the first ample, Otto Preminger’s The 13th Letter nation.” draft, and that subsequent historians made (1951), which Hoberman calls a “specta- Hoberman, in writing about movies few major changes to the story. cle of a town driven mad by a series of that “best crystallize, address, symptom- In its portrait of the political context of anonymous accusations,” and Nicholas atize, or exploit their historical mo - the blacklist, Army of Phantoms falls Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950), in ment,” realizes that any era in cinema short of the one invaluable revisionist which “the movie colony is an envi- history is complicated and fragmented. account of the period, Ron and Allis ronment of smashed careers and free- There certainly are crude stock charac- Radosh’s Red Star over Hollywood: The floating paranoia.” ters in this story, but their interactions Film Colony’s Long Romance with the Message pictures, of a variety of were not simple: “In the national Dream Left, which did a better job both of de - stripes, continued to be made, but most, Life, this war was fought by archetypal picting the self-serving manipulativeness as almost always, came in varied shades figures: the Christian Soldier and the of the Hollywood Communists and of of grey, which Hoberman ably dissects. Patriot Rough neck were pitted against acknowledging their frankly ideological High Noon (1952), which John Wayne an Implacable Alien Other, as well as the and coordinated aims. But Hoberman declared the “most un-American thing Wild One, and sometimes themselves.” does detail the ideological policing that I’ve ever seen in my life,” was loved by This book is a welcome acknowledg- Hollywood Communists engaged in. To Dwight Eisenhower, who watched it at ment of how complicated the story of take just one example, the Hollywood Ten least three times in the White House. Sam one particular period really is, and re- held a meeting to call Robert Rossen to Fuller’s noir classic Pickup on South minds us that a cinematic dream life, task for directing and adapting All the Street (1953) offers concurrent condem- even in black and white, is never as sim- King’s Men. Hoberman quotes director nations of informing and of Communism, ple as we might recall.

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encountering each other in a watermelon i was recounting all this to my trainer, City Desk patch. What watermelon patch? One Shawn, who works me out three times a planted to refresh sightseers who came to week, and with whom i discuss our fam- look at the Devil’s footprint. How had ilies, what’s on TV, and the crimes of the Cool Tombs the Devil left his footprint there? A black day. He is from the islands, and his fam- fiddler named Joost was coming home ily has a graveyard in the Bluff, the vil- from a party one Saturday night when he lage where he lived for the first eight or met a dark stranger, also with a fiddle, ten years of his life. He used to harvest who challenged him to a musical compe- land crabs in the cemetery in season, and tition. Joost was losing until a midnight at night he saw apparitions there. What church bell marked the beginning of did they look like? i asked. A light, with the Sabbath; he started to play a hymn, a figure inside, he said. What were the and the stranger stamped his foot and apparitions doing? Sitting on graves. vanished. We ended up not using the This week he told me the graveyard scene—too much story. The other thing i might have been moved or lost; there RICHARD BROOKHISER remember about green-Wood Cemetery have been hurricanes since he left, over is the elaborate stone gate, now home to 30 years ago, and the graves were in uying a coffin is nobody’s escaped parrots. The city’s shadow cities sandy soil. i hope not—there are always idea of shopping, a friend of now stretch out into Long island, West- hurricanes in the islands, and Shawn’s mine once said. i would cer- chester, and new Jersey. Cremation family’s burial ground sounds like it has B tainly rather go to a yard sale makes them smaller, but we will never been there for a while. or to Etro or even to the grocery, but a escape them. graveyard apparitions appear to have coffin is one of those inescapable pur- My parents picked their burial plots an ongoing interest in their last not-so- chases. Like gas, but for a shorter trip. years ago in the upstate town where my resting places, and most of us, even the Also like gas, you want to make sure you mother grew up. Though i visited there Bertrand Russell rationalists, feel the have it before you set out. periodically all my life, for the longest tug of some such belief. yet we also The city is large and, according to the time i never knew the cemetery exist- know that funerals, burials, and graves census, still growing. As a consequence of its fecundity it is interwoven with cemeteries. Digging around in the finan- Funerals, burials, and graves cial district recently they found an old slaves’ burial ground. Mammon covered are chiefly for the survivors—the it, but now you can peer at it through spectators, not the stars of the show. a Plexiglas peephole at street level. The city’s first Sephardic synagogue left three little rearguards as it moved up - ed—if you keep to the same street, you are chiefly for the survivors—the spec- town, in Chinatown and the Village and never know what is in the next block— tators, not the stars of the show. They along the old Ladies’ Mile. The first is but when i first went there it turned out are the bon voyage party; also the good inhabited by Revolutionary War veter- to be quite near the center of town. it was riddance party. you had a good run, we ans, the second by hostas that put out designed at the same time (mid–19th say to the departed, now back to the pale purple flowers in summer. As time century), and in the same style (pastoral), race. you said it of your dead, and passed, the city and its cemeteries moved as green-Wood Cemetery, under the in - others will say it of us. Tragedy, untime- farther and farther north and east. The fluence of the Romantic Movement and liness, and unfinished business may drive to the airport from midtown takes perhaps also of a tender recoil from the complicate matters, but this is the you past a necropolis in Queens. Jan carnage of the Civil War. The dead aggregate, the net of net; this is the big Lukas, the émigré photographer who did would be held in the arms of nature. The picture. so many nR covers, loved urban juxta- sweet lull of the gettysburg Address—so My father has a picture of a B-25 positions, and one of his favorites was often wrongly called lean or terse— fighter-bomber on his wall. That was my the view, back towards the skyline, from serves the same function: The o’s and r’s plane, he said on my last visit. you also among the headstones, catching the of the opening (four score and seven flew B-17s, i prompted him. They had verticals of both, skyscrapers vs. earth- years ago our fathers brought forth) four engines, he said, but i liked B-25s scrapers. soothe like mourning doves. The upstate better. He asked repeatedly how i had i once did a shoot for a documentary in cemetery, which is maintained by the come and how much the trip had cost green-Wood Cemetery in . The donations of families who have more me, but the specs of his aircraft in the set-up was complicated. The first shots members in it than out of it, has fallen on Army Air Corps in World War ii were of the battle of Long island (1776), one hard times, and is no longer as well man- clear and present. of george Washington’s worst defeats, icured as its designers intended. But the Deuteronomy said it well. “i have set were fired in what is now green-Wood bones of their landscaping endure, and before you life and death . . . therefore Cemetery. Who fired? Foraging parties the tall attentive trees (until they die too) choose life.” When the time comes, and from the British and American armies, still maintain the original vision. after it has gone, back to work.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Line Items

