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December 31, 2011 $4.99 Christmas!Merry THE EDITORS: AGAINST GINGRICH

MARKMARK STEYNSTEYN on His $4.99 Big Government 53 Follies

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toc_QXP-1127940144.qxp 12/14/2011 2:04 PM Page 4 Contents

DECEMBER 31, 2011 | VOLUME LXIII, NO. 24 | www.nationalreview.com

COVER STORY Page 26 The Gingrich Gestalt Instead of enabling Americans Matthew Spalding on Obama and TR p. 18 to take risks and push the frontiers, Newt Gingrich’s BOOKS, ARTS proposals incline mostly to & MANNERS the expansion of bureaucracy and an increase in 39 PROPHETIC STRAIN Michael Knox Beran reviews dependency. Mark Steyn George F. Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis. COVER: ROMAN GENN 41 VICTORIAN CREATIONS ARTICLES Elizabeth Powers reviews Charles Dickens: A Life, by Claire Tomalin. 18 THE STRING-PULLERS by Matthew Spalding Channeling TR, President Obama advocates rule-by-elites. 43 ANCIENT ECHOES Charles C. W. Cooke reviews 19 AN UNAVOIDABLE CHALLENGE by John Yoo The End of Sparta: A Novel, Now is the time to make the case for military action against Iran. by Victor Davis Hanson.

21 THE Z-WORD by Jay Nordlinger 44 STREET-CORNER When people say ‘Zionist,’ what do they mean? CONSERVATIVE John R. Coyne Jr. reviews 23 TEBOW’S RELIGION, AND OURS by Daniel Foster Speechwright: An Insider’s Earnest worship versus the worship of cynicism. Take on Political Rhetoric, by William F. Gavin. 24 BEFORE YOU SAY NO . . . by Aloïse Buckley Heath A correspondence, nonfictional, between a young boy, a housewife, 46 FILM: TINTIN TRIUMPHANT a headmaster, and the young boy’s brother. Ross Douthat reviews The Adventures of Tintin.

FEATURES 47 THE STRAGGLER: NATIONS OF THE MIND 26 THE GINGRICH GESTALT by Mark Steyn The Derbyshires discover Moscow. You take a dubious record, you take some wacky ideas, you take a narcissistic personality . . . 29 HOW SPEAKER NEWT BALANCED THE BUDGET by Kevin D. Williamson SECTIONS And why President Newt would not. 4 Letters to the Editor 31 AMNESTY, AGAIN by Kris W. Kobach 6 The Week Gingrich’s plan would reward criminals and make the law arbitrary. 36 The Bent Pin . . . . . Florence King 37 Athwart ...... James Lileks 33 SOME SHADE OF GREEN by Jonathan H. Adler 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long The former Speaker has a longstanding love-hate relationship 42 Poetry ...... Michael Petti with environmental reform. 48 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

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Send Drones, Not Soldiers DECEMBER 31 ISSUE; PRINTED DECEMBER 15 Jamie M. Fly’s “Retreat—But Whose?” (December 19) turned me from a sup- EDITOR Richard Lowry porter of the war in Afghanistan to a skeptic. If these are the best arguments for Senior Editors our Afghan campaign, perhaps we should walk away. Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones The bulk of the article is devoted to three non sequiturs. 1. Our soldiers are Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts heroes who work near-miracles. No one questions this. This is no reason to Literary Editor Michael Potemra Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy deploy them in Afghanistan, instead of on the Mexican border or at home as National Correspondent John J. Miller Political Reporter Robert Costa entrepreneurs and parents. 2. The Pakistanis will consider Americans fickle. How Art Director Luba Kolomytseva many decades will we have to fight in Afghanistan to convince them other wise? Deputy Managing Editors Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson If we succeed in changing their minds, how will this improve America’s posture Associate Editors Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen in the world? Can’t we achieve the same result with some artfully done drone Research Director Katherine Connell strikes and covert actions against America haters in the Inter-Services Intelli - Executive Secretary Frances Bronson Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos gence agency, at much less cost? 3. The Afghan people can now walk their Contributing Editors streets and go to school. God bless them, but this is not why I pay taxes to Robert H. Bork / Shannen Coffin / John Derbyshire Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum support a military. If it is, why not invade Somalia, Mexico, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin and wherever else there is human suffering? This is an argument for globalized Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi progressivism delivered by helicopter gunship. Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne David B. Rivkin Jr. I thought the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, a high-risk proposition that NATIONALREVIEWONLINE should rank above Alexander’s and Cortés’s in history’s eyes, had two objec- Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig tives. One, take away a staging ground for al-Qaeda. Two, show would-be News Editor Daniel Foster Editorial Associates Mullah Omars that harboring al-Qaeda is a fatal error. It seems to me the first Brian Bolduc / Charles C. W. Cooke has been mooted by events, and the second is better achieved by untraceable Brian Stewart / Katrina Trinko Web Developer Gareth du Plooy precision delivery of firepower into certain precincts of Islamabad. What am I Technical Services Russell Jenkins missing? EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Andrew V. Showen Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell Orlando, Fla. James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans JAMIe M. FLy RepLIeS: Mr. Showen is correct that our ultimate goal in Afghan - Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter istan should be to ensure that its territory (or areas of neighboring pakistan) can George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler never again be used as a safe haven for terrorists to attack the American home- David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune land. His proposed approach, consisting of “some artfully done drone strikes D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons and covert actions against America haters in the Inter-Services Intelligence Terry Teachout / Taki Theodoracopulos Vin Weber agency, at much less cost,” however, is fatally flawed. Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge We’ve pursued elements of Mr. Showen’s strategy in Afghanistan several Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak times in recent decades—after helping to push the Soviets out in 1989, and even Business Services in the years after our toppling of the Taliban in 2001, as we tried to avoid com- Alex Batey / Kate Murdock Elena Reut / Lucy Zepeda mitting significant numbers of U.S. troops. The results—3,000 dead on U.S. Circulation Manager Jason Ng WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com soil, more Americans murdered overseas, and countless deaths and sustained MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 turmoil in the region—are clear. SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 It is only in recent years that the United States and its allies have devoted the ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd proper resources to our efforts in Afghanistan, allowing us to pursue a coun- Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet terinsurgency strategy that shows the Afghan people that there is the potential ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett for a better life without the Taliban. The key point about our current strategy in

PUBLISHER Afghanistan is that we are finally getting it right, which is why it is so shameful Jack Fowler that the Obama administration is focused more on winning reelection than on CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes winning the war.

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

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n President Obama told 60 Minutes that mending the economy “probably takes more than one president.” Hey, we’ve been saying that since January 2009.

n Obama, having tired of performing his Woodrow Wilson impersonation, has moved on to Theodore Roosevelt, the rough- riding, war-fighting, gun-toting adventurer-president, and the man on earth whom he least resembles. Giving a speech in Osawatomie, Kan., he offered his own take on TR’s famous “New Nationalism” speech; he should have called it “Stale Liberalism,” for it was nothing more than his familiar manageri- al bluster accompanied by sharpened class-warfare rhetoric. A great many of TR’s economic ideas were daft and authoritarian, but the thing about the New Nationalism was that it was new—it had not yet been discredited by the experience of similar central- planning philosophies throughout the 20th century. Obama-style progressivism is nothing if not an arrogant refusal to learn from history. Teddy Roosevelt might be forgiven his naïveté, but Barack Obama should know better by now, as should we all.

n Newt Gingrich, who has a unique talent for sounding wrong when he is right, raised a chorus of heckles when he described child-labor laws as “truly stupid.” But he was, as he so often is, on to something: His proposal is to offer teenagers jobs at their or how eminent domain can work for you? Yet when Trump schools, which would achieve two goods—marginally reducing announced that he would host a debate of Republican candidates the schools’ bloated personnel costs and, more important, pro- at the end of December, Gingrich and Rick Santorum agreed to viding students with experience to facilitate their entry into the appear. (Bachmann, Huntsman, Paul, Perry, and Romney all work force. Gingrich at his best is something of an education declined.) Trump is a successful self-promoter. His ventures into realist who realizes that the current model of education—which politics have been bizarre and disastrous. He led the GOP and the recognizes only one metric of success, receipt of a four-year (or media on a hunt for Obama’s birth certificate, the tinfoil non- more) college degree—does not in fact serve all students well. story of this presidency. He wants above all to plug his next book, Work experience, vocational education, and—most critical— or the latest season of his reality show. Trump ended up with- choice among a variety of educational options are essential if we drawing as moderator, for which action concerned citizens are to maximize the productivity and well-being of the very large should be grateful. number of American students who are not headed for careers as investment bankers and management consultants. About this, n Herman Cain went up like a rocket, and came down like a Gingrich has nothing for which to apologize. booster rocket. His life arc—the son of a janitor and a maid, he became a CEO—and his platform personality made him shine in n Gingrich also took himself for a spin through Middle East his- an array of dimmer GOP bulbs. Then he began to be smacked by tory. “I think we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are charges of sexual misconduct: Four women claimed to have been in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab com- harassed by him when he headed the National Restaurant munity,” he told the Jewish Channel. True enough—under the Association. A fifth, Ginger White, said she and Cain had had a British mandate, “Palestinian” denoted the local Jews. But pro- 13-year affair. Cain denied all charges, though he admitted that fessorial Newt leaves political Newt with problems. Now that the he had given White money, and that his wife had never known horse has gone, why fumble with the barn door? If it was not aim- about her. But Cain’s inexperience also caught up with him. His less showing off, then it was a cynical feel-good appeal for 9-9-9 tax-reform plan was a bad idea, but at least it reflected some Jewish votes. It was nice, however, to see Palestinian negotiator earnest economic thought. Cain gave no thought to the world, Saeb Erekat sputter. “This is the lowest point of thinking anyone joking about U-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan—his trope for obscure can reach,” said Erekat. Lower than blowing up pizza parlors? places—then blowing a question about Libya, a real place that has been in the news constantly. Herman Cain was at best an n Why would anyone participate in, or listen to, a debate hosted unprepared man recklessly offering himself as a fantasy can -

ROMAN GENN by Donald Trump on any subjects other than media, bankruptcy, didate. It is good that he is out of the race.

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THE WEEK n A federal grand jury is investigating whether ex–New Mexico off the rule change. And when Corzine went to lobby the CFTC, governor Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign arranged whom should he have met but his old Goldman Sachs colleague, for supporters to pay hush money to his former mistress, the Commissioner Gary Gensler, along with Commissioner Mark Wall Street Journal reported. According to the allegations, Wetjen, a former aide to his Democratic Senate colleague Harry Richardson’s boosters gave $250,000 to a state employee who Reid? Corzine has much to answer for—and so does the CFTC, considered suing him in 2007. (The two supposedly began their and Washington at large. affair in 2004.) It has been a tough three years for the 2008 Democratic-primary contenders. Former North Carolina senator n The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is sup- John Edwards is standing trial for the very same charges. And posed to make sure that the nation’s schools don’t practice racial former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd has had to give up his discrimination. Instead, in two new “guidance” memos for long-held seat after the public learned of his sweetheart loans school administrators, the office, in conjunction with the Justice from Countrywide. We are not surprised to see such corruption. Department, promotes racial discrimination. The memos—one But we are a little taken aback that these men were brazen enough pertaining to higher education, the other pertaining to elementary to run for president. and secondary schools—tout the benefits of racial diversity, including “promoting cross-racial understanding, breaking down n Nearly a year after the Operation Fast and Furious scandal racial and other stereotypes, and eliminating bias and prejudice.” broke, the Obama administration has yet to answer a simple ques- They then advise schools that, while the Supreme Court says they tion: What did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and have to consider race-neutral methods of promoting diversity Explosives (ATF) hope to gain by letting Mexican drug gangs (such as preferences for the poor) before resorting to outright dis- buy guns in the U.S.? The question becomes even more pertinent crimination, they have no obligation to use race-neutral methods in light of an e-mail uncovered by CBS News. In the July 2010 if these are not “workable.” The memos even provide reasons for message, Mark Chait—an ATF higher-up who was demoted, but which race-neutral admissions might not be “workable,” includ- not fired, in the wake of the scandal—asked a colleague whether ing the all-purpose excuse that discrimination is the only way to a Fast and Furious case involved any guns that were bought in get the level of diversity the institution has decided it needs. groups from a single dealer. The reason for his request: He was Message received. looking for anecdotes to justify a new “demand letter”—an ATF regulation that would require some gun dealers to report cus- n Do American students of Asian ancestry face racial discrimi- tomers who bought more than one rifle at once. A congressional nation in college admissions? There is much evidence that they report suggests that by the time he sent this e-mail, Chait was do. The Center for Equal Opportunity has found, for example, aware that if the case involved guns that were purchased in that the combined median SAT scores for Asians admitted to the groups, the ATF might very well have sanctioned the sales (in University of Michigan in 2005 were 50 points higher than those some cases over resistance from the dealers themselves). This for whites. Further, where it is forbidden by law to consider race does not prove the theory that Fast and Furious was intended in admissions policy, proportions of Asian students in colleges from the beginning to create an argument for gun control, but it are higher than elsewhere. The student body at the University of does show that at least one ATF official considered putting it to California–Berkeley, for example, is over 40 percent Asian (three that use. Chait should, as also should the Justice Department, times the proportion of Californians with Asian ancestry). It is give a full explanation of what in the world Fast and Furious was well-nigh a universal belief among Asian Americans that college meant to accomplish. admissions officers discriminate against them when the law per- mits this. What to do? For students of mixed parentage the solu- n “I simply do not know where tion is obvious: Check any box on the application form other than the money is,” said Jon Corzine, “Asian.” Since three-quarters of white-Asian marriages in the the disgraced Wall Street mogul U.S. involve a white father, surname is a giveaway only for the and Democratic politico whose other quarter. A December 3 report from Associated Press reveals collapsed firm, MF Global, seems that this practice is exactly what is happening. Apparently we are to have lost track of some $1.2 trending toward the model of apartheid South Africa, where billion in customers’ money. Asians were “honorary whites.” Corzine’s troubles combine in a single case a number of relevant n There must be something in the water in Durban: The home of political themes—the hypocrisy conferences that routinely proclaim Zionism to be the world’s of Democrats’ railing against most virulent form of racism hosted another U.N. jamboree, the Wall Street, the ineffectual nature 17th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. of the financial reforms enacted by Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd- Some of the more ambitious proposals, such as a carbon tax on Frank, and the incestuous relationship between Wall Street and the world’s shipping and aviation fleets and an “international cli- the political class. While it remains unclear what precisely did mate court of justice,” were, thankfully, rejected. Two major happen to the customers’ money, the Commodity Futures agreements were reached: on the creation of a fund to help devel- Trading Commission seems to think that Corzine used a complex oping countries switch to clean energy, and on a tentative step financial instrument to “borrow” customers’ money to collateral- toward a legally binding greenhouse-gas treaty that will treat rich ize his trades in European government bonds—at least, the and poor countries equally. The latter was a victory of sorts for

NEWSCOM CFTC recently voted unanimously to ban such trades. It had the U.S., which has insisted on setting limits for developing /

SIPA earlier considered doing so, but was lobbied by Corzine to put countries if any applied to the developed world, though no treaty

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THE WEEK at all would have been much better. As for the climate fund, it has their destinations overnight. While we would prefer a plan that no funding source, and there is no plan for how the treaty’s ends USPS’s government-enforced monopoly on letter delivery specifics will be set. In short, this was just another U.N. confer- and then privatizes the company, slower mail could be part of a ence, wrongly conceived but mercifully unproductive. plan to keep USPS afloat without a bailout. Other cuts should include ending Saturday delivery, closing non-essential USPS n The U.S. Postal Service—which lost $5.1 billion in fiscal year facilities, and downsizing the work force. The House’s Issa-Ross 2011, has reached its debt limit of $15 billion, and is behind on a Postal Reform Act is a worthy bill that takes up some of these $5.5 billion payment to fund retiree health-care benefits—has reforms. The Senate’s bill, awkwardly titled the “21st Century proposed a new measure to cut costs: The “independent” but Postal Service Act of 2011,” also contains much of value, but is government-owned company would like to slow down the deliv- con siderably weaker. In hammering out a compromise, House ery of first-class mail, so that short-range letters no longer reach Republicans should push hard for concessions from the

Another Socialist Plot

HE recently released Muppet movie caused one of Sunday morning. I’ve seen them all: Abbott and Costello T those five-minute fracases that pass across the Go to Mars, Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion, Internet/cable-TV landscape like a summer squall. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Essentially, the Muppet movie (official title,The Muppets) Costello Get Syphilis, Abbott and Costello Testify at laid on a slew of Hollywood clichés—hardly shocking HUAC, etc. given that the Muppets themselves are something of a Okay, I made up a couple of those. But you get the send-up of old vaudeville and movie bits. The one that point. The Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, Shirley annoyed some conservatives was the Temple, John Wayne, et al. made lots of utterly typical casting of the villain as films in which they essentially played an evil businessman (in this case Tex the same character—i.e., themselves— Richman, dastardly oil baron). over and over again. What changed Liberals made fun of conservatives were the plots. for taking the movie so seriously. Lib - These days we get the same actors erals overlooked the fact that the rea- playing the same parts repeating the son it’s a cliché is that Hollywood same plots over and over again. Some - does, in fact, have a deep-seated, long- times this is forgivable, of course. It’s not established, easily verified animus like Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy towards capitalists and businessmen. Krueger would really work as a romantic Yes, yes, yes: Part of the reason businessmen are used lead. And if you’re going to make a Jaws II, it’s pretty hard as villains stems from the fact that you need villains to be to get away from the whole boy-meets-shark storyline. rich and powerful. But part of the reason also has some- But, really, why exactly did Return of the Jedi have to end thing to do with the fact that liberals run Hollywood and with the rebel alliance blowing up a Death Star? And why liberals think capitalism is evil—even though it makes couldn’t the gang from The Hangover come back in a them rich. sequel where they robbed a bank? Enough about all that. If you don’t think Hollywood Obviously, making endless variations on a theme was has liberal biases, all I can say to you is, “How on earth easier to do under the old contract system than it is today. did you end up reading this magazine?” Movie-star trailers were like cells in a Hollywood-studio But Hollywood could learn something from The Mup - gulag. Of course Spencer Tracy would do another movie pets. One of the reasons that so many movie sequels are with Hepburn—anything just to get some yard time. so awful is that the producers think they have to re-create That’s the great thing about the Muppets. Because essentially the same plot, leaving audiences to say, “I’ve they are merely technically advanced socks with sewn-on seen this movie before.” One of the best recent examples eyeballs, you can make them do one movie after another is The Hangover Part II, in which the whole gang is asked and they won’t complain. Personally, I’d love to see an all- to film essentially the same movie as the first Hangover, Muppet remake of All the President’s Men (Carl Bernstein only this time in Thailand. “I can’t believe this is happen- could play himself!). ing again!” says one of the guys at the bachelor party Alas, that’s as likely as Hollywood casting liberals as vil- gone awry. And neither can the audience! lains. I grew up watching Abbott and Costello movies every —JONAH GOLDBERG DISNEY

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THE WEEK Democratic Senate. If we’re to be stuck with a government- have disruptive consequences in the rest of Europe: Without owned mail company, at the very least it should not be run at the British support, European economic coordination—meaning, expense of taxpayers. among other things, shadow bailouts for the spendthrift south— will become more difficult. Without the palliative of German n Since 2006, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops money, German fiscal discipline may create social disorder in (USCCB) has received federal funds through the Department of more places than Greece. But Cameron has sensibly declined to Health and Human Services (HHS) to administer a nationwide sacrifice the well-being of Britons for the well-being of Greeks, network of organizations that aid victims of human trafficking an important victory for those who think of the United King- with shelter, food, counseling, and other services. This fall, the dom as a nation rather than an administrative subdivision of the group’s application for a grant was denied in favor of three other European Union. organizations, though two of these scored significantly lower than the USCCB in an independent review commissioned by n The world is living a high-class thriller, but is still at the stage HHS. Preference was given, administration officials explained, of having to use imagination to decipher the plot. The one clear to organizations offering referrals for “the full range of legally clue is the setting: Iran. Events turn on the nuclear program that permissible gynecological and obstetric care,” i.e. contraception the Iranians are asking everyone to believe is peaceful but and abortion, which the USCCB does not provide. Rep. Darrell according to many intelligence services is developing a nuclear Issa (R., Calif.), in hearings investigating the politicization of the weapon. Stuxnet and Duqu are anonymous cyber attacks that grant process, has accused HHS of anti-Catholic bias, but any have destroyed essential equipment. About half a dozen Iranian religious or secular institution that shares the bishops’ principles nuclear scientists have been murdered or disabled, one of them is liable to face similar discrimination under an administration Dariush Rezaei, said to have been very senior. Mysterious whose commitment to promoting abortion outweighs its concern explosions have marked the past 18 months, one of them at a for the real needs of victims. missile base near Khorramabad and another 30 miles west of Tehran. This latter destroyed a sprawling complex of buildings and killed Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, the head of the country’s n Andrew Cuomo looked like he was rebranding the fami- missile program. Grief-stricken, the Iranian establishment ly name, as well as Democratic politics in New York State, turned up for his funeral. Is all this accident and coincidence, or and possibly the nation: He was a social liberal, committed might it be war, and if so, who is waging it? Suspects include to same-sex marriage, but a fiscal hawk. “You are kidding American agencies—perhaps the very one that just lost a drone yourself if you think you can be one of the highest-taxed in Iran—and Israel, whose public figures are prone to attribute states in the nation . . . and have a rosy economic future,” he what’s happening to divine intervention. The subject matter is said as recently as this fall. Turns out the only people who too dramatic even to begin sketching the ending. were kidding themselves were those who believed his pru- dent noises. A temporary surcharge on n In central Tehran the police stood by and watched while high incomes was allowed to lapse as hundreds of protesters simultaneously broke into the British scheduled. But in its place Cuomo embassy and the residency compound in Qolhak to the north of and the legislature imposed new the city. They seized seven of the 26 members of the staff, and “progressive” tax brackets. The for a while a replay of the 1979 hostage crisis seemed in the surcharge was in effect reduced but making. Dominick Chilcott, the ambassador, was to say after- made permanent. Cuomo explained ward that he “had no idea how it was going to end.” One historic the new brackets by saying that the building is 135 years old, and in it Roosevelt, Stalin, and state faced “a different economic Churchill held their conference in 1943. The protesters system- reality than anyone could have anti- atically vandalized both sites, setting fires and parading in the cipated.” Same political reality that streets the royal portraits and the embassy crest they had looted. every New Yorker anticipated, Such incidents in the region follow a well-defined course that though. serves as a political statement. At the prompting of increasingly anxious Western powers, a new round of sanctions had just been passed to discourage Iran from finalizing its nuclear program. n Confounding all expectations, British prime minister David The Iranians would no doubt have preferred to take reprisals on Cameron seems to have discovered his spine, in refusing to Americans or Israelis, but in the absence of these favorite Satans kowtow to Franco-German demands for reorganizing the euro- they had to make do with voting to expel the British ambassador zone in a way that would further erode British sovereignty and sending in the official wrecking crews. Once the ambas- and—prob ably the deciding factor—put the City of London, sador and his staff had touched down safely in London, the the financial powerhouse of Europe, at a distinct disadvantage British gave the Iranians 48 hours to close their embassy and get vis-à-vis its Continental competitors. Proposed amendments to out of the country. An embargo on oil purchases might make a the EU treaty forging greater fiscal integration would require point about the importance of more civilized behavior in Iran,

