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* Nothing in the word “open” should be con- strued under any circumstances to mean that THE EDITORS ON THE OBAMACARE ROLLOUT this website is in any sense functioning. 0 74820 08155 6 www.nationalreview.com base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 10/22/2013 10:32 AM Page 1

“Clark Neily’s elegant essay slays the idea that “A great read for lawyers and ‘judicial restraint’ is always a virtue. It often amounts to nonlawyers interested in the judicial abdication. Neily explains that judges must judge real-world consequences of to defend the rights that government exists to secure.” judicial decision making.” —GEORGE F. WILL – RICHARD EPSTEIN

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The Constitution of the UnitedUnnited States was designed to limit governmentgovernment power and protect individuals from the tyrannytyrannny of majorities and interest-group politics. Butt these protections are meaningless without judgesjudges who are fully committed to enforcing them,theem, and America’sAmerica’s judges have largely abdicatedabdicated that responsibility.responsibility. All too often, instead of judgingjudging the constitu-constitu- tionality of government action,acction, courts simply rationalize it.

This book argues that principledprincipled judicial engagement—real judgingg in all cases, with nono exceptions—provides the path back to constitutionally limited government.government.

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10:03 AM TOC:QXP-1127940144.qxp 10/23/2013 2:48 PM Page 1 Contents

NOVEMBER 11, 2013 | VOLUME LXV, NO. 21 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 28

Apocalyptic Jay Nordlinger on Ali Khamenei Conservatism p. 24 There aren’t enough conservative voters to elect enough BOOKS, ARTS officials to enact a conservative & MANNERS agenda in Washington, D.C. 39 FORMING A PEOPLE The challenge, fundamentally, Victor Davis Hanson reviews isn’t a redoubling of ideological Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration commitment, but more success Transformed America and at persuasion and at winning Its Politics, by Michael Barone.

elections. Ramesh Ponnuru & Richard Lowry 41 W.:THE ROUGH DRAFT Matthew Continetti reviews Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in ARTICLES the White House, by Peter Baker. 14 BOEHNER’S TRIAL by Jonathan Strong 42 A LESSER GOD The House speaker’s reluctant march to a shutdown. Peter Tonguette reviews Salinger, by David Shields and Shane Salerno. 18 A NOBEL FOR GOOD INTENTIONS by John R. Bolton The OPCW is about as effective as most international organizations. 44 MAKING REPUBLICS Paul A. Rahe reviews 20 THE ART OF MANAGED DECLINE by Jillian Kay Melchior Metamorphoses of the City: Is Gary, Ind., the American future? On the Western Dynamic, by Pierre Manent. 23 REVOLUTION IN DOTAGE by Charles C. W. Cooke How the Left got boring. 46 FILM: MILES ABOVE 24 ENTITLED by Jay Nordlinger Ross Douthat reviews Gravity. The tricky business of addressing or referring to an unsavory foreign leader. 47 COUNTRY LIFE: 26 GAMES WITH ORSON by John J. Miller MELANCHOLY SEASON The politically correct denunciation of a movie and a novelist. Richard Brookhiser discusses the fall.

FEATURES 28 APOCALYPTIC CONSERVATISM by Ramesh Ponnuru & Richard Lowry SECTIONS There is no shortcut past persuasion. 2 Letters to the Editor 32 JACK KEMP’S HUDDLED MASSES by John Fonte 4 The Week Idealists forget that immigration needs assimilation. 37 Athwart ...... James Lileks 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long HANG THE DISSIDENTS! 34 by Kevin D. Williamson 43 Poetry ...... William W. Runyeon When patriotism becomes treason. 48 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

NATIONAL RevIeW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATIONAL RevIeW, Inc., at 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2013. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to editorial Dept., NATIONAL RevIeW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONAL RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONAL RevIeW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTeR: Send address changes to NATIONAL RevIeW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATeS: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters:QXP-1127940387.qxp 10/23/2013 1:42 PM Page 2 Letters NOVEMBER 11 ISSUE; PRINTED OCTOBER 24

EDITOR Richard Lowry Senior Editors NR on the Prairie Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts Yesterday, my wife, a fan since childhood of the Little House on the Prairie Literary Editor Michael Potemra series, visited the home of its author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in rural Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Robert Costa Mansfield in the Missouri Ozarks. The home is preserved exactly as it was Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson the day Mrs. Wilder died in 1957, right down to the books on the book- National Correspondent John J. Miller Art Director Luba Kolomytseva shelves and the magazines on the chairside lamp table beside the easy chair Deputy Managing Editors next to the fireplace. The most prominently displayed magazine was Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz Associate Editors NaTIONaL RevIeW, which looked to be from the 1950s. Patrick Brennan / Katherine Connell Being a reader of NaTIONaL RevIeW since 1980 or so, I found this inter- Production Editor Katie Hosmer Research Associate Scott Reitmeier esting, and thought you might also. Assistant to the Editor Madison V. Peace Contributing Editors Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Roman Genn Charles O’Farrell Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg / Florence King Springfield, Mo. Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne Reihan Salam / Robert VerBruggen The Din of Dinner NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig I enjoyed Richard Brookhiser’s article,“The Rest Is Silence,” in the October National-Affairs Columnist John Fund 14 issue. It reminded me of a conversation a friend and I had after trying to Media Editor Eliana Johnson Political Reporters find a restaurant where we could not only eat but hold a conversation—some- Andrew Stiles / Jonathan Strong thing that is becoming more and more difficult to find. She mentioned reading Reporter Katrina Trinko Staff Writer Charles C. W. Cooke recently that the loud music levels and the lack of sound insulation were part Associate Editor Molly Powell of a plan to keep patrons moving through the establishment—the less conver- Editorial Associates Sterling C. Beard / Andrew Johnson sation, the more quickly people finish eating and the next group can be seated. Technical Services Russell Jenkins I have no idea if it is really part of a plan, but it makes sense for the restaurant Web Developer Wendy Weihs Web Producer Scott McKim owners. I continue to watch for nice places in the mid-price range where a

EDITORS- AT- LARGE group of friends can enjoy a meal together while visiting. Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan

NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE BUCKLEYFELLOWSINPOLITICALJOURNALISM Marlene Rowland Alec Torres / Betsy Woodruff Jefferson City, Mo. Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / James Bowman Eliot A. Cohen / Dinesh D’Souza M. Stanton Evans / Chester E. Finn Jr. Corrections Neal B. Freeman / James Gardner David Gelernter / George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler “The Cuccinelli Comeback” (Jim Geraghty, September 30) asserted that e. W. David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune Jackson won virginia’s lieutenant-governor nomination in a six-way race. In D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons fact, there were seven candidates in the primary: Jackson, Jeannemarie Terry Teachout / Vin Weber Devolites Davis, Scott Lingamfelter, Steve Martin, Corey Stewart, Susan Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Stimpson, and Pete Snyder. Accountant Zofia Baraniak Business Services Alex Batey / Alan Chiu / Lucy Zepeda In the Letters section of the October 14 issue, Ras Smith wrote in response to Circulation Manager Jason Ng Jim Talent’s “The army You Haven’t” (September 16) that there are four, not Assistant to the Publisher Kate Murdock WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com three, military services in the U.S. “The United States Coast Guard is consid- MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 ered a military service only in times of combat,” Smith wrote. actually, 14 SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 USC § 1 establishes the Coast Guard as a “military service and a branch of the ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 armed forces of the United States at all times.” The other four military ser- Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler vices—the army, the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the air Force—fall under Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet the Department of Defense at all times, whereas the United States Coast Guard Associate Publisher Paul Olivett falls under the Department of Homeland Security during peacetime and under Director of Development Heyward Smith Vice President, Communications Amy K. Mitchell the Department of Navy during wartime or at the president’s discretion. Let it

PUBLISHER be known that there are five active-duty military services, and we’re grateful Jack Fowler for all of them. CHAIRMAN John Hillen

CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected]. FOUNDER William F. Buckley Jr. 2 | www.nationalreview.com NOVEMBER 1 1 , 2 0 1 3 base:milliken-mar 22.qxd 10/8/2013 8:06 PM Page 1

YOUNG AMERICA’S FOUNDATION’S FALL Conference at the Reagan Ranch

3:11 PM week:QXP-1127940387.qxp 10/23/2013 2:38 PM Page 4 The Week

n “You misheard us. We said we were going to cover tens of people.”

n The budget shutdown marked a turning point in intra- Republican politics. Heretofore the leaders in both rancor and self-regard tended to be incumbent old bulls (if the national helium reserve ever gets low, it can always tap John McCain). That is no longer the case. The strict defunders went in with no realistic plan and won nothing of substance (see editorial, p. 13). But their worst offense was to consign any Republican who disagreed with See page 12. them to the surrender caucus. The spite goes on: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is being primaried, as if he were Lowell Weicker. The fight to undo Obamacare is vital. Even more so were the issues that gave birth to the GOP: slavery, and slave- holders’ threats to secede. The infant party was even more ran- corous, as former abolitionists, Whigs, and Democrats, hacks and purists, New Englanders and Missourians snarled and gouged one another’s eyes. The first Republican president won election and reelection by keeping all these bears together in one cage. All who aspire to sit where he sat will do so only by learning to do likewise.

nChris Matthews has again compared Republicans to Con fed er- ates. This time, he said the government shutdown was “the third Battle of Bull Run—for them, it’s Manassas Creek.” If we’re playing that game, are the Democrats the party of the Mob? Of Tammany? Of Alger Hiss? Aaron Burr? Or are they the party tered on the right that its erstwhile promoter Marco Rubio talks of—let’s see, wasn’t its president a former Democratic senator about it only under duress, a version of it still has a chance. For from Mississippi—the Confederacy? Policy and politics aside, supporters of the basic approach in the House, the game will be Barack Obama’s election was a symbolic consummation of what to get a piece of relatively innocuous legislation through and Lincoln called the “new birth of freedom.” What a shame that then move to a conference committee with the Senate, where a every step of his ascent has been marked by the efforts of hacks modified version of the Gang of Eight bill could emerge. At like Matthews to use his race for partisan advantage. that point, the political pressure to hold a vote on the legislation in the House—where it could pass with the support of n The legal march of same-sex marriage through the courts almost all Democrats and some Republicans—would be has seen many novel arguments, all with the same conclusion: immense. It was widely believed (erroneously) that all House States must recognize same-sex unions as marriages whether speaker John Boehner had to do to defund Obamacare was sit or not they so wish. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the tight and do nothing. When it comes to immigration, though, federal government had to recognize same-sex marriages in it’s true that all Boehner has to do is nothing. It’s a course of states that did—but stopped short of saying that states must inaction conservatives should demand. recognize them. Now a New Jersey judge has ruled that her state has to recognize them anyway as a consequence of the n Hillary Clinton, addressing a meeting of the National As so- Supreme Court decision. Her argument is that the state owes its ci a tion of Convenience Stores in Atlanta, was asked about the same-sex couples the federal benefits that would come with raid that killed Osama bin Laden. During her 25-minute recognition as marriages. Governor Chris Christie, to his credit, answer she noted that she had supported the raid while Vice sought a stay of the decision while he appealed it. He then President Biden opposed it. Some caveats: No journalists were dropped the appeal when the stay was denied. Perhaps contin- allowed at the NACS event, as per her request; the source for ued litigation in the face of agenda-driven judges would have the story is a Re pub li can state representative. On the other been a waste of tax dollars—but if so, it highlights how little hand, her purported remarks could have been true, since Biden Christie has done to improve his state’s rotten judiciary. himself has said he thought the raid was too risky; and they would have had a purpose, since both she and Biden are run- n The White House’s next priority is so-called comprehensive ning for president. Old Joe is a sharp-elbowed brawler, but if

ROMAN GENN immigration reform. Although the Gang of Eight bill is so bat- he gets in the way of the Clintons and their manifest destiny, he

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THE WEEK will feel as if he has been visited by SEAL Team Six. Sit back, out Democratic voters during his own reelection contest next and enjoy the fun. month). Booker was also hobbled by his relentless and, it turns out, unscrupulous self-promotion: NR’s Eliana Johnson showed n JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank, has reached a tentative deal that his friend and frequent political exemplar, the Newark drug with the federal government to pay $13 billion to resolve civil dis- dealer T-Bone, is imaginary. Can the lightweight Booker rise putes related to its mortgage-security business, a record sum that even higher? Bathed as he is in the media glow of nearby New will leave the bank open to criminal prosecution. That enormous York, anything is possible. settlement results in large part from legal liabilities that the bank acquired along with the ruins of Bear Stearns and Washington n John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, lost public sup- Mutual in 2008. No one should weep for JPMorgan, but it’s port by mishandling an attempt to reduce public-sector unions’ important to note that the entanglement of the big banks and the legal privileges. He is trying to make up for that lost ground by federal government did not begin with the bailouts and did not end handing voters other states’ tax dollars. He wants the state to par- with their resolution: JPMorgan’s sin, according to the Justice ticipate in the Medicaid expansion included in the Obamacare Department, was misleading two government-sponsored enter- law. Almost all of the funds, at least for the first few years, would prises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, about the quality be supplied by the feds—which means the expansion, taken in of the mortgages backing securities they purchased. The GSEs isolation, redistributes money from the rest of the country to did not exactly cover themselves with glory during the housing Ohio. (Unless, that is, the rest of the states play the same game.) bubble: They invested some $26 billion in subprime mortgages The appeal of this policy is obvious. Kasich has added sancti- from troubled lender Countrywide, with disastrous results. Fannie mony and lawlessness to the equation. He says that when his Mae’s executives in 2006 were hit with 101 civil charges for state’s Republican legislators meet Saint Peter, they won’t have inflating earnings to maximize their bonuses, and a foreclosure to explain what they did to shrink government but will have to specialist was recently charged in a criminal case involving kick- say how they helped the poor. Kasich, apparently, plans to say backs. JPMorgan may have to make an account of its actions in that he saddled them with an insurance plan that results in health court, but the fundamental problem—the merger of the federal outcomes indistinguishable from no insurance at all. Republican government with the mortgage market—remains unresolved. legislators having balked, Kasich has gone to an unelected board to push through the policy. The Saint Peter he envisions either is not a stickler for the fine points of self-governance or has an n Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor of unexpected solicitude about Kasich’s reelection prospects. Virginia, has been persistently behind in the race. Democrat Terry McAuliffe is outspending him, and the scandals of the n State legislatures have passed 68 restrictions on abortion this incumbent Republican, Bob McDonnell, are weighing him year. Not California. The Golden State is bucking the national down. One problem of his campaign, though, is of his own trend and expanding its access to abortion. On October 9, Gov er - creation. McAuliffe has spent a lot of his campaign dollars nor Jerry Brown signed the Early Access to Abortion Bill into on ads slamming Cuccinelli for waging a war on women. Is law, allowing non-doctors—nurses, midwives, and physicians’ Cuccinelli making the case for his beliefs, or pointing out assistants—to perform aspiration abortions (surgical procedures McAuliffe’s own extremism? No and in which the unborn child is removed using a suction tube) no. Instead he is running ads in which during the first trimester. Planned Parenthood says that the women say he is a nice guy. The legislation “reaffirms California’s leadership on women’s change-the-subject strategy did not health issues.” The new pro-abortion litany is, Any abortion at work for Mitt Romney last year, and any time—performed by almost anybody. it will not work for Cuccinelli this time. It just makes candidates look n A 17-year-old New Yorker, pulled aside by security guards in embarrassed about their own a Victoria’s Secret store on suspicion of shoplifting, was found to agenda. We understand that have a dead newborn in her shopping bag. She said she had suf- a lot of Republicans like fered a miscarriage after six months, but the baby, a boy, weighed the idea of a truce on eight and a half pounds, and was nearly full-term. Ac cord ing to social issues; one of prevailing norms, was the young woman’s action against the these days they had bet- law? This is what the district attorney is now considering: Did the ter learn that one side infant die moments before, or after, birth? Or was her offense can’t declare one. against aesthetics? Poor boy; poor mother. Poor us.

n In October, the Los Angeles Times announced that it would no n Newark mayor and media darling Cory Booker won a special longer publish any letters or op-eds in which the author “denies” election to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Frank Lautenberg’s that global warming is the fault of mankind. An editorial issued death. Booker beat Republican Steve Lonegan by ten points, but by the paper confirmed that letters “that say there’s no sign in deep-blue New Jersey, at a bad moment for the GOP, it could humans have caused climate change” will be immediately have been a lot worse: Last year, the ethically challenged Senator rejected. “I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page,”

STEVE HELBER Robert Menendez thrashed his Republican opponent by over 19 letters editor Paul Thornton argued, adding that denying an thro - / points. Booker was hobbled by the odd October date (arranged po gen ic climate change “is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a

AP PHOTO by Governor Chris Christie, who did not want Booker bringing factual inaccuracy.” Thornton can dress up the decision however

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THE WEEK he likes but, in truth, the move is part of an ongoing attempt to adoption, a practice the National Association of Black Social transmute what remains an active scientific dispute into the realm Workers describes as “cultural genocide.” Families looking to of unassailable doctrine and to set current consensus in aspic. adopt are disproportionately white, and children awaiting Conceding that he had little knowledge of the subject himself, adoption are disproportionately nonwhite. Official hostility Thornton contended that he “must rely on the experts.” Only the toward transracial adoption has resulted in tragic outcomes. ones that suit him, it seems. For example, a family that already had adopted and raised special-needs children was denied the chance to adopt a young n Davion Only, a 15-year-old orphan in Florida, became a black girl because the community they lived in was too white heartbreaking cause célèbre when he stood before a local for the taste of the authorities, who overlooked the fact that the church and made a plea for someone—anyone—to adopt him: child was so physically and mentally disabled that she proba- “I’ll take anyone. Old or young, dad or mom, black, white, pur- bly would never know that there existed such a thing as racial ple. I don’t care.” Unfortunately, the gatekeepers in the adop- difference. More than 10,000 families have called and written tion world do care. Even though the law forbids them to offering to adopt young Mr. Only, and the authorities say his discriminate against potential adoptive families on the basis of placement in an adoptive home is all but assured. But there are race, social workers remain corporately hostile to transracial many more Davion Onlys in the world, whose plight is not

The Big Problem for Small Business

HE jobs report for September suggests that the econ- from about 11 percent to 24 percent, the highest level this T omy is still limping forward, creating jobs at an measure has reached since the period between 1994 and unusually low rate for an economy in recovery. 1995, when it peaked at 27 percent. For almost a decade Slow job creation can likely be explained by many factors. between 2000 and 2008, the level remained steady around Those cognizant of the impact of taxes on hiring prac- 10 percent. tices might remind the president that a large fraction of Taxes, the green line, have not skyrocketed as a major American business income is in the top individual-income- concern for firms, perhaps in part because small-business tax bracket, and has thus seen a large tax increase this year. owners were in the crosshairs of this president even at the Another factor has been the massive expansion of the reg- beginning. Their tax hikes were delayed until this year, but ulatory state under President Obama. If you want to start a they surely were inevitable. good fight at a dinner party attended by business execu- Perhaps the easiest way to put this extraordinary chart in tives, ask them what is the biggest drag on the economy— perspective is to note that the percentage of firms that list Obama care, Dodd-Frank, or the Obama EPA. either taxes or regulation as their No. 1 concern has risen to While the president seems to think that all economic 42 percent. That Washington could be a bigger concern weakness is the fault of either George W. Bush or the Re - than this weak economy for so many businesses is quite an publican House, the expansion of the regulatory state on accomplishment. Congratulations, Mr. President. Obama’s watch has been extreme, and the explosion of —KEVIN A. HASSETT straitjacket-wielding regulators is becoming visible in the data. A key source of job creation is, of course, small business, What Is the Most Important Problem and a key glimpse of the major concerns in this sector at Facing Your Business Today? any given moment comes when the National Federation of Poor sales Government requirements and red tape Independent Business releases its monthly poll of business Taxes Cost of labor

owners. The nearby chart shows the most commonly cited 40

answers in the poll since February 2008, the year before Obama 35 takes office President Obama took office. 30 Those familiar with these polls can tell you that, for the most part, businesses tend to downplay the importance of 25 Washington in their decision-making, and this is visible at 20 the beginning of the chart. As the Great Recession kicked 15

into high gear, poor sales were the biggest concern of 10

Percentage of respondents Percentage

about 33 percent of firms. But as the economy has slowly 5

recovered, concerns about government have skyrocketed. 0 Most notably, the percentage of small businesses citing Oct 08 Oct 09 Oct 10 Oct 11 Oct 12 Feb 09 Feb 10 Feb 11 Feb 12 Feb 13 Feb Feb 08 Feb Dec 09 Dec 10 Dec 11 Dec 12 Dec 08 Aug 13 Aug 09 Aug 10 Aug 11 Aug 12 Aug 08 April 09 April 10 April 11 April 12 April 13 April 08 government regulation and red tape as their biggest con- June 08 June 09 June 10 June 11 June 12 June 13 cern has risen, over the course of the Obama presidency, SOURCE: NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS

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Actual size is 40.6 mm

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THE WEEK going to be chronicled on The View, and they remain at the U.S. and other nations that are committed to stopping it have mercy of a deeply flawed system. to be clear, direct, and tenacious in applying pressure on governments that look the other way. n In early October, Louisiana’s “EBT” system malfunctioned, causing spending limits on users’ food-stamp cards to be lifted n The Bank of England is planning a new series of paper cur- for a couple of hours. In two parishes, some recipients noticed rency, and the image on the five-pound note will be Winston the error and set about buying as much as they could carry from Churchill’s. An obvious choice, one might think, and unlikely local Walmarts. By the time proper limits were restored, to offend anyone other than Barack Obama; but in fact the deci- Springhill’s chief of police remarked, the scene in his local sion was (in the words of the Duke of Wellington, the first store “was worse than anything we had ever seen in this town. non-royal to appear on a fiver) “a damned near-run thing.” The There was no food left on any of the shelves, and no meat left. reason for the bank’s hesitancy: It didn’t want to offend the The grocery part of Walmart was totally decimated.” One man Germans. Mervyn King, the bank’s governor, praised Churchill managed to walk out with $700 worth of food. Whatever the in a memo for his “broad name recognition” but cautioned that merits of the food-stamp program, we should remember that “the recentness of World War II is a living memory for many there is nothing magically different about stealing when the tax- here and on the Continent.” He wrote more about not being payers—and not a private business—are the victims, and we beastly to the Germans, but it was redacted. Fortunately, stouter should resist the temptation to let such behavior pass. Indigent hearts prevailed, and now the nation that withstood the Blitz or not, perpetrators of fraud should be labeled as any other cit- will not shrink in fear when faced with a few jeers from the izen would be: thieves. Jerries. After all, we put Washington on the dollar bill, and the British deal with it somehow. n Saudi Arabia has thrown a large stone into the stagnant pond that goes by the name of the United Nations. The Saudis had n The Obamacare rollout was handled so poorly that even lobbied hard to obtain one of the short-term seats on the United Azerbaijan has outdone us. The autocratic Central Asian state Na tions Security Council, only to turn it down when they had it held a presidential election in October, and the smartphone app in the bag. (Nobody seems to have told Samantha Power, the they developed to disseminate the returns worked so well that it United States’ ambassador to the U.N., who was still con grat u - displayed complete final results a day before the voting took lat ing them on the seat after they had renounced it.) Double place. You can’t beat that for efficiency; in fact, we hear that standards, the Saudis say (and they cannot be denied), prevent David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel are hiring Azerbaijani con- the Security Council from properly shouldering its responsibil- sultants to design software for Chicago’s next election. ities toward world peace. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran are contesting regional power by sponsoring their rival proxies in n A group of highly compensated education consultants has the civil war in Syria, and Russia and China exploit their per- managed to convince the managers of the government schools manent membership on the Security Council to tip the balance in Portland, Ore., that the common peanut-butter sandwich is in favor of Iran. As loyal allies of the United States, the Saudis a potential tool of racism. Principal Verenice Gutierrez recently had further expected President Obama to back them and inter- argued that using the humble PB&J as an example in the vene in Syria, especially after the ruling regime resorted to classroom threatened to exclude Somali and Hispanic stu- chemical weapons. Politically secretive as a rule, the Saudis are dents—“who might not eat sandwiches.” Beyond the racist angry and frightened enough for once to take a public stance. PB&J—which often is, after all, clothed in white sheets of bread—the Pacific Education Group, which has provided a half- n A Somali girl was smuggled into the U.K. for the purpose of million dollars in diversity services to the Portland schools, has harvesting her organs, a report from the British government warned educators to be on the lookout for such markers of exclu- has revealed. The unnamed girl likely represents an untold sively white culture as an emphasis on “self-reliance,” the belief number of children suffering a similar fate. Worldwide, only 1 that “hard work is the key to success,” “rational, linear thinking,” percent of the 2.4 million persons, most of them girls and the primacy of the nuclear family, monotheism, “adherence to women, who are enslaved at any given time are ever rescued, rigid time schedules,” the belief that one should place “work according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. It estimates before play,” and more. Which is to say, official Portland in 2013 that 80 percent of victims are sold into sexual slavery. thinks more or less the same thing of nonwhites as rural Harvesting their organs is an obvious next step in the effort to Mississippi did in 1830, a paradoxical time capsule brought to extract profit from their bodies: A kidney goes for as much as you by people who call themselves “progressive.” $150,000 on the black market, where First World patients in desperate need of an organ transplant go shopping. The n In a welcome instance of sanity in academia, Middlebury demand for human organs exceeds the supply, leading to the College has suspended for a year the student who, with four out- argument that legalizing and regulating the commercial trade siders, removed nearly 3,000 American flags that had been in them—it’s illegal everywhere except Iran—would go far planted to commemorate the victims of 9/11. At the time, she said toward driving this form of human trafficking out of business. they had uprooted the symbols of “conquest and colonialism” on But to legitimate an industry in which people in poverty could behalf of the Abenaki Indians, on whose burial ground the col- sell parts of their bodies before human traffickers got their lege supposedly rests—thus managing to surpass in pointlessness hands on them would be to accommodate the gruesome prac- both Mar lon Brando’s refusal of an Oscar after Wounded Knee tice, not defeat it. Investi gation and prosecution of organ har- and the current push to rename the Washington Redskins. The vesting is complicated by the global scope of the crime. The Abenaki let it be known that they needn’t have bothered. The sus-

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THE WEEK pended student—a veteran of Occupy Wall Street, the anti- n In February 1962, Scott Carpenter became the fourth fracking movement, and similar causes—has explained that “my American in space, the second to orbit the earth. He was then a intention was not to cause pain but to visibilize [sic] the neces- 36-year-old Navy test pilot. After three orbits, his capsule over- sity of honoring all human life.” Fair enough; and we assume this shot the Atlantic Ocean landing site by more than 250 miles and means that, if Middlebury’s conservatives (there must be a few) could not be located for 40 minutes. When he was found, in his put up a memorial to unborn children, she will leave it standing. life raft, he insouciantly offered his rescuers space rations. Of the original seven Mercury astronauts, only John Glenn is now n Emily Yoffe, who writes a regular advice column for Slate, left. The Sixties seem in so many ways like the Dark Ages— made the obvious observation that young women on college landlines, electric typewriters, computers running on punch campuses who binge-drink to the point of incapacitation put cards. But we put men in space and on the Moon. How is the themselves at heightened risk of becoming the victims of sexual microverse doing, tech-heads? Dead at 88. R.I.P. assault. “A misplaced fear of blaming the victim has made it somehow unacceptable to warn inexperienced young women” of n Oscar Hijuelos was the first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer Prize this fact, she said. As if to illustrate her point, denunciations from for fiction. The book for which he was awarded the prize—1989’s all the usual Internet quarters immediately poured forth: She had The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love—won not just a critical but written “a rape denialism manifesto” (in the words of one femi- also a commercial success, and was adapted into both a movie and nist website) promoting “rape culture.” “What about teaching a musical. He wrote of the experience of Cuban immigrants to men not to rape?” asked a writer on The Atlantic’s website. “I’ve America, but he reportedly did not like to be considered an “eth- told my daughter that it’s her responsibility to take steps to pro- nic” writer; he needn’t have worried about this, because his work tect herself,” wrote Yoffe. We suspect some of her critics tell their certainly resonated with too broad a public for him to be suscepti- daughters the same thing. ble to such easy pigeonholing. He was a Cuban American, and he was an American writer who belongs to all of us. Dead at 62. R.I.P. n “Our Chekhov,” Cynthia Ozick once said about Alice Munro. It is a HEALTH CARE famous and justified description. Munro, a Canadian writer now in her System Failure early 80s, has won the Nobel Prize in HE rolling fiasco that is the launch of the health- Literature. The committee called her insurance “exchanges”—the government-run online a “master of the contemporary short T marketplaces at the heart of the Affordable Care Act—is story.” That she is. The word “con- something the Obama administration is attempting to explain temporary” in that phrase, however, away as a “glitch,” but it now threatens to throw an entire is probably unnecessary. And Munro AutoZone worth of wrenches into the Rube Goldberg machine probably wouldn’t have written it. that is Obamacare. Health and Human Services managers close She is a superb writer, economical to the project privately say that hitting early-enrollment goals will and graceful. Rarely has prose been be all but impossible. The White House has called the situation so easy, or looked so easy. She can “unacceptable” (yet it is accepted); insurance companies attempt- think, too. Her stories arise from ing to use the system are in a state of panic; only a handful of states Huron County, Ontario, her native have their own working exchanges; and the federal exchange territory. She has not been a political is snarled up in Washington’s usual managerial incompetence. figure. She has simply been a master Nobody knows how long it will take to fix the problems, or of stories. She has given Stockholm whether they even can be fixed. The president has said that there her regrets, saying she will not be able to attend the ceremony: ill is “no excuse” for this mess, but there is no one taking responsi- health. She has apparently given up writing as well. A writer bility either, nor any credible timetable for getting it sorted out. has to be alone a lot, she notes, and, “at the wrong end of life,” In retrospect, those Republicans who sought a delay of she is becoming “very sociable.” Alice Munro has earned her Obamacare’s implementation would have been doing the company, and the Nobel Prize. Obama administration—to say nothing of the country—a favor had they been successful. n From the annals of superfluity: An organization called the The problem is not only crash-prone servers that make sign- Genesis Prize Foundation has established a new prize, promoted ing up for the exchanges a Sisyphean task. A larger failure is as the “Jewish Nobel,” that comes with a $1 million award. Its that the system is running on faulty data. The exchanges are first recipient is New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. It is diffi- there to facilitate transactions involving consumers, the federal cult to say which is more splendidly redundant: Giving $1 mil- government, and insurance companies, but information is not lion to a billionaire who will add the sum to the millions he reliably transmitted among the three. For example, faulty pro- already has given away through his philanthropic endeavors, or gramming has led to miscalculations of subsidies that con- establishing a prize honoring the intellectual and cultural sumers are to receive under the program, which means that a achievements of Jews. From chemistry to medicine to physics to great many of them will get premium bills that are far different literature to economics, about 20 percent of Nobel Prizes have from what they expect. (Far higher or far lower? Bet on the for-

PETER MORRISON gone to Jews, who compose 0.2 percent of the world’s popula-

/ mer.) Insurers are not receiving enough accurate information to tion. In an important sense, the Jewish Nobel Prize is the Nobel process applications from consumers. As of October 19, not one

AP PHOTO Prize. person in New York State had been able to complete a purchase

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through that state’s exchange. Consumers are not getting accu- imum degree of competence. The president can blame software rate information about the plans that are available to them. developers and vendors all he likes, but this is his mess, and if he The deeper problem for Obamacare is that in order for the new can’t clean it up—and he can’t—then it is up to Congress to do it ACA-compliant insurance plans to succeed, a very large number for him. Repealing and replacing Obamacare remains a live of healthy young people need to enroll—paying much higher issue, and Republicans would do well to pursue it. premiums than they would have paid before Obamacare—in order to offset the costs incurred by extending subsidies and cov- POLITICS AND POLICY erage to the old and the sick. If the insurance plans offered under Obamacare attract too many old and sick people and too few The Shutdown Republicans young and healthy people, they will not be financially viable. Ouse Republicans are consoling themselves in defeat by But young and healthy people do not have much incentive to saying that they fought the good fight. What a good comply with the ACA in the first place, and the catastrophically H many of them actually did was throw themselves half- dysfunctional enrollment process has given them a very strong heartedly behind a strategy that they knew very well was highly incentive to wait it out. unlikely to succeed. That strategy has now yielded its pre- uninsured Americans subject to Obamacare’s individual dictable, and predicted, results. Public support for Republicans mandate are required by law to sign up for new policies by has dropped substantially, they are more divided, and they have February 15 or face a fine. Those seeking new policies beginning won no con cessions from the Democrats. in January of the coming year must sign up by December 15. It some House Republicans claim that they were on the verge of is unlikely that the defects in the system will be repaired by winning the shutdown fight when senate Republicans undercut December or by February. them by agreeing to reopen the government and raise the debt And those are just the computer-system problems. The deeper ceiling for nothing. Again, the truth is otherwise. The Democrats problems with the bill will not be repaired by December or gave no indication that they were going to buckle, and the polls did not give them much reason to feel any pressure to do so. A unified party would not have been sufficient to force Democrats to defund Obamacare, and that unity could never have been achieved, since many Republicans grasped the point. Another consolatory myth, that the shutdown at least brought the defects of Obamacare to public attention, should also be abandoned. Obamacare itself has been bringing its defects to public attention, but has been obscured—momentarily, we trust—by the drama of the shutdown. some of the conservatives who launched this campaign say as well that it has indelibly associated Republicans February or by two summers hence, because the administra- with opposition to Obamacare in the public mind. That had tion is not interested in repairing them. Obamacare will leave already been accomplished, of course; and to the extent some many Americans paying premiums that are twice as high as people do not make that association, it is because these very con- those they paid before—or higher—and facing penalties if servatives have attacked those Republicans who question the wis- they do not buy those more expensive plans. This is being done dom of their tactics as insincere opponents of the law. in the name of improving the market for insurance, while in As critical as we have been of the shutdown strategy, we have fact converting insurance from a hedge against disaster into a also said that the people behind it have been clearer on the threat universal system of prepaid health care at a substantially higher that Obamacare poses to the country than have many Republican cost than the old one. leaders. sounding the alarm, halting the law if possible, and One of the reasons for that higher cost is that the new program eventually repealing it were and are worthy goals. The fact that is just a front for the old program: Medicaid, an expensive and the public has consistently registered opposition to the law sug- dysfunctional mess of an entitlement. In Oregon, the 56,000 peo- gests that these goals may be attainable. But the public does not ple who enrolled in health-care coverage under the new law in the hate and fear the law with the intensity that we conservatives do. first two weeks of October went exclusively into Medicaid—not It also wants answers to important questions—how can health one person was enrolled in a private insurance plan. Illinois has insurance be made more affordable? how can people with present more than 100,000 into Medicaid under the program. existing conditions get coverage?—that Republicans have not Medicaid’s perverse incentive structure has ensured explosive convincingly offered. growth in its spending over the years, while, more perverse still, Decades of misguided government policies have created many its attempts to reduce costs by restricting providers’ payments to of the dysfunctions in our health-care system that frustrate below-market levels means that fewer doctors are willing to see Americans, and Obamacare makes those dysfunctions worse. We Medicaid patients. can do better, and we should have confidence that if we make that Republicans may have failed thus far in their efforts to repeal case with conviction and intelligence we can bring the public to Obamacare, but the administration is in the midst of a much more our side and prevail. Throwing ourselves on the tracks, on the significant failure: a failure to execute its own vision with a min- other hand, as we have seen, will certainly fail.

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spending fights. One week into the August recess, Boehner, House majority leader eric Cantor, and the rest of the GOP leadership thought they had the situation under control. “No one is advocating a government shutdown,” Cantor assured NATIONAl ReVIew on August 9. Top aides were almost glib. “A shutdown? It’s not happening, it’s really not, but I guess you won’t hear people say that out loud, including me,” chuckled a senior House Republican. But rank-and-file members spread out across the country were starting to feel something different. “we hear it in our town halls, we hear it in our one-on-one meetings with constituents,” wyoming representative Cynthia lummis told me toward the end of the recess. “we hear it when we’re at county fairs or events we’ve attended during the August recess, of which there are many. And the message all over the country . . . is that Boehner’s Trial [Obamacare] is the overriding issue that is being discussed. way more than immi- The House speaker’s reluctant march to a shutdown gration, way more than the debt.” On August 22, Boehner tried to lay BY JONATHAN STRONG down the law in a 6:00 P.m. conference call with the House GOP. He announced He day after the govern ment shut point, after which he put everything he a plan to pursue a “clean” short-term down, Speaker John Boehner had into the shutdown showdown with continuing resolution to fund the govern- woke up feeling under siege. President Obama. To pin Democrats with ment—that is, one that did not defund T Pushed into a fight he didn’t responsibility for the shutdown, Boehner Obamacare or seek to advance other want by Senator Ted Cruz and the defund and his team moved nimbly to propose political objectives. Boehner argued that brigade, Boehner had embraced a strate- bills that would fund national parks, pay using the bill to fight Obamacare would gy he knew would end in disaster, only to soldiers, and resume other government be folly. face a new revolt from the moderates in operations whose cessation seemed made The overture did not go over well. his conference, one he personally stared for the TV cameras. Throughout the saga, ever since the fiscal-cliff fracas at the down on the House floor. Boehner con- the House GOP may have leaked like a beginning of the year, Boehner had bent fided to his closest congressional allies at sieve to the media, but the tidbits over backwards to incorporate input an October 3 meeting that he had asked reporters gleaned weren’t about squab- from the conference into his decisions. why God would have put him in this bles at the leadership table, which was Now, with members feeling the heat position. “There must be a reason,” he remarkably united, participants say. from their constituents back home, the thought as he lay awake in his bed. As The conservatives who had pushed tone was, “well, this is the decision lead- Boehner went through his prayers, one in the GOP into the fight lined up behind ership has made,” recalls Georgia repre- particular prompted a sudden, over- Boehner, who gave his colleagues pep- sentative lynn westmoreland. “And it whelming feeling of peace. rally-style speeches about sticking to- was like, ‘Hmm. I don’t think that’s what The account startled the 20 or so law- gether. President Obama, Senate majority we talked about. That’s not how it’s been makers in attendance; Boehner isn’t usu- leader Harry Reid, and the Democrats working.’ I think that’s when he got ally so open about his faith. Indeed, “are trying to annihilate us,” he told them pushback.” On the call that day, west - when one southerner there urged him to eight days into the shutdown, “but we can moreland was emphatic with Boehner. share the story with the public, he pushed get through this if we stick together.” “Go back to the drawing board,” he said. back: “I’m a Catholic—not a Baptist!” “The only way out,” he explained, “is meanwhile, those in Boehner’s orbit But the story’s meaning was clear to his to win.” were increasingly convinced that the end friends. “He wanted to make sure that we In the end, though, it wasn’t nearly game of those pushing the defund strategy all understood that he was up for the enough. As Boehner had anticipated, the was less about Obamacare and more fight,” says Representative Pat Tiberi of episode ended in a humiliating defeat, about dethroning the speaker. Ohio. one that may undermine the House On August 27, protesters chanted

The speaker’s prayer was a turning GOP’s credibility and influence in future “Fire Boehner!” outside the speaker’s ROMAN GENN

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district office in Troy, Ohio. Anger sim- laughable. At the only big White House room, where Representatives Jim Jordan, mered at the event, with one man shout- summit with Republicans, Obama had Raul Labrador, Justin Amash, Mick Mul - ing “Fascist pig!” at a police officer. The basically run out the clock, at one point vaney, and others sat. Their voices low, protest was organized by Faith2Action, prompting majority whip Kevin Mc- the group expressed their assent—they an aggressive pro-life group that features Carthy to shake his head in frustration, would back Boehner. video interviews of Representatives Tim drawing the president’s notice. Now Even that, it turned out, wasn’t enough. Huelskamp and Louie Gohmert, two Re - Senate Republicans were anxious to get Leadership played Whac-A-Mole for the publicans who tried to unseat Boehner in out of the slow-moving political disas- rest of the afternoon as the conference January, on its website. ter and looking to jam the House by splintered. There were at least four cate- Talk-radio hosts threatened to dub negotiating their own solution. gories of opposition, and despite further the health-care law “Boehnercare” if Deep in the Capitol basement, Boehner changes, it looked like the bill would be the Ohio Republican didn’t embrace laid out the last play—for the House to defeated. Until the last minute, several in the defund strategy. On Twitter, the preempt the deal Senate minority leader Boehner’s circle pushed him to bring it to “#FireBoehner” hashtag found a new Mitch McConnell was set to strike with the House floor anyway, thinking the high lease on life. Cruz, Senator Mike Lee Reid. “I’d rather throw a grenade than stakes would force opponents to back of Utah, and other top leaders cleverly catch a grenade,” Boehner told his col- down. “The whip count was close,” re - framed the decision as whether their leagues. The bill he described would in- members one top Republican. Others Republican colleagues would vote “for clude only trivial concessions to the GOP, warned it could be an excruciating vote Obamacare.” a far cry from the grandiose ambitions with no purpose, putting the House “A small number of our members— they had started with at Cruz’s behest. GOP’s team players in a difficult spot. If they would like to, any way they can But, Boehner said, this is our “last chance it did lose, the fallout would be even accomplish, see him leave,” says Tiberi. to retain any shred of dignity.” worse for Boehner than if he canceled the Upon the Republicans’ return to When he finished speaking, the room vote, they said. Washington, a plan floated by Cantor to was silent. And for the next 30 minutes, Boehner canceled. The next day, he force only a show vote on Obamacare the conversation was distinctly positive. told the House GOP that the gig was up. died a quick death, derided by Lee as a “It looked like we might get the votes for “We fought the good fight,” he said, but face-saving gimmick and by Boehner’s this thing,” recalls one member who was lost. Cantor counseled unity, warning House critics as the “hocus pocus” plan. in the room. One part of the proposal did members not to turn fights over tactics Leaders quickly realized the choice draw some polite questions. Boehner into purity crusades. With the micro- they faced and mulled their two options wanted to end a federal Obamacare sub- phones open for members to speak, no with senior lawmakers over several days sidy for members of Congress and top one came forward. Instead, the entire in mid September. They could pass a political appointees at the White House body rose to give Boehner a standing “clean” bill with Democratic votes. But but leave it intact for thousands of con- ovation. their estimates of GOP support put the gressional staffers. There was concern it The fight was gone from even the most number of “yes” votes below 40, mean- could look hypocritical. ardent proponents of the defund strategy, ing such a course would have ripped the Boehner’s conservative critics in the who, to a person, watched the final deal House Republicans apart at the seams. conference, who congregated in the back move forward without raising a finger. The other choice was to plunge ahead rows of the meeting room, began to rally At 9:21 P.M. that evening, the House into the shutdown, a course they’d been around that criticism. They were pitching approved a procedural vote for an essen- warning against for months. “They knew their own plan, crafted the previous night tially clean continuing-resolution and that this was a folly. Every single one of with Cruz in the basement of Tortilla debt-ceiling bill by voice vote. No one them knew this was bulls***,” says one Coast, a Capitol Hill restaurant. Another who had vowed to oppose any bill that House lawmaker about the leadership. 30 minutes later, Boehner’s escape hatch funded Obamacare objected. On the A day or two before the government’s was critically damaged. Senate side, Cruz, who had waged a 21- funding expired, Boehner made the final Florida representative Steve Souther - hour filibuster weeks earlier, told re - call. They were just going to have to do land, the tea-party class of 2010’s voice porters that “of course” he wouldn’t stall this, he concluded. at the leadership table, stepped in. Citing the bill’s speedy passage. Boehner “has said for a long time, as criticism that the proposal applied only “They blinked. That’s what happened. long as I’ve known him, long before he to lawmakers and not to staff (who had One person could have stopped it,” says was back in leadership, that the reason long since been asked to leave the room California representative Devin Nunes, why he was here is to do the ‘big deal,’” by an angry Representative Joe Barton who emerged in the shutdown as the top Tiberi says. And at the October 3 “Team of Texas), Southerland pressed the dis- Cruz critic on the right. “It was the equiv- Boehner” meeting, where he shared his senters: Will you vote for the bill if alent of Custer’s last stand, but General spiritual acceptance of the shutdown, the Boehner changes it? Custer didn’t show up to the battle.” Ohio Republican expressed optimism “He called them out,” says a law- On the final roll call for passage, the that he could get Obama to the table for maker who was in the room, asking bill passed the House with only 87 Re - such an agreement—one that included them, “Come on, come on, we’re in the publican votes. Then the GOP left town, modest entitlement cuts and a path for- locker room here, guys! Tell us! Are with virtually nothing to claim for a bru- ward on tax reform. you gonna vote for it or not?” Souther - tal and exhausting three-week fight with Twelve days later, this ambition seemed land was pointing to the back of the the president.