T’s Back!” If it takes four days to agree on two and a half days’ so goes Walmart’s new slogan. What they worth of “cuts,” how much time and energy and political mean is the old Walmart is back—“Everyday capital would the Republicans have to expend to negotiate ‘I low prices!”—and their disastrous attempt to a budget reduction of, say, $300 billion? Whoa, steady evolve into Goremart—“Every quarter higher losses!”—is on, man. That’s big bucks, a third of a trillion: We’d be over. Five years ago, Walmart hired an Al Gore adviser tagged as “extremists.” Whereas borrowing $300 billion as PR chief, stripped the stores of déclassé products such isn’t in the least bit “extreme”: It takes two and a half as fishing tackle, and filled it up with a lot of stuff that months, and it’s business as usual. was “green-friendly.” The sierra Club and The New Yorker But somehow cutting it is beyond the bounds of politi- said nice things about them, and Mr. and Mrs. America cal reality. And so as the ship fills up with water we con- stayed away. As former exec Jimmy Wright told the Wall gratulate ourselves on agreeing to pass out the thimbles. Street Journal, “The basic Walmart customer didn’t leave The sheer variety of ingenious accounting wheezes used Walmart. What happened is that Walmart left the cus- to dream up that $38.5 billion illustrates what we’re up tomer.” against. I quote from National Journal: Walmart went green into the red, and then realized that they couldn’t afford the Al Gore retail model. There’s a White House officials said throughout the process that the lot of that around. Before the big Gulf spill, BP had spent composition of the cuts was more important than the top- a decade kissing up to Dem ocrats and eco-progressives. line number, and that including mandatory cuts allowed Once upon a time, their initials stood for “British that top line to grow while limiting the immediate impact of the cuts. Petroleum,” but some Madison Avenue type thought it would look better to adopt the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” (My italics. Also my rolled eyeballs. And my mirthless and replace their old logo with a flower. Pansy? Not guffaw.) yet. Just a sunflower. My colleague Jonah Goldberg Do you know what that means? Hey, don’t bother: The suggested that, after the Demo-mediacracy effortlessly “top line” is growing, while the baseline is also up. As they turned Tony Hayward into an oleaginous snidely Whip - say in the small ads in the alternative weekly, are you a top lash, BP ought to own their rep and call themselves or a base? Neither of the above? Don’t worry, I’m sure “Badass Petroleum.” Exactly: “We love to drill—and it somewhere in between there’s a mid-line (the waterline?) shows!” where various “extremist” “cuts” are being enacted. Corporations pretending to be social workers is bad The first developed nation to get clobbered by the down- enough. But, even in the decadent phase of capitalism, the turn was Iceland. It has 300,000 people. America has 300 market still functions well enough to bring Walmart to its million. If you have big government in a nation of 300,000 senses in a mere half decade. Alas, for Big Government, or even 10 million (Portugal), it’s relatively easy to figure there are no such corrective mechanisms. The government out how much money you’re spending and on what. But, of the United states is currently borrowing about $4 billion as that mythical $38.5 billion “cut” illustrates, in an a day. The Republicans recently secured an alleged land- ever more centralized, de-federalized nation of 300 mil- mark victory over Democrats that cut 38-point-something lion, meaning fuloversight is all but impossible. billion dollars from the budget. How many weeks of Meanwhile, USA Today reports that even a third of clenched-teeth high-stakes brinkmanship did it take to Republican voters say “the government should not try to negotiate ten days’ worth of cuts? control the costs of Medicare.” Did I say ten days’ worth? Oh, wait. That was on Friday Oh. Okay. night. By the following Tuesday afternoon, over half of the Where do this third of Republican voters live? Iowa? $38.5 billion had been exposed as various meaningless New Hampshire? And if you were a second-tier candidate sleights of hand of which government, unlike Walmart, can trying to break out from the rest of the also-rans, mightn’t avail itself very easily—for example, counting money in you be tempted to position yourself as their champion? the Justice Department’s crime victims’ reserve fund that What happens if the government follows the advice of was never scheduled to be spent this year as a “savings” of that third of Republicans and declines to “control the costs $4.9 billion. Real savings—that’s to say, the kind that of Medicare”? The dollar dies as global currency, followed would pass muster according to Generally Accepted by inflation, the wiping out of your savings, widespread Accounting Principles—were around $14 billion—or, in social unrest, huge increases in crime and violence, Mad other words, less than the U.s. government borrowed in Max on I-95 . . . the four days between the announcing of the “historic The question is whether enough Americans are willing cuts” and their exposure as utterly fraudulent. to grow up—and fast: That’s to say, will they mature before the debt does? Forget the top line and the baseline: Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). The bottom line is that it’s the end of the line.

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