British assent. Cameron was thought likely to go along with and Britain is pressing for it. NEWSCOM / treaty changes in exchange for the giving of leeway to Britain ZUMA to protect its financial sector, but it was clear that the conces- n The Obama administration has pursued a policy of “reset” with / sions he would require would not be acceptable to the other a Russian regime that, according to the State Department’s own

members of the EU—and so he refused. Cameron’s “No” may reporting, runs a “mafia state.” Now the people of Moscow are RICK MACKLER

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denouncing that government. Our excuse for engaging a corrupt International want us to arrest Mr. Bush? Tell them to hang, and regime has been that Vladimir Putin enjoyed the support of the also please ask them to create their own country and wait for Russian people, but when the oil-and-gas boom came to an end Mr. Bush to visit their country so that they can arrest him to suit in 2008, the population’s commitment to Putin collapsed with it. their wish and not here in Zambia.” All it took was the latest manifestation of electoral fraud, follow- ing recent parliamentary elections, to bring them out into the n Whatever you may think is the purpose of higher education, streets. (Sensing an opportunity, the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, there is a case to be made that public funding of college-level stud- owner of the New Jersey Nets, has announced his candidacy for ies should bear some relation to the requirements of the national president of Russia in next year’s contest.) The United States can economy. In mainland China, where most higher education is paid continue trying to engage the Russian leaders, or it can do what for by the state, the government has found this case persuasive. it should have done in the first place: base U.S. responses on U.S. They have recently announced that funding of college majors will principles, and react to Russian behavior realistically. The in the future be determined by graduate employment rates. Fields authors of “reset” will be inclined to defend their brainchild, but in which the employment rate for graduates falls below 60 percent the Obama administration should bear in mind that Russia is no for two consecutive years will have their state subsidies cut back longer just the Putin-Medvedev tandem. The people of Russia or eliminated. It pains us to find ourselves in agreement with the have stepped out onto the stage as well. Chinese Communist party on anything at all, but this new policy is surely a sound one. If applied in the U.S., it would have two n Last year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave its peace highly desirable side effects: one, there would be fewer unem- prize to a Chinese dissident and prisoner of conscience, Liu ployable graduates available to populate the “Occupy” move- Xiaobo. This piqued the Chinese government, which created its ments, and two, the liberal professoriate would be furious. own peace prize in response. In this, the Chinese were following the Nazi government and the Soviet government, both of which n The California State University system has study-abroad pro- created peace prizes when piqued at Oslo. The Chinese award grams in which CSU students can spend a year at universities in is called the Confucius Peace Prize. And this year it was given such places as chilly Sweden, tropical Ghana, and exotic Canada. to Vladimir Putin, boss of Russia. Why? In the words of an In 2002, Israel was suspended from participation due to safety Associated Press report, “for enhancing Russia’s status and concerns, but officials have announced plans to reinstate it. Cue crushing anti-government forces in Chechnya.” Say this for the expressions of outrage from 80-odd CSU faculty, staff members, Chinese Communists: They know what they like. and administrators, representing “a wide range of views and political perspectives” (from Marxist to anarchist, presumably), n Last year the South Korean government allowed a Christian who have signed an open letter asserting that “CSU participation group to set up a Christmas tree near the Demilitarized Zone with the government of Israel in the proposed study abroad pro- separating their territory from North Korea. This year, they have gram could be interpreted as an endorsement of the international announced, three trees will be erected, with a lighting ceremony crime of apartheid.” CSU also has a study-abroad program in scheduled for December 23. The Norks are not happy. A state-run China. Does this mean the system and its faculty endorse censor- website hissed that the tree-lighting plan is “a mean attempt at ship, torture, slave labor, and arbitrary arrest and detention? psychological warfare.” The website further threatened that light- ing the trees would lead to an “unexpected consequence.” What n Britain’s Queen Victoria, who will that be, we wonder—a carol-singing concert from the North reigned from 1837 to 1901, gave her Korean side? Why not? Kim Il Sung, father of the current North name to an age popularly associ - Korean dictator, was raised a Presbyterian, and liked to relax by ated with bourgeois rectitude playing a church organ. and sexual repression. It has long been plain from her own n Who would have known it: One in ten people is a war crimi- recorded remarks and letters, nal. Or at least they might be if the International Red Cross gets however, that Victoria’s blood its way. The organization has suggested that video gamers who ran hotter than is suggested by play violent games could be violating the Hague Convention. the stiffly formal portraits we Never mind that the Hague Convention applies only to states; not are familiar with. Further evi- to mention to the real world. One can only stand and wonder dence for this has been getting where this all ends: Should the police storm the stage at perfor- some attention in the British press mances of Julius Caesar after Brutus’s betrayal? Speaking in recently: a remarkably sensual pic- defense of the Red Cross’s position, Australian professor of inter- ture of the bare-shouldered Victoria, national law Anthony Billingsley warned that “there are concerns then 24 years old, painted by Franz Winter- about the blurring of fantasy and reality.” On that much we agree. halter and treasured by Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert. Victoria was not quite 21 when she married Albert: His death 22 n Amnesty International has decided that former president years and nine children later devastated her, and she wore George W. Bush should be arrested as a war criminal. In October, widow’s weeds for the rest of her reign. Some silly gossip Amnesty asked Canada to do the job. (Bush was visiting British (made into an even sillier 1997 movie) notwithstanding, there Columbia.) More recently, it asked Ethiopia, Tanzania, or Zam - is no evidence that Victoria’s feelings found any physical bia to do the job. The Zambian foreign minister, Chishimba expression outside her marriage. In that respect at least she was

FRANZ XAVER WINTERHALTER Kambwili, had a tart response. “On what basis does Amnesty truly, and commendably, Victorian.

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THE WEEK n Illegal immigrant Joaquin Luna, aged 18, shot himself dead on n Michigan and Wisconsin are embroiled in a dispute over which November 25 at his family home in Mission, Tex. The family told state looks more like a mitten. The controversy began when a local media that Joaquin had been driven to the sad deed by dis- Michigan resident noticed that Wisconsin was using a mitten to tress over the failure of Congress to pass the dREAM Act, which symbolize itself in a marketing campaign. Blasphemy, he would have given federal college aid to illegals. National news declared: Everybody knows Michigan is the Mitten State, while media picked up the story and ran with it: CNN devoted a lengthy Wisconsin looks like one only if you stretch the thumb part segment to it on November 30. Local congressman Rubén over your pinky. Wisconsin partisans retorted that at least Hinojosa, a co-sponsor of the dREAM Act, aired the case in a their state doesn’t have to leave out an entire peninsula— maudlin speech to the House of Representatives. given that and besides, Wisconsin beat Michigan State for this year’s Texas actually does offer tuition relief to illegals attending state Big Ten football championship, so there. An online survey at colleges, and that Mexico itself has many fine colleges Luna TravelMichigan.com predictably showed Michigan winning in a could have attended in perfect legality, it is hard to see why he 5–1 landslide; international monitors have yet to weigh in on the should have been so upset over dREAM. Well, apparently he survey’s fairness. Mitt Romney was unavailable for comment wasn’t: When the county sheriff’s office at last released Luna’s until he could check the two states’ polling data. Meanwhile, eleven-page suicide note, there was no mention in it of the we’re told that Wyoming and Colorado will soon slug it out over dREAM Act. The sheriff himself scolded those who had tried to which state more closely resembles a Pop-Tart. politicize the tragedy. Representative Hi no josa was unrepentant, blustering through a spokeswoman that “there was no reason to n What would the Christmas season be without a War on doubt” the family. Christmas story? Here’s one from Stockton, Calif. Teachers at a local K-through-8 school have been told that Santas, Christmas n There has been a flurry of trees, and poinsettia plants are not to be displayed, though snow- striking news stories from outer men and snowflakes are acceptable. Why the ban? There are a space. Closest to home, though “myriad of religious affiliations,” quoth the superintendent, and still impressively far away, “we don’t want a pervasive theme of a class to represent one reli- NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, gious affiliation.” If you can make sense of that, you’re smart launched in 1977, seems to enough to be an ed bureaucrat in California. After many protests have reached the “helio - the superintendent seems to have backed off, though his English sheath”—the boundary zone usage is so idiosyncratic that it’s hard to tell: “Well-intentioned between the influence of the people may take a step that’s incongruous with district expec - Sun, as defined by the “solar tations. That’s been corrected.” Meanwhile, in Florida, there is a wind” of particles the Sun dire shortage of multicultural Santas, with speakers of Spanish emits, and interstellar space. and Haitian Creole especially in demand for community centers The plucky little spacecraft is and churches. Black Santas, too: “When Santa bears the face Kepler-22b two and a half times farther that kids can connect to, it can raise their self-esteem,” caroled a away from the Sun than Pluto ever gets, and still operating. Five local community activist. What could be more important than hundred times farther away than that, astronomers have found raising kiddies’ self-esteem? Assimilation into a common cul- the most earthlike planet yet, orbiting a sunlike star. The mean ture? Ho ho ho! surface temperature on Kepler-22b is a pleasant 72 degrees. And half a million times farther away than that, two black holes of record size have been discovered, one 10 billion times more mas- POLITICS sive than the Sun, one 20 billion times. The black holes sound Winnowing the Field terrifying; Kepler-22b sounds intriguing; but we will save our enthusiasm for Voyager 1, which we Americans made and sent on HARd-FougHT presidential primary campaign is ob- its way, and which bears an audio-visual selection of information scuring the uncharacteristic degree of unity within the about our planet and our species, including a Chuck Berry song, A Republican party. It has reached a conservative consensus a picture of Boston, a sketch of the human sex organs, and a on most of the pressing issues of the day. All of the leading candi- greeting from Jimmy Carter. dates, and almost all of the lagging ones, support the right to life. All of them favor the repeal of obamacare. Most of them support n New York university is set to become the first college in the reforms to restrain the growth of entitlement spending. All of them united States to offer classes in occupy Wall Street, when two favor reducing the corporate tax rate to levels that will make the new for-credit classes join the timetables next semester. In keep- u.S. a competitive location for investment. Almost all of them ing with the inchoate nature of the movement, both classes—one seem to understand the dangers of a precipitate withdrawal from for undergraduates, one for graduates—have a “rotating focus.” Iraq and Afghanistan, and of a defense policy driven by the need Expect the subject to rotate to the evils of government if a to protect social spending rather than the national interest. Con - Republican wins the White House in 2012. NYu’s move appears servatives may disagree among themselves about which candi- to have been quite brilliantly designed to ensure the maintenance date most deserves support, but all of us should take heart in this

CALTECH of a vicious cycle and ensure that the course’s content never development—and none of us should exaggerate the program- - JPL / becomes stale: In this vein, expect more debt-laden graduates to matic differences within the field. AMES / stand around complaining about the uselessness of their costly Just as heartening, the White House seems winnable next

NASA education about four years from now. year, and with it a majority in both houses of Congress, so that

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THE WEEK much of this conservative consensus could actually become law. A conservative majority on the Supreme Court, a halt to the march of regulation, free-market health-care policies: All of them seem within our grasp. But none of them is assured, and the costs of failure—either a failure to win the election, or a failure to govern competently and purposefully afterward—are as large as the opportunity. We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the frontrunner in the polls, would be to blow this opportunity. We say that mindful of his opponents’ imperfections—and of his own virtues, which have been on display during his amazing comeback. Very few people with a personal history like his—two divorces, two marriages to former mistresses—have ever tried running for president. Gingrich himself has never run for a statewide office, let alone a national one, and has not run for any- thing since 1998. That year he was kicked out by his colleagues, the most conservative ones especially, who had lost confidence in him. During his time as Speaker, he was one of the most unpop- the national stage. Republican presidential candidates have not ular figures in public life. Just a few months ago his campaign been known for their off-the-cuff eloquence in recent decades, but seemed dead after a series of gaffes and resignations. That conservatism should not choose a standard-bearer who would Gingrich now tops the polls is a tribute to his perseverance, and have to spend much of his time untying his own tongue. Rep - to Republicans’ admiration for his intellectual fecundity. resentative Bachmann’s rise early in the primary season reflected Both qualities served conservatives well in the late 1980s and the public’s hunger for sincere conviction; her later descent, early 1990s, when Gingrich, nearly alone, saw the potential for a following among other things her casual repetition of false anti- Republican takeover of Congress and worked tirelessly to bring it vaccine rumors, its desire that conviction be married to judgment. about. Even before the takeover, Gingrich helped to solidify the Representative Paul’s recent re-dabbling in vile conspiracy party’s opposition to tax increases and helped to defeat the Clinton theories about September 11 are a reminder that the excesses of health-care plan. The victory of 1994 enabled the passage of wel- the movement he leads are actually its essence. fare reform, the most successful social policy of recent decades. Three other candidates deserve serious consideration. Gov - Gingrich’s colleagues were, however, right to bring his tenure ernor Huntsman has a solid record, notwithstanding his some- to an end. His character flaws—his impulsiveness, his grandi osity, times glib foreign-policy pronouncements; his main weakness is his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) his apparent inability, so far, to forge a connection with con- ideas—made him a poor Speaker of the House. Again and again servative voters outside Utah. Governor Romney won our he combined incendiary rhetoric with irresolute action, bringing endorsement last time, in part because some of the other leading Republicans all the political costs of a hardline position without can didates were openly hostile to important elements of conser- actually taking one. Again and again he put his own interests vatism. He is highly intelligent and disciplined, and he takes con- above those of the causes he championed in public. servative positions on all the key issues. We still think he would He says, and his defenders say, that time, reflection, and reli- make a fine president, but time and ceaseless effort have not yet gious conversion have conquered his dark side. If he is the nom- overcome conservative voters’ skepticism about the liberal inee, a campaign that should be about whether the country will aspects of his record and his managerial disposition. Senator continue on the path to social democracy would inevitably Santorum was an effective legislator. He deserves credit for high- become to a large extent a referendum on Gingrich instead. And lighting, more than any other candidate, the need for public poli- there is reason to doubt that he has changed. Each week we see cies that topple barriers to middle-class aspirations. Weighing the same traits that weakened Republicans from 1995 through against him is a lack of executive experience. 1998: I’d vote for Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform; Paul Ryan’s As Republican primary voters consider their choices, they Medicare reform is radical right-wing social engineering; I apol- should ask themselves several questions: Which candidate is ogize for saying that, and no one should quote what I said be - most likely to make the race turn on the large questions before the cause I was wrong; actually, what I said was right all along but country, and not his personal idiosyncrasies? Which candidate nobody understood me. I helped defeat Communism; anyone is most likely to defeat Obama? Who could, if elected, form an NEWSCOM / who made money in the ’80s and ’90s owes me; I’m like Reagan effective partnership with Republican leaders and governors to and Thatcher. Local community boards should decide what to do achieve the conservative agenda? We will render further judg- with illegal immigrants. Freddie Mac paid me all that money to ments in the weeks to come as the candidates continue to make CHRIS FITZGERALD

: tell them how stupid they were. Enough. Gingrich has always said their cases and are, just perhaps, joined by new candidates. At he wants to transform the country. He appears unable to trans- the moment we think it important to urge Republicans to have the form, or even govern, himself. He should be an adviser to the good sense to reject a hasty marriage to Gingrich, which would AND ROMNEY , Republican party, but not again its head. risk dissolving in acrimony. Gingrich is not the only candidate whom we believe conserva- HUNTSMAN

, tives should, regretfully, exclude from consideration for the pres- EDITOR’S NOTE: The next issue of NATIONAL REVIEW idency. Governor Perry has done an exemplary job in Texas but will appear in three weeks.

SANTORUM has seemed curiously and persistently unable to bring gravity to

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The Conservative Tr a d i t i o n TIM Taught by Professor Patrick N. Allitt ED E O    IT FF E IM R    L 1. What Is Conservatism? 2. The Glorious Revolution and Its Heritage 70% 3. Burke, Tradition, and the French Revolution O 9 4. Pitt and the Wars of the French Revolution 2 R off D Y 5. The American Revolution ER R 6. The Federalists B UA Y FEBR 7. Conservatives in the American South 8. Northern Antebellum Conservatism 9. Opposing the Great Reform Act 10. Robert Peel and the Conservative Revival 11. Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill 12. Conservatism and the American Civil War 13. Industrialists, Mugwumps, Traditionalists 14. Disraeli and Tory Imperialism 15. The Rise of Labour and the House of Lords 16. The Idea of Anglo-Saxon Supremacy 17. No Vote for Women 18. American Conservatives after World War I 19. Opposing the New Deal 20. The Tory Party from Bonar Law to Churchill 21. The Reaction to Labour and Nationalization 22. American Anticommunism and McCarthyism 23. American Traditionalists 24. Libertarianism 25. National Review and Barry Goldwater 26. Upheavals of the 1960s 27. The Neoconservatives 28. The Neoconservatives and Foreign Policy 29. Christian Conservatives and the New Right 30. Margaret Thatcher’s Counterrevolution 31. Monarchs and Prime Ministers 32. Reagan Triumphant 33. The End of the Cold War 34. Paleoconservatives and Theoconservatives 35. Culture Wars Gain Insights into the 36. Unresolved Paradoxes

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and public assistance at the appropriate level of government can then protect those who are unable to care for themselves. What is truly revolutionary about the United States is that the ladder of opportu- nity became available to everyone. As a result, poverty has been vastly diminished. Even more important, it is no longer a per- manent condition from which there is no real possibility of escape. But about a hundred years ago, there arose a different dream: that government could engineer a better society, rather than simply leaving the people free to create one. Progressive reformers were convinced not only that the American founders were wrong in their assumptions about man and about the necessity of limited government, but also that advances in science would allow government to reshape society and eradicate the inequalities of property and wealth that had been unleashed by indi- The String-Pullers vidual rights, democratic capitalism, and the resulting growth of commerce and Channeling TR, President Obama advocates rule-by-elites business. A more activist government, built on evolving rights and a “living” Constitution, would redistribute wealth BY MATTHEW SPALDING and level out differences in society through progressive taxation, economic regula- ARACk OBAmA initially ran for Throughout history and today in many tions, and extensive social-welfare pro- president invoking Abraham parts of the world, political rule is the grams, all centrally administered by expert Lincoln, then looked to Franklin privilege of the strongest and the most bureaucrats. B D. Roosevelt and even appealed powerful. America is exceptional because The clearest formulation of this nation- to Ronald Reagan. He began campaigning it is dedicated to the principle of universal alizing and socializing aspect of progres- for reelection as Harry Truman running human liberty: that all are fundamentally sive thought is found in an influential book against a “do nothing” Congress. But now, equal by nature and equally endowed with by Herbert Croly called The Promise of at long last, he has revealed that his heart unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the American Life (1909). Croly allows that truly lies with the old Bull moose progres- pursuit of happiness. This principle and Americans are entitled to an “almost reli- sive, Theodore Roosevelt. the constitutional framework of law that gious faith” in their country, but quickly In a pilgrimage to the small town of enlivens it are the foundation of the Amer - cuts to the problem: “The traditional Osawatomie, kan., President Obama has ican Dream. Amer ican confidence in individual free- given the defining address of his admin- The related principle that each has a dom has resulted in a morally and socially istration. Osawatomie is where Teddy right to the rewards of his own labor undesirable distribution of wealth.” The Roosevelt in 1910 delivered his famous makes possible a dynamic social order in time has come to reject the ghosts of the speech calling for a “New Nationalism” which every member of society can work Founding and devote ourselves to “a dom- and launching his campaign for a third hard and advance based on individual inant and constructive national purpose” presidential term, which ultimately led talent and ability. The primary obligation centered on a new theory of the state, in him to bolt from the Republicans and run of government is to secure property rights, which experts administer government and as the Progressive-party candidate. break down artificial barriers to opportu - regulate the economy to achieve progres- Osawatomie was Roosevelt at his most nity, and uphold the rule of law. sive outcomes. By becoming “responsible progressive, and so it was for mr. Obama. This is sound economic theory. When for the subordination of the individual If there was any doubt before, it is now property is protected, there is an incentive to that purpose,” Croly writes, “the Amer - clear that the president has given up on the to earn, save, and invest in opportunities ican state will in effect be making itself center of American politics and doubled for the future. When guaranteed to reap responsible for a morally and socially down on his governing model. And this what they sow, more people will sow and desirable distribution of wealth.” tells us everything about where he is reap. When economic reward is available Despite his image as a “trust buster,” coming from and where he wants to go. to all, and the protection of property ex- Theodore Roosevelt preferred not to dis- tends to all, the amount of wealth through- mantle large corporations, but rather to Mr. Spalding is vice president for American studies at out society increases exponentially. A control and regulate them in the public

the Heritage Foundation. basic safety net formed by civil society interest. “Great corporations exist only ROMAN GENN

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because they are created and safeguarded fair—and that means ever more govern- by our institutions,” he proclaimed in ment authority, programs, and regulation. 1901, “and it is therefore our right and our “As a nation,” Obama said, “we’ve always An duty to see that they work in harmony with come together, through our government.” these institutions.” That meant centraliz- And so Obama returned to his mantra of Unavoidable ing control of the economy and expanding more federal education programs, more the power of the national government. infrastructure spending, and more eco- Increasingly progressive after his election nomic regulations. And, of course, raising Challenge to a full term in 1904, roosevelt declared taxes on the wealthy to pay for these war against “predatory wealth,” argued “investments” would only be fair. Now is the time to make the case for that administrative commissions should Obama denies the charge of class war- military action against Iran recommend regulatory measures to Con- fare, and, as class warfare is convention- gress, and—by the end of his second ally understood, he is correct. What he is BY JOHN YOO term—was calling for a graduated income actually doing is abandoning the average, and inheritance tax. middle-class voter and his middle-class Ur political calendar and In 1910, roosevelt set out to define a values and cobbling together an alliance one of our nation’s greatest more comprehensive progressive philoso- of state dependents, government hangers- threats have synchronized. phy, and found it in Herbert Croly’s book. on, and political elites who claim the O In the upcoming year, the “The material progress and prosperity of a capacity to run things. Obama’s program American people will render their judg- nation are desirable chiefly so far as they is fundamentally about the rise of a new ment on Barack Obama’s presidency. lead to the moral and material welfare of governing class that insists on enforcing Meanwhile, if the International Atomic all good citizens,” roosevelt observed in political and economic “fairness” rather Energy Agency’s November report is his Osawatomie speech, the initial draft of than letting us govern ourselves. The accurate, Iran will soon join the ranks of which was written by Croly. Progress and managed quest for fairness inevitably the world’s nuclear powers. Because of welfare require not only the centralization leads to bureaucratic favoritism, inequal- the Obama administration’s reluctance of government but also the nationalization ities based on special interests, and undue to confront this looming threat, others— of politics—a break from the American political influence. such as the republican presidential can- tradition of localism. The federal govern- At some point in every presidential cam- didates—must begin preparing the case ment should now play an interventionist paign, there is a speech that defines the for a military strike to destroy Iran’s role to advance progressive democracy, candidate and provides the rationale for nuclear program. for “if we do not have the right kind of law his policies in light of the larger meaning republican frontrunners have seized and the right kind of administration of the of the country. By turning to Tr’s New upon the threat. In last month’s South law, we cannot go forward as a nation.” Nationalism model, Obama has revealed Carolina debate, Mitt romney promised In his own Osawatomie speech, Presi- once and for all that the intellectual ante - that Iran “will not have a nuclear wea - dent Obama donned Tr’s progressive cedent of his administration is the progres- pon” under his presidency. Economic mantle. He alluded to “an America where sive theory of governance. He is calling his sanctions and aid to internal opposition hard work paid off, and responsibility was party back to its most radical roots. His come first, said the former Massachusetts rewarded, and anyone could make it if objective as president is to complete the governor, but “if all else fails . . . [and] they tried—no matter who you were, no progressive transformation of America, there’s nothing else we can do besides matter where you came from, no matter and define its next phase as assuring not take military action, then of course you how you started out.” But this “basic bar- equal opportunity, but “fair” outcomes, by take military action.” gain” has become so eroded by the mar- redistributing wealth and benefits through Newt Gingrich, the frontrunner in sev - ketplace that the “defining issue of our an ever more complicated and extensive eral early states, heartily agrees. In the time” is “to restore growth and prosperity, government that regulates more and more South Carolina debate, Gingrich pro- restore balance, restore fairness.” of the economy and society. posed covert operations, including “tak- The choice we face, as Obama frames it, As the national government becomes ing out their scientists” and “breaking is the same offered by progressives 100 ever more centralized and bureaucratic, up their systems,” and a Cold War–style years ago: between the harshness of mar- acting without constitutional limits, it also strategy “of breaking the regime and ket capitalism (defined in true straw-man becomes more undemocratic, and more bringing it down.” But the former fashion as “you’re-on-your-own econom- potentially despotic, than ever. The result House speaker “agree[s] entirely” with ics” with “a free license to take whatever is that a government designed to secure the romney that, should pressure fail, “you you can from whomever you can”) and right to the pursuit of happiness and to have to take whatever steps are neces- the fairness of progressive nationalism break down unjust barriers to opportunity sary” to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear (the view that “we are greater together— now penalizes success, restricts opportuni- weapons. when everyone engages in fair play, and ty, and has become the chief barrier to the everybody gets a fair shot, and everybody achievement of the American Dream. Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of does their fair share”). The 2012 election will be a referen - California, Berkeley, and a visiting scholar at the The word “fair” recurs in various forms dum on the governing philosophy of this American Enterprise Institute. He served in the Bush throughout the speech, with reminders nation. Let us hope that voters understand Justice Department from 2001 to 2003 and is the along the way that things have to be made the stakes. co-editor of Confronting Terror.