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of multilateral organizations, or why camouflage. None of this bodes well those defects are inherent in their crea tion for OPCW success in Syria, a Russian A Nobel and structure. When they go awry, their (and Iranian) client state. It exempli- actions do not constitute a “problem” to fies the inherent implausibility of an For Good be solved, or a temporary aberration, or a OPCW Nobel Peace Prize even un der bad day at the office, but merely the nat- the loosest “aspirational” criteria, i.e., ural outcome. those used to justify Barack Oba ma’s Intentions Their principal dysfunction resides in 2009 award. (By contrast, key elements The OPCW is about as effective the very DNA of the OPCW and U.N. of nuclear-weapons programs have no as most international organizations bodies, which see member states as fungi- dual-use applications; if uncovered, ble, one being pretty much like another. they are very difficult to explain, as Iran B Y JOHN R. BOLTON Article 2 of the U.N. Charter embodies and North Korea repeatedly demon- this notion: “The Or gan i za tion is based strate.) he Organization for the Pro hi - on the principle of the sovereign equality More broadly, international organiza- bi tion of Chemical Weapons of all its Members.” And while, abstractly, tions—both their member states and (OPCW) is an inconspicuous “sovereign equality” may sound unex- their bureaucracies—tend to forget their T little body established to help ceptional, it amounts in practice to moral original objectives too soon and too verify implementation of the Chemical equivalency for rogue states and sub- often, losing themselves among politi- Weapons Convention (CWC). Although stantial voting majorities against most cal and institutional imperatives only not part of the United Nations, it func- American positions. Fixing the prob- remotely related to those initial purposes. tions much as U.N. specialized agencies lem would require very different kinds In this sense, not surprisingly, they mir- do, right down to its system of assessed of organization—non-bureaucratic, non- ror national governments, whose opera- contributions, under which the United parliamentary, and much less structured. tions public-choice economists have States annually pays the largest budget This alternative paradigm exists in the illuminated, freeing us from the naïve share. The OPCW has 190 members now Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), early-20th-century belief that govern- that Syria has graced it with its presence, established under George W. Bush to ments serve the public interest better almost the same as the U.N. itself. prevent illicit trafficking in weapons of than private entities do. Being nearly identical to U.N. agencies mass destruction, now with over a hun- The same is true in international bod- lies right at the heart of why the OPCW dred adherents. The PSI and the OPCW ies: Rent-seeking dominates, as gov- appealed to the Norwegian Nobel Peace are two entirely different animals, and ernments promote their citizens for Prize Committee. Over the years, the the PSI is never likely to win a Nobel. particular jobs, seek memberships on Peace Prize has gone to the International (Of course, most PSI-style activities are desirable governing bodies, and tap Atomic energy Agen cy and its director classified, which, with luck, means they into “technical assistance” programs general (2005), the United Nations and rarely become public.) (sometimes candidly referred to as its secretary general (2001), U.N. peace- Not that media coverage reveals it, but “spigots”). Governments are problem- keeping forces (1988), the U.N. high the OPCW actually has a minimal role in atic enough, but organizations com- Commissioner for Refugees (1981), and implementing the CWC. Na tion al gov- posed entirely of governments embody the In ter na tion al Labor Organization ernments are responsible for de clar ing geometric progressions of those prob- (1969), among others. Some of these the extent of their chemical-weapons lems. awards were well deserved, some were programs and then destroying them con- Moreover, the organizations’ secre- intended as slaps at the United States, sistently with the CWC. The OPCW tariats, while often composed of dedi- and some were merely fatuous. Jay monitors and purportedly verifies this cated professionals, too frequently step Nordling er’s lucid study, Peace, They work, but as an observer, not an actor. out from their proper roles as agents of Say, definitively examines Peace Prize even as an observer, the OPCW has the member governments. National foi bles, including the quirky tilt toward been far from successful. Russia has vio- bureaucracies have an analogous ten- international bodies. lated the CWC from the outset: filing an dency to ignore their elected political The Norwegian politicians compos- incomplete, inaccurate baseline decla- masters. Rewarding such tendencies ing the Peace Prize committee are fasci- ration; developing new generations of with the Nobel Peace Prize is perplexing nated by international organizations, chemical weapons; and assisting rogue at best. believing in a stolid, burgherish way that states such as Syria and Iran in establish- The way José Bustani, the OPCW’s having more global bureaucracies en - ing their own programs. Both Moscow first director general, was fired in 2002 hances the prospects for peace. This and Washington are behind schedule in demonstrates the bureaucratic problem. depressing and completely erroneous destroying their chemical-weapons stock - An overwhelming majority of the coun- vision does not comprehend the defects piles, demonstrating both the complexity tries for which the CWC really mattered and the danger of handling these deadly (as opposed to those that simply join vir- Mr. Bolton is a senior fellow at the American substances and, in Russia’s case, studied tually every multilateral agreement, pay Enterprise Institute and a former U.S. ambassador to obstructionism. insignificant financial assessments, and the United Nations. He is the author of Surrender Components of chemical (and biolog- engage assiduously in rent-seeking) saw Is Not an Option: Defending America at ical) weapons have an almost inherently Bustani as harming the OPCW. A senior the United Nations and Abroad. dual-use character, making them easy to Brazilian foreign-service officer, he was

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You deserve a factual look at . . .

Myths About Israel and the Middle East (2) Should we re-examine endlessly repeated clichés? In a previous installment in this series of clarifying messages about Israel and the Middle East, we examined certain myths which, by dint of constant repetition, had acquired currency and acceptance. We looked at the myth of “Palestinian nationhood,” the myth of Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) being “occupied territory,” the myth that Jewish settlements in these territories are “the greatest obstacle to peace,” and the myth that Israel is unwilling to “yield land for peace.” And we cleared up the greatest myth of all, namely that Israel’s administration of the territories, and not the unrelenting hatred of the Arabs against the Jews, is the root cause of the conflict between the Arabs and Israel. But those are not all the myths; there are more. Reality: There is no prospect at all that anything resembling a What are more of these myths? I Myth: The Arabs of Israel are a persecuted minority. democratic state could be created in the territories. There is not a Reality: The over one million non-Jews (mostly Arabs) who are single democratic Arab state – all of them are tyrannies of varying citizens of Israel have the same civil rights that Jews have. They degrees. Even today, under partial Israeli administration, Hamas vote, are members of the Knesset (parliament), and are part of and other factions fight for supremacy and ruthlessly murder each Israel’s civil and diplomatic service, just as their Jewish fellow other. Another Lebanon, with its incessant civil wars, is much citizens. Arabs have complete more likely. The lawlessness and religious freedom and full access to “It is in our national interest that chaos that prevail in Gaza since the Israeli legal, health and Israel’s withdrawal is a good prospect educational systems – including reality, not myths, govern our policy.” of what would happen if Israel – Arabic and Muslim universities. The foolishly and under the pressure of only difference between the “rights” of Arabs and Jews is that “world opinion” – were to abandon this territory. As for Jewish young men must serve three years in the military and at demilitarization, that is totally unlikely. Because – with Syria, least one month a year until age 50. Young Jewish women serve Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, most of which are in a declared for two years. The Arabs have no such civic obligation. For them, state of war with Israel, at its borders – an irresistible power military service is voluntary. Not too surprisingly, except for the vacuum would be created. Despite pious promises, the arms Druze, very few avail themselves of the privilege. merchants of the world would find a great new market and the I Myth: Having (ill-advisedly) already given up control of the neighboring hostile Arab countries would be happy to supply Gaza Strip, Israel should also give up the administration of anything else that might be needed. Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) because strategic depth is I Myth: : Israel should make “confidence-building gestures” meaningless in this age of missiles. for the sake of peace. Reality: Israel is a mini-state – about half the size of San Reality: What really is it that the world expects Israel to do for Bernardino county in California. If another, even smaller mini- the sake of peace? Most of the 22 Arab countries consider state were carved out of it, Israel would be totally indefensible. themselves in a state of war with Israel and don’t even recognize That is the professional opinion of 100 retired U.S. generals and its “existence.” That has been going on for over sixty years. Isn’t it admirals. If the Arabs were to occupy whatever little strategic about time that the Arabs made some kind of a “gesture?” Could depth Israel has between the Jordan River and its populated coast, they not for instance terminate the constant state of war? Could they would not need any missiles. Artillery and mortars would they not stop launching rockets into Israel from areas that Israel suffice, since Israel would be only nine miles wide at its waist. has abandoned for the sake of peace? Could they not stop the Those who urge such a course either do not understand the suicide bombings, which have killed hundreds of Israelis and situation or have a death wish for Israel. which have made extreme security measures – such as the I Myth: If Israel would allow a Palestinian state to arise in defensive fence and convoluted bypass roads – necessary? Any of Judea and Samaria it would be a democratic state and would be these would create a climate of peace and would indeed be the totally demilitarized. “confidence-building gestures” that the world hopes for. Countless “peace conferences” to settle this festering conflict have taken place. All have ended in failure because of the intransigence of the Arabs. President Clinton, toward the end of his presidency, convened a conference with the late unlamented Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak, the prime minister of Israel at that time. Mr. Barak offered virtually everything that Arafat had requested, except the partition of Jerusalem and the acceptance of the so-called refugees, their descendants having swollen from the 650,000 who fled the nascent state of Israel during the War of Liberation, to an incredible 5 million. Arafat left in a huff and started his infamous intifada instead, a bloody war that has cost thousands of Palestinian and Israeli lives. Israel is America’s staunchest ally and certainly its only true friend in that area of the world. It is in our national interest that reality, not myths, govern our policy.

This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals Facts and Logic About the Middle East I and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We P.O. Box 590359 San Francisco, CA 94159 have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational Gerardo Joffe, President work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. 37E To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 3col:QXP-1127940387.qxp 10/22/2013 10:50 PM Page 20

a poor manager: unfocused in his priori- expensive projects—an airport, a baseball ties, heedless of budget constraints, and park, a convention center—in an attempt enchanted with the per quis ites of office The Art of to attract businesses, residents, and much- and the pursuit of self-serving publicity. needed revenue, but all these endeavors Bustani’s incompetence was com- Managed have failed, devouring the city’s remain- pounded for the new Bush administra- ing resources along the way. tion by his unopposed reelection in But the city does have one asset: Mayor May 2000, a year before his initial term Decline Karen Freeman-Wilson, a Gary native actually expired. When I asked State Is Gary, Ind., the American future? and Harvard Law School alumna. Instead De part ment careerists, who had in - of following her predecessors’ big- formed me of Bustani’s unacceptable BY JILLIAN KAY MELCHIOR spending example, Freeman-Wilson is managerial performance, why they had embarking on a simple, smart, and virtu- allowed an early, uncontested reelec- Gary, Ind. ally unprecedented mission: to manage tion, they said no one had wanted to take N a crisp fall day, a workman and direct Gary’s irreversible decline. the political risk of challenging Bustani manicures Leatrix Lamber - And as Gary embarks on this experiment, and losing. Indeed, some State careerists son’s lawn as she sits on the it deserves national attention. The stark worried about even expressing displea- O porch of her immaculate red- and intractable realities have forced even sure with Bustani’s performance (except and-white house on Virginia Street. The Gary’s Democratic leadership to advo- by wringing their hands), let alone elderly black woman watches with cate austerity. launching a campaign to remove him approval, and she is dressed to the nines Gary’s reputation precedes it. Chica - from office. Thus the State Department, herself, wearing a sparkly purple top, goans caution passersby to avoid its along with most other important OPCW pressed slacks, and matching shoes and exits and fuel their cars farther down the members (notably excepting Ja pan and earrings. But despite decades of obvious road. Big-city gangs have found their Germany), was willing to fill the role of care—flowers fill the planters in front of criminal protégés here. Though random the Titanic’s band, playing stoically as her house, and even the trim looks freshly crime is rare, by October 15 Gary had the OPCW sank beneath the waves. coated—Leatrix has a terrible view. already matched the previous year’s 43 My view was different. If the organi- Across the street are two abandoned homicides. This summer, the police chief zation was worth creating, which the houses, windows shattered or boarded said he had visited about 20 homes warn- United States had presumably decided up, the paint chipped, and the lawns over- ing against retaliatory gun violence, by ratifying the CWC, it was worth sav- grown. One was home to a police officer “stress[ing] to them that vengeance is the ing, if necessary by ousting Bustani if and his child, and when they sold it, it Lord’s.” And earlier this year, two peo- he would not leave voluntarily. This he went for only $11,000, Leatrix says. It ple died after their apartment was fire- refused to do, and the United States has since gone derelict. Down the street bombed, reportedly over an argument thereupon led the coalition that fired are vacant lots, knee-high weeds spilling about an Xbox 360. him at a special conference of CWC across the sidewalk. Middle-class houses Gary’s average household income is state parties in April 2002. (For those used to stand there, but they too were less than $28,000, and 36 percent of its interested, I describe our campaign in abandoned. The blight attracted copper residents fall below the poverty level. Surrender Is Not an Option.) Bustani thieves, drug addicts, and arsonists, and Unemployment continued a jagged rise was succeeded by an Argentinian, Leatrix says that once, several years ago, even after the recession ended, up to 14.9 there being no anti–Latin American a boy was slain on the perimeter of her percent most recently. About one in three bias at work despite Bustani’s effort to property, a dozen bullets fired through his buildings in the city are abandoned. turn the controversy into a Third body. Gary is a precautionary tale, one of World–versus–America fight.) “Gary used to be booming, honey,” those places that give reason for skepti- The real question is why this agony was Leatrix tells me. “When I was a young cism whenever a bureaucrat or bigwig even necessary. While the OPCW has run adult, I would walk down this street, and claims to know the way to utopia. U.S. quietly since 2002, that tells us nothing people would drive down just to see it. It Steel ambitiously founded the city in about its capabilities under fire, literally, was so beautiful. . . . And you know 1906, planning to create the biggest steel in Syria, and certainly does not justify the what—I look at it in the spirit. I don’t see mill in the world. An early city history Nobel Peace Prize. There is simply no the ugliness because I know what God states that “Gary is the truly Aladdinesque basis for the Norwegian committee’s can do.” city creation of the twentieth century, and decision, and why the committee mem- Leatrix’s faith must be truly profound, without a precedent in character and des- bers believe that such inexplicable awards for Gary is a dismal place, a littered and tiny in the world’s history.” Early resi- enhance the prestige of either the recipient malodorous town pinched between I-80 dents dubbed it the Magic City, and for a or the Peace Prize itself is unfathomable. and I-90. The city treasury is depleted, time, it did flourish. Its single industry If its institutional experience so far is any having run up over $43 million in debt. drew immigrants from Mexico and across indication, the OPCW will be yet another Past mayors have fronted ambitious and Europe, as well as southern blacks, and No bel winner later forgotten by history, Appalachians who were, as one steel which judges much more stringently than Jillian Kay Melchior is a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow at executive recounted in the late Sixties, the Norwegians who annually decide who the Franklin Center for Government and Public “the gaddam sorriest white people I ever wins the prize money. Integrity. saw.” The city peaked in 1960, a year

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when it had 178,000 residents—a re - ings], hurt you and rape you.” Chicagoans had traveled to take high- spectable population, but short of the Short on funds, Gary struggles to pro- school senior photos in the majestic expected 250,000. vide lighting, police, fire protection, street ruins; other photographers had spray- Gary was soon plagued by the usual services, snow removal, and other basic painted their Twitter handles on the stone problems of one-industry Rust Belt services. The police force has already lost walls. Outside, an impeccably dressed towns. Racial tensions stoked violence at least 15 officers this year, the police older black man approached van Dyk and and led to white flight and black frustra- ranks falling to around 220. In the late me. Squeezing our hands, he told us how tion. Foreign competition chipped away summer, Mayor Freeman-Wilson asked much it would mean to him if this church at the primary industry. Union intransi- the governor to send 60 Indiana State were restored to its former glory, and he gence scared away at least as many jobs Police troopers to help out. (He instead looked like he was about to cry. Later, I as it purportedly protected. Political sent a technical-assistance team to help asked van Dyk if he got that a lot. Yes, he corruption was pervasive but rarely review Gary police operations.) replied—but residents weren’t always so prosecuted. Suburban malls upended Part of the problem is that Gary is too nice about it. mom-and-pop businesses. Federal help big for its population. The city has only Blight is a vicious cycle, both a symp- gave a false sense of security, but when 80,000 residents but more land mass tom and a cause of decline, and it quickly those dollars evaporated, the city’s true than San Francisco, says Joseph van becomes the central focus of my interview desperation was revealed. And because it Dyk, the city’s 29-year-old director of with Mayor Freeman-Wilson, a petite was populated by immigrants and lower- redevelopment. And “instead of having woman with an easygoing demeanor. and middle-class Americans, Gary lacked large swathes or neighborhoods that Several residents have commented that the philanthropic titans who helped some have been abandoned, we’re kind of like her best trait is her humility, and sitting in similar cities limp along. Swiss cheese,” he says. “There’s holes her office one late September afternoon, A sort of backhanded optimism of the all over the city.” she talks so bluntly about Gary’s problems things-can’t-get-worse variety pervades As in many ailing cities, some of the that it’s easy to forget she’s a politician. Gary today. And even the city’s inspira- blight is as exquisite as it is heartbreak- Then again, she may be the first leader in tional stories have a bite: Take Veronica ing. Memorial Auditorium, where Frank a long time with some practical ideas on Townsell-Burnett, a 44-year-old resident Sinatra once spoke out against racism, is how to fix Gary. who spends her time voluntarily cleaning an icon of collapse, bricks and debris lit- “Our No. 1 problem is jobs, and so if up blighted properties while she’s be- tering its grand floor. The City United you don’t have a job, you can’t maintain tween jobs. She does it because “I love Methodist Church, a stunning Gothic [your property], and so that leads to my community. I just love Gary,” she tells structure, is in similar disrepair. I visited blight,” she says. “So the loss of jobs and me; and also because “you don’t know it with van Dyk, peering up at the the increase in our poverty rate has had a who’s gonna come out [of those build- stained glass that remained. A group of devastating impact on the appearance of the city. And it’s done that in two ways. It’s done that because individuals have not been able to take care of their property, but it’s also done it because as a corporate entity, the city has lost dollars that we would use to take care of property as well.” Furthermore, blighted property scares away would-be investors and residents. The first step in addressing the problem has been taking an inventory of all 64,000 parcels in Gary. Surveyors, almost all of them volunteers, are in the process of recording what, if any, struc- tures are on the land, building a database that will eventually allow the city to cal- culate accurate cost estimates for demo- litions. Furthermore, the city will factor in information about crime statistics, fire- department calls, energy usage, business licenses, construction permits, and other things. Once the data have been collected, Freeman-Wilson says, she hopes to see which neighborhoods are still salvageable and dedicate resources to saving them. But, she says, there are also “whole square-block areas [where] you may

have maybe 50 houses in a place that you TAYLOR COLLINS

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wouldnormallyhave500.Soit’sworthit servativeshaveonlyrecentlyrecognized toclosethatoff,nothavetodeliverser- tobeasignificantproblemforthem. vices.Butthat’sadifficultconversation Revolution But,asaresultoftheirvictory,leftists tohaveandadifficultdeterminationto nowfindthemselvesinapeculiarposi- makebecausepeoplearesovestedin InDotage tion.WhennorberteliaspublishedThe those50parcels.” Established and the Outsiders in1965, Freeman-Wilsonreadilyacknowledges How the Left got boring “outsider”wasalmostasynonymfor thatunpopularchoicesawaither.“If “leftist.”nowadays,theideaisrisible. BY CHARLES C. W. COOKE youlookatsomeofthoseplacesandsee ItistheLeftthatestablisheswhatis whatthesefolkshavedoneintheface nce uponatime—backwhen acceptableandwhatisunwelcomein oftheblightaroundthem,that’saspe- the Beatles were growing society;itistheLeftthatdecideswhatis cialcharactertraityouwanttoculti- mustaches and picking up humorousandwhatisoffensive,whatis vate,”shesays.“I’mnotsayingthatitis O sitars,andSergioLeonewas kindandwhatismean,whatisfairand withoutadegreeoftrepidation,butit’s wonderingwhetherhecouldgetaway whatisunjust.ItistheLeft,inother alsowiththerealizationthattheend with filming a western in europe— words,thatjudgeswhatisnormal. resultwillbebetterforallinvolved, AmericansofthenewLeftcouldclaim Farfrombeingthecreedoftherebel- becauseevenwiththosefolkswhohave withsomecredibilitytobecompelling liousoutsider,leftismhasnowbecomethe maintainedtheirpropertywell,there’sa andiconoclastic.Then,theFlower child- standardoption—thedefaultworldview certainelementofdangerinvolved.” renlongedearnestlyforaBravenew intowhichtheapatheticfallasindifferent Inthebest-casescenario,right-sizing World—ablankslateontowhichtheir ironfilingsmightarrangethemselvesona thecitywillenableitsleaderstofocuson “enlightened”generationmightexpand pieceofpaperaboveamagnet.Leftismis otherpriorities.AndGarydoeshaveafew theheroicsocialvictoriesofthecivil- theoutlookthatyoupickupifyouaren’t thingsgoingforit.TheIndianaUniversity rightsera,destroythe“judgmental” reallysurewhattothink—orifyoudon’t northwestcampushasasizeablepres- powers-that-beinfavorofamoreper- care.ItisOpinion101:Thestartingpoint enceinthecitylimits.TheLakeMichigan missiveorder,andbuildaGreatSociety forpoliticalandculturalimpressions.And beachfrontisexquisite,andtheregion’s atopthenewDeal.Thatistosay,in thus,inacrueltwistoffate,havethe unique and bizarre ecosystem—cacti, whichtheymightrecreatesocietyintheir extremistsbecometheestablishment,the orchids,andfirtreesallsproutup—draws ownimage. mutineersbecomeTheMan,andthesub- tourists.Garyisalsosituatednearmajor Leftists wore the most interesting versivesbecome...well,they’vebecome highways,railroads,andwaterfronts,giv- clothesandhairstyles,pushedtoexpand downrightboring. ingitpotentialtoexpandintothetrans- theboundariesoffreeexpression,and And, funnily enough, they haven’t portationindustry. madethebestnewmusic.Theyweregen- noticed. Almostcertainlyastheresultof closingdownwholeblockswillcer- uinelyopen-minded—albeitoftentothat adeepneedtoretainthesenseofheroism tainlybethorny,notonlyemotionallybut pointatwhich,asG.K.chestertonjoked, andvictimhoodthatmarksitsphiloso- alsolegally.Andthecityrisksscaring theirbrainswerelikelytofallout—but phy,theAmericanLefthasnevereven awaysomeofitsmostdedicated,responsi- theyalsoknewtheirenemy,whichcon- startedtoacknowledgethat,inpolitical bleresidents,peoplelikeLeatrixLamber- sistedofalmosteveryonewhohadany maturity,ithasbecomeeverythingthatit sonwhohavestuckitoutontheirlots. influence.Theyhadnamesforit—“the oncedespised. Thenagain,Garymaywellbeoutofother establishment,”or“TheMan”—andthey “Maneuverandbaittheestablishment,” options. wereunabashedintheirlanguage.“All theradicalSaulAlinskyoncedemanded. Despiteallthesecomplications,van thesquaresgohome!”insistedcynthia “Turnon,tunein,dropout!”insisted Dyk,Gary’sdirectorofredevelopment, RobinsononSlyandtheFamilyStone’s TimothyLeary.WeatherUnderground sayshe’sexcitedandhopeful,partially hit“DancetotheMusic.” bomberBernardineDohrnperhapsputit becauseGaryisbreakingnewground From1962onward,theLeftestablished best:“Freaksarerevolutionaries,”she withitsurbanplanning. andfaithfullyexecutedaplantogetits wrote,“andrevolutionariesarefreaks.” “Upuntilveryrecently,everysingle ownback.Recognizingthattheuniversity Howfarthose“freaks”havefallenin municipal plan in the history of the systemwas,inthewordsoftheseminal ourage.Inadevelopmentthatmusthave worldwaspredicatedongrowth,”van PortHuronStatement,“thecentralinstitu- beenalmostimpossibleforanyonealive Dyksays.“Andnowwe’reseeing,in tionfororganizing,evaluating,andtrans- duringthe1960stograsp,therecentshut- Americaatleast,forthefirsttime,major mittingknowledge,”theyplannedtotake teringofthegovernmentpromptedour citiesthatwerepredicatedongrowth— itoverandtherebyreshapetheAmerican McGovernitepresidenttoordermen theseplansdon’tworkanymore....You mind.IftheLeftcould“wrestcontrolof withgunstoerectbarricadesaroundthe havetoinvestwhatlittlewehavein theeducationalprocessfromtheadmin- nationalparkswhileprotestingVietnam areaswethinkarealreadysucceeding istrativebureaucracy”andensurethat veteransknockedthemdowntothecheers andhopethatbuildsout,andhopethat classesconsistedof“debateandcontro- ofRepublicans.Theworldisupsidedown. raisesourreputation,whileatthesame versy,notdullpedanticcant,”thePort Isthepresidenta...square? timemanagingareasthatareshrinking Hurontheorywent,thenitcouldtransmit WhenIwascoveringOccupyWall andhavingaveryhonestapproachwith itsradicalismtothecitizenryatlargeand, Street,Ilikedtoquestiontheconsistency whatwecanandcannotdogivenour eventually,seizepower.Thisitdidwith ofattendeeswhosimultaneouslyspoke limitedresources.” remarkablesuccess,somethingthatcon- warmlyof“lettingyourfreakflagfly”

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and ranted against the evils of leaving insist that they be interesting, and that the people alone to do their own thing. To influence that the movement has won not their credit, most respondents would be used to alleviate what H. L. Mencken Entitled notice the problem, leading them to balk at described as “the haunting fear that some- The tricky business of addressing or the suggestion of coercion and start mum- one, somewhere, may be happy”? Take bling incomprehensibly about “love,” or almost anything regarded as both “fun” referring to an unsavory foreign leader “togetherness,” or a variety of other and “American” and you can all but guar- terms drawn from the stale lexicon of antee that the modern Left has a problem BY JAY NORDLINGER the Woodstock years. with it. Certainly, this unwillingness to “sell Local control? Dangerous—people N his recent address at the U.N., out” was virtuous. But it was also deeply will make the “wrong” decisions. Indi - President Obama referred to Ali silly. To remake the world, you need vidualism? That’ll lead to greed. Re - Khamenei, the head ayatollah in Iran. power. And having power makes you The I Each time, he referred to him as “the ligion? What if you believe things that Man. This is to say that the leftist id still aren’t true, or disapprove of behavior we Supreme Leader.” He did not even say his sees itself as Timothy Leary, opening like? Rap music? Careful of those name: just “Supreme Leader.” Was that Aldous Huxley’s “doors of perception,” misogynistic lyrics! Alcohol? Too much really necessary, for the president of the when in reality it has un consciously is bad for you and, besides, the socialized United States? Those who control Iran become Don Corleone—not so much costs of treatment require us to remind may refer to Khamenei as “Supreme extending an offer of a new experience as you of this at every opportunity. Flying? Leader”—but do democratic leaders, adumbrating an offer you can’t refuse. Hurts the environment. Cars? Same such as Obama, have to follow suit? Occupy, perhaps, was a support group for thing, I’m afraid. Jokes? Every one of Two months after he became president, a movement that has not yet come to them has a butt, so careful whom you in 2009, Obama sent Nowruz greetings to terms with its new station. offend! Guns? Dangerous! Race? Well, Iran. (Nowruz is the Persian new year.) This is the trouble with revolutions. everything is racist. Averages? Lead His predecessor, George W. Bush, had The day after victory, the most committed inexorably to stereotypes. Football? sent such greetings too. But Bush made radicals become the most committed Violent, patriarchal, and perilous. clear that he was sending them to the conservatives, and ideas that were irrev- And don’t even get them started on people. Obama sent them to “the people erent a few days before become immedi- smoking. and leaders” of Iran. He also referred to ately catechistic. The Left can no longer Even hugs have come in for condemna- the country—twice—as “the Islamic Re - be concerned with bringing down the tion in recent months. In October, Slate’s public of Iran,” as the mullahs style the Establishment because it is the Establish - Amanda Hess bothered to write a column country. Iranian democrats, many of ment. Instead, it must attempt to ensure advising against the “awkward, falsely whom are in jail, don’t see it that way. that society conforms to its conception of intimate power plays” that she believes John Bolton, a U.S. ambassador to the virtue. Our modern life is monitored plague Americans greeting one another U.N. under Bush, puts it plainly: You call incessantly by a veritable army of busy- across these 3,000-something miles. Iran “the Islamic Republic” when you bodies who consider everything political None of this, of course, is to say that want to “kiss their posterior” (i.e., the and from whom there is no safe refuge. conservatives are all radicals, nor that all rulers’ posterior). There may come a time In October, a man named Jon conservatives want to be such. None of for such smooching. Otherwise, a simple Hochschartner penned an almost unbe- this is to suggest that all conservatives are “Iran” will do. lievably silly Salon essay about the in favor of the permissive society. None of Little stylistic touches, which may videogame The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina this is to pretend that conservatives are seem nothing to us in the Free World, can of Time. Zelda, he wrote, is “deeply prob- incapable of being censorious—although mean a lot to those in unfree places. lematic,” “extremely toxic, patronizing, they are almost certainly less likely to try President Reagan declared 1983 the “Year and paternalistic.” It fails to handle “class, to tell others what to do. But then, conser- of the Bible,” which is the kind of thing race, gender and animal rights” in a man- vatives generally do not pretend to be that causes snickers in the West. But it ner of which he could approve. exciting. As my colleague Jonah Goldberg was no laughing matter in the Gulag. Pieces like this would be amusing if they has observed, your average leftist believes Somehow, Natan Sharansky—or Anatoly were on the fringe. But they’re not. This is himself to be a “live-and-let-live sort of Shcharansky, as he was then—heard what the heirs of the Port Huron Statement per son who says ‘Whatever floats your about it. He studied the Bible with a fel- have done with academia. Walk at random boat’ a lot.” low prisoner, for as long as authorities into any graduate school in the country To put it more bluntly, modern leftists allowed. The two zeks (prisoners) called and you will be subjected to this sort of seem still to believe that they are all their sessions “Reaganite readings.” nonsense all day long. Despite having Hunter S. Thompson—open-minded and In 1984, the inimitable William F. largely got what it wanted, the Left cannot rebellious outsiders who look on with dis- Buckley Jr. began a column, “I want to quit seeing victims and injustice every- dain from the fringes of society. In fact, in know one very simple thing: Why do non- where—and we all have to pay the price. their old age, they’re the old guy down the totalitarian leaders embrace totalitarian And here’s the thing: If the Left is street, the guy who won’t stop telling you leaders?” He did not mean “embrace” in a going to insist on having its opinions on about the glory days 40 years ago—and metaphorical sense. He wrote, “I am all facets of life, and on backing its opin- who won’t give you your ball back either, staring at a picture of two men smiling ions up with force, couldn’t we at least lest you hurt yourself with it. at each other, their arms about each other,

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their noses not two inches separated. Any closer, and they’d have skirted sodomy.” The picture showed Felipe González, the prime minister of Spain, greeting the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, at Madrid’s airport. As a rule, dictators crave the legitimacy that democratic statesmen can confer. They crave the mere rubbing of shoulders. At the U.N. in 2002, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat wanted to be up close and personal with President Bush. Elliott Abrams cap- tures the moment in his recent memoir, Tested by Zion: The secretary of state, Colin Powell, “served as defensive tackle, literally pushing Arafat back when he tried to get into a photo with Bush as the president moved down a General Assembly corridor.” At the latest U.N. gathering, President Obama was eager to meet Iran’s “president,” Hassan Rouhani. The Iranian snubbed him. But he later consented to a phone call with the American. Referring to Rouhani, I have put “president” in quotation marks, because “president” is one of those titles that non-democrats, or anti-democrats, like Ali Khamenei: Not my Supreme Leader. Yours? to claim for themselves. It puts them on equal footing with, say, the president of infamous letter to the head of the called him “Your Majesty.” Jean-Bédel the United States. For decades, two sty - Nicaraguan junta, Daniel Ortega. “Dear Bokassa set himself up as Emperor of listic touches rankled Cubans: We in free Comandante,” it began. Republicans Central Africa (quite a rise from army countries called Castro “President Castro” hooted at this salutation. Challenged on a private). He was overthrown in 1979. (a designation he formally relinquished television show, Stephen Solarz, one of In addition to being the “Supreme several years ago), and we called him, as the Democrats, threw up his hands, Leader,” Kim Jong-un is “First Secretary we still do, “Fidel.” This first-naming grinned a little, and said, “But that’s his of the Workers’ Party of Korea.” Usually, suggests a certain warmth or admiration. title!” The phrase “Dear Comandante” we referred to the head of the Soviet (True, the first-naming may be more jus- entered the Republican lexicon, signifying Union as “general secretary”—the general tifiable now, seeing that the older brother an overly friendly overture to bad actors. secretary of the Communist party. In his has elevated the younger, Raúl, to promi- Just for the record, Ali Khamenei is not last year on top, Gorbachev enjoyed the nence.) the only “Supreme Leader” in the world. title “president.” The late Robert D. In Iran, they have had just two Supreme The North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, Novak had an admirable practice: In his Leaders since the Islamist revolution in has that title too. I don’t believe that columns, he would refer to the Soviet No. 1979. Before Khamenei was Khomeini. President Obama has referred to him that 1 as “party boss”—as in “party boss President Carter addressed a letter to him way. About Moammar Qaddafi, we used Mikhail Gorbachev.” That saw the situa- “Dear Ayatollah Khomeini”—a respect- to joke that, after all his years as dictator, tion clearly. Gorbachev (or Chernenko or ful, unfawning salutation. he was still known as “Colonel.” When Andropov or Brezhnev, etc.) was the boss Moving back to Latin America, the late would he give himself a promotion? But of a party, and therefore he was boss of Hugo Chávez was a “president”—presi- he had other titles: “Brotherly Leader and the country in a one-party dictatorship. dent of Venezuela—but he was more Guide of the Revolution of Libya” was Like his Soviet counterparts, Pol Pot accurately described as a “presidential one; “Guide of the First of September was the “general secretary” of his Commu - dictator,” or a “strongman.” When they Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s nist party, in Cambodia. But his fellow met in 2009, Obama was all warmth to Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” was another. (A Khmer Rouge, his fellow genocidal- him. He gave Chávez a soul-brother hand- little cumbersome.) ists, referred to him warmly as “Bro - shake and called him “mi amigo,” his We have not had emperors for a while. ther No. 1.” (A man named Nuon Chea friend. Afterward, Chávez was compli- Haile Selassie was one, ruling Ethiopia was Brother No. 2, and so on down the mentary, saying of Obama, “He is a very from 1930 to 1974. His complete mouth- hierarchy.) intelligent man, young, and he is black.” ful was “His Imperial Majesty, Con - Sometimes, a U.S. president will with-

hold a title altogether—he may say “Mr.” VAHID SALEMI In 1984—the same year Bill Buckley quering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King / wrote his above-quoted column—ten of Kings of Ethiopia, Elect of God.” This is “a way to suggest criticism,” says

Democrats in Congress sent a somewhat Toasting him in 1963, President Kennedy Marlin Fitzwater, who was press secretary AP PHOTO

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to Presidents Reagan and Bush 41. People’sRepublicofKorea.”These FitzwateraddsthatLyndonJohnson wordsmaybeconsideredtip-offsfor would“misspellormispronouncethe dictatorship. Games namesofleadershedidn’tlike.”Bush InOctober1941,FDRwrotetoStalin. 41persistentlypronouncedSaddam Threeandahalfmonthsbefore,theNazis WithOrson Hussein’sfirstname“Sodom,”apro- hadbrokentheirpactwiththeSoviets, nunciationtheIraqidictatorapparently leavingStalinintheunexpectedpositionof The politically correct denunciation didn’tappreciate.(Formally,Hussein, Westernally.“MyDearMr.Stalin,”was likesomanyotherdictators,was“pres- Roosevelt’ssalutation.Mostofthetime, of a movie and a novelist ident.”) ourpresidentreferredtoHitleras“Hitler,” InSaudiArabia,thereareagreatmany thoughsometimeshesaid“HerrHit- BY JOHN J. MILLER princes.Howmany?Ithinkofwhatalady ler.”Churchill,too,wouldsay“Herr fromSalzburgsaidwhenasked,“How Hitler.”Once,hesaid,“Hitler,withhis LMOST halfwaythroughEnder’s many Habsburgs are there in Austria tatteredlackey,Mussolini,athistail ...” Game,the1985science-fiction today?”Sheanswered,“Asmanyasthere Diplomacyandstatecraftrequireall novelbyOrsonScottCard,a aregasstationsinAmerica.”Anofficialin A pairofsiblingstrytomanipu- sortsofnose-holding,flattery,andlies.In aRepublicanWhiteHousedecidedhe particularcircumstances,itmightbewise lateglobalopinionbypostingpolemics wouldnotcalltheseguys“Prince”or foraU.S.presidenttograntAliKhamenei “onthenets”—Card’searlyanticipation “YourMajesty,”ashiscolleaguesdid.He “SupremeLeader.”Ifthisgesturehelpsto oftheWorldWideWeb.Tosucceed,they didnotwanttoendorsetheSaudisystem, preventtheIranianregime’sacquisition mustovercomethebiasesof“thenews sotospeak.So,presentedwiththeSaudis’ ofnukes,wellandgood.Butifitis herd.”Cardsetshisstoryinafarfutureof foreignminister,forexample,he’dsay, merelygratuitous,itisoffensive—gro- interstellarwarfare,butheseemstocom- “Hello,Mr.Minister,sogoodtoseeyou.” tesque.Remember,theIranianregimeis mentonourowntimeswhenhedescribes Nooneeversquawkedormurmured. onethatstonesgirlstodeathforthe his characters’ need to sift “accurate Moreimportantthanwhattocalla “crime”ofhavingbeengang-raped. informationoutofthestoriesofthehope- leader,sometimes,iswhattocallacoun- Inhis1984column,BillBuckleypro- lesslyignorant,gulliblenewswriters.” try.Take“Burma”versus“Myanmar.” posedaplankfortheRepublican-party Apparentlysomethingsneverchange. Whentheyseizedpowerinthe1980s, platform,mainlytongueincheek:“No Nowthemodern-daynewsherdhas thejuntachangedthenameofthecoun- AmericanPresidentshouldembraceany descendedonCardhimself,asthemovie tryto“Myanmar.”Thedemocraticoppo- worldleaderresponsibleforthedeath versionofEnder’s Game,withitsproduc- sitionhasclungto“Burma.”Itisthe and/ortortureand/orimprisonmentof tionbudgetofmorethan$110million, policyoftheU.S.governmenttosay morethan0.01percentofhispeople.” preparestoreachtheatersonNovember1. “Burma,”alongwiththem.Butonhis Hesaidthat,forshort,wecouldcallit Manyleft-of-centerpunditsdismissCard visittothecountrylastyear,Obamasaid “theOsculationClause.”(“Osculation,” asasocialpariah—agay-bashingbigot “Myanmar,”asadiplomaticcourtesy. aBuckleyesqueword,referstokissing andpossiblyevenaracist—simplybe- Thisisunderstandable(especiallyinlight or“closecontact.”)Norulecanbemade causeheisaMormonwhohashadthegall ofBurma’snascentliberalization). fortitles—forwhattocalltyrants,or toopposesame-sexmarriage.“Card’s IntheU.N.,JohnBoltonpointsout,a frontmenfortyranny.Democraticstates- viewsareugly,”complainedAlexandra governmentcancallthecountryitrepre- menoughttogowithtaste,nose,gut. PetriintheWashington Post inacolumn sentswhateveritwants.They’llgetthat But,again:Avoidthegratuitous.Noflat- about calls to boycott the movie on nameonthenameplate.Butothergovern- teringtitlesforfree. accountoftheauthorofthenovelit’s mentsdon’thavetoplayalong.“Inever OnewinterinDavos,Ihadamemo- basedon.Petricamedownonthesideof said‘Myanmar,’only‘Burma,’justtotick rableexperience,wheretitlesarecon- seeingthefilm—seeitdespitethe“visible them off, frankly.” (This was in pre- cerned.A group of journalists were intolerance”ofCard,shesaid—butothers liberalizationdays,whentheBurmese meetingwithAhmedNazif,thenthe arelesscertain.Manyaredoingtheirbest governmentdeservednocourtesy.) Egyptianprimeminister.Hewasintro- tocreepoutmoviegoers:DavidWeigelof The genocidalists of the Khmer ducedas“HisExcellency,”andthejour- Slate even compared Card to George RougerenamedCambodia“Democratic nalists from the Middle East were Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the Kampuchea.”EastGermany,orCommu- addressinghimas“YourExcellency.”I AmericanNaziparty.It’sasifEnder’s nistGermany,calleditself“theGerman thoughtthiswasalittlecurious,sincethe Game werethenewTriumph of the Will. DemocraticRepublic.”Manypeople, Egyptiangovernmentwasverykeentobe Card’spoliticalviewsareofcourse includingAmericansbroadcastingthe seenasdemocratic.Happytobethebrash fairgame,andpeoplearefreetoseethe Olympic Games, were happy to play Yank,IsaidtoNazif,“Howdidtheprime movieorskipitforwhateverreasonthey along.Othersnotedthat“GermanDemo- ministerofEgyptcometobecalled‘His please.Yetthecontroversyhastheunfor- craticRepublic”wasthreeliesinone: Excellency’?”TheDavosofficialover- tunateeffectofsmearingabookthat TheeasternhalfofGermanywasnei- seeingthemeetinglookedatmewithfiery doesn’tdeservethenotoriety.Ender’s therdemocraticnorarepublic,andit hatred,asthoughhewantedtokillme. Game isoneofthefinestscience-fiction wasnotstrictlyGerman,givenrulefrom ButNazifgavemesortofagrinand novelsinrecentdecades.It’samodern Moscow. The totalitarians in North said,withatwinkleinhiseye,“Well,50 classicthatwontheHugoandNebula Koreacallthatcountry“theDemocratic yearsagoitwas‘Pasha.’” awards,thebiggestannualprizesinthe

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genre. Its influence in fact runs much an off-planet Battle School, where he Card’s politics are unconventional, deeper than winning these prizes sug- begins to develop the skills that will help blending some elements of liberalism and gests. Card didn’t mean to write Ender’s Earthlings defeat the “buggers,” an alien conservatism while rejecting others: “I Game as a young-adult title—a sector of race of insect-like monsters with mysteri- grew up Republican but left in 1977, nau- the publishing industry that has exploded ous motives and strange powers—and seated by the growing Reagan-worship,” since his novel’s first printing. Yet its whose next assault is both expected and he says. “Though the Democratic party hero is a boy, and it has made a lasting feared. was already on the road to extremist impression on many readers during their At the military academy, Ender makes madness at that time, there were still adolescence. I teach at a college, so I’m friends and enemies, builds alliances and Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moy - constantly around young people. Ender’s sows division, and tries to balance his nihan—intelligent, capable of nuanced Game is one of the books they are most instinct for compassion with the occa- thought, and not given to hero worship.” likely to have read outside of school—a sional necessity of ruthlessness. In other Years later, Card came to admire George shared text for a generation that doesn’t words, he faces the ordinary struggles of W. Bush: “the most honorable president of have many. Even Mitt Romney raves middle-school existence. He also con- my lifetime,” he says. “No president since about it: In 2011, he listed Ender’s Game as a favorite book, alongside The Ad - Card’s politics are unconventional, ventures of Huckleberry Finn. So this is a novel worth knowing, no matter what blending some elements of liberalism Card’s detractors say. and conservatism while rejecting others. The 62-year-old Orson Scott Card is himself a colorful figure. A great-great- fronts a series of problems, ranging from Lincoln has governed so well in the face of grandson of Brigham Young, he was the perils of schoolyard bullying to the such vitriolic, dishonest, and hypocritical born in Richland, Wash., and his family moral complexity of “xenocide” (the opposition.” He has served on the board of bounced around the West as he grew up. willful extinction of an alien species). the National Organization for Marriage, a For his tenth birthday, he received a set Along the way, he gets to play a lot of group that has become a hate object of the of Bruce Catton’s books on the Civil video games, which turn out to be use- Left for opposing same-sex marriage. War, awakening a lifelong interest in ful in the fight to preserve humanity. If Card remains a registered Democrat but military history—a fascination that nothing else, Ender’s Game gives kids believes his own party is committed to would shape Ender’s Game. He attended raised with Xboxes an excuse to keep “insane social experiments.” He sees the Brigham Young University, majored in leveling up on Halo: “Mom, I’m learning GOP as anti-immigrant and racist. “I theater, and went on a Mormon mission the skills I’ll need to save the world!” really am a man without a party,” he says. to Brazil. Card eventually settled in There’s also a twist at the end—a surprise Maybe it’s best to call Card ornery— Greensboro, N.C., where he has lived for that is hard to see coming but that makes he even blogs at the Ornery American the past 30 years, writing novels, collab- immediate sense when it arrives. (www.ornery.org), a website he runs— orating on comics and video games, and I asked Card, by e-mail, why Ender’s and recognize that creative types don’t raising children. His kids are named after Game has achieved enduring popularity. need to be systematic political thinkers his and his wife’s favorite authors, such “What makes the story work is Ender’s to engage the rest of us. In May, Card as Emily Brontë, Geoffrey Chaucer, and relationship, not with his friends, but with wrote what he called “a silly thought Charles Dickens. Ender’s Game started other kids whom he does not know all that experiment,” even putting a disclaimer at out as a short story published in 1977 in well,” he wrote back. “It is the way Ender the top: “I’m not serious about this!” The Analog, a science-fiction magazine. creates community despite all attempts to column described how Barack Obama Card rewrote it as a novel, and he’s isolate him, the way he watches out for might try to stay in power beyond his two never had to look back—the book’s suc- the welfare of other kids far more than he presidential terms, in a plot that involves cess made it possible for him to become looks to advance his own career.” basically turning AmeriCorps into a a full-time writer of science fiction. Ender’s Game was not Card’s first brown-shirted national police force. Ender’s Game is one part Tom Brown’s novel, but it was among his first, and Make of it what you will, but this is the School Days (a 19th-century novel by since then he has written dozens more, sort of speculative thinking that we Thomas Hughes that is the progenitor of plus gobs of short stories. Card claims pay sci-fi writers to do. Card’s reward? all schoolboy-adventure sagas) and one that he can complete a book in about five Weigel of Slate branded him a racist part Starship Troopers (a 1959 novel weeks, during what he calls his “typing crypto-Nazi. about war and democracy by Robert A. time.” The thinking time that takes place So goes the “public shunning of Mr. Heinlein). It tells the story of Ender beforehand can go on for years. Much of Card,” as the New York Times has Wiggin, a boy who is a “third”—his par- his fiction occurs in Ender’s universe, described the organized effort to defame ents’ third child, on an Earth whose gov- through sequels and parallel stories, but Ender’s Game. Card’s critics might do ernment limits families to two children he has also written fictional accounts of well to set aside their wrath, read the except in special circumstances. With Biblical women, such as Sarah and book, and absorb what may be its ultimate this dystopian backdrop, Ender emerges Rebekah; Pastwatch, a time-travel book theme: Through tolerance, that most diffi- as a boy genius, recruited for an unusual involving Christopher Columbus; and cult and liberal of virtues, we may learn variety of education for the gifted. He Empire, a novel of a new American Civil essential lessons, even from those we first leaves home at the age of six to enroll in War that splits Left and Right. see as foes.