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In this game of diplomatic poker, the The U.N. Charter guarantees the no matter how justified or beneficial, Republicans would go all in where the “territorial integrity” and “political in - to the approval of authoritarian na - last administration and the present one dependence” of each member nation, tions. have checked. Though he declares that and prohibits the use of force except in Thankfully, the U.S. has not often “we don’t take any options off the self-defense, which many scholars and waited for the Security Council’s per- table,” President Obama avoids explicit international officials interpret to mean mission to protect its interests. But if the military threats. Instead he seeks to that force is prohibited except when an president seeks U.N. authorization for a “isolate and increase the pressure upon invader has attacked across a border or military action against Iran, his adminis- the Iranian regime.” He naïvely hoped is about to do so. It does provide an tration will have to make a case much to negotiate a settlement with Tehran exception for war to prevent threats to like the one that the Bush ad ministration (and Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea!), international peace and security, but made regarding Iraq. It can argue that but he has ended up in the same place only if approved by the Security Coun - destroying Iran’s nu clear weapons is a as his predecessor. George W. Bush cil (where the United States, Great combination of self-defense and pro - declined to attack Iran’s nuclear infra- Britain, France, Russia, and China all tecting international security. Nuclear structure. He also passed on striking a have a veto). Not surprisingly, U.N. au - weapons in the hands of an obvious suspected Syrian nuclear facility (the thorizations to use force are rare. China enemy would constitute a grave threat to Israelis destroyed it in 2007). Like and Russia, both Security Council American interests. Even without them, Obama, he pursued economic sanctions members, generally oppose interven- Iran has fomented conflict in the re - and applied political pressure to foster tion in what they consider “internal” gion, supported groups hostile to Israel Iranian regime change. affairs, including policies that repress through its client state Syria, supported President Obama has done more than political and economic freedoms. They terrorists who target American allies merely delay the inevitable day of reck- can usually be counted on to protect such as Saudi Arabia, and attacked oning with Iran. He has left the public other oppressive regimes by blocking American troops in Iraq. It has also sup- uninformed about the nature and possible U.N. approval for war, as they did in ported attacks on our embassies and consequences of military action, which Iraq in 2003. military bases in places such as Saudi President Obama has done more than merely delay the inevitable day of reckoning with Iran. He has left the public uninformed about the nature and possible consequences of military action.

must be serious and sustained enough to Just as national governments claim Arabia and Lebanon, planned to kill destroy complex, protected, and dispersed a monopoly on the use of force within ambassadors on Amer ican soil, and of facilities—pinpoint bomb ing of a single their borders and in exchange offer course taken our diplomatic officials facility will not end Iran’s nuclear pro- police protection, the U.N. asks na tions hostage. Nuclear weapons would allow gram. Iran might respond by attacking to give up their right to go to war and in Iran to escalate hostilities with little fear Israel, Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, exchange offers to police the world. of any large-scale American military and oil shipments in the Persian Gulf. But the U.N. has no armed forces of its response. If Saddam Hussein had suc- President Obama has also failed to ex - own, has a crippled decision-making ceeded in his drive to build nuclear plain the heavy costs of containment, system, and lacks political legitimacy. weapons, would the United States have which would involve a constant, signifi- It is contrary to both American na - gone to war in 1991 to protect a small, cant conventional and nuclear military tional interests and global welfare oil-rich sheikdom? presence on Iran’s peri meter. because it subjects any intervention, A president need not wait until an Obama has compounded this poli tical attack is imminent before taking action. negligence by failing to build the legal Iranian nuclear capabilities would case for attacking Iran. Instead, the cause a radical reversal of the balance administration has tethered Amer ican of power, and that fact justifies action in national security to the dictates of the itself. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, United Nations. In Libya, Obama delayed Pres. John F. Kennedy imposed a block- launching the air war until the Security ade, which is an act of war, though his Council approved the intervention, allow- legal advisers claimed it was a “quaran- ing a popular revolution to metastasize tine” instead. Soviet nuclear missiles into a prolonged, de structive civil war. were not fueling on the launch pads, The same craving for international ap - but President Kennedy used force be - proval may lead the administration to put cause the Russian deployment upset the off mili tary action against Iran until it is “Alsace-Lorraine—what did you superpower equilibrium in the Western too late. get for Christmas?” Hemisphere.

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Even realists who criticize a pro- immigrants, and on the other, his grand- democracy agenda should support the parents. Speaking of respectability, Gould prevention of Iranian hegemony in the The is a graduate of St. Paul’s School and Middle East. Iran seeks to export its fun- Peter house, Cambridge. Not bad for a damentalist revolution, with its brutal Z-Word Semitic upstart. suppression of individual rights and free In his widely publicized remarks, markets, throughout the region. It stokes When people say ‘Zionist,’ Flynn worried about “neocons and war- the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Its presi- what do they mean? mongers,” now itching to invade Iran. dent hopes to wipe Israel from the map. “Warmongers” is a word we can easily It undermines reconstruction and recon- BY JAY NORDLINGER understand. But what about two other ciliation in Iraq. It supports terrorists words Flynn used, “neocons” and “Zion - throughout the world. It threatens to FEW weeks ago, a Labour ist”? These are very slippery terms. If you close off the Straits of Hormuz, through MP in Britain, Paul Flynn, want to paralyze someone who denounces which travels 17 percent of the oil traded expressed displeasure with his neocons, say, “What’s a neocon?” If you worldwide. It has attacked shipping in A country’s ambassador to Israel. want to paralyze someone who denounces the Persian Gulf. A nuclear Iran could “I do not normally fall for conspiracy the- Zionists, or even refers to them, say, expand its asymmetric warfare against ories,” he said, “but the ambassador has “What’s a Zionist?” People use these its neighbors, or even escalate into con- proclaimed himself to be a Zionist.” words cavalierly and ignorantly. And ventional warfare, with little fear of What Britain needs in Israel, according none too nicely, either. direct retaliation. to Flynn, is “someone with roots in the We will concentrate on the older of the Military action need not go so far as U.K.” who “can’t be accused of having words, “Zionist.” Though it may be older an invasion or even a no-fly zone. Our Jewish loyalty.” than “neocon,” it is much, much newer forces would have to destroy Iranian air- Britain’s ambassador to Israel, as you than “Zion.” We first encounter “Zion” in defense sites, but otherwise, thanks to may have surmised, is a Jew, the first II Samuel, Chapter 5: “David took the precision-guided missiles and drones, to serve in that capacity. He previously strong hold of Zion: the same is the city they could concentrate on a few links in served in Pakistan and Iran (not Jewish of David.” I am quoting King James’s the Iranian nuclear chain: the centrifuge states). As for Matthew Gould’s “roots in translators. In Psalm 48, we have one of facilities where uranium is enriched, the the U.K.,” they may not be as deep as the loveliest lines in the entire Bible: assembly points for weapons, and per- Flynn’s, but they are semi-respectable: “Beautiful for situation, the joy of the haps missile and air-delivery systems. On one side, his great-grandparents were whole earth, is mount Zion.” Centuries The surgical nature of such strikes would make them proportional to the military objective, which would be not the overthrow of the Iranian regime but e United States once again can establish the destruction of its nuclear capability. Nuclear-weapons infrastructure is a a stable dollar worth its weight in gold. legit imate military target, even if some strikes may kill civilians. If casualties “The True Gold Standard --

result because facilities are located A Must Read for Policy Makers” beneath cities, the fault rests with the “Lew Lehrman’s most recent book on why we need to Iranians for deliberately using civilians adopt a new gold standard comes at just the right time. to shield its military—a move long for- The book makes the constitutional and policy arguments bidden by the laws of war. Unlike for the gold standard as a means of allowing economic Iranian-supported terrorist groups, the growth that will generate the revenue we need to eliminate United States will assuredly do every- GHÀFLWVDQGDYRLGDIXWXUHGHEWFULVLVRIRXURZQµ thing possible to keep civilian loss of — Former Congressman David McIntosh, life to a minimum. Indiana’s 2nd District (1995-2001) The United States has assumed the role, once held by Great Britain, of “Lehrman is the most profound monetary thinker of guaranteeing free trade and economic our time. The world monetary system is in a terrible development, spreading liberal values, crisis and we live in a world of booms, busts, and and maintaining international security. debilitating panics. The dollar has lost 82% of its 1971 value and 96% versus gold. Social disorder, wars, and Find it on Amazon.com An attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, revolution almost always follow such chaos. Lehrman in Paperback & on Kindle. though it would impose costs in human in this book analyzes the disorder and lays out an lives and political turmoil, would serve orderly, practical plan to restore economic growth and FREE Lewis E. Lehrman’s these interests and forestall the spread create a stable monetary system, exchange rates, and 5 Step Plan to Restore of conflict and terror. The Republican HQGLQÁDWLRQµ Economic Growth presidential candidates should begin — Barton M. Biggs, rough a Stable Dollar @ preparing the case now for this difficult author of Wealth, War & Wisdom eTrueGoldStandard.org but unavoidable challenge.

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later came a hymn that begins, “Glorious Earlier this year, Farrakhan said that things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our “Zion ists dominate the government of the God!” Those words were written by the United States of America and her banking author of “Amazing Grace,” John Newton. system.” He added, “Some of you think “Zion” may refer to a hill in Jerusalem, that I’m just somebody who’s got some- or a section of Jerusalem, or Jerusalem thing out for the Jewish people. You’re itself, or all Israel. Or to the kingdom stupid. Do you think I would waste my of God, period. It also may refer to the time if I did not think it was important for Jewish people or to all mankind. People in you to know Satan? My job is to pull the Illinois may know Zion as a city on the cover off of Satan so that he will never Wisconsin border. deceive you and the people of the world “Zionism” arose in the late 19th cen- again.” tury, and its believers and supporters were In Israel itself, the word “Zionist” is in “Zionists.” This was the movement to bad odor, certainly on the left. Few acad- establish a Jewish state in ancient Israel— emics, artists, and cool teens would want to “reestablish” that state, if you like. Zionist of Zionists, Theodor Herzl to be known as Zionists. This started “just European Jews such as Theodor Herzl after the 1967 war,” says Zev Chafets, the thought, or feared, that assimilation was administration, and in particular to the veteran American-Israeli writer. “Zionist” a lost cause. The host countries would work of one State Department official: came to mean superpatriot, flag-waver, never allow it. The best answer was a John Bolton. jingo. The worldwide Left associates return to Zion, to Israel. Other Jews held Over the years, people have denounced Zion ism with colonialism, imperialism, this return to be desirable in itself, re - Zionism while proclaiming their great and, of course, racism, and the Israeli gardless of whether assimilation in the love of Jews. They’re not anti-Jewish, you Left does the same. broader world was possible. see, but merely anti-Zionist. They could More than a few Israelis refer to them- Herzl wrote his pamphlet The Jewish just as well say “anti-Israel,” but “Zionist” selves as “post-Zionists,” which may mean State in 1896. The next year, he organ- is somehow the word of choice. any number of things. For instance, it may ized the first Zionist Congress, in Basel. Accepting an Academy Award in 1978, mean that they reject the old Zionist vision Many Jews were Zionists, many were not. Redgrave congratulated her colleagues on and instead welcome a “binational state,” Those who were not, were free to stay standing up to “Zionist hoodlums,” such including the West Bank and Gaza and where they were (as were those Jews who as those picketing outside. Later in her everyone in them. Jewish particularism is supported Zionism but did not wish to remarks, she said, “I pledge to you that anathema to them. When they think “Zion - emigrate themselves). The ancient lan- I will continue to fight against anti- ist,” they are apt to think “settler,” and guage, Hebrew, was revived. The move- Semitism and fascism.” In 1980, Jesse a settler, in their minds, is no good. Of ment gathered pace. After the Holocaust, Jackson called Zionism “a kind of poiso- course, not so long ago, just about every and a war of independence, the Jews had nous weed that is choking Judaism.” He Israeli was a settler, and a Zionist, to boot. their state. Zionism, i.e., Jewish national- was following the pattern of “Judaism There are still people who embrace the ism, was fulfilled. good, Zionism bad.” In 1992, he seemed Z-word, no matter the opprobrium that But the term hung on, particularly in to have a change of heart, hailing Zionism comes with it. Paul Flynn, the British MP, the mouths of Israel’s enemies. Indeed, as a “liberation movement.” said that Ambassador Gould “has pro- many Arabs would not, and will not, say But old habits die hard, and Jackson claimed himself to be a Zionist.” That is “Israel.” They say “Zionist entity” or is still liable to use “Zionism” or “Zionist” true. Gould has also said, “I thought long “Zion ist presence.” To say “Israel,” ap- as a term of abuse. In October 2008, Amir and hard about applying for the position” parently, would acknowledge statehood, Taheri, an exile journalist from Iran, re - of ambassador to Israel. “I thought it might which is unacknowledgeable, to some. corded what Jackson said at a conference just be all too difficult. But then I thought The late Yasser Arafat was a frequent in France. An Obama administration was to myself, ‘Why should Jews rule them- user of “Zionist aggressor,” “Zionist con- coming, he said, and this administration selves out of important positions?’” Gould quest,” and similar phrases. would diminish the “Zionists who have has emphasized he is “the British ambas- One goal of Israel’s enemies was to stig- controlled American policy for decades.” sador to Israel, not the Jewish one.” matize “Zionism,” and they had their Whom did he mean, exactly? What do peo- Ten years ago, Gil Troy, a history pro- greatest success in November 1975, when ple ever mean when they say “Zionists”? fessor at McGill University, wrote a book the United Nations passed its infamous Louis Farrakhan talks about Zionists with a totally unabashed title: “Why I Am Resolution 3379: Zionism equals racism. almost as much as Arafat did. An Asso ci - a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the “Racism” was the severest term of the age, ated Press report in 1984 said, “Farrakhan, Challenges of Today.” There are also many and it may well be that today, too. Vanessa who has been quoted as calling Judaism millions of Americans who support Israel Redgrave, a great supporter of Arafat and a ‘gutter religion,’ denied that he was and are known as “Christian Zionists.” his PLO, said, “Zionism is a brutal, racist against Jews. He has said that remark Their critics utter this term with disdain or ideology.” Other peoples could have their referred to Zionism, not Judaism.” Here is fear or both. I suspect that these Christians national expression, but not the Jews. an AP report from 1998: “Farrakhan sug- themselves have no problem with it.

Resolution 3379 was revoked in 1991, gested a Zionist plot was behind President To me, a Zionist has always been a per- NEWSCOM /

thanks chiefly to the work of the Bush 41 Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.” son who supports the idea of a Jewish AKG

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homeland, or state, in the Middle East. In mediocre middle linebacker who was a ancient Israel. Therefore, being a Zionist is fourth-round pick out of North Carolina essentially the same as supporting the right Tebow’s State, would want to take Tebow down a of Israel to exist. When Farrakhan says that peg. For good and for ill, head games and the U.S. government, the banks, and the Religion, intimidation are as much a part of football media are “dominated by Zionists,” I’m as tackling is (not to mention that Tebow apt to say, “Sure: Most Americans support has four inches on Tulloch and is a talent- Israel, both as idea and as reality.” But I am And Ours ed enough athlete that he might even make being too clever, no doubt—because when Earnest worship versus a better backer). people say “Zionist,” they really mean ... the worship of cynicism But there is also something a bit nastier Well, what do they mean? One clue in Tulloch’s mockery, in the phenomenon comes from John J. Mearsheimer, the BY DANIEL FOSTER of “Tebowing” as a whole, and in the cri - University of Chicago professor who, ticisms by players such as former Broncos with Stephen M. Walt, wrote The Israel HEN the Detroit Lions’ Ste - quarterback Jake Plummer, who said of Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a notori- phen Tulloch sacked the Tebow, “When he accepts the fact that we ous book published in 2007. Mearsheimer Denver Broncos’ Tim Tebow know that he loves Jesus Christ, then I has just written a blurb for a book by Gilad W in the first quarter of their think I’ll like him a little better.” Atzmon, an ex-Israeli who hates Israel Week Eight match-up, the linebacker So what is it that so many around foot- and hates himself, for that matter. He has immediately kneeled next to the prone ball—players, pundits, fans—are so peeved described himself as a “proud self-hating Denver quarterback in a mockery of about? Why has Tebow’s faith generated Jew.” In his blurb, Mearsheimer writes, Tebow’s habit of praying on the field, so much controversy and criticism in a “Panicked Jewish leaders, [Atz mon] most recently seen after the Broncos’ mir - sports-entertainment complex that is so ar gues, have turned to Zion ism (blind loy- a culous fourth-quarter comeback against filled with clichéd Jesus praise that, to alty to Israel) and scaremongering (the the Dolphins the week before. quote Homer Simpson, you’d think God threat of another Holo caust) to keep the The insult coincided with and reinforced helped only professional athletes and tribe united and distinct from the sur- the explosion of “Tebowing” as an Internet Grammy winners? rounding goyim.” meme, complete with a Twitter feed and So, there we have a definition of Zion- website where you can see an act of com- ism, from a professor of political science at munion with the Creator rendered as a one of our most distinguished universities: bit of pop-cultural ephemera and scroll “blind loyalty to Israel.” There is an old through pictures of folks striking the pose joke, told by Jews, that goes, “What’s the everywhere from Oxford to Istanbul, with definition of an anti-Semite? One who that muddle of irony and enthusiasm that hates Jews more than is absolutely neces- has become my generation’s trademark. sary.” Is that what a Zionist is—someone But there isn’t an ironic bone in Tim who supports Israel more than is absolute- Tebow’s body. That’s what makes him ly necessary? Someone who is too enthu- con spicuous. That’s what makes the fact siastic or unyielding in his support? that he’s managed to stay squeaky clean, In my observation, people say “Zion - in a sport that notoriously is not, con - Tim Tebow, praying prior to kickoff ist” when they don’t want to say “Jew” or spicuous. And that’s why the power of “Israeli.” As Gil Troy wrote last year, Tebow’s evangelical Christian faith, and I have a theory. Part of the resentment is “intellectuals have camouflaged modern the earnestness with which he professes it, redirected anger at Tebow’s success, after anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism.” There are annoys so many people. the whole of the football smart set had certainly people who are anti-Zionist or Even other religious quarterbacks have, come to the bizarre conclusion that, al- anti-Israel—is there a difference?—with- in a friendly way, advised Tebow to tone though he was clearly one of the ten or so out being anti-Jewish. Some of them are down his religiosity to avoid turning fans best quarterbacks ever to play in the Jews. But, as Paul Johnson, the historian, off. Said former Super Bowl champion NCAA, Tebow had no shot in the NFL. once said to me in an interview, “Scratch Kurt Warner, himself known to have led on- Football doesn’t like to be wrong; they’re the fellow who is anti-Israel, and you field prayers: “I’d tell him, ‘Put down the mad enough when surefire prospects turn won’t have to dig very far before you find boldness in regards to the words, and keep into busts, but when surefire busts succeed, the anti-Semite within.” Another histori- living the way you’re living. Let your they’re livid. They don’t like to see a guy an, Bernard Lewis, says that talk of Zion - teammates do the talking for you. Let them who winds up to throw passes like he’s ism “sometimes provides a useful cover”: cheer on your testimony.’” Likewise, when pitching for the Yankees—and only occa- a cover to those who harbor the old, Packers QB Aaron Rodgers was asked sionally sees them land anywhere near their enduring hatred. about Tebow in the context of his own more intended target—marching down the field As you go about life, you may encounter subdued avowals of faith, he offered the in the fourth quarter, week after week. NEWSCOM someone who says “Zionism” or “Zionist,” elliptical advice of Saint Francis of Assisi: But the greater part of it has to do with / RTR with an edge in his voice. Ask him what “Preach the gospel at all times. If neces- our culture’s curious double standard when / he means. The answer, or non-answer, you sary, use words.” it comes to public religion. All but the most

get is likely to be revealing. It’s easy to understand why Tulloch, a committed atheistic crusaders in this coun- RICK WILKING