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Senators Mike Lee (left) and Ted Cruz Apocalyptic Conservatism There is no shortcut past persuasion

BY RAMESH PONNURU & RICHARD LOWRY

rior to the government shutdown, the House re - of worse outcomes. it has only one tactic—raise the stakes, publican leadership offered a plan to force the hope to lower the boom—and treats any prudential disagree- Senate to hold a symbolic vote on defunding ment with that tactic as a betrayal. Adherents of this brand of P obamacare before allowing it to move on to a so- conservative politics are investing considerable time, energy, called clean continuing resolution—one, that is, with no anti- and money in it, locking themselves in unending intra-party obamacare provisions. The plan was denounced by various battle. conservative groups as a sell-out and caused a revolt in the The tendency arises from legitimate frustrations. The federal caucus. A few weeks and a government shutdown later, all government seems constantly to expand even as—and some- republicans had to show for their trouble was . . . a symbolic times because—it proves itself incompetent. republicans vote on defunding and a clean Cr. They were back where have done precious little to reverse or even halt the trend. they had started, only with lower poll numbers and more poi- obamacare is a disastrous and unpopular law; but if the sonous divisions. republican party has a strategy for bringing about its eventual if someone had missed the intervening weeks, he would end, it has been kept well-hidden. have had no idea of the drama and political pain that had So it is entirely reasonable to search for new ways to tame the ensued before the party accepted a version of the initial unac- welfare state rather than keep doing what has been done before. ceptable compromise. From one point of view, the entire The republican consultant class has often seemed to suffer from episode was all rather pointless; from another it was quite an almost clinical deficit of imagination. And the republican important. it was the latest and most consequential expression party’s leadership could certainly use the occasional poke with a of an apocalyptic conservative politics. cattle prod. if the conservatives behind the defunding crusade it is a politics of perpetual intra-republican denunciation. it now turn back to fighting the Senate’s immigration bill with the

focuses its fire on other conservatives as much as on liberals. same passion and commitment, they will again be denounced by EVAN VUCCI / it takes more satisfaction in a complete loss on supposed prin- Democrats, the press, and some republicans as a mindless

ciple than in a partial victory, let alone in the mere avoidance wrecking crew. it shouldn’t stop them. AP PHOTO

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The key premise that has been guiding these conservatives, defunders claim that their campaign drew public attention to however, is mistaken. That premise is that the main reason Obamacare’s deep flaws, the reverse is true: It at least tem- conservatives have won so few elections and policy victories, porarily drew attention away. The unpopular shutdown itself especially recently, is a lack of ideological commitment and was bound to take precedence in the public mind over the will among Republican politicians. A bigger problem than the unpopular law that had occasioned it. Besides tanking insufficient conservatism of our leaders is the insufficient Republican poll numbers, the main effect of the shutdown number of our followers. There aren’t enough conservative ended up being a paid vacation for part of the federal work voters to elect enough officials to enact a conservative agenda force. in Washington, D.C.—or to sustain them in that project even Republicans—both those who were truly committed to the if they were elected. The challenge, fundamentally, isn’t a defunding strategy and those who felt compelled to go along redoubling of ideological commitment, but more success at with it—did make some smart tactical moves. They sent the persuasion and at winning elections. Senate bills to reopen parts of the government and publicized the administration’s petty determination to make the shutdown unnecessarily painful. Shrewd tactics were unable, however, to He plan to defund Obamacare was an attempt to find a rescue a flawed strategy. shortcut around this necessary work. For many reasons, The press covered the shutdown as a disaster for both the T it had strong appeal to conservatives. Many conserva- country and the Republican party. The damage in both cases tives—although not the leaders of the defunding effort—were was overstated. The shutdown did impose some harms on the under the false impression that if the House refused to allocate country that should have been avoided, but most people’s lives The leading defunders thought that the shutdown would increase their leverage, but in the actual event it eroded that leverage a little bit every day.

funds for Obamacare, it could defund it. In truth, Obama - do not depend on non-essential federal employees. Although care’s funding keeps going unless both houses of Congress two major polls showed the party’s image to be at a low ebb and the president (or two-thirds of both houses) agree to stop during the shutdown, the political damage may not be long- it. The defunders thus needed to win the assent of many con- lasting. gressional Democrats and President Obama. They were never Its legacy depends on what lessons conservatives draw from going to get it, and have barely tried to explain why they this episode. Its odd end does not augur well. The House thought otherwise. Republicans punctuated their humiliation with a standing ova- The leading defunders thought that the shutdown would tion for Speaker Boehner. They were not applauding him for increase their leverage, but in the actual event it eroded that trying, though failing, to keep a fractious caucus together and leverage a little bit every day. Senate Democratic leader Harry undamaged—a score on which we have some sympathy for the Reid and President Obama denounced the shutdown but man. Instead they congratulated him for having “fought the always knew they could wait it out, watch Republicans’ poll good fight.” Objectively, all he had done was make it possible numbers drop, and count on a capitulation at the end. They for legislation to pass over the “no” votes of most of his were right, and any student of the shutdowns of the 1990s Republican colleagues so that they could claim to have noth- would have expected as much. ing to do with it. It was applause for theoretical purity, regard- The defunders convinced themselves, however, that those less of legislative results. shutdowns had gone much better than any conservatives at The same impulse was on display at the start of the year. The the time had thought. In the months after those shutdowns, tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush were about to they observed accurately, Republicans enacted welfare expire, and taxes were going to rise on everyone. The parties reform and lost only a few House seats. Newt Gingrich, who were haggling over which of the tax cuts would be extended. led the Republicans at the time, has been happy to highlight Boehner tried to get the House to vote to renew the tax cuts for that part of the record, since it puts what has generally been everyone making less than a million dollars a year. Many considered the low point of his career in a flattering light. Republicans refused to back him because they did not wish to be What this retelling of the story leaves out is that the shut- seen as favoring tax increases for anyone—even tax increases downs ended conservatives’ political momentum and Re - they had not voted for and could do nothing to stop. The result publicans spent the next several years running away from the of their decision was that taxes went up more, and on more limited-government conservatism that was associated with people, than they might have otherwise. the debacle. Conservatives committed to defunding, finally, thought that the unpopularity of Obamacare would buoy them politically. He need for greater purity, the ever-present danger of Here they made a double miscalculation. While Obamacare is betrayal: These have been long-standing themes on unpopular, the public is more wary of it than hostile to it T the right. When our people get power, they immedi- (something that may change as it takes effect). And while some ately stop being our people, the great conservative journalist

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M. Stanton evans quipped decades ago. yet this assessment of compromise. Which leads us to such candidates as Sharron what ails conservatism has grown less and less true with time. Angle. The Rockefeller Republicans who once ruled the party have The people who backed these candidates reply that nobody long been vanquished. Today’s Republican party has a bolder has a perfect track record of picking winners, and that many of plan to rein in our fastest-growing entitlement program, their candidates, including Marco Rubio and Cruz, have suc- Medicare, than Ronald Reagan did, and that plan has the sup- ceeded. Those are fair points, and this magazine backed both port of such establishment Republicans as John Boehner and men over their more established rivals. To note the inconsis- Mitt Romney. What they don’t have are the votes to enact it. tency of the pattern, though, is to acknowledge that circum- Today’s Republican party is more committed to confirming stances matter—in which state the race is taking place, how judicial conservatives and blocking judicial liberals than it has skillful the candidates are—and that purity can exact a price. ever been. (Compare the confirmation votes on Robert Bork NATioNAl RevieW joined the purists in supporting Richard and Samuel Alito, or Stephen Breyer and elena Kagan.) it just Mourdock in indiana, too, and that turned out to be a mistake. isn’t in a position to win those fights. Replace Mitch Too many conservatives have not admitted it or drawn appro- McConnell as Senate Republican leader with Ted Cruz, the priate conclusions. Texas senator who led the defunding brigades, and that would The defunding campaign was the legislative equivalent of still be true. the hopelessly ill-suited candidate—and, like many of those While conservatives are right to be dissatisfied with the candidates, it drew support from people who see politics pri- results that our political engagement over the decades has marily in terms of purity, confrontation, and willpower. The yielded, it has produced real achievements. Persuasion, win- contrast to the Democrats’ behavior in 2009 and 2010 is ning elections, passing legislation the normal way: That’s the instructive. They were willing to muscle through a health-care approach that helped bring the top tax rate down from 70 per- bill even though the public opposed it, and even though some cent, reduce the crime rate, reform welfare, and . . . oh yes, top- of them realized it would cost them seats. Republicans should ple the Soviet Union. Few aspects of our national life are more have a similar commitment to better causes. But they should disheartening than the enduring regime of Roe v. Wade. even also note that Democrats used this maneuver only when they on that issue, however, incrementalism has enabled some vic- had the votes—large majorities in both houses of Congress, tories, changing public opinion in a pro-life direction and control of the White House—to pull it off. They did not take reducing the abortion rate. a large political risk while having no plausible way to gain a Many conservatives would like to believe that purifying the policy victory to show for the potential costs. Republican party isn’t an alternative to expanding it but an if politics is mainly a test of wills, then the task ahead for essential means to that end. on this theory, Republicans lost conservatives is to engineer a series of high-stakes, long-shot power because they were too compromising under a “compas- confrontations with President obama and try to win them. sionate conservative” president, nominated two moderate That’s a recipe for disappointment: in modern America, for presidential candidates in a row, and in general demoralized good or ill, presidents have built-in advantages over congres- conservative voters. The available evidence does not lend sional party caucuses, not least because the latter are usually much credence to this theory. Both of those last two nomi- more cacophonous. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid did not set nees—who really did have more moderate records than most up such confrontations with President Bush after they took Republicans—ran ahead of most of their party’s other federal Congress in the 2006 elections. it was not because they were candidates, for example. That’s not an argument, in our view, more civic-minded but because dramatic battles are not gener- for a left turn by Republicans. But it is an argument against the ally the way party caucuses frustrate presidents and advance idea that moving in the opposite direction will in itself pay their own policy objectives. political dividends. Jim DeMint, the former senator who now heads the Heritage Foundation, famously said that he would “rather have 30 Hey are also a recipe for constant infighting. Con - Republicans in the Senate who believe in the principles of free- servative groups that have internalized the apocalyptic dom than 60 who don’t believe in anything.” By any reason- T view of politics believe the most effective model for able standard, though, we have had at least 30 conservatives in gaining ground is simply pressuring Republicans to be more the Senate for the entire time DeMint has been in Washington. confrontational. The first step of the defunding strategy was The trouble is that, without elected allies, 30 conservative sen- not to persuade most Republicans that it was a good idea; it ators cannot govern the country or even block liberal initia- was to force them to go along with it whether or not they tives. agreed. So the defunders prevented the majority of House An emphasis on purity—even when defined essentially Republicans, who disagreed, from being able to follow a dif- by matters of style and attitude rather than policy views— ferent approach, and threatened to run primary opponents has too often kept such allies out of power. it has led against some of them. Then they began to insist that Re - Republican primary voters on several occasions to choose publicans who remained critical were dishonorably breaking candidates who lost races that mainstream conservatives the party’s (coerced) unity. it turned out that the power to move would likely have won. William F. Buckley Jr. said that con- the House Republican caucus is not the power to move the servatives should support the rightwardmost viable candi- world. Again and again it has instead been the case that as date, with viability understood to include the ability to House Republicans go, so go House Republicans. make the case for conservatism in a way voters will find While not working, this approach increases the amount of compelling. For the purists, viability is an unacceptable bad blood among allies. The elevation of tactics to the level of

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principle means that there will always be new turncoats to None of this is to impugn the sincerity of those who pushed purge. In recent weeks, Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, for defunding, or to blame them for their frustration. It’s not as both previously tea-party favorites, have been denounced for if the Republican leadership handled this episode especially not being sufficiently committed to defunding. Constantly well. It set the stage for this fiasco. It advanced some clever tac- generating new turncoats is not a sign of a workable strategy. tics against Obamacare—such as diverting some propaganda Senator Cruz himself—who is, for the record, a longtime funds to actually helping sick people—but never outlined, in friend of one of your authors—understands perfectly well that public, an overall repeal strategy into which those tactics could prudence places limits on statesmen, even if his rhetorical fit. That failure bred distrust among conservatives, who torpe- flights in this fight have sometimes ignored the point. Asked at doed the leaders’ tactical plan in part because it looked like an a town hall a few months ago why we couldn’t impeach alternative to repealing Obamacare rather than a means to it. President Obama, he said that we didn’t have the votes. By The defunders thus filled a vacuum—but filled it badly. And his logic in the defunding fight, though, why should it have they did not supply what the leaders most woefully lacked. mattered? Leave aside, as the senator did, whether impeach- Neither group has promoted a free-market health-care plan of ment is desirable. If it is an important way to vindicate the the kind that would have to be part of any plausible strategy to Constitution, why not ram it through the House and see if mak- replace Obamacare. ing the case for it would flip enough red-state Democrats in the Once the shutdown began, Republican congressional leaders Senate to convict Obama? If opponents of defunding were and their aides began to give anonymous quotes criticizing the “defeatist” for counting too few votes for it, wasn’t he a defunders. The gist of many of the quotes was that the defun- defeatist too? Scorn prudence and you can justify any course ders were stupidly venting rather than pursuing a sound plan of action so long as you approve its ends. to achieve their goals. But the leakers were doing the same For that matter, why didn’t the defunders ever call for a bud- thing. So were John McCain and some of his allies, who get bill that would repeal Obamacare altogether? If, as we have were on the record with gleefully scornful criticisms of sup- sometimes heard them say, it is the most basic rule of politics porters of defunding, or, as McCain charmlessly called them to start with a maximalist position and then compromise—as in a different context, “wacko birds.” Other critics claimed opposed to “negotiating with yourself”—why didn’t they fol- that the organizations behind the defunding campaign, such low that rule? Presumably it is because they drew a prudential as Heritage Action and FreedomWorks, were seeking to line of their own: They considered a shutdown fight over tem- raise money, and that the politicians behind it were trying to porary defunding more winnable than a straight-up budget raise their standing. Both of those ambitions are helpful ones fight over full repeal. when rightly directed.

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The anti-Obamacare passion we saw in the defunding fight, too, is welcome even if it needs to be better applied. That passion is, indeed, one of the wonders of American politics. Jack Kemp’s Where else would an entitlement promising a kind of free lunch engender such strenuous populist opposition? For that matter, where else would a Tea Party be possible? The groups Huddled Masses that pushed defunding play an important role in galvanizing grassroots sentiment. The insistence on conservative rigor can exercise a welcome influence in fights like the one over the Idealists forget that farm bill, in which inertia and self-serving Republican politics immigration needs assimilation are at their worst and many of the same groups that supported defunding urged a better, more reformist course. Their will- ingness to go out and fight is indispensable. BY JOHN FONTE

n important bloc of conservatives who adhere to the OnETHELESS, there is a better way forward: the kind of immigration policies of the late Jack Kemp support normal conservative politics that our Constitution envi- comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) for reasons n sions. The end of that politics is preserving and restoring, A worth exploring in detail. Kemp rejected the argu- as necessary, our constitutional order, while applying it to new ment that border security and enforcement of existing immigra- challenges. Its means are presenting platforms, persuading tion laws should be toughened before a guest-worker program voters, winning elections, and setting policy, sometimes hero- was established, explaining that enforcement-first policy could ically and excitingly, more often competently and reliably. These not be reconciled with “the need for future immigration to meet things can be done well or badly—and in recent years no faction the demands of a growing economy.” of the party has a great track record—but they have to be done. Similarly, Paul Ryan told the Washington Examiner in July, “I The near-term tool at the disposal of this politics is the U.S. always look at [CIR] as an economic issue.” Immigration, Ryan House. It can stop most foolish ideas, raise popular issues that contends, should be based on the needs of the economy, meaning cause trouble for Democrats, and make future Republican elec- that it should be employer-driven. He maintains that employers toral gains and then policy victories possible. It can strike the need a large increase in the number of both low-skilled and high- occasional deal that on balance advances the public interest and skilled workers and that we should therefore develop new guest- the conservative cause. This isn’t much, but it isn’t nothing, worker programs and expand existing ones in various industries. which is what Republicans had in 2009 and 2010. We should also legalize illegal immigrants “so long as the border For the country to be governed conservatively, however, con- and the interior enforcement is actually implemented.” The case servatives have to win more elections. Among the most dismay- for the immigration of more low-skilled workers, Ryan asserts, is ing developments of the shutdown fight was the explicit assent they “bring labor to our economy so jobs can get done.” If wages given by a few conservative writers and politicians to the notion were raised “too much in certain industries,” they would go out that it is a pipedream to seek to elect more conservatives who of business. In the final analysis, he argues, a large increase in the will then, for example, repeal Obamacare. That is asking a lot of work force would spur economic growth. a party, exponents of this view said, that has won the popular vote Most conservatives, including Kempite idealists, are Tocque - for president only once in the last six contests. villians in the sense that they view ideal American society as So it is. But it is asking for the impossible to expect conserva- consisting of politically equal citizens who join a wide range of tives to realize their policy goals if that electoral record continues voluntary associations that together form civil society. These or gets worse. There is no alternative to seeking to expand the individuals, whose character has been shaped by the mediating conservative base beyond its present inadequate numbers and to institutions of civil society—churches, families, civic associa- win the votes of people who aren’t yet conservatives or are not tions, clubs, etc.—participate in a free-market economy with a yet conservatives on all issues. The defunders often said that strong cultural base that fosters economic growth and brings those who predicted their failure were “defeatists.” Yet it is they prosperity and well-being to the greatest number. who have given in to despair. They are the ones who entertain the Progressives view American society through a different lens. ideas that everything has gotten worse; that the last few decades They see society as essentially binary, consisting of two main of conservative thought and action have been for nothing; that sets of groups: marginalized (victim) groups and dominant engagement in politics as traditionally conceived is hopeless; that (privileged) groups. Ethnic minorities, language minorities, and government programs, once begun, must corrupt the citizenry so women are among those belonging to marginalized groups, and that they can never be ended or reformed; that the country will whites and males are members of privileged, dominant groups. soon be past the point of regeneration, if it is not there already. The purpose of progressive politics is “substantive equality” Effective political movements create the conditions for their among the various groups. This means not simply equality of own success. Conservatism has not done enough of that, but opportunity but representational equality, or parity, in all seg- when it has prospered it has never been moved by despair. The ments of society. For example, if Latinos make up 20 percent of apocalyptic style of politics holds that the future of the country is at stake. That is true, which is why conservatives need to get Mr. Fonte is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of to the work of persuading and electioneering—and drop the Sovereignty or Submission: Will Americans Rule Themselves or Be fantasy of a shortcut. Ruled by Others?