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try have come to tolerate what the legal a chance to explane, because John got community has dubbed “ceremonial de - their first and he fed you a lot of garbage. ism,” an unwittingly damning term for Before You But I still like John, he is a fine young those acceptable celebrations of the Divine boy, he has been well brought up by his stripped of their divinity, the kind that take Say No . . . Mother. their place in rote recitations of pledges and But even if sometimes you don’t get patriotic songs: God as a feel-good place- A correspondence, nonfictional, along with me too well, I always think of holder, an empty signifier, a carrier of any- between a young boy, a housewife, you as my “Oldest Friend” so I hope you thing or nothing, the unremarkable and a headmaster, and the young will do me this great favor of writing me a earthly god whose name graces the al - letter of recommandation. mighty sawbuck. This is the god we rou- boy’s brother Thanking you for your trouble, tinely hear invoked by the professional BY ALOÏSE BUCKLEY HEATH Respectfully yours, athletes. With very few exceptions—Mari- PeTeR BAIleY-GATeS a no Rivera comes to mind, as well as Curt March 7 Schilling, and post–Prime Time Deion San - Dear Mrs. Heath: P.S.: Thank you for the pennies of which I ders—athletes’ professions of faith strike I wish to ask you a great favor. My already had the 1926 San Francisco mint most believers, nonbelievers, and agnostics brother David goes to Cranwell and he but I did not have the 1921 Denver. Do alike as empty ritual, an extended solipsism says they go easier on brothers, so I you have a 1905 Indian Head, I will pay in which big men with bigger egos congrat- might have a chance to get in even one nickel, clear profit of four (4)¢? ulate themselves for having God on their though my grades aren’t so terribly Respectfully yours, side. How could it be otherwise? We see good. But I need three letters of recom- PeTeR BAIleY-GATeS that in fact so many of them are supremely mendation and I have one from a priest arrogant—materialists, abusers, and lech- and one from a nun and my father says March 7 ers. We accept their professions of faith pre- he thinks the third one better be from Dear Peter: cisely because they are empty. And we’ve someone who is not a priest or a nun. I would be glad to write you a letter of become cynical and secular enough that the You are not a priest or a nun but yet you recommendation to Cranwell, and I am dissonance between their actions and their know me intamitely from me having very flattered that you asked me. Of stated beliefs doesn’t bother most people. delivered your paper even that bad day course, I will have to tell the Truth, the The hypocrisy is actually sort of comfort- right after Christmas when their was no Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth, ing, a confirmation that that old hokum in school and the Times boy didn’t deliver so I hope nobody will be careless enough the Bible has no bearing on the world as it his customers, and from those Catholic to allow my letter to fall into the hands of actually is. It’s the same sort of glee you Christmas cards you always buy, and the police. I can’t tell you how much I see from some when Christian politicians from the jack lantern pumpkins I helped would miss you if you had to spend the and ministers are felled by all-too-human you carve three years in a row, and the next ten years in a reformatory. moral—especially sexual—foibles. easter eggs, and a lot of other things. Respectably yours, By contrast, Tebow is the last Boy Scout: (like the time I picked up John when he MRS. H. a leader on the field and off who spent his broke his arm and taught Priscilla how college years not indulging in any of the to ride a two-wheeler.) P.S.: No, I haven’t got a 1905 Indian worldly pleasures afforded to Heisman Before you say no, I did break the tram- Head, which saddens me very much, but Trophy winners but doing missionary work poline but I didn’t honestly know how what saddens me more is the fact that in Thailand, helping overworked doctors heavy I was, because I grew very sud- even after three years’ acquaintanceship perform circumcisions in the Philippines denly and the only reason I was always you don’t know me well enough to realize (you read that right), and preaching at on the roof was because of my gliders that I also know that this particular penny schools, churches, and even prisons. This is which you said I could get if they were on is worth $6! You and your 4¢ profit—hah! a young man with such a strong work ethic the roof, and the time you wouldn’t let I’ve told you and told you about my high that, according to teammates, he can’t even me come in your backyard for three IQ. Don’t you believe me? However, just be coaxed into hitting the town on a night weeks that time, Catholic Word of Honor, to show you I bear no grudge, I will give after a Broncos win, because he is too busy John started it and it was not my fault you my duplicate of the 1911 no mint preparing for the next week’s game. This is because Scout’s Honor, I only gave John mark—for free yet! a young man who even turned the other the most compleatly gentle kind of tap so Respectably yours, cheek at Stephen Tulloch’s Tebowing, say- he would go home so Georgie Cun ning- MRS. H. ing, “He was probably just having fun and ham wouldn’t beat him up, because you was excited he made a good play and had know how Georgie is when he gets mad. P.P.S.: Don’t worry about my letter. I will a sack. And good for him.” Because John threw a mud ball at him on bet you one dollar (from me) to one That’s way too much earnestness for the his bicycle. Not that you were wrong, but doughnut (from you) that you will get into ironic. It’s way too much idealism for the that I’m explaning now, because you Cranwell—not because you’re such a hot- cynical. And it’s way too much selflessness were so mad then you wouldn’t give me shot, you understand, but because if I’m for the self-absorbed. In short, people aren’t crazy enough to like you, your priest and upset at Tebow’s God talk. They’re upset A Christmas story by the late Aloïse Buckley Heath is your nun are probably suffering from the that he might actually believe it. an NR tradition. same form of insanity. On the other hand,

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they may know you even better than I do, Lest my young friend sound barely Mrs. Benjamin Wild Heath God help them! lower than the angels, I must add that his 29 colony road respectably yours, fertile imagination combined with his West Hartford, connecticut Mrs. H. 13-year-old’s sense of humor has led, on occasion, to my addressing him with Dear Mrs. Heath: March 9 words harsh and unkind (“You know I am very grateful to you for your de - To Whom It May concern: perfectly well that when I told you last tailed and colorful description of Peter Peter Bailey-Gates has been in and out Tuesday you could climb up on the roof to Bailey-Gates. of my house almost daily for the past three get your glider, I didn’t mean you could Many of Peter’s accomplishments can years—by “almost” I mean those short buy ten more gliders and aim them at be put to good use at school. Leaf-raking sentences of exile which I have been un - the—and by the way, I hope you didn’t and snow-shoveling are part of the puni- kind enough to impose upon Peter—and buy them with the lottery money for the tive curriculum. endowed with all the in that time I have come to know him very bicycle horn—when are you going to energy which you describe, I am sure that well indeed: as friend, paper boy, fellow have that lottery, anyway? I bought those Peter will be an early candidate for de - penny-collector, and combined decorator, tickets six weeks ago!” And much more). merits. waiter, and entertainer at my younger These irrational, if predictable, crises of We will try to keep pace with Peter. children’s birthday parties. the adult world leave Peter possibly re - What substitute we will have when the I have found Peter to be unfailingly pentant, probably remorseful, but certain- occasion arises for Peter to “retire to his good-humored, well-mannered, and con- ly unruffled. He is more sophisticated own backyard” we will try to figure out siderate—all of which qualities stand him today than three years ago, when, at the during the year. in good stead in his relations with the age of ten, he frequently urged me not to sincerely yours, public, which are many and varied. I am get my liver in a quiver. Today, when cHArLes e. Burke, sJ sure that no boy in New england, much Peter and I have what he refers to as “a (rev.) charles e. Burke, sJ less in West Hartford, has been engaged Principal in so many intricate business enterprises as Peter Bailey-Gates. I have bought, March 15 hired, subscribed to, invested in, paid and Dear Mimi and Dad: been paid interest on fully a dozen of Please excuse the paper, for I’m in study his ventures in the last three years—not hall, and since something happened to - even counting his snow-shoveling, leaf- night, which made me feel pretty proud of raking, apple-picking, and garbage-can- my little (little? Ha Ha) brother Peter, I toting, for which my own young sons are thought I’d tell you about it, unless you recruited. Peter’s financial sense is, how- already know. This has also changed prac- ever, no deterrent to his feeling for what tically my entire attitude toward Father is fitting and proper: When he washed the Burke who has practically never been car of the 70-year-old spinster who lives known to crack a smile in the memory of nearby, for instance, he was careful to the oldest graduate. explain (lest I should find out, I suppose!) Not more than five minutes ago, dur - that he had refused payment only because ing the break between study-hall hours, she had “no man to make money for her”; Father Burke called me and showed me again, when he asked me to take an ad in difference of opinion,” he retires with a letter which Mrs. Heath had written his projected Colony Road News and I complete equanimity to his own backyard to him about Peter. It described Peter to was so irreverent as to reserve two inches until such time as my ill-humor subsides. a tee. All of the letter was praiseworthy of space for the slogan “HoorAY For Mrs. My change of mood is apparently picked about him, and had been written just HeATH,” Peter offered to refund my dollar up by Peter’s extrasensory perception about Peter and nothing else. Father because he had caused my ad to appear as within the hour, for whenever I decide Burke was astonished and asked me if it “coMPLIMeNTs oF A FrIeND.” I must, how- that the time has come for forgiving and was all true, and I told him it was, and he ever, state categorically that Peter has forgetting, he appears at my front door said in that case PeTer GeTs IN!! . . . faithfully and conscientiously fulfilled within 15 minutes, to assure me he has say hello to the little kids for me please, his share of every and any contract be - forgiven and forgotten. By way of proof and tell them “Big Dave” will be home tween us, what ever it may have been. (or pen ance?) he then resumes without soon. (And the fact that one or two of these con- rancor his status as our daily visitor. Love and prayers, tracts have been rather clearer to Peter Needless to say, our friendship is stead- Your soN DAvID than to me has been indignantly attrib- fast. uted by my own children to my habit of ALoïse BuckLeY HeATH March 15 CORBIS

/ doing jigsaw puzzles, reading, watching (Mrs. Benjamin Wild Heath) Dear Pete—Boy, does Mrs. Heath sure tele vision programs, and saying “uh- have your number. Father Burke said he hunh” simultaneously, when I should March 15 can hardly wait to get you up here to have been listening. My husband affirms crANWeLL PrePArATorY scHooL knock it out of you. Love and kisses.

STEFANO BLANCHETTI this judgment.) office of the Principal DAve

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The Gingrich Gestalt You take a dubious record, you take some wacky ideas, you take a narcissistic personality . . .

BY MARK STEYN

wAS wrong about Newt. Or, as Newt would say, I was if you live in the I-95 corridor, you might want to buy black- fundamentally wrong. Fundamentally and profoundly out curtains. wrong. I was as adverbially wrong about Newt as it’s But, when you draw them, Newt’s still there, shimmering I possible to be. Back in the spring, during an analysis of beguilingly, which is the one adverb I fundamentally never the presidential field, I was asked by Sean Hannity what I thought I’d be using for this most fundamentally adverbial of thought of Gingrich. If memory serves, I guffawed. I sug- candidates. A year ago, we were still talking about Palin and gested he was this season’s Alan Keyes—a guy running for Daniels and Christie and Jindal and Ryan, an embarrassment president to boost his speaking fees but whose candidacy was of riches. Barely a month ago, Cain and 9-9-9 were riding otherwise irrelevant. I said I liked the cut of this Tim Paw- high, an embarrassment of a different kind, and Gingrich lenty fellow, who promptly self-destructed. There would be a was still a single-digit asterisk. But, like Gussie Fink-Nottle, lot of that in the months ahead: Michele Bachmann ODing on we are all Newt-fanciers now. On the eve of Iowa it seems the Gardasil, Rick Perry floating the trial balloon of his candida- Republican base’s dream candidate is a Clinton-era retread who cy all year long, only to puncture it with the jaunty swing of proclaims himself a third Roosevelt, with Taft’s waistline and his spur ten minutes into the first debate. And when all the twice as many ex-wives as the first 44 presidents combined; a other Un-Romney of the week candidates were gone, there lead zeppelin with more baggage than the Hin­den­burg; a self- was Newt, the last man standing, smirking, waddling to the help guru crossed with a K Street lobbyist, which means he’s debate podium. Unlike the niche candidates, he offers all the helped himself on a scale few of us could dream of. For this the faults of his predecessors rolled into one: Like Michele Tea Party spent three years organizing and agitating? Bachmann, his staffers quit; like Herman Cain, he spent the Gingrich’s timing is brilliant—if it was planned. And, if it’s latter decades of the last century making anonymous women accidental, it’s kind of freaky. You’ll recall that two decades uncomfortable, mainly through being married to them; like ago, in one of his many Post-it notes to himself, Newt wrote: Mitt Romney, he was a flip-flopper, being in favor of gov- “Gingrich—primary mission. Advocate of civilization. De - ernment mandates on health care before he was against them, finer of civilization. Teacher of the rules of civilization.” I’m NEWSCOM and in favor of big-government climate-change “solutions” not sure I’m quite ready to acknowledge Newt as the “definer / RTR before he was against them, and in favor of putting giant mir- of civilization,” but he is certainly the teacher of the new rules / rors in space to light American highways by night before he of primary season. Consultants, money, endorsements are for

was agai . . . oh, wait, that one he may still be in favor of. So, schlubs. The daring candidate is out there running on porten- BRIAN SNYDER

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tous adverbs: In the land of Cain and Perry, the polysyllabic repeal of Obamacare, you take a 12.5 percent corporate-tax man is king. Iowa is now all that stands between Newt and rate, you take community illegal-immigrant-legalization boards, the nomination. If he wins there, you might expect New you take airborne lasers and fire them at North Korea, you take hampshire to protect its brand by voting for the non-Newt. the oceans and pump nitrogen into them to end global warm- Instead, what’s left of Romney’s softening lead in the Granite ing, you take Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and State will vanish as legions of nominal “independents” flood apply it as a business model to the Congressional Budget the Republican primary to vote for the candidate they figure Office, you take Deepak Chopra on deep-pan pizza, and sud- will be easiest to beat in the general—as happened in 1996, denly you have a candidate who knows the difference between when more than a few of my liberal neighbors figured why Gestalt and Gstaad in a way that is kind of conservative but waste your vote renominating Clinton when you can cross also very . . . over, boost Pat Buchanan, and sabotage Bob Dole. From New hampshire, the race moves to South Carolina and Florida, where Gingrich is already ahead, and thence to a slew of south- hOa, hold up there. What exactly is so conservative ern primaries, to the vast majority of whose electorate Mitt is about the Newt Gestalt? When Romney dared him a Massachusetts squish and to the rest a demonic cultist. So the W to return his Freddie Mac windfall, Gingrich fate of the Romney campaign now rests on some other candi- responded by demanding that Mitt “give back all of the money date—Ron Paul—figuring out a way to stop Newt in Iowa. he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off Warned against his tendency to self-glorification, Gingrich employees over his years at Bain.” That’s a cute line if you’re reacted to his amazing revival by modestly comparing him - a 32-year-old Transgender and Colonialism major trying to self to Reagan, Thatcher, and the founders of Walmart and warm up the drum circle at Occupy Wall Street, but it’s very McDonald’s. he left it to Joe McQuaid, publisher of the New odd coming from the supposedly more-conservative candidate Hampshire Union Leader, to produce a comparison more on the final stretch of a Republican primary. When Romney appropriate to a statesman-historian of his stature: Winston attacked Perry’s views on Social Security by accusing him of Churchill. Like Churchill resigning as first lord of the admir - wanting to shove Granny off a cliff, he was recycling the most alty after the debacle of Gallipoli, Gingrich resigned as Speaker shopworn Democratic talking point. Newt effortlessly trumps after the humiliation of the 1998 midterms. Like Churchill that by recycling the laziest anti-globalist anarchist talking spending years in the political wilderness, Gingrich spent years point. at Freddie Mac, Newt was peddling influence to a in the wilderness of K Street. Like Gingrich demanding that quasi-governmental entity. at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney was Barney Frank and Chris Dodd be sent to jail for political profi- risking private equity in private business enterprise. What sort teering, Churchill favored summary execution for the axis of “conservative” would conflate the two? leaders. Like Gingrich getting $1.8 million for services as a With his numbers sinking, Mitt was driven to go negative. “historian” to Freddie Mac, Churchill was on a seven-figure asked where his policies differed from Gingrich’s, Romney retainer from Goebbels. No, hang on . . . Like Newt on air cut to the chase: “We could start with his idea to have a lunar Force One, Winston was made to exit King George VI’s Gold colony that would mine minerals from the moon.” You can’t State Coach from the rear door. No, that’s not it . . . tell the players without a scorecard, folks. Both leading con- Newt, says former New hampshire governor John h. servative candidates have supported government mandates on Sununu, is “inconsistent, erratic, untrustworthy, and unprinci- health care. Both leading conservative candidates have sup- pled.” But, up against an untrustworthy, unprincipled opponent ported massive expansion of entitlements. But they differ on of consistently non-erratic soporific caution, that’s more than the critical issue of whether we should use large numbers of enough. Mitt Romney flutters no hearts. If you believe, as welfare claimants to mine unpasteurized green cheese from the many Republican voters do, that a second Obama term is an dark side of the moon. To be fair to Gingrich, he’s generally existential threat to the republic, the house-trained torpor of the sounder on economic issues than Romney: Mitt’s reforms Romney campaign is an affront. Whether Newt is the antidote would leave us with a corporate-tax rate twice as high as to it is a thornier question. The 44th president doesn’t loom Newt’s, and, in contrast to the Gingrich abolition of taxes on especially large on the Gingrich canvas: If Newt were a disas- capital gains, Romney is proposing to end them only for those ter movie, Obama would be one of those bit players who get making under $200,000 because it would be wrong to “spend swept away in the general avalanche of devastation. as our precious tax dollars for a tax cut.” When “conservatives” Gingrich laid it out to Newsweek, “You take brain science, you think tax cuts are government “spending,” who needs Nancy take personal and Social Security savings, you take offering Pelosi and Barney Frank? the poor the opportunity to work and have a paycheck instead I have little fear that a Gingrich administration will be of food stamps, you take Lean Six Sigma”—a management- spending money on lunar mining or giant space mirrors or efficiency doctrine, his latest fascination—“and suddenly genetically modifying plant life around the planet to suck all you have a Gestalt that is in many ways conservative, but in the carbon out. But I rather doubt we’ll get the 12.5 percent many ways very moderate.” corporate-tax rate and the abolition of the tax on capital gains, “You have a Gestalt”? Would Rick Perry have a Gestalt? Or either. Newt is said to be “unpredictable.” This is true in the herman Cain? Romney might, but the consultants would have narrow sense that one would not have predicted that a social advised against mentioning it after it tested badly with the faux pas in placement on state transportation to the Yitzhak focus group. Bush was never in danger of having a Gestalt, nor Rabin funeral would lead him to shut down the federal gov- Dole. and, with Newt’s Gestalt, brain science and Social ernment. But, aside from such offenses to his amour-propre, Security savings accounts are only the beginning! You take the Newt is actually extremely predictable. The surest way to bet

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is that the big-government stuff will happen and the rest won’t. us as “Canute”—the fellow who, at what is now Westminster, It was Newt who gave us S-CHIP, the biggest expansion of took his throne to the shore and commanded the incoming tide Medicaid since the program was created. On the other hand, not to wet his feet. It declined to obey, as Canute knew it when it came to holding the line on “tax credits” for people would: He staged the performance in order to teach his who don’t pay any taxes, Gingrich looked into Clinton’s eyes courtiers a lesson in the limits of kingly power. No such inti- and melted. Newt defends his big-government inclinations by mations of human limitation afflict the new Knut. Few poli - placing them in an historical context of a muscular activist ticians are more incisive at identifying the absurdities of Washington, citing, for example, the Homestead Act of 1862. America’s bloated, sclerotic leviathan—as he pointed out As it happens, I would be in favor of a new Homestead Act. recently, the headquarters of the U.S. military’s Africa Com - Government owns far too much land, greater than the sover- mand is in Stuttgart, which even Herman Cain might recognize eign territory of many other major nations, and that fact alone as barely qualifying as the general ballpark. But no other can- supports the self-indulgent delusion that America can chug didate on the right shares the boundless confidence that along as the Sierra Club writ large, a giant wildlife preserve Leviathan will work just swell if only Knut the Great is there that no longer needs to be in any business so vulgar as energy to command it. For Republicans, this is not someone who is extraction, all of which can be outsourced (if you’re Obama) to both “very conservative” and “very moderate,” but someone Latin America or (if you’re Gingrich) to the moon. A small- who is potentially the worst of all worlds: a man who embraces government conservative might conclude that America would big-government solutions to health care, climate change, and benefit from the equivalent of Mrs. Thatcher’s decision in 1979 all the rest, but who gets damned as a mean-spirited vindictive to sell off public housing to its tenants: It’s not an especially big right-wing hater—the Gingrich who stole Christmas, to revive thing, but it’s a way of communicating your understanding of the Newsweek’s 1994 cover story. relationship between the citizen and the state. In that sense, few And, as predictably unpredictable as Gingrich is, there of Gingrich’s proposals bear comparison with the Homestead remains the drearier routine of his post-Speaker career. When Act: Instead of enabling Americans to take risks and push the Churchill was forced from the Admiralty in 1915, he went on frontiers, they incline mostly to the expansion of bureaucracy to serve with the Sixth Battalion, the Royal Scots Fusiliers on and an increase in dependency. As a result of Gingrich’s “re- the Western Front. By contrast, when he was forced from the forms,” four out of ten American children are on Medicaid. speakership, Newt stayed in Washington working his Rolodex. Presumably this is what he meant when he told Newsweek These are different s, but even so the Freddie Mac business is that his Gestalt is “in many ways conservative, in many ways not a small thing. Perhaps the single most repellent feature of very moderate.” I’d prefer to formulate it this way: Gingrich is the political class that has served America so disastrously in a pushover for progressivism who’s succeeded in passing him- recent decades is its shameless venality in parlaying “public self off as a hard-line right-wing bastard. Which is why service” into a guarantee of an eternal snout at the trough. Democrats who make the mistake of believing their own talk- Newt writes bestselling books about government, produces ing points on Newt invariably have to improvise hastily. DVDs about government, sets up websites about government, In 2007 John Kerry found himself booked for a debate with but he is as foreign to genuine private-sector wealth creation as Gingrich on climate change and had his speechwriters prepare any life politician. Indeed, his endurance in Washington repre- some boilerplate about Newt’s “marching in lockstep with the sents one of the worst aspects of contemporary “public ser- climate-change deniers.” Unfortunately for him, the former vice”—that a life in politics no longer depends on anything so Speaker spoke first and announced that man-made global whimsical as the votes of the people. warming was a real threat that we needed to address “very So what does that leave? Tonally, his confident swagger is actively.” He praised as “a very interesting read” Kerry’s more appealing to the Republican base than Romney’s unctu- unreadable book on the subject, and for good measure added ous aw-shucks wholesomeness—just as John McCain’s mav- that he was “very worried about polar bears” because “my erickiness was more appealing than Romney last time around. name ‘Newt’ actually comes from the Danish ‘Knut,’ and And we know how that worked out for the GOP. The Dems are there’s been a major crisis in Germany over a polar bear named confident that this is a gift from the heavens: The Stupid Party ‘Knut.’” Kerry abandoned his prescripted attack on Gingrich, is stupid enough to put up a scowly, jowly fat guy whose name hailed his candor, and put his arm around him. Lest the paying is a byword for everything from the Nineties Mr. and Mrs. customers feel cheated by the bipartisan love-in, the senator Moderate don’t want to revive. attempted to put a bit of clear blue water between him and the But Newt wouldn’t be where he is right now if the conven- ruthless right-wing bastard by raising the possibility that per- tional wisdom were all that wise. It’s easy to dismiss the futuro - haps Gingrich did not share his enthusiasm for cap-and-trade. logical mumbo-jumbo of his accumulated brainstorms—“the Newt said he was willing to be persuaded. “I am going to sell Triangle of American Progress,” “the Four Great Truths,” “the a few more books for you, John,” he declared. Five Pillars of American Civilization,” “the Five Pillars of the 21st Century,” “the Nine Zones of Creativity,” “the Fourteen Steps to Renewing American Civilization”—except that right ’M not saying that the presidential debates will end with now he’s heading for the nomination and Paul Ryan and Mitch Gingrich offering to pen a new foreword to Dreams from Daniels aren’t. The Nine Zones and Fourteen Steps have been I My Father, only that anyone banking on Newt to clobber distilled to the One Singular Sensation: Newt lui-même. The Obama is flying on blind faith. SAS, the British special forces, have a motto: “Who dares By the way, “Knut” is not the name just of a German polar wins.” Unlike Mitt, Newt dares—and he may yet win. As the bear, but also of the Danish and English king better known to old Dem bumper stickers used to say, “Newt Happens.”

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accounting practices. While Speaker Gingrich does deserve some credit for the millennial budget surpluses, President Gin - How Speaker Newt grich would be crucified for attempting to revisit the policies that Balanced the Budget produced them—and conservatives would drive in the nails. He foremost contributor to the Gingrich surpluses was And why President Newt would not taxes, and the main contributor on that front was the pay- T roll tax, receipts from which far exceeded payouts to BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON Social Security and Medicare. Because such excess payroll-tax receipts are by law automatically spent on federal securities, they n the United States, our political discourse is extraordinarily camouflage the true extent of federal indebtedness. Thus the fis- democratic, and therefore extraordinarily stupid, and the cal paradox of the Gingrich surpluses: even though the federal immortality of certain myths—the Social Security “trust government reported hundreds of billions of dollars in budget I fund,” the impact of foreign-aid spending on the federal bud- surpluses, the total national debt continued to climb, by $113 bil- get—makes it nearly impossible to discuss the fundamental facts lion in the surplus year of 1998, by $130 billion in 1999, by $18 of American government. Here are two phrases that should be billion in 2000, and by $133 billion in 2001. What happened was struck from our political lexicon, their use designated an occasion in fact a redistribution of federal liabilities from publicly held for corporal punishment: “Reagan deficits” and “Clinton sur- debt to intragovernmental debt in the form of securities held by pluses.” Presidents do not write the national budget, balanced or the so-called trust funds that support the major entitlements otherwise, nor do they create deficits or surpluses. Congress does according to the epic fiction that is the federal ledger. The debt that, by passing tax bills and appropriations bills. There were no held by the public in the form of Treasury bonds and notes went Reagan deficits, nor were there Clinton surpluses: There were Tip down, but intragovernmental debt went up by an amount that O’neill deficits and newt Gingrich surpluses. exceeded that reduction. This of course makes those Gingrich The governors in the Republican presidential field all can boast surpluses look less attractive in retrospect. More important, it of having worked with legislatures to achieve balanced budgets. points to the major fiscal challenge in the coming years, when the Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman can boast of having done so in sit- entitlement programs will be the major driver of federal deficits. uations that replicate in miniature the national fiscal picture— Social Security already is in a permanent deficit, and, with some locked-in spending outpacing tax revenues reduced by recession $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, Social Security and Medi - and subsequent slow growth—but with an important difference: care will prove impossible to sustain, especially with an aging Unlike the federal government, states and cities do not really population. If deficit hawks can take heart from anything, it is have much choice but to balance their budgets. It is a lucky thing that the major Republican presidential contenders have credible that this is so, and one that bears further consideration: Most of plans for reforming Social Security and that most of them—the our states and cities operate under legal prohibitions against oper- notable exception is Gingrich—have credible plans for reform- ating deficits, but the federal example suggests that restraints on ing Medicare. borrowing are easily set aside, and many of our states and cities But the Gingrich surpluses were not accounting gimmickry have excellent credit ratings that would enable them to borrow at only. There were real reforms, too—reforms that were enacted by attractive rates. The real constraint here seems to be an informal and large over Republican objections, Gingrich’s in particular. norm against states’ and cities’ borrowing to finance regular oper- Again, a very large role was played by taxes, specifically by the ating deficits, even though they do borrow large sums for capital tax increases in the 1990 budget deal between Pres. George H. W. projects. Bush and congressional Democrats, and the tax increase in the no such norm prevails at the federal level, where balanced 1993 budget. The former so enraged Gingrich, who was at the budgets or surpluses require a combination of sober fiscal realism time the minority whip, that he hung up on chief of staff John and delicate bipartisan diplomacy. newt Gingrich has many fine Sununu when Sununu called with the news. The latter helped to qualities, but he is not the most obvious man for the job when the bring Republicans to the majority—every Republican had voted job calls for realism and delicate bipartisan diplomacy, virtues against it—and Gingrich to the speakership. with which the former Speaker is associated by no sentient polit- It also increased federal revenue substantially by steeply in - ical being. But the facts are not to be denied: Under a fiscal course creasing the top tax rate (from 31 percent to 39.6 percent), inflict- set by newt Gingrich and his Republican congressional allies, ing new taxes on the middle class (raising the gasoline tax, for the United States reported a budget surplus of $69.3 billion in instance), raising the corporate-income tax, lifting the income 1998 and of $125.6 billion in 1999. Gingrich resigned from the cap on Medicare taxes, and increasing taxes on Social Security House that year, but it was the continuation of Gingrich’s policies benefits, among other things. Conservatives, in thrall to some- that produced the subsequent surpluses of $236.2 billion in 2000 thing called Hauser’s Law—which is a law of economics in the and $128.2 billion in 2001. But this is not a conservative success same sense that Lady Gaga is a lady—argue that federal revenues story, conventionally understood: Gingrich balanced the budget always stay roughly the same regardless of tax rates, but this is in no small part by knuckling under to Democratic demands, demonstrably untrue. Federal tax receipts neared 21 percent of including relatively high taxes, and by helping to entrench the GDP in 2000, about one-sixth higher than their post-war average myth that our entitlement liabilities are only a kind of fiscal of 17.7 percent. The difference between 18 percent and 20 per- hypothesis, something that can be made to vanish into the fidu- cent may not seem like very much, but when you are talking ciary ether with a flourish of the magical wand of government about a share of an economy equal to a quarter of the world’s eco-

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nomic output, the numbers are very large indeed. In fact, with the insolvency of the United States. But no entitlement-reform deal exception of World War II, there was not a year in American his- that neglects the rest of the deficit will prevent that outcome, tory in which federal spending broke 21 percent until 1975, when either. The trick is to do both, and Newt Gingrich’s experience there began a long run of very high spending that ended with the suggests that higher taxes—and let’s not use the euphemism Gingrich ascendancy in 1994. When Republicans won their land- “revenues”—probably will need to be a part of that picture. slide in 1994, federal spending was 21 percent of GDP; by 2000, Like higher taxes, bipartisanship is not a good on its own; it was down to 18.2 percent—a real reduction in federal spend- given the perverse character of the contemporary Democratic ing relative to the size of the economy, if not in absolute terms. party, it would be better to describe bipartisanship as a necessary You may not remember 1994–2000 as a time of savage austerity evil. Faced with the master politician Bill Clinton, Gingrich had measures: We had welfare reform, a reduction in military spend- little choice but to cut relatively liberal deals, and contemporary ing, and generally sensible restraint that endured until the Republicans will have little choice about doing so, either, regard- peculiar economic ideas of Pres. George W. Bush and Rep. Tom less of what happens in 2012: A long-term solution, one that will DeLay went into effect, with the goal of reducing the putative stick, will require buy-in from both parties, and to proceed as budget surplus—to “return the surplus to the American people,” though this were not the case is deeply unconservative, to the as DeLay put it—as though such surpluses were a permanent extent that wishful thinking is unconservative. The essential victory, and as though the real debt were not mounting in spite thing for Republicans to do is to identify and encourage the best of them. If tax receipts today were comparable to the millennial deficit-reduction impulses that the Democrats harbor. (This may levels, then the 2013 deficit would run about $418 billion; if require the use of an advanced microscope.) The PAYGO rules, we are collecting taxes at the current level, that deficit will be for example, were hated by congressional Republicans, because $1.4 trillion. Democrats used them against unfunded, irresponsible tax cuts of Conservatives are justified in balking at the idea that one in the sort in which congressional Republicans specialize, and five dollars should be consumed by the parasitic class in Wash - PAYGO finally was abandoned in 2002. Subsequently, the deficit ington. But the lowest level of federal spending that Republicans more than doubled, from 1.5 percent of GDP in 2002 to 3.2 per- have brought us in recent decades was 18.2 percent in 2001. Until cent in 2008, then leaping to 10 percent of GDP in 2009. PAYGO such a time as there is evidence to the contrary, it probably is safe was not perfect, but it is preferable to trillion-dollar deficits. to think of 18.2 percent as a practical floor on federal spending, Bipartisan compromise is not perfect, either, but it beats default regardless of which party is in power. Perhaps some future and national impoverishment. Republican majority will do a better job of containing costs, but there is scant reason to think that likely: The most effective statu- tory constraint on federal spending, the so-called Pay-As-You- e are well past the point at which it is sufficient to Go (PAYGO) rules, were undermined by Republicans, who achieve moral victories, ideological victories, or mere chafed under the rules’ constraints when they desired to cut taxes W political victories. Political victories are a necessary without cutting spending. but not a sufficient condition for achieving the business at hand, which is, to put it baldly, a matter of national survival. That fact already is beginning to sink in among Republican budget hawks: HIS is a case, then, of picking our poison. Tax increases are “Broad-based tax reform” is a Republican euphemism for tax undesirable for any number of reasons, some of them increases, though it is not only a euphemism: It is important that T moral—if you go to bed with the devil, expect to wake up our tax code be reformed along the most growth-oriented lines, with a burning sensation—and some economic: Higher taxes those that minimize the distortion of economic decision-making, may retard growth and certainly will cause massive amounts of rather than along the class-warfare lines preferred by Pres. capital to be reallocated from productive purposes to unproduc- Barack Obama and his congressional allies. Phasing out the tive ones. Tax increases are a drag on growth, but so are endless deductions for mortgage interest, state and local taxes, charitable substantial deficits. The best method of balancing the budget giving, and the like would go a long way toward closing future would be spending cuts, but there is no constituency in Congress, deficits while removing destructive distortions from the tax or in the country, for cuts of the requisite depth—and, in any case, code. It is even more critical that we enact similar reforms in the those cuts would have real economic effects, too, though effects handout-ridden corporate tax code. A general policy of flatten- that probably would be less undesirable in the long run than ing and simplifying the tax regime—a model that has partisans entrenching the federal state at its current bloated level. The 2013 in both parties—is greatly preferable to further politicizing the deficit will probably run right around $1 trillion; if Republicans code with more brackets and more exemptions that encourage are not prepared to cut $1 trillion in spending, then they should rent-seeking on a massive scale. make their peace with tax increases—or make their peace with If Republicans find themselves in control of both chambers of endless deficits, until such a time as the weight of them produces Congress and the White House after 2012—which seems to me an avalanche that will destroy the economy of this country the most likely outcome at this point—they will need to act and seriously disrupt that of the rest of the world. Those are the quickly and decisively to pass a legislative program that reforms choices. the major entitlements and brings spending and taxing into some Incidentally, except where noted, none of the deficit numbers kind of sensible alignment. But in order to balance the budget, above includes the mounting liabilities for Social Security and a President Gingrich would almost certainly be obliged to accept Medicare, which are the most significant fiscal threats as we policies that Speaker Gingrich opposed, and that most Repub - move forward. Put simply, no balanced-budget program that fails licans will continue to oppose—until, once again, they have no to incorporate robust entitlement reform will prevent the even tual choice.

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recipients will be allowed legal presence in the United States, but not citizenship; and 3) amnesty will be awarded by local neigh- AMNESTY, borhood boards of citizens, based on the model of World War II Se lec tive Service boards. Often when newt offers the “big ideas,” as he calls them, that are the mainstay of his campaign, they appear at first blush to be AGAIN sensible and well considered. The former professor presumably does his research before delivering a lecture, right? Unfortunately, Gingrich’s plan would reward criminals and not this time. His amnesty proposal betrays a misunderstanding make the law arbitrary of why past amnesties have failed and an ignorance of how im - migration enforcement actually works. BY KRIS W. KOBACH Before continuing, let’s define the operative term. Since most members of the American public—and Re publi can voters in par- ticular—oppose amnesty, politicians go to great lengths to avoid n a debate at the end of november, newt Gingrich announced using the word, preferring euphemisms such as “legalization pro- his plan for dealing with the 11 to 12 million illegal aliens in gram” or “pathway to citizenship.” So it is important to state what the United States. It was classic newt. First he offered a brief an amnesty is. It is any policy that awards lawful presence in the I history lesson on the 1986 am nesty disaster, then he laid out United States to large numbers of illegal aliens, whether it offers his solution, with his signature air of self-confidence and bold- a path to citizenship or not. The opportunity to apply for citizen- ness. What he proposed is a standard mass amnesty, like those ship may or may not be included, but it’s an amnesty (legally, a long supported by liberal Democrats, but with three twists: 1) pardoning of illegal acts) either way. newt cannot accurately Only illegal aliens who have been here for an unspecified but claim that his proposal is not an amnesty merely because it does significant number of years will get the amnesty; 2) amnesty not of fer citizenship. now let’s look at newt’s big idea, which suffers from three fun- Mr. Kobach is the Kansas secretary of state. He is the co-author of Arizona’s and damental flaws. First, when revealing his plan, newt declared that Alabama’s laws against illegal immigration, and he served as counsel to U.S. it would not be “humane” to deport an illegal-alien household that attorney general John Ashcroft during the George W. Bush administration. had been in the United States for 25 years. After all, the illegal O JAY, CAN YOU SEE? And does he ever see in his acclaimed collection — you will, too!

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aliens might have friends in the community and might belong to a Rockwell scene. But they would not be judging an essay contest; church, he suggested. they would be judging the legal rights of individuals in a very But since when does having community ties make compliance complicated field, and the result would be uninformed and in - with the law optional? I lived in England for four years, made consistent treatment of the aliens. many good friends, and attended a local church. But I never In a subsequent candidates’ forum, Newt likened his neighbor- dreamed that by doing so I could stake a claim to permanent resi- hood amnesty panels to juries: “I would rather have my fate de - dence in the country. And I was there legally. Social ties do not cided by a jury of my peers than have my fate decided by a and should not create an entitlement to remain. Make Newt’s Washington bureaucrat.” Great line, but it misses one important argument anywhere else in the world when your visa expires and point: Juries are forbidden to decide questions of law (e.g., what you will politely be escorted to the nearest port of departure. acts are necessary to constitute a crime); they decide only facts Equally puzzling is Newt’s assertion that the illegal aliens who (e.g., whether the defendant committed those acts), and leave the have been here the longest are the ones who most deserve law to the judges. On Newt’s panels, the citizen-adjudicators amnesty. Apparently Newt believes that the longer you continue would be deciding issues of legal culpability and endowing to violate the law, the less culpable you are. He seems to be apply- amnesty recipients with legal rights (namely lawful presence and ing the property-law concept of “adverse possession”—a kind of work authorization in the Unit ed States). squatter’s right to remain—to immigration law. But squatters are Or, to put it differently, a jury decides the narrow factual ques- allowed to claim property rights only if their squatting has been tion, “Did he do it?” But Newt’s amnesty panel would decide the done in the open and the property owner has chosen to do nothing legal questions, “Which immigration laws did he violate?” (an about it. Illegal aliens conceal their status and evade law enforce- inquiry that involves both law and facts) and “Did he violate those ment. Why in the world should we reward those who have been laws in such a way that we are inclined to forgive the violations?” the most successful in committing federal crimes? These inquiries are vastly more complex and subjective—and Newt also suggested that an illegal alien violates the law only likely would result in different panels’ treating similarly situated once, when he first sneaks into the United States, and that if this one aliens unequally. crime occurred a long time ago, it’s okay to overlook it now. But This is to say nothing of who would serve on these panels. How most illegal aliens, in the ordinary course of living, commit multi- many minutes would it take the ACLU to set up a website urging ple crimes throughout their stay in the United States. For example, its members to sign up for them? The system would be easily it’s a crime to enter the country without inspection (which many manipulated by community organizers on a mission. illegal aliens do repeatedly), it’s a crime to use someone else’s Newt’s website also states that each amnesty recipient would have Social Security number to obtain employment, and it’s a crime to pass a criminal background check before his case comes before a to present false information to a law-enforcement officer. community board. Who would do those background checks? Second, Newt served up the standard ACLU line that enforcing Presumably the same “status adjudicators” who review immigration federal immigration laws “separates families.” This statement applications under the current system. However, Newt fails to com- revealed that he’s not familiar with how Immi gra tion and Customs prehend the manpower problems this would create. The Department Enforcement (ICE) actually operates. ICE officers go to great of Home land Security has only 3,000-odd status adjudicators at pre- lengths to keep families together during the deportation process. If sent, and they are already overburdened reviewing the 6 million or there are minor children in the household, in most cases either the so applications for green cards, visas, and other immigration benefits illegal alien is not detained, or the children are allowed to be with that they receive every year from legal aliens. Doing a background the parent in a special facility. And when immigration judges issue check properly means more than simply running a name (or the removal orders, they do so with care to ensure that families stay multiple names that many illegal aliens use) through a database of together. If an illegal household includes a minor child born in the those arrested for or convicted of crimes in the United States. It also United States, that child is not separated from his family. He actu- means obtaining information from local law-enforcement authori- ally possesses dual citizenship—that of his parents’ home country ties in the alien’s home country—a difficult and time-consuming and that of the United States. He will return with his illegal-alien task. The manpower to do the job right, while also serving those parents to their home country, but when he grows up, he will pos- aliens who actually follow our laws, simply doesn’t exist. sess a rare privilege: He may enter the United States as a citizen. Most important, any reasonable amnesty would require each application to be evaluated from a homeland-security perspective, with the benefit of classified information concerning aliens’ pos- HE third flaw in Newt’s amnesty plan is the big gest—his sible terrorist ties—something local neighborhood boards would proposal that neighborhood boards review each amnesty be unable to do. During the 1986 amnesty, Mahmud “The Red” T application and decide whether to award the amnesty. The Abouhalima fraudulently obtained a form of amnesty designed idea sounds thoughtful, if quaint, but makes no sense in practice. for seasonal agricultural workers when he was actually driving a It fails to recognize the legal complexity, manpower requirements, cab in New York City. His brother Mohammed did the same. The and security problems that any amnes ty entails. brothers used their newly acquired legal status to travel abroad Each illegal alien will have committed various violations of for terrorist training and then became part of the terrorist cohort federal immigration law. The complexities of immigration law are that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. It unfamiliar to most attorneys, let alone laymen, so it is hard to see is a virtual certainty that more terrorists would be granted legal how non-attorneys without any specialized training could spot all status if Newt’s amnesty were to become law. the immigration violations at issue. Finally, on top of the 11 to 12 million illegal aliens already in Having retired (or unemployed) people from different walks of the country, all of whom are potential applicants (legally or fraud- life sit on these neighborhood panels might sound like a Norman ulently) for Newt’s amnesty, there would be a mass influx of new

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illegal aliens who would try to obtain the am nesty by presenting easily forged documents, such as paycheck stubs or utility bills, indicating that they had been present in the United States the Some Shade required number of years. that is exactly what happened with the 1986 amnesty: hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens streamed across the border to ap ply for it fraudulently. the inS discovered Of Green 398,000 cases of fraud, and while nobody knows how many thou- sands went undetected, we do know that the undetected cases included the terrorist Abouhalima brothers. The former Speaker has a longstanding love- newt evidently didn’t research that bit of history concerning the hate relationship with environmental reform 1986 amnesty. Defending his proposal, he naïvely declared that it wouldn’t create an incentive for illegal aliens to enter the country, BY JONATHAN H. ADLER since it would cover only aliens who had lived in the United States the required number of years. that’s exactly what the amnesty proponents thought in 1986. it never dawned on them how easy it ewt GinGrich is not a newcomer to environmental pol- is to forge the necessary documents. icy. he taught environmental studies as a professor at As Mitt romney correctly pointed out when newt announced west Georgia college and attended the second earth his plan, any amnesty would be a magnet for more illegal immi- N Day, in 1971, embracing much of that era’s environ- gration. even mere congressional discussion of amnesty may mental doomsaying. Gingrich was a member of the Sierra club have this effect. During the last five years, each time congress and first ran for congress in 1974 as an avowed environmental- came close to enacting an amnesty, reports from the border indi- ist. (he lost.) though he dropped the green rhetoric before he was cated a spike in illegal entries. finally elected, he continued to back environmental causes as a in sum, newt’s big amnesty idea is a poorly conceived pro - young member of congress. in the 1980s he pushed for federal posal based on a misunderstanding of history and immigration enforcement. An immigration system cannot be “humane” if it Mr. Adler is the Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law at the Case Western makes a mockery of the rule of law and treats people arbitrarily Reserve University School of Law, a senior fellow at the Property and and unequally. Any amnesty is a bad idea; but newt’s amnesty Environment Research Center, and the editor of Rebuilding the Ark: New would be a disaster. Perspectives on Endangered Species Act Reform.