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a local work force, 20 percent of all doctors in the area should be America and American identity. By a margin of 67 to 37 per- Latinos; if they are not, there is a problem of “underrepresenta- cent, the native-born were more likely than immigrant citizens tion” or “disparity” in the local medical profession. progressives to believe that the U.S. Constitution is a higher legal authority employ coercive diversity and multiculturalism as weapons to for Americans than international law. By 81 to 50 percent, the implement their “new modes and orders.” These measures work native-born were more likely to believe that schools should to subordinate the traditional institutions of civil society to the focus on American citizenship rather than ethnic pride. administrative state and progressive ideology. it cannot be emphasized enough that the diversity touted by American elites is not the genuine diversity that emerges from omprehenSive immigration reform would exacerbate the the activities of a free pluralistic society. rather, it is diversity undermining of civil society. The Cir bill that passed the coerced through federal-government-mandated numerical C Senate, sponsored by Chuck Schumer and marco rubio, “goals” and de facto quotas, ethnic and gender preferences in would almost double both legal immigration and the number of employment and education, and “protected classes,” an official guest workers in the next ten years. it would legalize current ille- legal status that undermines the ideal of equality under law. gal immigrants by providing a probationary visa immediately. This system of coercive diversity and multiculturalism, instead This means that approximately 33 million new green cards would of assimilation into a distinctly American way of life, is what be issued in the coming decade. most of the new immigrants and immigrants have been subjected to for decades. Schools and uni- guest workers would be low-skilled and members of a “protected versities have promoted an adversarial type of multiculturalism class” and therefore clients (wittingly or unwittingly) of the that tells young newcomers that they belong to a victim group that bureaucratic-legal coercive diversity machine. The Congressional has been oppressed by American society. And federal-government Budget office (CBo) states that Schumer-rubio would result in programs such as bilingual and multicultural education, diversity increased unemployment and falling wages for the next ten years training, and multilingual voting effectively initiate immigrants for many working- and middle-class Americans, who have been into ethno-linguistic group consciousness and loyalties. the hardest hit during the recession. According to the CBo, even A vast administrative-legal bureaucracy, both public and pri- with the inclusion of the Corker-hoeven amendment, added to vate—including university and corporate diversity managers, strengthen enforcement, the Senate bill would reduce illegal activist lawyers, and federal, state, and local officials—imple- immigration by only one-third to one-half in the unlikely event ments this multicultural assimilation. Unlike the reaganites, of its ever being implemented. Testifying before Congress, Chris whose Justice Department (which included figures such as edwin Crane, the head of the national immigration and Customs meese, Stephen markman, and mark Levin) fought tooth and nail enforcement union, has said that the Senate bill not only provides against group preferences, the Kempites (with the notable excep- for “legalization first” but “actually weakens and undermines tion of Bill Bennett at empower America) have mostly ignored interior enforcement,” which already, along with border security, the insidious advance of preference-based multiculturalism. is not being fully carried out under current circumstance. in the roughly 1,200 pages of the Schumer-rubio bill, obama’s political appointees at the Department of homeland empiTeS tend to believe that immigrant assimilation Security are granted over 1,000 exceptions to and waivers from occurs naturally. But assimilation was and remains, as enforcement of immigration law. in the past year, the administra- K norman podhoretz has put it, “a brutal bargain.” The tion has consistently refused to enforce large sections of immi- assimilation of the ellis island generation succeeded only be - gration law. “interior enforcement has been gutted” since 2008, cause progressive politicians including Theodore roosevelt and according to Crane. There is no indication that obama would Woodrow Wilson insisted on “Americanization” and crushed the seriously enforce any new immigration law passed by Congress, proto-multicultural activists, who were led by horace Kallen and so illegal immigration will likely continue for the next three and randolph Bourne. Further, though controversial, the years whether Congress acts or not. With this in mind, it is clear immigration-restriction legislation of the 1920s solidified the that house republicans can do nothing to reach an honorable patriotic, socioeconomic, and cultural assimilation of the ellis “compromise.” Killing Cir is the only reasonable course. island immigrants. instead of fostering the patriotic assimilation of immigrants Assimilation today, as ross Douthat has noted, is “stalling to American civil society, the Senate bill provides federal funds out.” he cites findings that third-generation hispanics on average for advocacy groups to promote immigrant integration (read: have lower household incomes than do the second generation, multicultural integration). This money will likely go to left- and observes wryly that “America’s leadership class . . . assumes wing activists at mALDeF, La raza, the CASA de maryland that continued mass immigration is exactly what our economy (headed by a former Sandinista activist), and obama’s Chicago needs.” he asks whether “an America whose native-born work- community-organizing friends at the illinois Coalition for ing class is facing a slow-burning socioeconomic crisis is really immigrant and refugee rights. responding to the criticism that in an ideal position to assimilate low-skilled immigrants at an such funding would be funneled to left-wing activists, Senator increasing clip.” rubio’s spokesman naïvely suggested that conservative groups, The multicultural-diversity approach to “immigrant inte- too, could apply to obama’s political appointees for funds. gration” appears to be having a negative effect on patriotic if comprehensive immigration reform passes Congress, we attachment as well. A quantitative analysis of survey data com- can expect more multicultural education and less civic-patriotic missioned by the Bradley Foundation’s project on American education; more demands for preferential treatment of ethnic national identity found that immigrant citizens were less likely groups in employment and education; more “diversity” adminis- than native-born citizens to emphasize the uniqueness of trators in government, corporations, and universities; more

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demands for government multilingual services; more “disparate impact” litigation from the aCLu and maLDEF; more demands for proportional representation of groups whose members belong Hang the to “protected classes”; more low-income cradle-to-grave clients, à la “Life of Julia,” for the welfare state; more wage stagnation for american workers; more cries of “discrimination”; and much bragging from President Obama on the great landmark achieve- Dissidents! ment of “comprehensive immigration reform.” The idealist vision of Jack Kemp and his successors has led to When patriotism becomes treason much good policy analysis for american conservatism and has provided a needed optimistic tone to the agenda of the american BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON center-right. On immigration and assimilation, however, Kempites should observe the reality of 2013 instead of indulging in nostalgia for 1913. The Kempite immigration agenda, as even aury Grimm is the perfect model of a modern online Paul ryan has argued, focuses almost exclusively on economics activist, and a great signer of petitions—for the at the cost of addressing questions of politics, assimilation, culture, Weekend Voting act, against fracking, for the Equal and the american regime itself. Both Obama and the Kempites M rights amendment, for tighter fuel-economy stan- envision large-scale low-income immigration as promoting their dards, against trans fats in Colorado school lunches, for stronger version of the good society. But they can’t both be right. EPa rules directed at preventing climate change. She is also the originator of at least one petition: to have members of Congress who vote in ways that displease her rounded up and put into Bama and his fellow progressives believe in the primacy prison—or, presumably, in front of a firing squad—on charges of of politics, both low and high. With comprehensive treason. O immigration reform they immediately gain advantage ms. Grimm’s petition was created through moveOn.org, the in the low politics of partisanship, reaping millions of new Democratic group originally founded to oppose the impeach- Democratic voters. in the high politics of regime change at ment of Bill Clinton and funded by such familiar Democratic home, Cir advances the cause of “fundamentally transforming moneymen as Peter B. Lewis, of Progressive insurance america” by subordinating civil society to the state and leftist Companies, and George Soros. (moveOn.org disclaims any ideology. responsibility for the petitions created through its website.) ms. many Kempites apparently believe that culturally conserva- Grimm, who writes in the shift-key-happy style of internet polit- tive low-income immigrants are “natural republicans.” Over- ical discourse, demands an investigation for capital-T Treason of whelming evidence, however, including over four decades of republican members of the House for thwarting the (cap, cap) electoral results, suggests otherwise. True, middle-class immi- “Will of the american People.” Some 1,555 people signed the grants and their children often change political attitudes, but entreaty within a matter of days, and a few offered suggestions Cir’s unending flow of low-skilled labor favors the progressives for broadening its scope: adrianne Daily of Castle rock, in the long run. Latinos have been compared to italian immi- Colo., suggested that Charles and David Koch be added to the grants in the past. Fair enough, but, as michael Barone notes, it list of indictable traitors; Holly Zell of Fairfax, Va., offered a took about 80 years for italians to turn to the republican party in cheery “Lock ’em up and throw away the key,” noting that the large numbers. Even that change was facilitated not just by the shutdown had cost her three weeks’ pay; Joseph Hine of passage of time but also by the immigration pause from the 1920s Gloversville, N.y., averred that conservatives should be charged to the 1960s, which stopped the influx of lower-skilled workers. with “sedition and treason” for “plotting against the u.S. gov- unlike Obama and the progressives, Kemp and his successors ernment and the people”; Sharon Douglas of Belleville, mich., have always had trouble understanding that politics, including added: “Treason, Sabotage, or Sedition—pick one or use all immigration politics, is a zero-sum game. in politics both high three. This can’t continue or be tolerated.” Taking a more elimi- and low, there are winners and losers. if progressives are the nationist view, Cathy and Gary Elmore of Deer Park, Wash., winners, conservatives are the losers. most important, Kempites declared: “We need to get rid of the anti-americans.” Christine have never really understood and never confronted the regime- mays of Stockton, Calif., showing exquisite moral clarity, transforming nature of coercive diversity and adversarial multi- declared that the shutdown was “just as much a terrorist act as culturalism. 9/11 was. and justice must be served on these criminals!” in late august, President Obama’s closest adviser, Valerie So, what’s a few (thousand) crackpots online? Perhaps the Jarrett, told a group of Obama supporters “that when we look back petitioners at moveOn.org do not represent the mainstream of 50 years from now,” Cir will rank alongside health care as one of the progressive movement. (Perhaps it is also the case that poor Obama’s two greatest accomplishments. Jarrett, Obama, and the spellers and people waving Confederate flags do not represent liberal establishment recognize the transformative nature of Cir the mainstream of the tea-party movement.) Such ideas are hardly and understand how mass immigration of low-skilled workers limited to the fringes. robert reich was secretary of labor of combined with the permanent powerful diversity machine of the these united States during the Clinton administration and is a sta- state would undermine civil society and forever alter america’s ple of respectable Democratic commentary on cable news and in limited-government system. unfortunately, some on the right do print. His take on the shutdown is nearly indistinguishable from not see it. it is time for the Kempites to rethink their long-standing ms. Grimm’s: “They are not legislators because they eschew the assumptions about immigration and assimilation policy. normal processes of legislation. They are not statesmen because

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they are willing to sacrifice the governing institutions of our Grassley from Iowa, Rep. Bachmann from Minnesota, and of nation. They are not leaders because they cower to a fanatical course Sarah Palin can say whatever they want about the minority. They have chosen instead to get their way through Democrats, and the Tea Partiers will accept it and repeat it. The extortion—holding the United States hostage to their weapons of followers don’t find out for themselves what the Democratic mass economic destruction. What, then, are they? Would it be leader truly said, what is really in a bill, what a treaty actually unfair to consider them traitors?” The word “traitor” often is specifies, or whether taxes have really gone up. They are happy to let Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin do their thinking for them. used in a non-legal sense, but Professor Reich’s language here It has gotten so bad that their leaders casually say preposterous strongly suggests that using parliamentary tactics to force a shut- things that are easily refuted, because they know their audience down and a debate over the debt limit is the moral equivalent, or will never believe the truth, or even hear about it. something very close to the moral equivalent, of betraying one’s country, i.e., committing treason. Despite his cowardly phras- It will come as no surprise to you that Professor Altemeyer does ing—“Would it be unfair?”—Professor Reich’s implicit conclu- not believe that there exists such a thing as left-wing authoritarian- sion here is only a hair’s breadth removed, if even that, from Ms. ism, and that those inclined to share his views are, as he told Ronald Grimm’s: Members of Congress who vote in ways that dis- Bailey, “fair-minded, even-handed, tolerant, non aggressive per- please him are criminals, at least theoretically subject to pros- sons. . . . They are not self-righteous; they do not feel superior to ecution for a crime that is, let us not forget, punishable by persons with opposing opinions.” That is perhaps as good an death. Either Ms. Grimm’s petition must be taken as a legit- example of a self-refuting statement as one is likely to encounter. imate expression of progressive views or it is beyond the One finds a fair sprinkling of the terms “RWAs” and “authori- pale, in which case the University of California at Berkeley tarian followers” in liberal commentary, and no appreciation at and NBC should reconsider their relationships with Professor all for the irony inherent in the concept itself: Treating political Reich. disagreement as a psychiatric condition has been a hallmark of Given that the world is full of morally illiterate people, the authoritarian regimes throughout history, most notably in the desire to literally criminalize political disagreement is a natural Soviet Union. Perhaps the Soviets were secret tea partiers. We all and indeed unavoidable outgrowth of the desire to rhetorically remember Boris Yeltsin’s conflict with the Communist hardliners criminalize it. The rhetorical criminalization of conservative disin the Duma: “Yeltsin Fends Off Conservatives,” read the head- sent has been under way for some time, with Democratic leaders line in the Christian Science Monitor, which, along with much of talking about “anarchists,” “hostage-takers,” “arsonists,” and the rest of the media, could not bring itself to describe the heirs “terrorists” in relation to what was, after all, a refusal by the of Josef Stalin as “the Left.” majority party in the House of Representatives to vote for a bill When conservative dissent is not criminal or delusional in the favored by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. eyes of the Left, it frequently is simply at odds with empirical reality. Thus the canard that conservatives are “anti-science” and the habit of Barack Obama of promising to put sound science CORRESPONDED a bit with Ms. Grimm about her petition, back at the center of public policy, except when it is politically and the conversation was not edifying. But it was clarify- inconvenient to do so, e.g., in his administration’s support for I ing: She left no doubt at all that she means precisely what EPA-mandated emissions rules that under no credible scientific she wrote: that people should be held liable for a capital estimate will do anything to reduce global warming. That partic- offense for disagreeing with her politically. Discounting a fun- ular trope is found most often in the debate over what we are not damental principle of constitutional government—protecting supposed to call “global warming” anymore, in which conserva- the rights of minorities against the majority—she justified her- tives are labeled “climate deniers” in an intentional echo of the self on the grounds that “this was a minority, and a fringe minor- phrase “Holocaust deniers.” It is important to notice here that ity to boot. . . . They cannot hold the American people hostage.” conservatives are labeled thus not because of their scientific opin- Ms. Grimm, Professor Reich, and the thousands or millions ions but because of policy differences. What to make of those who agree with them are espousing a philosophy that is self- such as Henrik Svensmark of the Technical University of evidently authoritarian. That is not without irony: Many of the Denmark, who hold contrary views on the scientific understand- same people are given to citing a questionable psychological con- ing of climate change, is another matter. A matter for whom? dition that goes by the obvious enough name of “right-wing Last week brought an entertaining finding from Dan M. authoritarianism,” popularized by Bob Altemeyer, a retired pro- Kahan, who is a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law fessor of psychology at the University of Manitoba and a recipi- School. In the course of correlating tests of scientific compre- ent of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s hension with political affiliation, Professor Kahan made the star- prize for research in behavioral science. The line between the psy- tling—to him, most of all—discovery that self-identified tea chological and the political is in this field of inquiry very blurry— partiers score slightly better than average. He set about busily Professor Altemeyer’s work is relied upon heavily by John Dean explaining away this finding that the anti-science wing of the in his Conservatives without Conscience—and such rigor as the troglodyte party has better science comprehension than their social sciences occasionally enjoy is casually set aside. Consider more open-minded and literate neighbors: Professor Altemeyer’s analysis of the tea-party phenomenon: The relationship is trivially small [but statistically significant], and Authoritarian followers submit to the people they consider can’t possibly be contributing in any way to the ferocious conflicts authorities much more than non-authoritarians do. In this con- over decision-relevant science that we are experiencing. text, Tea Partiers seem to believe without question whatever their I’ve got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I chosen authorities say. Rush Limbaugh, Glen [sic] Beck, various pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully religious groups, the House and Senate GOP leaders, Sen. expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between

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identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension. But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party. All my impressions come from watching cable TV—& I don’t watch Fox News very often—and reading the “paper” (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused Internet sites like Huffington Post and Politico). Professor Kahan is to be commended for admitting and attempting to correct his bias, but though he hits upon what is here the relevant point, he does not seem quite I M P O R T A N T to appreciate it: Disputes over subjects such as EPA emissions rules may touch on questions of science but are not scientific questions—they are policy disputes. And N O T I C E never mind that the Left never misses a good crusade against science when it suits progressives’ tastes: There is not a shred of scientific evidence justifying the panic to all National Review over GMO crops (Critical Reviews of Biotechnology has just published a massive review of the scientific literature confirming this), but the Left’s crusade against 21st- subscribers! century agriculture continues unabated. Professor Kahan may not know any tea partiers, but surely he lives within easy driving distance of a Whole Foods.

ND so the catalogue grows: Conservatism may be a criminal conspiracy, it We are moving our may be a mental condition, it may be driven by an inability to comprehend A basic science. It may be—and this convenient explanation is too banal to subscription-fulfillment bear much attention—a product of racism, sexism, or some other species of specif- office from ic hatred. It may be the result of greed and filthy lucre from the Koch brothers. We might even consider Joan Walsh’s daft insistence that the master decoder for under- Mount Morris, Ill. standing 21st-century conservatism is latent 19th-century Confederate revanchism— to Palm Coast, Fla. the website she edits contains some 961 references to the Confederacy and Please continue “neo-Confederates,” mostly in polemics that seek to explain/discredit conservative politicians from Bob McDonnell to Rand Paul to Sarah Palin. (If you think that to be vigilant: neo-Confederate sympathies are unlikely to be a powerful current in the politics of There are fraudulent Alaska, consider that some of our progressive friends believe that the same “the South will rise again” sentiment informs the governor of Maine.) agencies soliciting This is not simply an issue of irresponsible rhetoric. If we were to attempt to doc- your National Review ument every beef-witted or unjustifiable thing said in the course of political debate, we would have time for nothing else. There is a substantive problem here, and it is subscription ! renewal the problem of reasonableness. Consider the debate about gay marriage: On several without our authorization. occasions, courts have stepped in and overturned duly passed laws—the law of the Please reply only to land, just like the Affordable Care Act—on the grounds that these laws had no “rational basis” and therefore must simply be based on unreasoning animus. If progres- National Review sives can convince those manning the levers of judicial and cultural power that renewal notices or conservative ideas are based on ignorance, mental defects, or malice, then their victory in the judicial process is all but assured and their chances of victory in the polit- bills—make sure the ical process greatly bolstered. return address is The Left’s program here is not, in the end, to send conservatives to the gallows for refusing to vote a bill out of committee, or to clap Paul Ryan into an asylum for the Palm Coast, Fla. criminally insane, but simply to narrow the scope of debate. When Charles Murray Ignore all requests for and Richard Herrnstein published The Bell Curve, some took issue with their data renewal that are not and methodology, but many more declared that to ask questions about race and intelligence was in and of itself racist. The words “Why would you ask that question?” directly payable must have been heard 10,000 times during the debate. But the question “Why would to National Review. you ask that question?” is, ironically enough, not asked as a question: No critic cared why Mr. Murray and Mr. Herrnstein would ask such questions; their opponents If you receive any mail or sought only to force them to defend their motives, at which point the substantial telephone offer that makes debate was over. There are similarly complex (if not so emotionally charged) questions related to the national debt, to its effect on long-term economic growth and you suspicious contact national prosperity, to spending and taxing priorities, to the opportunity costs of [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. federal expenditures, to the proper role of separated powers in a republic, to the Your cooperation constitutional specifics regarding executive and legislative powers, etc. There is a great deal of detail, specialized knowledge, and judgment necessary to meaningful is greatly appreciated. participation in that debate. It is a far less intellectually demanding exercise to talk about treason, or madness, or the fact that all the right people agree about what they agree about.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Born Under a Bad Site

O fix the problems of the Obamacare website, for the subsidies for others, although the money actually the administration has promised a “tech surge.” goes into the general fund and ends up studying the fol- We’re supposed to think of the surge strategy licles of aquatic plants at the Harry Reid Center for T employed by President Bush to push back the Hairy Reed Research. Iraqi insurgency and consolidate the war’s gains so that And if you object to taxpayer-funded science grants, you future administrations would have something more sig- hate research because you fear it’ll prove man did not nificant to throw away. Apparently the word “surge” domesticate dinosaurs and use them for steeds. tests well as a sign of vigorous, renewed determination As for the true cost of birth, or “fetal-relocation assis- to tackle a problem, and makes the geeks involved feel tance,” as it’s probably called at Healthcare.gov, who all martial ’n’ stuff. knows? The Mystery of Birth is no longer the thing itself, To the list of things that are now the moral equivalent of but who pays what. If you have an entity that can both print war, you can add tech support. unlimited amounts of money and borrow as much as it Some have suggested that the problems were intentional, wants, you may be surprised to find that the entity is in order to create a spontaneous nationwide epi pha ny that charged more and more for all sorts of things. No longer do single-payer health care is the answer. This is like selling you have Dad, bleary, wearing the same shirt for the second someone a motorcycle so shoddy that one wheel falls off, day, stubbled, working on his 47th cigarette since the so he’ll come back later and buy a unicycle. cramps started, looking at a bill and saying, “It says you Not to disparage single-payer; that’s what we had charged us for Jell-O. She didn’t get any Jell-O. We asked when I was born. It was called “Dad.” Parents back then and they said it would come but it never did. I’m not pay- saved maternity bills, perhaps to wave at a sulky teen ing for Jell-O.” who wanted his allowance raised—ever get me back for Of course, there are so many more medical marvels this? No? All right then. The bills usually looked like now that the cost must increase. When the doctor said this: “You need a total hip replacement” in the old days, it was another way of saying “Nothing I can do.” That is why we Double-occupancy room: $18 need single-payer: The ruthless efficiencies of govern- Codeine-soaked leather strap to bite down on: $3.26 ment will bend the curve until it snaps and gets little sharp The Part Where the Baby Came Out: $87 Swaddling garments: $1.45 pieces of curve everywhere, and if you step on one and go Parking: $2.25 to the emergency room for a tetanus shot they don’t have to ask for your insurance card, because everyone’s Dad paid with a check, or laid out some twenties. If he insured. They’ll scan the barcode on your neck and you’re got a handful of change in return, he thought, “That’s good to go. going straight into the kid’s college fund.” Now you’re Point is, you won’t have insurance companies denying charged for the rental of the fetal monitor, which informs you coverage because you went out of the system. The the doctor that the baby is still in the hangar; forceps government will deny you coverage because there’s a depreciation; and a federally mandated “umbilical-cord- shortage of tetanus vaccine. That’s much better. Every - disengagement assessment,” which costs $1.68 and funds one’s in the same boat that way. Muttering through lock- the distribution of scissors in Third World nations; and jaw, yes, but equal. there’s probably a mandate that the footprints they take The failure of the government to build the front door to must be in soy-based ink, thanks to a line on page 47,367 the future of health care should be a lesson to young voters, of the farm bill. accustomed as they are to whiz-bang tech that works—a In the future, the law will probably require the doctor generation that grew up with flat-panel screens connected to inform the parents—sorry, that’s presumptuous, the to a magical network that answered every homework ques- custodial parties—that they may sign up for carbon off- tion, served up videos of their favorite song, connected sets to minimize the child’s impact on climate change. them in a trice to friends who were posting pictures of Signatures will be required, but since this is government, pumpkin-spice latte, freed them from the dull world of it won’t be a matter of scribbling on an iPad; you will sloth and error, and revealed a world of frictionless exposi- have to john-hancock something in triplicate, and the tion of their own individuality. Having seen what private support staff will fax the goldenrod copy to the EPA enterprise can do, why would they want to hand over their Natal Impact Management Board, which will have 190 fate to a government as nimble as a slug on sandpaper? days to process your request for a subsidy to offset the Why would they want single-payer? cost of the offsets. If you qualify. If you do not qualify, Then again, the parents bought the iPhones. The parents you will be assessed an Offsetting Offset Offset to pay paid for the Internet. So it was, like, free. So what if you have to call 1-800 to get an operator to sign Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. on? That’s a free call too.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