Cdr. Martin J. Travers, USN (1921-2011)

Aviator, Sailor, Diplomat, Polymath, Patriot

Patron of National Review

Requiescat in Pace

      
      
      
      

   


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controls on the industrial emissions that cause acid rain and break the Left’s mo nop oly on environmentalism is long overdue. sought to have the Arctic Na tional Wildlife Refuge designated a Though he has often reached out to environmentalists, there’s wilderness area, permanently off-limits to oil and gas develop- nothing conciliatory in Gingrich’s energy platform, which is pith- ment. He also co-sponsored the Global Warming Prevention Act ily summed up in the slogan “Drill here, drill now, pay less” of 1989, which called for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to (which is also the title of one of his books). This agenda may lack at least 20 percent below 1988 levels by the year 2000. It’s no nuance, but it’s perfectly clear: Lift restrictions on domestic ener- wonder he was heralded by environmental activists. In 1989, gy production and incentivize the development of new energy Wilderness Society president Randall Snodgrass said Gin grich sources across the board. “All of the above” is his energy choice, was “a conservationist in the grand old style of Teddy Roosevelt so he wants to deregulate oil and gas development but also main- and Gifford Pinchot.” tain (if not expand) subsidies for alternative energy sources, Notwithstanding his early record, few environmental activists including ethanol. The latter position is particularly controversial today think of Gingrich as one of their own. He may not be the with taxpayer groups and has earned him the sobriquet “Pro - only Republican presidential candidate to advocate dismantling fessor Corn pone” from the Wall Street Journal. Time will tell the Environmental Protection Agency, but he is one of the most whether it will produce the desired response in Iowa. forceful. However much he supported climate-change regulations Energy-policy discussions almost inevitably turn to the ques- in the past, he eschews such policies today, and he has become a tion of global warming. Like all the Republican candidates, fierce proponent of domestic oil and gas development. Yet envi- Gingrich adamantly opposes any effort to limit U.S. greenhouse- ronmental issues remain important to the former Speaker. gas emissions through imposition of a cap-and-trade system, The young Gingrich wanted to be a paleontologist or a zoo under which aggregate emissions would be capped and industries director—aspirations that still motivate him today. He borrowed would be allocated emission al low ances that could be bought and the cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull from the Smith sonian for sold. As Gingrich has explained, such a policy would, in effect, his office, and in 1997 he publicly debated T. rex eating habits impose “an across-the-board energy tax on every American” and with the noted paleontologist John Horner. For his 53rd birthday, “accelerate American job losses.” Yet Gingrich’s opposition to while serving as Speaker, he hosted a reception for a few thou- federal climate controls has not always been so resolute. sand people at Zoo Atlanta to raise money for species conser- On December 4, Gingrich told Fox News that he “never vation, and he still makes time for occasional zoo visits on the favored cap-and-trade” and cited his efforts to defeat the climate campaign trail. When Knut, a four-year-old polar bear at the legislation favored by House Democrats and President Obama. Berlin Zoo, died unexpectedly in March, Newt tweeted his Yet in 2007 he told an interviewer that legislation imposing lament, later posting his picture with the cub on Facebook. “mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system” and Gingrich’s interest in zoos led to a friendship with former tax incentives was something he would “strongly support” and Zoo Atlanta director Terry Maple. In 2007, the two collaborated was a policy the Bush administration should have pursued more on an environmental manifesto, A Contract with the Earth, and aggressively. they reportedly have a second environmental book in the works. Contract is an effort to marry a sincere environmental commit- ment with more conservative, or “mainstream,” policy princi- HIS is not the only time Gingrich has called for climate ples. As Gingrich explained in the introduction, “our failure to action. In a 2007 debate with Sen. John Kerry, he called resolve serious environmental challenges will compromise the T for policies to “reduce carbon loading of the atmosphere” lives of our children and our grandchildren.” Engaging citizens in and “do it urgently,” though he also expressed some concern a broader conservation effort, however, could “avert a catastro- about the viability of carbon cap-and-trade. That same year he phe and successfully renew the earth to its natural condition of told the New York Times’s Andrew Revkin that “as a matter of abundance and vitality.” All that is required is “a bold initiative prudence we ought to have less carbon loading of the atmos- on behalf of the natural world, dedicated to a common cause and phere.” And then he filmed the infamous ad with Nancy Pelosi a bridge to green prosperity.” for Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Pro tection, in which he reiter- Contract outlines an environmental vision that relies upon ated the need to “take action to address climate change,” some- incentives, entrepreneurship, and collaboration. This is Gin - thing he now says he regrets. The ad was the “dumbest single grich’s conservative alternative to conventional environmen - thing I’ve done in the last few years.” talists’ reliance upon regulation, taxation, and litigation. In Since setting his sights on the White House, Gingrich has Gingrich’s view, it is a “tragedy” that the Right has abandoned cooled to climate controls. He fought against the Waxman- environmental policy to the Left. Though often vague on details, Markey climate bill, a true regulatory behemoth. Gingrich testi- Contract seeks to fill that gap. fied that the legislation would impose a de facto carbon tax and It is easy to support collaboration instead of conflict to advance extend federal bureaucratic control throughout the economy. It environmental values. Who would fight against that? The chal- would even have empowered the energy secretary to regulate lenge is to move from platitudes to policy. Gingrich and Maple Jacuzzis. As an alternative, he proposed financial incentives for speak of the awe nature can inspire, and lament the failure of the development of new technologies; more “all of the above.” political leaders to translate this inspiration into action. The prob- Yet Gingrich did not completely close the door on cap-and-trade, lem is that not everyone agrees on how much can or should be testifying that he might consider supporting such a system if it sacrificed to preserve environmental values, or even which envi- was limited to the 2,000 or so highest-emitting facilities. ronmental values are at stake. The dominant regulatory paradigm Gingrich’s platform today contains nothing so equivocal on of environmental protection is deeply ingrained, so much so that climate policy. His campaign website announces that “Newt even Gingrich and Maple find it hard to shake. Still, the effort to absolutely opposes ‘cap and trade’ as well as any system of tax-

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ing carbon emissions” and that he believes “there is no settled protections for property owners, after the Republicans took over scientific conclusion” on the threat of climate change. Gingrich Congress in 1995. Environmentalist groups, working behind the has made clear he would divest the EPA of authority to regulate scenes, helped arrange briefings for the Speak er by scientists greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. committed to leaving the ESA untouched. Gingrich promised Complaints about the EPA’s climate policies are just one part them he would keep any reform legislation they opposed off the of Gingrich’s indictment of the agency’s regulatory overreach. floor while refusing to meet with free-market groups advocating He regularly attacks the EPA as an out-of-control, job-killing greater protection of property rights and the elimination of the bureaucracy. He thinks it’s not enough to trim the EPA’s authori- ESA’s perverse anti-conservation incentives. ty around the margins; instead, he wants to shut its doors and In Contract Gingrich explains that his commitment to “envi- replace it with a new creation of his own devising: an Envi - ronmental stewardship” led him to defend the ESA. This “his- ronmental Solutions Agency. “I want to restaff it,” Gingrich toric legislation . . . has been mired in some controversy,” he explained at an event organized by Politico. “I don’t think you acknowledged, while maintaining it was “an essential conserva- can train the current bureaucrats. I think their bias against capi- tion tool” and an “excellent example of the value of civility, con- talism, their bias against local government, their bias against sultation, and collaboration.” For anyone remotely familiar with economic rationality, is just amazing.” So he wants to “start with how the ESA operates in practice, this characterization of the act a new team” that will embrace “common sense.” The question is is simply bizarre. The ESA has been the source of fierce conflict whether the Environmental So lu tions Agency would really be and has undermined environmental stewardship on private land. something different, or just an excuse for legions of bureaucrats The discovery of endangered species triggers costly and burden- to order new business cards. some land-use controls, making species habitat a potential eco- Unlike many of those who criticize the EPA, Gingrich takes nomic liability. Thus, researchers have found, the act creates Pres. Richard Nixon may have created the EPA by executive order, but the agency will not be dispatched so readily.

pains to distinguish attacks on the agency from attacks on envi- powerful incentives that work against species conservation on ronmental protection. Conservation does not necessarily require private land—the land, it turns out, on which most endangered maintaining a centralized regulatory bureaucracy. Gingrich con- species depend. cedes that some degree of regulation may be necessary, but he The Beltway-based environmental lobby was fiercely opposed calls for lodging greater authority in the hands of state and local to any GOP-led ESA reform, committed as it was to the regula- governments. “The EPA is based on bureaucrats centered in tion- and litigation-based environmental-policy model that Washington issuing regulations and litigation and basically Gingrich elsewhere has condemned. ESA reform was precisely opposing things,” he complains. In its place “we need to have an the sort of cause Gingrich should have supported; no issue is agency that is first of all limited, but cooperates with the 50 more ripe for a conservative, conservation-oriented alternative to states.” the status quo. Pres. Richard Nixon may have created the EPA by executive After sabotaging ESA reform efforts, Gingrich created a order, but the agency will not be dispatched so readily. Nor is special House task force on the environment, dominated by the reforming the foundational environmental statutes an easy lift. Republican caucus’s greenest—and most liberal—members, Decentralizing much environmental decision-making is a sensi- including Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R., N.Y.), who was closer to ble idea; indeed, it’s long overdue. The question is how it can be the green lobby than most Democrats. This action made it even done, both practically and politically. It’s relatively easy to pro- more difficult for conservatives to argue the case for an alterna- claim the need for a new paradigm—that is one of Gingrich’s tive approach to environmental protection. strengths. But actual policy change requires engagement with the In his environmental-policy pronouncements, Gingrich says nuts and bolts. Gingrich has shown little interest in the details of many of the right things, embracing environmental values while environmental policy, and has a record of resisting conservative disparaging today’s overly bureaucratic system of federal regula- policy reforms. As Speaker he was the primary obstacle to rewrit- tions. But while he may decry the political practice of picking ing the En dan gered Species Act (ESA) and safeguarding private- industry winners and losers, he remains committed to ethanol property rights from federal environmental regulation. Yet ESA subsidies. He may condemn overly prescriptive environmental reform should be uncontroversial for conservatives, since no regulations, but he refused to consider, let alone support, conser- statute better illustrates the potential divide between environ- vative efforts to reform the ESA. And before he was running for mental regulation and actual environmental protection. The law president, he sounded much more comfortable with federal caps imposes onerous burdens on private landowners and constrains on carbon emissions than he does now. resource use. Meanwhile, few species have recovered under the Gingrich has a greater interest in environmental issues than ESA’s protection, and in some cases the act may have made most Republican leaders and the rhetorical skill to articulate an things worse. alternative environmental vision. If anyone can challenge the Yet Gingrich intervened personally to prevent House Re pub - prevailing environmental orthodoxy, it should be him. The ques- li cans from enacting serious reforms to the ESA, including tion is whether he’s willing to do it.

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The Bent Pin BY FLORENCE KING Tingling for Camelot

HAT barometer of our jejune times, Chris hour, five-act passion plays about cannibalism as practiced Matthews’s oh-so-sensitive leg, is all aquiver in families so turned in upon themselves that they will eat with a brand new thrill. only their own. The American people saw all this but saw T Four years ago it was Obama’s oratory that through none of it. The Kennedys were just close-knit, triggered the hot-cold sensations that ignited a near occa- that’s all, and believed in sticking together, but they were sion of spin, but Obama no longer has what it takes to be independent. Proof? Old Joe said, “I gave each of my chil- adored by an adolescent boy. Almost from the moment he dren a million dollars so they could tell me to go to hell if took office he began losing his bona fides so fast that he they wanted.” seemed to fade, so to speak, into black. Now he seems to be As if. The fear he roused in his children, especially his sinking into obscurity before our very eyes. Always thin, he second son, was, I believe, the cause of the humiliating fail- is now skinny and taut, almost spidery, an antihero’s anti- ure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when JFK withdrew hero without a shimmering pulsation to bless him. the promised air cover at the last minute lest the Soviets No prob! Naïve idealism’s Leg Man has found another take umbrage. He was not only afraid his father would hero to keep the electrifying crackle surging through his blame him for starting a war, he was also afraid that Old knee pants. He has written a book Joe would hate him for not being Joe called Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero. I Junior, the adored eldest son, killed in haven’t read it and don’t plan to be - WWII, who could do no wrong in his cause I have already read and re - father’s eyes. Joe Junior would have viewed so many Kennedy books that pulled off the invasion, the father they have left me bound and gagging. would have said. JFK may have hated Besides, it isn’t necessary to read this himself for not being Joe Junior, or one because young Christopher does for being alive at all. the best oral book reports in class. He A few months later the same dy - has been reciting them everywhere namic affected his meeting in Vienna lately, quoting himself verbatim, with the ruthless Soviet boss Nikita savoring favorite plummy phrases Khrushchev, who was old enough to like “pathfinder and puzzle” and be his father and therefore had no “beacon or conundrum,” and leaning trouble turning him into mincemeat. heavily on his leitmotif, “rough and (A frightening description of his near- tumble,” because he so wants to believe that Jack Kennedy breakdown on Air Force One during the trip home is found played hardball too. in JFK: The Man and the Myth, by Victor Lasky.) I yield to no one in my dislike of any and all things Something must have happened between the foreign- Kennedy. I am put off by the spectacle of the president-as- policy disasters of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of celebrity, and JFK was the first such for me. My formative October 1962 to change him into the calm, fearless Cold years comprised an era when the American presidency still Warrior that Chris Matthews compares to the Plantagenets. met some version of traditional leadership. In my child- Something did: On Dec. 19, 1961, Old Joe Kennedy had a hood, Franklin D. Roosevelt was a king; Harry Truman was massive stroke that robbed him of speech and turned him a small-r republican capable of rising to the level of digni- into a shell of his former self. fied simplicity that republics ostensibly stand for; and Ike If Matthews regrets locating his now-famous “thrill” in was the classic military leader. I adored Roosevelt and liked his lower extremities instead of his spine, researching JFK Truman. I did not like Ike—too bland beside Patton and must have offered proof that his is not the only restless leg MacArthur—but I was okay with Ike because he made on the block. Norman Mailer let himself go when he com- basic historical sense, a Cincinnatus who took up golf pared JFK’s complexion to “the deep orange-brown suntan instead of plowshares but a Cincinnatus just the same. of a ski instructor.” I heard many such comments 50 years I was 25 when JFK was inaugurated in 1961. Now, 50 ago and they were all from men. I never heard a woman call years and many reflections in a jaundiced eye later, I know JFK anything beyond a perfunctory “good-looking.” The the reply Dan Quayle needed when Lloyd Bentsen told same thing happened whenever John Wayne’s name came him, “You’re no Jack Kennedy.” What Quayle should have up. Yes, he had a nice smile, but . . . and then it trailed off, said is, “Jack Kennedy was no Jack Kennedy.” lustless. Lincoln may belong to the ages but Kennedy He was a sickly man in a rocking chair who was belongs to men. It must be all that talk about “vigah” and scared to death of his father. His style of government-as- the story about swimming through shark-infested waters psychodrama was reminiscent of Eugene O’Neill’s five- with a crewman’s lifebelt strap between his teeth. Now that Frank Rich has signed off on the name, it can be said loud Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, Fredericksburg, VA 22404. and proud: My man-crush, right or wrong. AP

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Crude Ethics

WEBSITE aimed at design professionals had a rap mostly comes from conservative reservations about grow- piece this month about keeping your ethical char- ing people in dishes to suck out their cells for experimentation. acter snow-white when asked to work for dubious When it comes to big scientifical thinga mabobs, like huge A clients. Star profile: a young fellow who found humming nuclear power plants, or finding new ways to extract himself in the horrible position of designing something for— oil from all the cunning places Mother Nature has hidden the steel yourself—a pesticide company. He begged his boss to delicious stuff, the Right is generally pro-science, and the Left dump the client; the employer, perhaps blinded by such crude runs away fluttering its hands, shrieking in terror. The charac- concerns as keeping the lights on, declined to listen to his bet- terization isn’t completely fair—you’re probably more likely ter angel. The article noted that the fellow was going to quit to find the Left funding a scientific experiment that smashes anyway, so he did a shoddy job on purpose. It has his name and atoms together to discover what happened in the seventeenth picture, so bosses of design companies: fair warning. trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, because it expands The ethics of taking the king’s shilling and doing your worst our knowledge of the universe, and can’t possibly enrich the work wasn’t addressed. But the article discussed another Koch brothers. The Right might put off these things until the design firm with High Standards, and that meant they wouldn’t day when we’re not seventeen trillion in debt. The universe take work from . . . petrochemical companies. If you don’t isn’t going anywhere. Well, it is expanding at an incredible believe liquefied dinosaur juice is Satan’s rate, flinging itself into the void with a vel - plasma, it’s like reading that someone won’t Boo hiss ocity that beggars the imagination, but so is do work for Nazis, pogrom coordinators, Medicare spending. vivisectionists, anthrax lobbyists, and hair- chemicals Anyway: Petrophobia—an irrational, stylists. One of these things is not like the unreasoning fear of oil—is one of those others, as the children’s song goes. that kill and things that set modern mopey liberalism According to the article, however, the apart from its brawny antecedents. When firm realizes that there are many shades of have side the Left was about good jobs for ordinary grey in this morally ambiguous world. One effects! (Except joes, a forest of oil derricks meant working of those shades resembles green, under the people, roughnecks who could be persuad- right light. That’s green as in money, not The Pill. All ed to band together against Oil Barons. But green as in coming up with new ways to now the Left isn’t concerned about jobs; it’s guilt affluent Westerners into taking shorter, praise to concerned about careers. Either a career colder showers. Some clients, after all, may The Pill.) managing tax money, or low-impact car- get money from oil companies, which try to bon-neutral careers that involve sitting in a wash away the moral stain of filthy carbon sauce by funding glass-walled conference room with iPads discussing a brand- the Center for Innocuously Renamed Leftist Agendas. It’s a ing campaign for a new line of hemp clothing. (Five percent of form of alchemy: Bad money turns into good deeds when you profits go to charity!) Horrid oil may have brought you to work walk it through an office where people use the word “sustain- and trucked in the organic arugula on the artisanal sandwiches able” in every press release. If you can print the work on paper served at the meeting; horrid coal may heat your building and made of 80 percent post-consumer materials with soy ink, all keep the computers running so you can tweak that logo—hon- the better! Stick it to the man! estly, the client can’t decide if he wants Gill Sans or Neutra for Watching these exquisitely calibrated moral sensibilities the font, it’s an absolute nightmare—and your clients may display their plumage in public makes a preening peacock exist only because they’re funded by the third-generation heir look like a turtle in a mud pit. Pesticides are bad because to a pipeline fortune who wants to pay for the sins of his fore- they’re chemicals. Boo hiss chemicals that kill and have side bears. Oil may make your entire brittle existence possible— effects! (Except The Pill. All praise to The Pill.) Oil is bad; oil dare we say, sustainable—but as long as you’re not dipping brings naught but sorrow. The New York Times did a piece your quill in the stuff, you’re a good person. on the boomtowns of the North Dakota oil fields, which are At this point the petrophobe may kindly request that we stop boisterous and messy, awash with testosterone, and not an daubing straw men with creosote and setting them alight. The art gallery for miles. The pictures of the treeless expanse problem isn’t oil, it’s the need for clean alternatives. If we con- with their lines of grim dormitories lacked only “ARBEIT tinue to use oil, we won’t feel the need to invent a new tech- MACHT FREI” over the gate. nology by slathering a dodgy business model with the magical It’s odd. We’re told conservatives are “anti-science,” a paste of federal subsidies. If the company wastes the money charge that reassures the clever set that their opponents believe and goes bankrupt and the technology doesn’t work? Well, Ogg the Caveman rode dinosaurs around while shouting they meant well. Besides, some of that money hired a design “Yee-haw, the world is 56 years old!” But the “anti-science” firm, and that created jobs! The CEO of the start-up went to jail, but the logo was super Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. ethical.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

9:45 A.m. Presidential Portrait Painting. President en route to White House. Enjoys President continues work on his self- afternoon cruller. Closed Press. portrait. Pool Spray at top. 5:15 P.m. President and German chancellor The President’s 10:00 A.m. Presidential Chatroulette. Presi - Angela merkel engage in personal meeting. dent appears on video-chat service to dis- President is accompanied by a large dry- Schedule cuss issues one-on-one with American erase board and several new dry-erase people. Open Press. markers. Chancellor merkel is accompa- Dec. 13, 2013 nied by her chief of staff and a personal 10:45 A.m. President delivers remarks to physician. Pool Spray at top. (All times approximate.) Whoever Happens to Be in the Vicinity. NOTE: This could be canceled or post- 6:30 P.m. President allows Chancellor mer - 6:30 A.m. President and mrs. Gingrich wake poned because of the passage of the Na - kel a word in edgewise. Closed Press. to soothing white-noise generator. Closed tional Homework Act, which would require Press. the president to assign national homework 6:35 P.m. President and mrs. Gingrich de - for the next week, and to encourage citizens liver daily evening televised address. To - 7:00 A.m. President and mrs. Gingrich to break into study groups. Pool Spray at night’s topic: How Your Enemies make You attempt “Downward Facing Dog” yoga top. Stronger. Open Press. pose. Pool Spray at top and at close. 12:00 P.m. Wheels Up Air Force One. Presi - 7:05 P.m. President eats large pepperoni pizza 7:15 A.m. President and mrs. Gingrich re - dent en route to miller’s Crossing, Pa., for by himself. Closed Press. ceive daily briefing via Twitter. President the opening of the first Pennsylvania State updates his Facebook status. mrs. Gingrich Children’s Workshop, a pilot program of the 7:10 P.m. President and mrs. Gingrich host reviews the Presidential Daily Schedule for No Child Left Idle Act of 2013. Open Press. White House reception to celebrate the signs of disloyalty. Closed Press. Pool Only. confirmation of three new cabinet officers, the Secretary of Zoos, the Secretary of the 7:30 A.m. White House Chief of Staff mitt 12:30 P.m. Aboard Air Force One: President Future, and the Secretary of Unlikely Con - Romney arrives at the executive residence, delivers daily noontime national address. nections. Open Press. presents the president with his daily Cin - Today’s topic: Kemal Atatürk’s Three nabon, and escorts the president to the Key Revolutionary Ideas in Post-Imperial 7:30 P.m. President delivers remarks at the Treaty Room while delivering overnight Turkey. Open Press. Please remind your reception. Open Press. briefing. Closed Press. readers and viewers that this material will be covered in the National Midterm Exam 8:15 P.m. President gathers with Six Sigma 8:00 A.m. President and mrs. Gingrich de - in February. Team in Oval Office for daily Six Sigma liver daily televised national address. To - review. President reviews the day’s events day’s topic: meditation and Its Health 1:15 P.m. President eats a Hardee’s Double and the day’s key personnel, and processes Ben e fits. Pool Spray at top and at close. Star Bacon Cheeseburger in presidential data via DmAIC—Define, measure, Ana - limousine. Closed Press. lyze, Implement, Control—system. Pool 8:15 A.m. President Gingrich meets with Spray at top. National Security team, delivers National 1:30 P.m. Remarks at the Opening. Guests Security Briefing rebuttal at 8:30 A.m. include Vice President Herman Cain. Photo 9:05 P.m. Daily economic briefing. President President sees connections between Face - parade with the facility’s Top Producing in velvet robe. Open Press. book User Preferences and civil unrest in Toddler and most Efficient Nine-Year-Old the Persian Gulf. Closed Press. in the Sneaker Assembly Unit. Open Press. 10:05 P.m. Daily political briefing. President in terrycloth towel. Open Press. 8:40 A.m. President reconvenes National 3:30 P.m. Wheels Up Air Force One. En route Security Team for a last-minute thought to White House. President meets with eco- 10:15 P.m. President and mrs. Gingrich retire centering around terraforming moon col - nomic team in flight. Develops new theory to residence. Begin daily update of Enemies ony. President makes several foreign- on the extinction of the dinosaurs. Confers List. White House counsel on speaker. policy-related telephone calls. Closed with Secretary of the Treasury Ron Paul Closed Press. Press. on various matters, including the sale of Federal Reserve banks nationwide to the 11:00 P.m. Presidential Good-night Snick - 9:00 A.m. Presidential Quiet Time. President Restoration Hardware chain of house- and ers™ bar. Closed Press. sits quietly in study, musing and generating homewares. Pooled Press. ideas. ABSOLUTE SILENCE is required 11:15 P.m. President and mrs. Gingrich retire by visitors and guests. Open Press. 4:45 P.m. Air Force One touches down. for the night. Open Press.