Middle-aged couple (40–55), voting for ‘hope and change’ but I pref. white or Asian, for MOS (no haven’t seen any results. Maybe I’m sound) photomontage for RNC. making a mistake voting reflexively Must be fit and attractive but have for the Democrats. Maybe I should the look of sadness around the eyes, take another look at the Republican CAST-IT DC™ as if dreams for a better life have party. Sure, I’m basically pro-choice and I have lots of gay friends—none of Casting-Call Bulletin Board been smashed. No dialogue, couple that is really a big deal to me—but I for the Washington, D.C., Area must look at new health-care premiums with a stricken and devas- also believe in entrepreneurial capital- Note to all background atmos- tated expression. Male looks at ism and the power of a fairly regulated phere: Please DO NOT contact ven- female with a “What are we going free market. Maybe it’s time to think dors directly. ALL CASTING is to to do? We’re going to lose our busi- again”–type expression. SHOOTS go through listed casting agents. ness”–type look, female puts hand OVER THE WEEKEND. on his shoulder with a “Why did we Family clusters (kids: 3–17; par- CALLS FOR believe the president when he said ents: 30–45) of all ethnicities for a OCTOBER–NOVEMBER: that we could keep our existing DNC spot. MUST BRING two plan, and that premiums would go changes of clothes, one ratty and Older male/female: Need 12–20 down?”–type expression. SHOOTS bedraggled, the other clean and older (55–80+) fit and active seniors THURSDAY. neat, for before/after Obama pho- for political video on Obamacare. Middle-aged WHITE males (50–65) tomontage. Will need to be able to Players must be in full possession of with stern and unfeeling expressions move and dance in time as the fam- mental faculties, have all or most of to appear in a political advertisement ilies form a circle around the presi- their limbs, and be able to move for Organizing for America. All need dent. Children under 12 will be around in a semi-rhythmic fashion. to be able to laugh evilly in a con- required to throw rose petals. No Looking for seniors who look appro- vincing fashion as disabled children dialogue. priate holding various pieces of are turned away from a hospital-type Spanish/Hispanic/Mexican men and sports equipment, e.g., tennis rac- set. Please come to call wearing dark women (18–60) for issue spot for quet etc. If you have a similar prop, or grey suit. No dialogue, but willing DNC. Must be able to convincingly please bring it to the call. NOTE: to work with established improvisa- say goodbye to each other as one or There is one line of dialogue to be tional comedians for possible lines, the other is deported in a dangerously distributed: “Thanks, President Oba - etc. SMOKERS A PLUS. SHOOTS unsafe bus. Need to be able to weep ma!” to be given to 58+ females of FRIDAY. loudly on cue. Must bring several indeterminate ethnicity. SHOOTS Spanish/Hispanic/Mexican men changes of clothing. PLEASE BRING TUESDAY. and women (18–60) for DNC spot. INFANT CHILDREN IF YOU HAVE Teens/tweens, mixed race, mixed No dialogue. Must be able to con- THEM. No dialogue, but wailing in genders: Need 25–30 young people vincingly look at a photo of Presi - misery is encouraged. (teens/tweens ONLY, please bring dent Obama with an admiring and Middle-aged WHITES and ASIANS photo ID with DOB for verification) grateful expression. SHOOTS WHEN ONLY for RNC senatorial spot. No to appear behind President Obama at CAST. dialogue. Simply walking together, White House photo-op. Must be in Young adults (25–30) of ALL arms locked, through a crowd of excellent health, though braces on RACES. Need 20–40 “types,” with food-stamp/entitlement recipients. teeth etc. and glasses are A PLUS. tattoos and other “cool” and “young” Must be able to convincingly seem No dialogue. Must be ambulatory and attributes for generic ballot ad for like a potential political coalition. able to hug the president with convinc- RNC. MUST BRING SMART- SHOOTS MONDAY. ing gratitude. SHOOTS WEDNES - PHONE. Need to be healthy and fit, Open call: all Hispanic/Mexican/ DAY. dressed in “tech-industry start- Latin atmosphere in D.C. area, for Spanish/Hispanic/Mexican men up”–style clothes—think J. Crew, DNC generic ballot spot. Please arrive and women (18–60) for RNC spot. think Zara—and MUST ALL carry in street/business attire. No dialogue, No dialogue. Must be able to con- messenger-style bags. No dialogue. but those who can show paystubs from vincingly “vote” on film for Re - Players simply look down at their RNC generic-Hispanic spot appear- publican candidate. SHOOTS WHEN smartphones, then look up with a ance will be paid double. Some singing CAST. “Where’s my job? I thought I was possible.

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and they grew to loathe each other. distill common themes across time and Why was the later Progressive move- space: The arrival of large numbers of Forming a ment often identified with Wisconsin, quite different peoples into new and often Minnesota, and the upper Midwest? It previously homogeneous en claves has People was likely owing to the statism and paci- always caused initial cultural chaos. We fism brought to the northern U.S. by need to recall only the draft riots in new VICTOR DAVIS HANSON millions of impoverished Germans and York during the Civil War or white flight Scandinavians. They were determined to to the suburbs at the advent of African- make government work for the poor in a American migration from the South fol- way it had not done so in Europe. In con- lowing the 1940s. The usual scenarios of trast, an almost simultaneous and equally conflict were predictable: stereotyping, if large influx of even poorer Irish Catholics not overt ethnic and racial prejudices, relied on a different sort of Democratic answered by insular, tribal, and often patronage politics in the major cities of shrill identity politics—the mix resulting the eastern seaboard. in occasional violence. After the Civil War, impoverished Despite their claimed desire to main- southerners largely ignored the much tain their own culture and language, most more dynamic economies of the northern arrivals from abroad eventually were states that were the nexus of the growing absorbed by the unstoppable forces of Industrial Revolution. But foreigners— assimilation, integration, and intermar- Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration especially Italians, Eastern Europeans, riage—a popular culture fueled by the Transformed America and Its Politics, by Michael and Jews—fleeing both poverty and polit- official “melting pot” ideology of the U.S. Barone (Crown Forum, 320 pp., $27) ical persecution, found Chicago, Cleve - government, a policy of making “one land, Detroit, new York, Phila delphia, from many.” Unlike Europe, where class n this brief but fascinating study of and Pittsburgh oases of economic oppor- and birth were firmly entrenched, and both immigration to the United tunity. unlike Africa, Asia, and South America, States and mass migrations within The mid 20th century was character- where citizenship was often assumed to I it, Michael Barone traces the peo- ized by another two great internal migra- be a reflection of racial uniformity, the pling of America, from the original tions, originally fostered by World Wars U.S. almost immediately after its found- British Protestants of the 17th century I and II: the flight of blacks from the ing was redefined as a heterogeneous to the present influxes of millions of South to the north, and the trek of Mid - culture, in which relocation was often Mexican nationals and Asians. westerners and the poor of the old border synonymous with economic opportunity The late-18th-century arrival of the states to California and the southwestern and advancement to the middle class. Scots-Irish from war-torn northern U.S. Out west, agriculture, new indus- The net result of immigration usually Ireland, and their subsequent migration tries, tourism, and recreation were creat- proved positive. Immigrants enriched to Appalachia and farther westward ing wealth at a rate that outpaced that in the peripheries of American culture— through the Cumberland Gap, bifurcated all other areas of the nation. food, fashion, music, art, religion, and the politics of so-called white Protestant Barone ends with a final pair of popu- language—while accepting the core val- America. The majority culture would lation movements. The present massive ues of consensual government, market soon become schizophrenic, as the old flight from “blue” states—California in capitalism, and middle-class populism. Puritan new England status quo was particular—to no- or low-tax red states The American population grew rapidly. challenged by brasher, cockier, and such as nevada, Florida, Tennessee, and Society was energized by the constant soon-to-be-Jacksonian populists. Barone Texas has turned the conventional wis- influx of an ambitious, if not desperate, adroitly charts the early stages of dom of seeking paradise on its head, as new underclass. Host Ameri cans were America’s path toward the Civil War in a economic robustness for most Ameri cans reminded that they could not simply coast story of parallel migrations: new Eng- trumps natural beauty and idyllic climate. on their native advantages. Millions of landers spread laterally into the northern The other massive movement of peo- mostly less-well-off citizens reflected the Midwest, even as rich, slave-owning ples is, of course, the huge influx of ethos of self-reliance, hard work, and a grandees opened up new bottomlands Latin Americans, and the nearly as large, meritocratic system, in which status was across the newly acquired southern but mostly legal and less controversial, acquired more through material acquisi- United States from the Atlantic Ocean to arrival of more prosperous and educated tion than through birth, class, or ethnicity. the Mississippi Valley. Both prospered— Asians from China, South Korea, the Barone’s second theme, however, is Philippines, and Southeast Asia. more controversial, and it serves as a sub- Mr. Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover In the retelling of these often disruptive text of the entire book. The current debate Institution, is the author, most recently, of The demographic changes, Barone’s calming over some 11 million illegal aliens, the Savior Generals. purposes are twofold. First, he wishes to vast majority of them Latinos, and in par-

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS ticular Mexican nationals, is addressed little net influx along the vast 1,900-mile The trendy salad bowl is more likely in terms of the prior analyses of past Mexican border for most of our nation’s taught in our schools than is the carica- mass migrations. For Barone, the pres- history. Past generations certainly did tured melting pot. Huge increases in state ent apprehensions of contemporary not talk of fencing the Rio Grande or the and federal entitlements have eroded the Americans are not all that different from San Diego–Tijuana corridor. He assumes work ethic of new immigrants, while the what our forefathers once feared from further that the near destruction of the purveyors of racial politics see career the influx of starving Irish Catholics Mexican economy in the 1980s and expansion through millions of new, loyal fleeing the potato famine, or late-19th- 1990s, like most downturns abroad, was constituents. century inflows of Italians, most of them episodic: Mexico now has a higher rate of Statistics suggest that in terms of grad- from impoverished Sicily, or the arrival GDP growth and lower unemployment uation rates, criminality, literacy, and of hordes of Eastern European and than does the U.S. Similarly, declining unemployment, second-generation Mexi - Russian Jews. birthrates in Mexico suggest that, like the can Americans are having as many prob- In all these cases, the original majority Irish and Germans, fewer Mexicans will lems of adjustment as their parents, or culture of the U.S.—Northern European be coming into the U.S. in the future, even more than they had. Amnesties of Barone’s masterly account of our demo graphic history could be reassuring in our present chaos, but only if we have not broken with our own precedents.

and mostly British, Protestant rather than regardless of the policies adopted by the the last 30 years have not curtailed ille- Catholic, and English-speaking—fretted U.S. government. Consequently, Barone gal immigration, which thrives on the that the nation of the founding fathers can end his study on an upbeat note: odd alliance of corporate America and would be lost to a new mob of polyglot, identity-politics pressure groups—the multiethnic, and often politically subver- Cultural variety and cultural conflict one wanting cheap labor, the other con- have been a part of the American polity sive Europeans. stituents in need of group representation. from its beginnings, and we should not Barone notes that in all the huge forget that there are dark sides aplenty in Nineteenth-century Ireland and Ger - influxes of the past—the 18th-century our heritage. But in considering current many, of course, did not share a 1,900- arrival of the Scots-Irish, and especially problems, it is helpful to recollect that mile border with the U.S. In 1910, Los the mid-19th-century German and Irish conflicts produced by the surges of Angeles was not a sanctuary city, in immigrations—there were dire predic- migration that have come before resulted which federal immigration law might be tions that the hordes would just keep in much worse strains than those of the openly rendered all but null and void. In coming. That never happened. In every early 21st century, and that in the process 1950, there was not a viable La Raza case, the numbers eventually tapered off, of dealing with them, Americans have movement or popular but ahistorical slo- as the economies and political landscapes developed a capacity and a habit of ganeering that the “borders crossed us.” accommodating and uniting into one of once-wretched home nations abroad Nor was a sixth of the nation on food nation citizens with very serious and usually improved and would-be immi- deep differences. stamps in 1900. Scandinavians were not grants eventually chose to stay put. schooled under the protocols of federally Barone also draws an analogy between I hope his optimism is well founded, mandated bilingual education. Ballots present-day illegal immigration and inter- but the use of history cuts two ways. and various government documents were nal migration, and takes the long view While there may be great controversy not printed in Polish. Affirmative action that things even out over the generations. over past immigration laws that adjudi- did not grant privileges to the impover- The need for factory workers in World cated entry into the U.S., America has ished children of destitute Sicilian minori- Wars I and II drew almost half the black never had over 11 million foreign ties. Lithuania did not print comic books population to northern and western indus- nationals simply ignore federal immigra- to instruct its emigrants on how best to trial centers—even as there now grows a tion law and a myriad of state statutes. enter the U.S. illegally. The prime min- reverse pattern of black migration back to Illegal immigration also does not ister of Japan did not sue individual states the South. California was once the occur in a vacuum, but instead is a part of with the support of Washington. The pres- promised land; yet when taxes soared and a perfect storm that has seen other simul- ident of the United States did not publicly social problems exploded, people began taneous and force-multiplying events. assure Jewish leaders that they should leaving as eagerly as they had once Multiculturalism is a fairly new American jointly “punish our enemies” at the polls. trekked through the Sierra Nevada to concept, postulating that no one culture— Barone’s masterly account of our reach the Golden State. In other words, at America’s in particular—can be judged as demo graphic history could be reassur- least some Mexican nationals may well any better than any other. The result is that ing in our present chaos, but only if we begin migrating back to Mexico, as eco- the illegal immigrant rarely hears from his have not broken with our own prece- nomic and political conditions south of new host that he left racism and exploita- dents. The problem with historical adju- the border improve. tion in Oaxaca for something far more dication is that different inputs can often Barone is correct to note that there was humane and just in America. result in quite different outcomes.

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When Bush is viewed from the per- narrative are all of the major news events, spective of the present, and in contrast celebrities, and scandals that appeared W.: The to his successor, even a New York Times on the front page of Baker’s newspaper reporter such as Baker is able to appre- from 2001 to 2009: stem-cell research, Rough Draft ciate his virtues. Baker acknowledges Cheney’s energy task force, Halliburton, the former president’s humility, com- Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, David Kay passion, idealism, and decisiveness. He and the Duelfer report on Iraqi WMD, MATTHEW CONTINETTI notes that President Obama has pre- Paul O’neill, Abu Ghraib, the Swift served many of Bush’s initiatives, from Boat Veterans for Truth, Social Security counterterrorism policies to no Child reform, Hurricane Katrina, Harriet Miers, Left Behind to Medicare Part D to the Dubai Ports, comprehensive immigra- President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS tion reform, the loss of Congress, the fir- Relief to most of the 2001 and 2003 tax ing of Donald Rumsfeld, the collapse of Baker somehow mentions every major decision, policy, controversy, and personality of the first decade

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in of the 21st century. Reading his book the White House, by Peter Baker can be exhausting. (Doubleday, 816 pp., $35)

n April, the five living Ameri can cuts. And he concludes that the mea- Lehman Brothers, and—finally—the rise presidents gathered in Dallas for sures Bush adopted in times of emer- of Barack Obama. Baker somehow men- the dedication of the George W. gency, from his response to 9/11 to the tions every major decision, policy, contro- I Bush presidential library. Sit - surge in Iraq to the Troubled Asset versy, and personality of the first decade ting on an outdoor stage under a bright Relief Program, were necessary and of the 21st century. Reading his book can Texas sun, they addressed an assembly successful. be exhausting. of dignitaries, journalists, and former But don’t get your hopes up. Baker As good as the reporting and re search Bush-administration officials, includ- hasn’t written an apologia for Bush, may be, Baker’s prose is not strong ing Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. When nor has he written a revisionist history enough to sustain an 800-page narra- it was Bush’s turn to speak, his descrip- that challenges the conventional wis- tive. (George R. R. Martin he’s not.) His tion of his former vice president was dom. While he is clearly trying to be judgments are too boring to leave the gracious and kind. “From the day I fair-minded, his story is all too famil- reader wondering what he’ll say next. asked Dick to run with me, he served iar. It’s the same thing you’ve heard And yet, while Days of Fire is too long, with loyalty, principle, and strength,” he from the chorus of pundits, journalists, it also feels too short: Baker attempts to said. “Proud to call you friend.” Cheney, and political hands: George W. Bush cover so much ground that significant relaxed and healthy thanks to a success- was an inexperienced chief executive aspects of the Bush presidency, such as ful heart transplant, and wearing dark whose heavy reliance on Dick Cheney judicial, housing, education, energy, and sunglasses and a ten-gallon hat, smiled gave us waterboarding, Guantanamo trade policies, are mentioned only in coolly. Bay, nSA surveillance, and quagmires passing or in relation to major events. The relationship between the 43rd in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only in the Other trends, such as U.S. economic president and the 46th vice president is later years of his presidency, when integration with China, the resurgence of the main topic of Peter Baker’s mam- Bush grew in confidence and com- an unapologetic, tech-savvy liberalism, moth book. Baker says Days of Fire is mand, did he sideline Cheney in favor and the changing demographics and “the most documented history of the of secretary of state Condi Rice and a beliefs of American society, are hardly Bush-Cheney White House to date” and multilateral foreign policy. By then, mentioned at all. This is the rough draft “a neutral history of a White House however, it was too late. Bush had of history—with emphasis on the rough. about which no one is neutral.” He’s gone from being the most popular A shorter book focusing exclusively on right on both counts. It’s also the latest president in history to one of the least the interactions and tensions between episode in an ongoing reconsideration of popular, and “unnecessary controver- Bush and Cheney would have been far Bush that began as soon as he departed sies combined with the devastating more readable. Washington, D.C., for Texas on January misjudgments in Iraq ended up detract- Another weakness of the book is its 20, 2009. ing from what otherwise might have narrative frame. The relationship be - been a solid record.” Cue violins, and tween Bush and Cheney is far less inter- Mr. Continetti is editor-in-chief of the Washington fade to black. esting than Baker suggests. Baker’s Free Beacon. Mentioned during the course of this reporting undermines his thesis that for

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS eight years the president and vice presi- neglect out of which the crisis came, to dent were “partners in an ambitious joint which the president heroically re - venture to remake the country and the sponded,” he tells Baker. “Bush made A Lesser world.” For sure, Cheney was influen- crises through neglect and then re - tial. But the final decisions always were solved crises through courage.” Saying God Bush’s. “Even in the first term,” Baker Bush alone “made” these crises is says, “Bush rebuffed Cheney on more overstating things, to say the least. But PETER TONGUETTE than one occasion.” That’s an under- the point about neglect and courage is Salinger, by David Shields and statement. In his first term, Bush pro- a good one. It also applies to 9/11: Shane Salerno (Simon & Schuster, moted compassionate conservatism, America looked the other way during 698 pp., $37.50) sided with Colin Powell in the debate the 1990s as radical Islam solidified its over how to respond to the EP-3 aircraft control over Afghanistan and attacked ESPITE the impressive bulk of incident over China, waited to attack Americans in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, this new book about the author Iraq, went to the U.N., rejected a plan to Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen. But, of The Catcher in the Rye and put exiles in charge of post-Saddam Iraq, when the crisis of 9/11 arrived, Bush D several of the past century’s promoted democracy as a way to com - implemented policies that have pre- most enduring short stories, there is an bat the root causes of Islamic extrem- vented a major attack on U.S. soil for aspect of it that calls to mind a dime-store ism, and called for a Federal Marriage over a decade. romance novel: Intentionally or not, both Amendment. Cheney dissented in every What is Bush’s legacy? For Baker, tempt readers to skip to the good parts. In case. it’s mostly negative. “If history is a the case of Salinger, that means getting to “By the time Bush and Cheney stepped defense to an extent,” he writes, “it is the bottom of the question that has been out of the White House for the final also an indictment.” A “broader reeval- confounding the author’s admirers, fans, time,” Baker says, “they had disagreed uation in years to come” of the Bush and groupies since he last wrote a work for on North Korea, gun rights, same-sex presidency “seems uncertain.” The Bush publication in 1965: What was springing marriage, tax cuts, Guantanamo Bay, years will remain tarnished by the mis- forth from the typewriter of J. D. Salinger interrogation practices, surveillance takes made in Iraq. “It may be hard for (1919–2010) during the years that fol- policy, Iran, the auto-industry bailout, Bush to shift the narrative as much as lowed, and how much of it is there? climate change, the Lebanon War, Harriet he would like.” Still, Bush won’t be One of the most endearing character- Miers, Donald Rumsfeld, Middle East the one to “shift the narrative” of his istics of Salinger is that its co-authors, peace, Syria, Russia, and federal spend- presidency. That will be the job of his- David Shields and Shane Salerno, coming.” So Bush’s 2009 decision not to fully torians. menced their research wondering more pardon former Cheney adviser Scooter There’s a precedent here. For years, or less the same thing as the rest of us. Libby, whose sentence Bush had com- Harry Truman was seen as a hapless (The book’s “oral biography” format pre- muted in 2007, looks less like Cheney’s machine politician who waged an un - sents a mix of voices extracted from inter- “fight for redemption from a president popular war in Korea and left office views, articles, and a wide variety of other who had turned away from him” than like unloved and unlamented. Then a new sources.) As they put it in the introduction: just another choice the president made generation of historians rehabilitated “We began with three goals: We wanted over the vice president’s objections. Truman by showing how he established to know why Salinger stopped publish- Baker’s 800 pages show that the conven- the policy of containment against the ing; why he disappeared; and what he had tional story is flawed: Cheney never Soviet Union. Baker’s account supplies been writing the last 45 years of his life.” called the shots. Bush did. the raw material for the historians of While it is to be expected that answers to Many of those calls were made in the future. the first two questions can only be guessed extremis. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 And his account has competition. at, the authors present pleasingly concrete provoked a massive reorientation of Bush may be silent about current poli- information in response to the third. national-security and counterterrorism tics, but he is vocal about his accom- Unfortunately, as with most romance policy, all directed by Bush. America plishments and beliefs. “When future novels, the payoff disappoints. In a con- was on the verge of losing the Iraq generations come to this library and cluding chapter, cryptically titled “Se - War when Bush sided with Cheney study this administration,” he said in crets,” Shields and Salerno itemize five and ordered a surge of troops and the April, “they’re going to find that we books—not all of which will be all- adoption of a counterinsurgency strat- stayed true to our convictions, that we new—that will be published starting in egy. And the financial crisis of 2008 expanded freedom at home by raising 2015. It is nice to finally have some shook the world economy to such an standards in schools and lowering specifics, but it is likely that many readers extent that Bush famously told advis- taxes for everybody, that we liberated will have a feeling of vague dissatisfac- ers he was abandoning free-market nations from dictatorship and freed tion after the excitement passes. principles to save the free-market sys- people from AIDS, and that when our Salinger, it seems, was at an artistic tem. freedom came under attack, we made standstill. The majority of the upcoming David Frum, the former Bush speech- the tough decisions required to keep writer, says he sees similarities between the American people safe.” The reha- Mr. Tonguette’s criticism has appeared in the Wall the surge and the crash. “In both cases bilitation of George W. Bush is just Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and there was a long period of antecedent beginning. elsewhere. He is writing a book on Peter Bogdanovich.