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all the promise of the white nights, of in February 1946, Kennan dispatched the lovely birches,” could “never be the “Long Telegram,” roosevelt was Prophetic realized” by a 40-year-old american dead and the Iron Curtain was dividing foreign-service officer. europe. “at [the] bottom of [the] Krem - Strain The russian language seemed to lin’s neurotic view of world affairs,” Kennan like one he had known in a pre- Kennan explained to the Truman admin- MICHAEL KNOX BERAN vious existence, and he found in the cul- istration, “is [the] traditional and instinc- tural grammar of russia a means of tive russian sense of insecurity,” the fear expressing aspects of his nature that of a “people trying to live on [a] vast were unrenderable in the Western idioms exposed plain in [the] neighborhood of with which he had grown up. Kennan fierce nomadic peoples.” The fear was thought of himself as a prophet, and compounded, Kennan said, by the dread among his prophetic endowments was an with which russia’s rulers traditionally intuitive perceptiveness akin to that of looked upon the West, with its greater the misfits and holy fools of primordial technical prowess and freer political russia. The diplomat who experienced forms, so different from the mud and visionary ecstasy in the birch woods absolutism of eurasian russia. In im - was the spiritual cousin of Leskov’s posing the Soviet imperium on eastern alexander ryzhov and Dostoevsky’s europe, Stalin was continuing the czarist Makar Dolgoruky. policy of using subordinate Slav states in George F. Kennan: An American Life, Kennan’s feeling for what he called Mitteleuropa and the Balkans as a buffer by John Lewis Gaddis (Penguin, the “vast organic process” that is “the against the West. 800 pp., $39.95) spiritual life of the russian people” Kennan had been impressed by Gib - enabled him to understand rather earlier bon’s analysis of the vulnerabilities eorGe F. Kennan, who died than most observers that the Bolshevik of states that undertake (in Kennan’s in 2005 at the age of 101, revolution was not, as edmund Wilson words) “the unnatural task of holding in lives as the author of the thought, “a fundamental breakthrough” submission distant peoples,” and in his G “Long Telegram” from Mos - that shattered russia’s primeval molds. July 1947 “X” article he identified im- cow and the “X” article in Foreign on the contrary, Kennan wrote in a perial overstretch as the great weakness Affairs, essays that laid the foundation September 1944 dispatch, Stalin had of russia’s policy. The U.S., Kennan for Cold War containment. Yet Kennan “settled firmly back into the throne argued, could make russia’s unnatural had scarcely published his doctrine of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the task even harder by forcing it to devote before he began to disavow it. Forsaking Great.” Six months later, in March 1945, ever greater resources to the mainte- the belief that the West should resist Chambers, writing about the Yalta con- nance of its precarious empire. To this Soviet aggression, he came to think that ference in Time, reached the same con- end he proposed “a policy of firm con- the United States posed a greater threat clusion. In “The Ghosts on the roof,” tainment designed to confront the rus - to civilization than Bolshevik russia Chambers depicted the shade of nich - sians with unalterable counter-force at did. olas II smiling as Stalin outmaneuvered every point where they show signs of John Leonard said that to lunch with roosevelt in the czar’s old palace. “We encroaching upon the interests of a Whittaker Chambers was to encounter have known nothing like it,” Chambers peaceful and stable world.” by turns each of the Karamazov brothers. has nicholas exclaim, “since my an - Walter Lippmann pointed out that so In his extraordinary book George F. cestor, Peter the Great, broke a window broad a policy of engagement would lead Kennan: An American Life, John Lewis into europe by overrunning the Baltic to over-commitment. Kennan agreed, Gaddis depicts a diplomat whose inner states . . .” and was sorry that Truman described the life was as darkly Byzantine as Cham - neither Kennan’s nor Chambers’s first containment exercises, in Greece bers’s. If Chambers seemed like a warn ings that the Bolsheviks had swad- and Turkey, in the pretentious language russian, Kennan wanted to be a russian. dled the imperialist policy of the czars in of Wilson, using “universal formulae” to Two years before he composed the the altruistic rhetoric of socialism opened “clothe and justify particular actions.” “Long Telegram,” he reflected in sorrow eyes in FDr’s Washington. Diplomat The U.S., Kennan believed, should act that “I will never be able to become part William C. Bullitt, writing in 1948, quot- “only in cases where the prospective of them [the russian people], that I must ed roosevelt as telling him that “if I give results bear a satisfactory relationship to always remain a distrusted outsider, that [Stalin] everything I possibly can and ask the expenditure of american resources nothing from him in return, noblesse and effort.” In time, however, Kennan Mr. Beran is a contributing editor of City Journal oblige, he won’t try to annex anything would reject containment even in cases and the author, most recently, of Pathology of the and will work with me for a world of where the means-end ratio was likely to Elites. democracy and peace.” When, however, be satisfactory, as when ronald reagan

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS fingered Moscow’s puppet regime in selected “on the basis of individual fit- wisdom a compass.” Reagan “under- Poland. ness for the exercise of authority” and stood that, in order to lead, he could Why the change of heart? Like virtual- “unhampered by the necessity of seeking never despair.” Kennan “despaired con- ly every intellectual since 1800, Kennan votes” would rule. stantly,” and left “it to Reagan to bring was appalled by what Matthew Arnold Kennan would later “soften” these [containment] to its successful conclu- called “this strange disease of modern views, Gaddis writes, but he was to the sion.” life.” His opposition to American policy end of his life toying with “councils of Yet the prophetic office Kennan per- was nourished by his conviction that state” and extra-democratic politburos formed was not limited to the great state America was the most prolific incubator that “would take decent account of the papers of the 1940s or the unbalanced of the contagion. “It is not I who have feelings and opinions” of the people, yet jeremiads of later years. He rightly left my country,” Kennan wrote in 1955. would “assure a sufficient concentration warned that modern man’s “sickly secu- “It is my country that has left me.” He of governmental authority” and “a suffi- larism” and readiness to prefer vacuous was disgusted by “the endless streams of cient selectivity in the recruitment of social science to “the more subtle and cars, the bored, set faces behind the those privileged to exert it” to permit the revealing expressions of man’s nature” windshields, the chrome, the asphalt, “implementation of hopeful long-term found in the Bible and Shakespeare were the advertising, the television sets, the programs of social and environmental destroying the cultural infrastructure of filling-stations, the hot-dog stands, the change.” the West, an infrastructure that had barren business centers, the suburban As Kennan aged, his messianic arro- enabled the Old Western man to balance brick houses.” Man, Kennan said, approv - gances deepened. He was the lone pro - individualism and commonalty, the The motive force for the rectification George Kennan sought will come not, as he naïvely hoped, from the Left, which is as intellectually enfeebled as he was by its enchantment with philosopher-kings and elite control.

ingly quoting Bullitt, “is a skin-disease phet who could prevent the nuclear claims of the flesh and the claims of the of the earth,” and the most virulent lep- apocalypse Reagan was preparing. A spirit, more ingeniously than his modern rosies were American. “Americanism, note of megalomania crept into his utter- descendants. With the decline of the like Bolshevism, is a disease which gains ances, and he spoke grandiosely of his old culture, new forms of morbidity footing only in a weakened body.” “efforts to save civilization” from the emerged; the “vigorous life of the The diplomat who had served in Mos - popular president. Kennan now saw “his English highway of Chaucer’s day,” cow during the purges and Prague when own country, not the Soviet Union,” Kennan observed, had vanished. The the Germans marched in could no longer Gaddis writes, “as the principal threat decline of civic art and the rise of solip- distinguish between venial and mor - to international stability.” He trusted sistic technologies made it possible for tal sins. He had no means of gauging Andropov “more than he did Reagan,” people to withdraw into neurotic co - degrees of horror; to encounter, in and he regarded those who, like Sak - coons—into “private lives” so “brittle” Chicago in 1951, “girls, hardly more harov and Solzhenitsyn, challenged their and “insecure,” Kennan wrote, that those than thirteen,” who “chewed gum, and imperial masters as “dangerous ene- who lived them “dared not subject them spewed profanity” was hardly less ter- mies.” “He’s on their [the Russians’] to the slightest social contact with the rible for him than it was to encounter, in side,” U.S. arms negotiator Paul Nitze casual stranger.” It was, Kennan be - Prague in 1939, Czechs sought by the concluded. lieved, “the sad climax of individu- Gestapo begging for their lives in the Kennan was blind, Gaddis observes, alism,” a realization of the dark fate American legation, their faces “twitch- to the achievement of Reagan, “an in - Toc queville foresaw if democracy failed ing and their lips trembling when I sent stinctive grand strategist” who “re - to practice cultural conservation. them away.” fused to let complications obscure The motive force for the rectification Unable to recognize the mildness of desti nations, or to make conventional Kennan sought will come not, as he America’s shortcomings in comparison naïvely hoped, from the Left, which is as with those of her rivals, Kennan de - intellectually enfeebled as he was by its scended into prophetic hysteria. “I hate enchantment with philosopher-kings and democracy,” he wrote in the 1930s. “I elite control. Regeneration, if it is to hate the ‘peepul.’” Only “strong central come at all, will come from the Right, a power” could save the Republic. In 1938 Right that has learned to draw again on he called (privately) for an “authoritarian what is most valuable in the old Western state” in America and a “very extensive culture that Burke and the post-radical restriction of suffrage.” Blacks, natural- “ . . . And now, an NBS special news report— Wordsworth, Newman, Ruskin, Eliot, ized Americans, and nonprofessional ‘Why Doesn’t Obama Get the Respect and and even Maistre in their different ways women would lose the franchise; an elite Support He Deserves?’ . . . ” tried to conserve.

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career, in cities all over England, bringing thousands of spectators to tears, fits of Victorian fainting, and even hysteria with his enact- ment of the murder of Nancy by Bill Creations Sikes. Dickens was one of the original mega-celebrities, unlike poor Thackeray, ELIZABETH POWERS who wrote only one great book and failed to achieve anywhere near the same kind of following. Although Dickens was working in a venerable western literary tra di - tion—besides Shakespeare, the outsized characters in Rabelais and Cervantes come to mind, not to forget Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, and Tristram Shandy—a new element emerges in his later novels, reflecting what some think was the desire of Dickens to be not just a popular but also a “serious” writer. He thus created indeli- Charles Dickens: A Life, by Claire Tomalin ble portraits that are less positive about the (Penguin, 576 pp., $36) human condition, symbolizing everything that was felt to be wrong about England: wo giants of the 19th-century the railway locomotive in Dombey and English novel, william Make - Son, the fog in Bleak House, the uncov- peace Thackeray and Charles ered coal pit in Hard Times. The attitude T Dickens, were born within a behind them is very hard and bitter indeed. year of each other, in 1811 and 1812, but Dickens seemed actually to know little only Dickens has been the subject of about some of the targets against which he international bicentenary commemora- railed. Macaulay, for instance, said that tions. Dickens did not understand the utilitarian Dickens’s long hold on the public ima - economics he criticized in Hard Times. gination is due to the many memorable Here, too, however, Dickens reflected the literary characters he created, each one sentiments of ordinary people: Like most seeming to embody elements of the best of us, he believed politicians and “great or the most venal, if not the worst, of the minds” were humbugs and distrusted their human species: Tiny Tim and Scrooge, solutions. Pecksniff, the Artful Dodger, Mr. Grad- In 1860, Dickens burned all of his pri- grind, Sam weller, the Podsnaps and Ven - vate correspondence, saying his books eerings, to name a few. In the foibles and would speak for him. Nevertheless, bio - heroics of these characters, 19th-century graphies and even critical studies of readers seemed to recognize themselves. Dickens generally locate the roots of the Above all, these portraits speak to our optimist and the scourge in the life and the desire for courage, contentedness, and personality, originating in Dickens’s fierce sociability, even in the meanest condi- youthful ambition to rise from the down- tions. Think of the shared cups of brandy ward mobility of his parents and the limi- before the fire in The Pickwick Papers or tations of his background. Peter Ackroyd, the Christmas feast at the Cratchit house- in one of the best recent biographies hold. And no one, says George orwell, (albeit a rather long one), does justice to ever wrote better about childhood, a rare this approach. orwell saw in the portraits skill in a time when it was not good to be of contentedness a reflection of Dickens’s a child. cockney origins and the rise of consumer If the novels are dependent on melo - culture in London in the early 19th cen - drama, they also contain scenes that, as tury. Edmund wilson, in an essay sub - NATIONAL REVIEW is orwell also writes, you remember to your titled “The Two Scrooges,” offered a nifty available on iTunes and in dying day. That these scenes had reso- in terpretation of the entanglement of the nance for Dickens himself can be seen in good and the bad (later explored in Crime the Android Market. the readings he gave in the latter part of his and Punishment by Dostoevsky, who acknowledged Dickens’s influence on NR APPS ARE FREE TO DOWNLOAD. Elizabeth Powers is the editor of Freedom of him) in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, on ©NATIONAL REVIEW, Inc., 2011 Speech: The History of an Idea. which Dickens was working when he

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS died in 1870. Wilson suggests that the have taxed the vigilance of the nurses. try lane with its own garden” that the double life of choirmaster John Jasper, an They reached Strasbourg on 7 June, women could cultivate. Dickens tended opium addict who (it is conjectured) kills went on by train to Basle, and there fit- to the choice of bedsteads and linen, the his nephew on Christmas, is a masked por- ted themselves into three coaches for kitchen and laundry equipment, the trait of Dickens himself. the three-day drive to Lausanne. On 11 crockery and cutlery, the books and the June . . . Dickens has been subject to hero wor- piano. Meanwhile, he sent his young sons, ship, to debunking, to psychological Tomalin’s documentation verifies that the poetically named Henry Fielding, analysis; Claire Tomalin’s method, in Dickens was representative of a familiar Edward Bulwer Lytton, and Alfred this new biography, is to explore Dick- Victorian type, both a bon vivant, enjoying D’Orsay Tennyson Dickens, at a young ens’s life as lived, literally from week to many male friendships, and a relentless age to an English boarding school in week. Tomalin—the author of biogra - worker, even when in poor health, pub- France, where they remained for six to phies of Mary Wollstonecraft, Katherine lishing in weekly installments novels of seven years—during the period in which Mansfield, Jane Austen, and Thomas enormous size while also editing a weekly he wrote Hard Times, a novel about the Hardy—knows her Dickens, having writ- magazine. He was addicted to walks typi- effects of bad schooling. ten a book on his relationship with Ellen cally of twelve miles and liked to change And for “a man famous for his goodness Ternan, the young actress for whom he residence constantly. and his attachment to domestic virtues,” as abandoned his wife. (Tomalin takes the Tomalin’s treatment of David Cop - Tomalin writes, he was shockingly callous minority view that the relationship not perfield is very good, though she too sees toward the wife who had borne him ten only was consummated but also resulted its genesis in the personal experience of its children, alienating her from those chil- in a child, who died shortly after birth.) author. For the most part, however, she dren and humiliating her with friends and Every new work on Dickens builds on ear- fails to provide a larger context, not only the public. In the end, one comes away lier research, and Tomalin has benefited for political and historical events that sim- from this biography not particularly lik - from these previous labors. Something ply rush by (the poor laws, the revolutions ing Dickens, who seems to have been an goes missing, however, when a biogra pher of 1848), but also for the intellectual and embodiment of one of his legendary cre- piles on an accumulation of data in the moral environment. ations, Mrs. Jellyby, the unthinking phil- following manner: One would have liked more analysis anthropist of Bleak House. Indeed, one of Dickens’s contradictions: Why the doesn’t have the sense that Tomalin loves On 29 May [1845], Dickens dined with tireless support of orphans, paupers, and or even admires Dickens. Clearly, we live Forster, who accompanied the whole fallen women, of the widows and depen- in a time when it is difficult to say good family as far as Ramsgate the next day. dents of his friends, but indifference to things about great writers who may not This time the Dickens caravan consist- his own numerous children? With the have been good men. G. K. Chesterton, in ed of six children, Anne and two nurses, Roche the courtier, Dickens, Catherine largesse of the very rich Angela Burdett- his classic (and short) biography of and Georgina, and the same dog, Coutts, he established a home for way- Dickens, contended that “Carlyle killed Timber. At Ramsgate they took the ward women, described by Tomalin as “a the heroes; there have been none since steamer to Ostend, then a river steam- small, solid brick house . . . a home rather his time.” boat up the Rhine, a voyage that must than an institution,” standing in “a coun- From the evidence of this biography, Carlyle’s friend Dickens played a part in the demolition of mid-19th-century England: “A time of ugliness: ugly reli- JANUARY gion, ugly law, ugly relations between rich and poor, ugly clothes, ugly furni- Why comes the winter with its bitter winds, ture.” So it was described in 1898 by its drifts of snow and ice that run too deep, George Gissing, another careful reader of as though the Earth the summer’s warmth rescinds Dickens. Tomalin takes this England as a and kills the rose we tried past June to keep? given—she begins with a prologue that portrays Dickens at the age of 28, in 1840, Why does the gentle sparrow flee the spare as a juror at an inquest concerning a sus- and brittle boughs for warmer southern climes, pected infanticide—without examining yet I remain on pages, white and bare, the extent to which Dickens himself until this January greens in rhymes? shaped and fashioned this image. As Oscar Wilde wrote (in “The Decay of Lying”) For there’s no winter to a weathered heart, only a few years before Gissing, people whose beat has blossomed to love’s blush, then lost saw fogs in London not because there its rosy rhythm when love falls apart, were fogs, but because poets and painters like flowers, petrified by dirty frost. taught them “the mysterious loveliness of such effects.” Whatever the reality may Amidst the dead of winter, we will thrive have been, if Dickens lives on more than a through words that flourish here, our love alive. century later, it is because of his portraits of optimism, not those he painted of hard —MICHAEL PETTI times.

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cults may lend themselves well to graph- Thebans’ victory at the Battle of Leuctra ic novels, but they are not especially in 371 B.c., when the odds were so Ancient beneficial to civilization. Sparta was a heavily stacked against them, raises an city-state that deserved emasculation. inevitable question: Why, when Athens Echoes As the book opens, the Thebans are had failed for 27 years to defeat Sparta, living under constant threat of raids and did Epaminondas manage this feat in just CHARLES C. W. COOKE invasion from neighboring Sparta. two? It is obvious that Hanson admires Hungry to expand Laconia—the empire the nascent Theban system of govern- of slave farms that fed their dominance ment—sitting as it did between the two of the Greek peninsula—the Spartans extremes of Spartan martial discipline wanted to roll both Thebes and the and Athenian hyper-democracy—and Boeotian farms into their realm, and considers it a contributing factor to The - their hoplite armies had a nasty habit of ban success. To adapt the apocryphal coming, seeing, and conquering, leaving phrase often attributed to Alexis de  devastation in their wake. The situation Tocqueville, Thebes was great because looks unchangeable until Epaminondas,  Thebes was good. a forgotten Great Man of History who In telling his story, Hanson is forced to would be described by cicero as “the firstpractice the deft skills of the reconstruc- man of Greece,” steps up to the plate.  tive surgeon,  filling in the detail with his The End of Sparta: A Novel, Overcoming his own reservations,   and  imagination    when  confronted with a by Victor Davis Hanson (Bloomsbury, the better judgment of some of his lieu- dearth of evidence. (The book’s hero, 464 pp., $28) tenants, Epaminondas comes slowly  and Epaminondas, in particular has been to unexpectedly to the conclusion that the some extent excised from history, first     HE setting of The End of only way to guarantee lasting peace and by a bitter Xenophon, and then by the  Sparta is antique, but the book protect Thebes is to offer battle, thor- loss of Plutarch’s biography of him.) The has contemporary resonance. oughly to vanquish the Spartan army, result is a rich fiction, woven neatly T By the end of its opening and to free the 100,000 or so Messenian around the skeleton of the few solid chap ter, we have learned that “decline helots who, with their ancestors, have details we have at our disposal. This task [is] a choice, a wish even,” and that the been enslaved for over 200 years since forced the author to delve more deeply nature of civilization’s enemies is that their defeat in the Messenian War. In into the minds of his subjects than a “only the spear arm stops them. Nothing achieving their liberation, they win a writer might ordinarily have to. Their else. They won’t parley, won’t surrender, larger battle, namely the smashing of internal conflicts center on the tensions won’t stop—until killed.” the considerable influence and prestige between Pythagorean rationalism and That these warnings about the peren- Sparta has held in Greece since the the more romantic polytheism that was nial nature of the threats to liberty appear Peloponnesian War, and the removal of ubiquitous in Greek society, and on the so early on is no accident. The author, the slave farms that have served as bases ultimate question of whether security or classicist and regular NR contributor for the projection of Spartan power. The liberty is preferable (these issues were Victor Davis Hanson, is a fervent be- Thebans’ victory dramatically redraws debated long before Benjamin Franklin liever in classical education as a path to the political map. voiced his famous maxim). understanding the continuity between The freedom of the helots is, thus, Wisely, Hanson avoids telling the the past and the present, and, like conser- bound up with the freedom of all. It is story solely from the perspective of aris- vatives of all stripes, is well aware that, impossible not to note the parallel here tocrats and key players, as has been the when it comes to life’s fundamentals, with recent American involvement in the tendency of many academics in the nothing really changes. The struggle for Middle East: Amid the sweeping democ- freedom is never-ending, and this novel ratic fervor, one can hear echoes of Pres. provides a timely reminder of this and George W. Bush making his case for pre- “Rated One of New York City other enduring truths. emptive action, and insisting both that ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats Tall in the long identity parade of his- peace is not just the absence of violence tory’s villains stand the Spartans. It is but the absence of the threat of violence, their malfeasance, ambition, and down- and that freedom is a universal value. fall—and, by extension, the glory of Epaminondas’ undertaking was not an those who would stand up to tyrants— easy one. With Athens weak, the farmer- that Hanson makes the subject of his first soldiers at his disposal were more likely novel, and it is particularly refreshing to to end up as arrow-fodder than to be New York’s all suite hotel is located in see an explicit rejection of the recent the heart of the city, near corporations, elevated as conquering heroes. The theatre & great restaurants. Affordable pop-cultural glorification of Spartan Thebans were—fatally for Sparta, as it elegance with all the amenities of home. morality. The adventures of warrior- turned out—underestimated by the Spartans as “pigs.” But this hubris was 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 Mr. Cooke is an editorial associate at NATIONAL understandable: On paper, the Theban Reservations 1-800-248-9999 Ask about our special National Review rates. REVIEW. cause did appear hopelessly lost. The

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS classical field. Epaminondas may be we’d written caught someone’s eye and the hero, but we see most of the action prompted a call. Bill Gavin’s call came through the eyes of Mêlon, a veteran Street- in 1967, the result of a letter he’d written farmer-soldier whose humanity shines to richard Nixon, urging him to run for through even to the extent of frustrating Corner president in 1968. Gavin at the time was us with many of his decisions and atti- a high-school teacher, working in the tudes, and those of his two slaves. This Conservative master-teacher program at the University decision on Hanson’s part is instrumen- of Pennsylvania. His letter was probably tal in allowing readers to take the lie of a JOHN R. COYNE JR. one of the most unusual richard Nixon land with which most are likely unfamil- ever received. iar. Mêlon is emblematic of the uninter- “Dear Mr. Nixon,” it read in part, “May rupted nature both of the Spartan threat I offer two suggestions concerning your to Thebes prior to the Battle of Leuctra, plans for 1968? 1. run. You can win. and of the inveterate necessity of fight- Nothing can happen to you . . . that is ing oppression: He has fought the Spar - worse than what has happened to you. tans before and was crippled for his ortega y Gasset says in ‘The revolt of the troubles; his father was killed. Mêlon’s Masses’: ‘. . . These are the only genuine testimony and perspective demonstrate ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the depth to which Theban society was the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. He devastated by Spartan hegemony. who does not really feel himself lost, is In other places, though, Hanson’s char- lost without remission. . . .’ You, in effect, acter development can be lacking. Some Speechwright: An Insider’s Take on are lost. That is why you are the only of the characters are clearly in cluded sole- Political Rhetoric, by William F. Gavin political figure with the vision to see ly to carry philosophical discussion, and (Michigan State, 172 pp., $24.95) things the way they are. . . . run. You will this makes it hard to develop an emotion- win. . . . I know you can win if you see al stake in them and their fates. Likewise, or three decades, Bill Gavin yourself for what you are: a man who has Hanson’s need to discuss abstract ideas has been numbered among the been beaten, humiliated, hated, but who occasionally puts his characters into un - best and most trusted speech- can still see the truth.” realistic positions: It is a little hard to F writers in Washington, giving A remarkable letter, to say the least. believe, for instance, that Mêlon can think words to the thoughts of such men as Because of it, in 1968, Gavin was offered so deeply and clearly about metaphysics Nixon, Agnew, reagan, Sen. James a job with the Nixon campaign, then the while desperately fighting to stay alive, Buckley, and House minority leader White House writing staff, where he or that he would enjoy such a cinematic Bob Michel. It is to Jim Buckley and learned to handle the tools of his trade. view of the battlefield. Bob Michel, both of whom “exempli- “What I learned writing for Nixon be - This shortcoming is more than made up fied what it is to be a good man,” that he came the foundation for my career as a for by the musically resonant descriptions dedicates this book addressing both the speechwright.” of battle. As in his academic work, this nature of rhetoric and the practical Although Nixon demanded “forceful- is where Hanson shines. The old adage aspects of crafting political speeches, all ness, directness, timeliness, brevity” in about portraits is that the eyes should in the context of a well-told personal speeches and was quite understandably follow the viewer around the room; Han - narrative. leery of attempts at eloquence or playing son’s battles surround the reader and are “I believe writing speeches is some- to emotions, he prized both abilities in brought to life with a claustrophobic real- thing less than an art but more than a Gavin, who provided the memorable lines ism that can veer roughly into discomfort. mechanical exercise,” he writes. “I prefer for Nixon’s 1968 acceptance speech (in - There is a level of detail unusual for a to think of it as a craft, and that is why cluded in an appendix), in which he novel—we are informed how much a I prefer the word ‘speechwright’ instead spoke of the little boy who “hears the spear weighs, for example—but the inclu- of the usual ‘speechwriter.’ A wright is train go by at night” and “dreams of far- sion of such minutiae is necessary rather someone who puts things together. A away places.” than superfluous; most of us know little of speechwright puts together a speech out In a poignant scene set at the Capitol in the ancient world’s quotidian detail, and of separate pieces . . . the way a wheel- 1990, Gavin, then an aide to Bob Michel, need such description in order to make wright puts together a wheel.” describes a visit by Nixon, whom he sense of the scene. Nor, he points out, is speechwriting, hadn’t seen for 20 years, to speak to re - relatively little is definitively known “strictly speaking, a profession.” Few of publican congressmen. As Nixon, Gavin, of the period, and Hanson has to fill in us who have worked as speechwriters and Michel stood talking, “Bob said gaps with both imagination and scholar- ever consciously trained for the job. But something nice about my writing, and ly deduction. What he has achieved is a most of us were writers, and something Nixon said, ‘oh, I know, I know. He realistic portrait of an ancient world trou- writes with heart.’” Later, Nixon asked bled in much the same way as our own; Mr. Coyne, a former White House speechwriter, is whether his speech on world affairs had and in this respect, The End of Sparta co-author, with Linda Bridges, of Strictly Right: been too “intellectual.” Not at all, Michel slips the surly bonds of Greece to touch William F. Buckley Jr. and the American assured him. Nixon responded, “I leave the face of a deeper truth. Conservative Movement. that intellectual stuff to Gavin.”

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as he was leaving, Nixon asked Gavin: never uncivil, however. as Gavin puts it: steering him toward Bob Michel. Gavin “are you still a conservative?” “Congressional offices quickly take on was offered a job, accepted, and “eighteen “Yes, Mr. President. More than ever.” aspects . . . of the boss’s style, and Jim years later, when Bob Michel retired, I The process of becoming “more than Buckley—even-tempered; a bit shy; retired with him.” ever” had intensified 20 years earlier, with charm ing; with a quick, ready sense of In 1980, Gavin was asked to take a Gavin’s decision to leave the White humor; smart; and the soul of civil - leave of absence to become “chief speech- House for a very short stint at HeW ity—was and is the least ideologized (to writing coordinator” for the Reagan presi- (now HHS), run by the peculiar elliot use his brother Bill’s term) person I have dential campaign. He accepted, and with Richardson. (“Now, I don’t want you to ever known. He did not—again quoting the win was invited to return to the White let those liberals at HeW change you,” Bill—force ‘every passing phenomenon House, an invitation that could have been said Richard Nixon in a farewell phone into his ideological mold.’” prompted in part by Ronald Reagan’s call.) as a teacher, Gavin believed he To go from writing for Richard Nixon, reading. In 1971, Gavin had written an could contribute to forming education “whose view of rhetoric was essentially article for NaTIoNal RevIeW called “Con - policy. But he learned quickly that, in the pragmatic,” to writing for Jim Buckley, fessions of a Street-Corner Conservative,” HeW’s nest of inbred, paranoid, bureau- “who saw his public utterances as what we “about people from my background cratic liberals, he was viewed as some sort now would call ‘teaching moments,’” [urban blue-collar Catholics] who, ten of mole. Why else would he have left the required a considerable shifting of rhetor- years later, would be called Reagan Dem - White House for HeW? “Within a few ical gears. Buckley would not only discuss ocrats.” While working with Jim Buckley, weeks I was certain I had definitely made a topic in his speeches, “but also informed he expanded the ideas into a book, Street a colossal blunder.” the audience of the principles he relied on. Corner Conservative, published by ar - To go from writing for Richard Nixon, ‘whose view of rhetoric was essentially pragmatic,’ to writing for Jim Buckley, ‘who saw his public utterances as what we now would call “teaching moments,”’ required a considerable shifting of rhetorical gears. Fortunately, the legendary Frank Shake- . . . He would rather take two paragraphs to ling ton House and made a selection of the speare had an opening at the United States explain a necessary distinction, thereby Conservative Book Club. Information agency, where Gavin spent risking his audience, than resort to a one- a Washington Star reporter wrote that two rewarding years before joining the liner that would get applause but leave Reagan—on a 1980 flight from California staff of New York’s Senator Buckley, ideas muddled.” to New York, where he would announce where he found his place. “For the first Jim Buckley was not an electrifying his cabinet choices—“busied himself on time, I would be writing for someone in speaker. But by “the criteria of sincerity, the plane reading task force reports and a the conservative movement, the brother of intelligence, civility, and the ability to book entitled ‘Street Corner Conservative’ the man whose personality and message make a good argument in a good cause, he by William Gavin.” Gavin never found made me realize I was conservative with- was excellent. We worked well together, out what Reagan thought of his book, but out knowing it. . . . I came of political age and . . . I tried my best to make sure his there’s no doubt the president approved. during the late 1950s, and my conser- carefully constructed arguments had the Gavin turned down the offer of another vatism is rooted in, if not completely clarity he demanded but also the forceful- White House post to return to Bob defined by, the . . . philosophically based ness they deserved.” Michel’s office, where he remained until conservative principles enunciated by In the end, owing to the lingering fallout Michel retired. NaTIoNal RevIeW, under the editorship of from Watergate and the Democratic surge, Gavin followed suit, and is today “in the Bill Buckley.” (In 1960, NR had published Buckley lost his bid for reelection, and Former Speechwriters Protection Pro - his first paid article, “a satire on Japanese Gavin would soon be jobless. But fate in gram,” writing novels. So far, unlike many student riots called ‘Rave, New World!’”: the form of Pat Buchanan intervened, workers with words who promise upon “every two weeks I awaited the newest retirement to write novels but never do, he’s issue and read it straight through. . . . I was produced two, both well-received: One already a practicing conservative, but Hell of a Candidate and The Ernesto NaTIoNal RevIeW taught me what that “Che” Guevara School for Wayward Girls. meant intellectually.” But then, that’s characteristic of street- Working for Jim Buckley, he learned corner conservatives. They stand by their that what it meant practically was intellec- principles and values, they keep their tual combat, taking place “not just in a sen- word, they work hard, and they produce. atorial office but also in what he and his Bill Gavin may no longer be a practicing staff saw as a besieged outpost of the con- “Is it true you people give tax breaks to speechwright. But he’s still a street-corner servative movement.” The combat was minority-owned businesses?” conservative.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS archetypal that you don’t need to hear 1940s. Even though Hergé kept writ - Film them speak to know them, and the rich and ing into the 1970s, his hero fundamen - vivid backdrops that any globetrotting tally belongs to the age of fedoras and hero deserves. freighters, tommy guns and studebakers, Tintin they’ve also resisted the temptation and it would be wrong to introduce him to mess radically with the basic tintin any other way. Indeed, in a sense this Triumphant formula. I was dreading some sort of movie feels like a kind of extended apolo- James Bond–ian stakes-raising that would gy for spielberg’s recent betrayal of his ROSS DOUTHAT pit Hergé’s characters against Nazis or own saturday-morning-serial hero, Indi - russkies or a supervillain out to destroy ana Jones, who was left stranded in the fIrst encountered tintin, the the world. Instead, the script combines Cold War era by the disastrous Kingdom of Belgian comic-book artist Hergé’s elements from three of Hergé’s books—The the Crystal Skull. immortal reporter-detective, while Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret the only problem with The Adventures I trailing behind my parents in one of of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham’s of Tintin is that it runs a bit too long, strain- the many pretentious secondhand shops Treasure—into a pleasingly straight - ing to fill out 105 minutes with a story that clutter up southern New England. the forward narrative whose seams barely that’s fundamentally designed—like any books were hardcover and in french (as I even show. good serial—to wrap up in closer to an said, pretentious), but my eight-year-old the movie is a treasure hunt, no more hour. the Indiana Jones movies justified self was bored enough by the day’s excur- and no less, carried out by car and ship their running time by weaving in a little sion to be satisfied with the pictures and seaplane, in which tintin (Jamie Bell) romance, but tintin is no Harrison ford: alone—satisfied, then excited, and then and his bibulous, blustering companion In print and pixels alike, his cheeks have rapt. Not only did my father feel obliged to Captain Haddock (Andy serkis) pursue never seen a razor. the world of Hergé is buy the books, but he spent the next few the lost cargo of Haddock’s 17th-century fundamentally sexless: a never-never land days using his high-school french to ancestor sir francis. Along the way, of boyhood whose only recurring female inhabitant is the opera diva Bianca Casta - fiore, a frightening caricature of grown-up womanhood. she puts in a cameo appear- ance in this movie, shattering bulletproof glass with her high notes. It’s to spielberg’s credit that he doesn’t try to invent a love interest for tintin or a romance for Haddock. the characters are simply not designed for those sorts of complications. But this leaves the movie with nothing to do but pile on the chase scenes and set pieces past the point of diminishing returns. By the time we reach the grand finale, the script’s otherwise- impressive sense of restraint has given way to a typical blockbuster showdown, in which Haddock and sakharine slug it out with giant dockyard cranes, like a 1940s version of transformers. It’s an ending that loses touch with the Tintin and Snowy fact that the pleasures of the tintin books translate the dialogue for me. (I suspect they’re menaced by the villainous sak - are fundamentally low-tech: the cosh to that he was greatly relieved when we dis- harine (Daniel Craig) and his attendant the head, the gun poked in the ribs, the covered that the rest were available in goons; assisted, clumsily, by the idiotic car wheeling around the corner, and the English.) bowler-hatted detectives thomson and sudden “Eureka!” moment over a code It’s a great compliment to steven thompson (Nick frost and simon Pegg); or book or map. Hergé’s eager-beaver spielberg and Peter Jackson that I could and backed up at all times by tintin’s reporter doesn’t have a superhero’s pow- imagine a non-English-speaker watching doughty wire fox terrier, snowy. ers, and he doesn’t have Indiana Jones’s their new Adventures of Tintin (spielberg Because it doesn’t try to gloss the whole facility with a whip. All he has is brains, directed, Jackson produced) without sub - tintin oeuvre, certain beloved characters gumption, and the willingness to take a titles and being similarly swept away. are missing from this movie. (there’s no punch (or a dose of chloroform) in the ser- Using motion-capture performances and sign of the deaf and distracted Professor vice of his story. the reader doesn’t expect computer animation, they’ve conjured Calculus, for instance, who became al - him to save the world or leap tall buildings up some of the magic of Hergé’s books: most as much of a fixture as Haddock in or trade blows with a supervillain. We just the almost silent-movie sense of motion later books.) But spielberg has shrewdly expect him to keep on coming, until he

COLUMBIA PICTURES and momentum, the cast of characters so zeroed in on material from the early finally gets his man.

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the Neva. It never occurred to me to won- even suggested an alliance with Islamists The Straggler der why Russia’s monarch would want to against the West. (Because he has also bless a river: Children accept such things suggested flooding Britain by exploding as part of the uniformly mysterious world nuclear weapons in the atlantic, perhaps Nations of beyond the family’s front yard. we should take the Russo-Islamist al - Later, with a decent education inside liance with a grain of salt.) me, I knew much more. The horrors of Stalin was of the same mind when it The Mind the 1917 revolution, and the nastiness of served his purposes. Japanese foreign the subsequent regimes, were open to minister Yosuke Matsuoka, making his anyone who cared to inquire. own visit to Moscow in april 1941, To the droshkies and palaces were thus “greatly resented it when, after signing added stone-faced commissars, labor [the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact], camps, and Five-Year Plans. For anyone Stalin . . . waltzed him round the room not keeping up, the 1965 blockbuster saying, ‘We are all asiatics here—all movie Doctor Zhivago helped fill some asiatics!’” (Paul Johnson, Modern gaps. The color drained out of my men- Times.) Lenin would have been scandal- JOHN DERBYSHIRE tal Russia, leaving gray concrete. em- ized: In the knotty early-20th-century blematic of late-Soviet Russia was debates about how Marxism was actually have just spent a week in Moscow GUM, the landmark department store to be applied to the revolutionary cause, with Mrs. Straggler at the invi - on the eastern side of Red Square. GUM Lenin was wont to voice fears that revolu- tation of a Russian foundation. featured in all Brezhnev-era travelers’ tion in Russia alone might degenerate into I Neither of us had been in Russia accounts of Moscow: the place where cit- an Asiatshchina, a despotic-bureaucratic before. It was a working trip, with very izens could, after a few hours’ queuing, state on the imperial Chinese model as little time for sightseeing, and that only in buy the latest clunky products of Soviet described, cursorily and inaccurately, by central Moscow. It was, though, in a per- industry. a college classmate of mine in Marx. (“The suffix -ina . . . is extremely functory way, an opportunity to compare London circa 1965 had been to Moscow productive in the extended forms -shchina the Russia that is with the Russia I’ve and shopped at GUM, bringing back a and -ovshchina to denote unfavourably a been carrying in my head all my life. fearsome mechanical alarm clock that he state of mind or a political, social or a nation, certainly a big nation that’s christened “Lenin.” It woke the entire artistic movement or trend,” according been around for a century or two, is an dormitory. to Unbegaun’s Russian Grammar. The impossible thing for a non-native to Then the system disintegrated. We language is rich in these subtly coloring know fully. This is even the case with heard of chaos: soldiers selling their suffixes: Unbegaun has 17 pages on “cousin” nations such as Britain and equipment, state enterprises privatized them. We could use something like this america, sharing a common language. for cents on the dollar. There were oli- in english. “Obamashchina” has a nice after 30 years in the U.S., I am still bang- garchs and a great financial crisis; Putin ring to it, if you can place the stress ing my shins against peculiarities of the came in; Georgia and Chechnya rumbled right.) american national character. With a in the far distance; Mrs. Clinton called for My contractual obligations at last nation culturally more remote from the a “reset.” But the Iron Curtain was gone, completed, we had a day and a half for one you grew up in, the case is hopeless. China was rising fast, and Russia seemed sightseeing. We circumambulated the I can only shake my head in wonder at the no longer very important. Kremlin, strolled along the river embank- arrogance of State Department and mili- and then we were there, practicing our ment, and took the obligatory photo- tary types who claim to have fathomed hastily acquired Russian among the graphs in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral the afghan or Iraqi national character. crowds on Tverskaya Street, riding the and Lenin’s mausoleum. GUM has been To console our irremediable ignorance subway (which is wonderfully clean and turned into an upscale american-style we have nations of the mind—comfort- efficient: I blush to think how the New mall filled with designer outlets. The able, fairly coherent images of foreign York subway must appear to visiting arbat is a tourist trap, and Gogol’s house places, assembled from random gossip, Muscovites). It’s like the collapse of the is closed on Tuesdays—Tuesday of course travelers’ tales, and literary browsing. I wave function in quantum mechanics: being the only day we had. have had a Russia of the mind for as long the abstract suddenly concrete, Russia of Something small but quite new has as I can remember. the mind suddenly a place inhabited by been added to the Russia of my mind, In my childhood home there was a people. though—something orthogonal, a new book published before WWI, an account and what an intriguing place! Russia dimension. You will hear people scoff at of Russia by an english military man is an outlier of european civilization, the idea that travel broadens one’s out- who had lived there. The text was in- even more so than Spain. There are in - look. No, they tell you, it only reinforces terrupted every few pages by lovely deed Russians who deny that their coun- our prejudices. (Malcolm Muggeridge colored-ink pictures illustrating aspects try is a part of the West at all. vladimir was of this school.) They are wrong. The of Russian life: a country fair, convicts Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Dem - Stragglers have discovered a fine, beauti- waiting for transportation to Siberia, ocratic party of Russia, which got 12 ful city and a distinctive people, and said droshkies gliding over frozen streets. The percent of the vote in the December 4 goodbye to them too soon, with much one I liked best showed the czar blessing elections, is one such. Zhirinovsky has regret.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN The Mutant Present

LIPPING channels in my hotel room the other Super-A** of Jimmy Olsen,” they’d have been up there night, I caught ten minutes of Hitchcock’s North with Nostradamus. To a visitor from 1950, the physical by Northwest, a film I like enormously. It’s an transformation of the citizenry would be the most signifi- F “old” movie, from the Fifties, but Cary Grant’s cant fact about America in 2011, and one far more startling suit is pretty much identical to the suits around today. than the Xbox. He would look at the childlike clothing and Likewise, his shirt and tie. The architecture is familiar. To wonder what it said about the overall cultural sensibility: a viewer from 2011, a film from the 1950s is a glimpse of Was this a society dedicated to eternal adolescence? What an earlier version of what’s still recognizably our world. about the size of people? Was this a country growing ever But what would a visitor from Eisenhower’s America sicker and feebler? And was that why so many of the jobs make of our time? He might eventually get around to mar- had to be done by foreigners? veling at the iPod and Twitter, but I would bet his initial Not much of this comes up in Republican primary de- reaction would be complete amazement at the people. bates, but it seems to me more telling about where the Instead of the sober suits and hats of a 1950 Main Street, nation’s heading than any CBO statistics about debt-to- men and women crowd the sidewalks in brightly colored GDP ratios. If Obamacare survives the next presidential leisurewear that, to his mid-century eyes, gives them the term, it will never be repealed. I object to the president’s air of overgrown children, especially governmentalization of one-sixth of the when slurping sugary drinks through economy on liberty grounds: The in - straws from containers not dissimilar troduction of government health care to baby bottles. He would observe that a changes the relationship of citizen and remarkable number of these people are state to something closer to that of extremely large, waddling along like junkie and pusher. I was thinking of supersized moppets. The actual children Britain, Canada, and Europe, but I didn’t are also strikingly overweight. If he went know the half of it: The scale of disaster into a big-box emporium, he would be here will be of an entirely different struck by how unhealthy many of the order. Three-quarters of American men inhabitants are, cruising the aisles in between 45 and 64 are supposedly over- motorized carts. If he were in almost weight. Nudge the diabetes statistics a any American city, he would notice that decade or two down the road, and you’re almost everybody serving him—at the newsstand, at the looking at budget-busting health expenditures beyond the coffee shop—appears to be an immigrant of ethnicities wildest nightmares of Sweden and Quebec. barely present in the United States 60 years ago. Who will pay for them? In the southwest United States, And I would wager that, even if you shove the latest will a predominantly young Hispanic population be Droid under his nose and invite him to express his aston- willing to be ever more onerously taxed to pay for the ishment, he’ll say, “Well, I never,” and then go back to health-care costs of a predominantly old white boomer pondering the spectacular evolution of America’s human population? Or will America fracture on age and infirmity capital. Nineteen fifty may look to us like an earlier ver- lines? That’s the future the (liberal) Hollywood film - sion of our world but 2011 would not look to him like an maker Albert Brooks foresees in his novel 2030. Could the advanced version of his world so much as a freak muta- U.S. act to prevent the Brooksian dystopia? Yes, but our tion—and not the one he expected. In my latest apocalyp- visitor from 1950 might ponder the overgrown child-men tic blockbuster, I mention en passant that a signature image padding the streets and wonder how quickly a society of Fifties sci-fi movies and comic books was the enlarged dedi cated to eternal adolescence can recover its survival brain, the light-bulb cranium with which a more evolved instinct. humanity would soon be wandering around. Evolvo Lad All of which is to say that my pessimistic pals on the had one in his tussles with Superboy. So did Superman’s right who warn that the United States is in for a grim future sidekick in a futuristic fantasy called “The Super-Brain as a large Greece are being hopeless Pollyannas. America of Jimmy Olsen.” So did Lois Lane, although she wasn’t rarely does things by half, and there’s no reason to believe happy about it. “The evolution ray that made me super- societal decay would be an exception to that rule. Culture intelligent turned me into a freak!” she sobbed, clutching trumps economics, and it is perplexing to me that, even in her unsightly Edisonian incandescent of a head. the stilted, artificial debate formats favored by ABC and Don’t worry about it, Lois. In a bleak comment on the CNN, no one thinks to ask the candidates about these limits of predictive fiction, our brains didn’t get bigger. issues. Perhaps it’s for the best. Perhaps even Newt would But our butts did. If DC Comics had gone with “The have no solution to hand. You really need one of those light-bulb-cranium superbrains. But Evolvo Lad seems to Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). have retired. And they’ve banned the light bulb.

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Embrace Your Faith

Faith Means Living It Every Day

Beyond A House Divided Our Lady of Guadalupe

Carl Anderson, the world’s foremost Catholic author, invites Catholics and non-Catholics alike to reexamine their moral foundations.