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works concern characters already very the 18-year-old Maynard: “I’ve missed women’s basketball games.” familiar to us, including Seymour Glass you all day”; “So many thoughts of you”; What is most demoralizing is the real- and Holden Caulfield, and several are to “I miss you pretty sorely”; “We didn’t do, ization that Salinger apparently never be combined with existing works, which so much; we were.” got around to bothering with middle poses interesting challenges to prospec- We can only hope that the upcoming age—let alone senescence—as a writer. tive publishers. In the future, will The Salinger publications are more cogent. He remained fixated on the well-trod Catcher in the Rye be available, like the There is truth in Tom Wolfe’s view that a ground of adolescence. Among the two halves of Franny and Zooey, only in 1965 letter Salinger wrote in protest of works previewed by Shields and Salerno a volume accompanied by other stories “Tiny Mummies,” Wolfe’s famous demo- is a “complete retooling” of a 1942 short with the same main character? So much lition of The New Yorker, was “the most story called “The Last and Best of the for the tiny red paperback with spindly lucid and comprehensible thing he had Peter Pans”—it could be terrific, but the yellow lettering (a famous cover carefully written in a decade.” In fact, the moony title is off-putting in light of the legion of imitated on this book). ramblings Maynard inspired in Salinger unsettling anecdotes depicting a gray- But if Shields and Salerno are disap- tell us something about where his work— ing Salinger romantically pursuing pointed, they do a good job of concealing which peaked in the late Forties and early young women (including starlets he it. “Salinger’s chronicles of two extraor- Fifties with the beautifully written tales spots on TV and female journalists who dinary families, the Glasses and the that resulted in the collection Nine come calling). Enamored of youth in his Caulfields—written from 1941 to 2008, Stories—took the wrong turn. life—Maynard remembers wondering to when he conveyed his body of work to If the co-authors are positively Pan - herself at one point, “What if I’m getting the J. D. Salinger Literary Trust—will be glossian about the merits of the soon-to- too old for him?”—he worships at its the masterworks for which he is forever be-unveiled Salinger works, they have altar in his fiction. known,” they write, in the bombastic their eyes wide open when it comes to the Nor is his immoderate love limited to style characteristic of this biography. disturbing amount of attention Salinger youth. As John Updike put it in his review Yes, this is a book that plainly thinks paid to young women—long after he of Franny and Zooey, “Salinger loves the a lot of itself. A caption accompanying ceased being young himself. As a World Glasses more than God loves them.” a photo of Salinger standing with his War II veteran in his early thirties, he frat- Salinger’s fiction is marred in other first wife reads: “One of many never- ernized with a local “high-school gang,” ways. One of his best stories, “A Perfect before-seen photographs of Sylvia and and his habits did not change much in the Day for Bananafish,” is nearly spoiled by J. D. Salinger on their wedding day, decades that followed: “At age 90 he was its flippant attitude toward Muriel Glass, October 18, 1945.” Later, Salerno sets a regular attendee of Dartmouth College the wife of the story’s troubled protago- up an account of an aborted film version of “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” in grandiose terms that virtually guaran- PRAYER tee that what follows will be disappoint- Tenderness does not arise from ing (and it is): “This story has never the beauty and motion of the dark clouds, been told.” of the rain, or its passing, As it happens, much of Salinger has or the air, purged in a breeze, been told elsewhere. Those curious about slight but apparent, drifting Salinger’s private life (he had three mar- from the direction of the rain. riages, two children, and more than a few It comes from a sense of wholeness affairs) could peruse a memoir by an ex- that overrides the sequence of time lover, Joyce Maynard, whose story is and the weather, that partakes repeated here. To be sure, Shields and of the sequence of time, and the weather, Salerno add much to the record by repro- and fulfills a meaning in its passing imperfectly held in our words, ducing undated extracts from Salinger’s our capacity for recognition, letters to Maynard. Shields and Salerno in a way that does not pass. may be right when they claim that the It comes from the place fear and missives constitute “the only self-portrait emptiness cannot reach, from a turn available of a man who had removed of heart and then of mind touched himself from the public eye decades with solitude, and with a sense of before,” but the picture that emerges is God’s presence. It comes, coherent, far from positive. first from gratitude, as a habit of mind, Scattered throughout the letters are then the further sense that others, lines indicative of Salinger’s intelligence of the living, shall be treated in and perception—he refers to “all those the light of thankfulness, with a afternoon souls” who populate the game prayer offered up for us all, here and gone, in the light of God’s mercy, show Let’s Make a Deal—but for the in the beauty of the rain, most part they read like the dashed-off jot- and its passing. tings of a lovesick adolescent, except that Salinger was 53 when he was addressing —WILLIAM W. RUNYEON

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS nist, Seymour. Because Seymour kills John Milton to Bertrand de Jouvenel. No himself a few pages later, we are meant to one—apart, perhaps, from Aron and from be politely appalled at the way Muriel Making Manent’s friend and associate François whiles away the hours in her hotel room: Furet—did more in those years to cham- “She washed her comb and brush. She Republics pion a revival of classical liberalism in took the spot out of the skirt of her beige France. suit. She moved the button on her Saks PAUL A. RAHE When the Cold War came to an end, blouse.” And so on. Going for broke, Manent turned his attention to the trajecto- when Seymour enters the room to do the ry of Europe and the gradual dissolution deed, Salinger notes that the place reeks within Europe of the nation-state—a shift of “new calfskin luggage and nail-lacquer visible in some of the essays collected and remover.” The equation of primping with translated into English as Modern Liberty moral rot is too much. Does Salinger and Its Discontents. More recently, in A really think that Muriel’s grooming habits World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the are so decadent? Has he forgotten that the Nation-State and Democracy without woman he describes so contemptuously Nations? The Fate of Self-Government in is about to be widowed, or does he not Europe, he has emerged as a trenchant care? In “Franny,” a similar tone of finger- critic of the European Union and a princi- wagging is directed toward Franny Glass’s Metamorphoses of the City: pled defender not only of self-government sweetheart, Lane Coutell, who is depicted On the Western Dynamic, by Pierre Manent as such but of what he rightly takes to be as too shallow for our deep-thinking hero- (Harvard, 376 pp., $39.95) its modern crucible: the nation-state. In ine because—why, exactly? Because he his estimation, depoliticization is the likes to hear himself talk and enjoys hav- IERRE MANENT is today the lead- great problem of our age. ing a lunch of frogs’ legs? Readers will be ing political philosopher in A bit more than 20 years ago, as he forgiven if they conclude that handsome, France. As a young scholar and turned his attention from the receding well-adjusted Lane is the character in the P teacher, while working in Paris totalitarian threat to the uncertain future story they ought to emulate. as an assistant to Raymond Aron, he read of self-government in Europe, Manent Shields and Salerno go to some lengths with attention and care the works of Leo published The City of Man, a dense and to link Salinger’s hatred of “the frivolity of Strauss, befriended Allan Bloom (whose challenging work in which he addressed fashion and materialism” with his deep book Love and Friendship he would later the emergence of historicism and the soci- knowledge of Vedanta and Buddhism, but translate into French), and helped found ological mind-set that, he believes, enfee- could it really be pure surliness that and for twelve years co-edited the distin- bles modern man and cripples his political motivates his disgust at Muriel, Lane, guished French journal Commentaire. In imagination. Hovering ostentatiously in and other “phonies”? The Salinger we time, he became director of studies at the the background, though never mentioned come to know in these pages is often École des Hautes Études en Sciences in the text, was Augustine’s City of God. intensely unlikable and unaccountably Sociales, where he still holds court. At the very end of his book, Manent drew mean. We can comprehend the invective Early in his career, during the Cold attention to Machiavelli’s ruminations on he unleashes at Maynard after she goes to War, Manent followed Aron’s lead and the inability of Europeans after the fall of see him following their breakup—it is, concerned himself with the totalitarian the Roman Empire to recover the energy after all, an ex-lovers’ quarrel—but other temptation and with the inability of liber- once supplied by Rome, and he pointed, incidents are bizarre and even frightening. als to recognize the seriousness of the as the Florentine had before him, to At one point, when the former nanny of his Commu nist threat. In those years, he took Christianity as the chief cause. From children ventures onto his property to Tocqueville as his guide and liberal “inside” the Roman empire, “or, at least, solicit money for a Red Cross drive, he democracy as his subject. In 1977, he within it,” he explained, brandishes a gun and threatens to “shoot published Naissances de la politique there arose a new empire, or a new kind at the ground right in front of you” if she moderne: Machiavel, Hobbes, Rousseau. of empire, one more vast in extent since comes any further (though he eventually In the 1980s, he brought out two addition- it encompasses all men in space and time tosses her a check). al books, which were subsequently trans- and more vast in understanding since the The catalogue of bad habits, odd hang- lated into English as Tocqueville and the virtue that gathers it is not magnanimity, ups, and unshakeable opinions attributed Nature of Democracy and An Intellectual which makes masters visible and sets to Salinger is enough to leave even the History of Liberalism, and he published in them apart, but rather humility, which most avid devotee of his writing a little French a two-volume anthology of liberal does not recognize persons and, being depressed. It is, as Franny Glass would tracts penned by figures stretching from invisible, opens the invisible space of say, “sad-making.” Perhaps Shields and hearts. The emperor of the visible empire, “sol invictus,” the invincible sun, has as Salerno should not have saved their best Mr. Rahe holds the Charles O. Lee and Louise K. Lee his opponent and successor the vicar of stuff for last—that way, we could have Chair in the Western Heritage at Hillsdale College and the invisible empire, “servus servorum savored the announcement of the new is the author, most recently, of Soft Despotism, Dei,” the servant of the servants of God. books before we had a chance to really Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, get to know their most uncompanionable Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect. This This is an observation, deeply indebted creator. year, he is a national fellow at the Hoover Institution. to Thomas Hobbes, that is reminiscent of

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Leo Strauss. But the last three sentences in relationship between forms of government founding of the Christian church, which the volume point elsewhere: “Some other and the size of the territory in need of gov- was a city, or civitas—a new political form time we shall study the cause that resides ernance. But he does not join Montesquieu in its own right. In time, moreover, when in the separation of the two Romes. We in rejecting as wholly inadequate the the Reformation divided Europe, sapped must prepare for a second and altogether classical political science of Aristotle. the energy and authority of the Church, different crossing. We never understand “Where Montesquieu saw the limits of and left it in both Catholic and Protestant more than the half of things when we Greek political science,” he suggests, kingdoms to the mercy of the secular neglect the science of Rome.” Manent’s “perhaps one should rather see the sci- prince, there gradually emerged a fourth latest book, Metamorphoses of the City, ence of the limits of the city.” In this fash- political form, the nation-state—which is an attempt to make good on this ion, he believes, was possessed of a sovereignty that en - promise. It constitutes his “second and we can do justice, more easily than we abled it to absorb and dominate the altogether different crossing.” Its subject thought, to Montesquieu’s legitimate Church and, in time, neuter it and consign is, as he repeatedly makes clear, “the sci- demand, and more generally that of the it to civil society. With this nation-state, ence of Rome,” and it is the work in the modern social or human sciences. If we there came a revival of self-government light of which he, as a political philoso- understand the city according to its limits, by way of representative institutions. pher, will ultimately be judged. we place ourselves in a position to As this brief outline can only suggest, Manent’s purpose is the elaboration of understand the possibility, perhaps the Manent has written a book as challenging necessity, of the other political forms. a new political science adequate for as Strauss’s Natural Right and History, More precisely, by keeping before us understanding the political exhaustion both the ancient science of the city and one in which he calls to judgment Strauss that besets not just Europe but the United its limits as well as the later experience and his followers for neglecting the city States. To this end, he attempts “to lay of other political forms, we open for our- of God and failing to articulate an ade- bare the illuminating power of a careful- selves the possibility of a more complete quate “science of Rome.” In the pro - ly considered history” of what he calls science. We then consider the city in the cess Manent has done a great public “political forms.” His starting point is no perspective of its death and metamorpho- service: first, by forcing political philo - longer Tocqueville. It is the ancient sis into other political forms and we con- sophers to grapple with the erosion of Greek city, whose “formation” Manent sider the succession of political forms as self-government in the West and the grad- has come to regard as “a much more sub- a commentary on and an illustration of ual substitution of bureaucratic admini - stantial anthropological transformation, not only the potentialities of the city but stration for political praxis; and, second, its limits as well. if one can use the term, than the modern by demanding that they reconfigure the democratic revolution.” In categorizing What Manent has in mind is not “a third only political science that gives primacy the shift that has taken place in his think- political science” but a reconfiguration of to politics in such a manner as to take into ing, he observes: “ancient political science,” which he per- consideration the succession of what he sists in embracing “not because it is calls “political forms.” What Cicero did Instead of seeing history as facilely run- ancient but because it is political and it for Rome in the time of Caesar and ning toward us, toward the grandeur and miseries of our democracy, I saw it more alone is wholly political; that is, it is whol- Octavian with his De Officiis and his De and more clearly unfolding starting from ly science of the government of humans Republica and what Augustine did for the the prodigious innovation that was the by humans.” He remains persuaded that Civitas Dei with his magnum opus The first production of the common, some- he was correct in arguing in The City of City of God needs to be done for Europe thing much more substantial and more- Man that “modern political science, even and America in and after the age of the over much more interesting than the in the most ‘liberal’ authors, such as nation-state. virtues and vices of our too-famous Montesquieu, tends to make us the play- Manent is right in intimating that we equality. I saw more and more clearly the things of ‘causes’ that ‘govern’ us.” One need to read Montesquieu with great care forms of our common life unfolding cannot defend self-government with a and to take seriously the criticism that he from the first and master form as so political science that is predicated on a levels at classical political science, and to many reverberations of this original con- flagration, as so many metamorphoses denial of the human capacity for what the do so without succumbing to the propen- of this primordial form. Greeks called praxis. sity—fostered by all modern political The requisite reconfiguration of politi- and social science—for underestimating In taking “political forms” rather than cal science that Manent seeks is, he the scope left for human agency. He is cor- “regimes” as fundamental, Manent bids believes, ready to hand. It was, he argues, rect as well in his insistence that we need a fond farewell to Leo Strauss, arguing Cicero who, in the time of Caesar and to attend to the logic underpinning the suc- that—Strauss to the contrary notwith- Octavian, revised the political science of cession of political forms, and the warning standing—the political science articu- Aristotle for the purpose of understanding that he directs to his fellow Europeans lated by Aristotle is not fully adequate to a res publica in the process of becoming about the dangers attendant on administra- the analysis of Rome, which, as it in - what the Romans would in short order tive centralization is not salutary solely for evitably became “distended,” came to dub a principatus (the private possession them: It applies with almost equal force to exhibit an imperial “political form” quite of its princeps, or “first man”)—and us. With the nation-state, man recovered in different from that represented by the Augustine was the Roman statesman’s some measure what the ancient Greeks Greek city as a city. greatest intellectual heir. In Manent’s esti- had discovered when they founded the Manent takes his inspiration from mation, Rome’s transformation was just city. To lose the res publica would be to Montesquieu, who laid emphasis on the the beginning, for it was followed by the lose our most precious heirloom.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS earth (get it?)—that feels like it was lifted only Kowalski’s voice, experience, and Film from The Manual for Lazy Screenwriters. jetpack to help her back to anything like But this time, in this Cuarón movie, the safety. Miles problems registered for me intellectually and that “anything like” is a bit of a but not viscerally. When it came to my cruel joke, given how fundamentally enjoyment of the movie, the extraordinar- unsafe, how temporary and vulnerable, Above iness of what he put up on screen was all every refuge turns out to be. Sometimes that really mattered. The public seems to with Clooney’s veteran at her side and ROSS DOUTHAT agree: Gravity isn’t just a hit, but a hit sometimes on her own, Bullock’s charac- with staying power, buoyed by impressive ter has to fight, float, swing, and jet-propel am in the minority among film word-of-mouth. Like some other high- her way from one makeshift sanctuary to critics in coming away a little grossing examples (Titanic springs to the next, while every pass from the debris disappointed from the movies of mind), this may be a movie that simply field narrows her options and shrinks the I alfonso Cuarón. Before his new overpowers its own weaknesses and time she has to use them. one, Gravity, the mexican-born director refuses to be judged on anything except all of this happens “in the blind,” with made only six: his 1991 debut, Sólo Con its spectacular immersiveness. no help from mission Control below. Tu Pareja; an adaptation of Frances The plot is linear, simple, harrowing. a There are echoes of Apollo 13 through- Hodgson Burnett’s The Little Princess in crew of american astronauts, led by the out the film, and explicit evocations 1995; the Gwyneth Paltrow–Ethan Hawke wisecracking, storytelling veteran matt (Houston’s voice, in those first ten min- Great Expectations three years later; the Kowalski (George Clooney), are con- utes, belongs to Ed Harris), but the mexican road movie Y Tu Mamá También ducting repairs on the Hubble Telescope, silence is the crucial difference. There’s in 2001; then the third installment of including some computer updates being no team of alpha nerds working to bring the Harry Potter franchise, Prisoner of performed by Bullock’s Dr. Ryan Stone, the astronauts back, no watching, hop- Azkaban; and then the dystopian Children on her first trip into orbit. The opening ten ing, cheering audiences down below. If of Men seven years ago. Cuarón’s films minutes, in which Kowalski jetpacks his you feel like reading the two movies as are ravishing, luminous, visually daring, way around his tinkering colleagues, chat- religious allegories—and Gravity does and I understand why people love them. tering with mission Control and admiring not exactly discourage that interpreta- But there is more to storytelling than the views of Earth, would feel buoyantly tion—then Apollo 13 was about watch- showmanship, and, especially when he’s awesome if they hadn’t been preceded by ing guardian angels bring their charges safely home to heaven, and this feels much more like a dark night of the soul. The soul in crisis is Stone’s (Clooney’s role is crucial but clearly secondary), which means that the movie depends on Bullock’s ability to hold her own amid the effects shots and not get lost against the stunning panoramas. and despite the clichéd back story and the occasional cringe-inducing line, she delivers the kind of centered, vulnerable, physical performance the movie needs. Cuarón reportedly considered angelina Jolie for the part adapting other artists’ work, Cuarón’s a single, menacing line of text: “Life in but wanted Bullock most of all, and he plotting and characterization can feel shal- space is impossible.” So we watch, and was right. The qualities that made her a low, and his thematic choices confused. wait, for something terrible to happen. star originally—the unusual mix of There are no adaptation issues in When it does, it starts with the Russians. charisma and ordinariness, magnetism Gravity—it’s from an original script he Our old rivals are shooting down a broken and relatability—are perfect for the kind co-wrote with his son—but it suffers from spy satellite while Kowalski and Co. are of absolute audience identification this some of the recurring Cuarón flaws. It’s a working, and instead of knocking it back part needs to inspire. after her Oscar win dizzying, terrifying, exhausting astronaut to Earth they accidentally just explode it, for The Blind Side and this summer’s movie that takes full advantage of contem- creating a vast debris field that starts mega-hit The Heat, this is part of an porary movie magic, the natural magic of sweeping around the planet at rapid impressive mid-career run for Bullock. the world as seen from orbit, and the exis- speeds, tearing through just about every- She was america’s sweetheart in the late tential dread summoned up by the abyss of thing in its path. This includes the com- 1990s, and now here she is 15 years space itself. But it also has a script that munications array that connects Kowalski, later, middle-aged and no longer quite as often thuds and plods along, too much Stone, and their team to Houston, and adorable, but suddenly Hollywood’s clobbering symbolism, and a main char- soon enough it includes the american biggest female star. That takes luck, but . acter, a novice astronaut played by astronauts themselves. Their shuttle is also smart choices—and entrusting her- Sandra Bullock, whose tragic back wrecked, most of their team killed, and self to the force of Cuarón’s Gravity

WARNER BROS story—a dead child, killed by a fall to Stone goes spinning off untethered, with may be the smartest one she’s made.

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around the foundation. There may even oughly, but I know bears have memories, Country Life be some left over for the humans. It only and I hope he will not revisit, especially if takes hours with a hammer to shell what he should feel disappointed. small jaws gnaw unassisted. But the small and fragile tough it out, Melancholy As with crops there is a recessional of too. Once late in the season I was picking flowers. Black cohosh, boom mikes with up a rock in the meadow—probably grab- Season a rank, sweet scent. Turtle heads, per- bing something to anchor a ground cloth fectly named, if turtles were purple. on a mulch pile. I had put the lining in my Aster, white and blue. Snake root, a jacket, there had been at least one night modest white weed that, if cows eat it, of frost, it was drizzling a little with icy poisons their milk; the plant that killed stings. Under the rock was a salamander, Abraham Lincoln’s mother nods beside dark with a red side stripe. Salamanders the path to my deck. Though the calendar are soft and slow; their expressions, if I says the year is ending, the bees don’t may call them that, seem passive, not very know it. They move from plant to plant bright. They are too big simply to live nine as each one does its thing, adaptable as contractors and more industrious. I have discovered tiny blossoms—on grasses, RICHARD BROOKHISER for instance—which I would never have noticed but for their buzzing. y friend said he aspired to Creatures who need warm weather head live in San Diego. Why for the exits. The season becomes a series was that? I asked. of absences; each week you see who is not M “No change of seasons. there. The catbird newscast, that cascade No fall.” of gibberish, like the celebrity page of the Over a million people live in San Huffington Post, is canceled. The corre- Diego, so either they like the weather or spondents ate all the berries on the spice they don’t care. But if my friend’s bushes and took off. No more humming- description of their unfallen condition is birds, those little green souls have trans- accurate, what do they miss? migrated. If you lie outside at night you In a changeable climate, spring is can hear geese overhead. In their present promise, summer is bounty. Everything large numbers they are sleek, stupid is coming, then everything is here. When moochers, settling on golf courses or the it arrives, no end is imaginable. The shoulders of highways, eating and defecat- changes of crops and blossoms in July ing. But when they fly they are thrilling. and August pass like cards being dealt For the first time in 14 years of having a from an infinite deck. In fall we know country house I saw a bittern—a two-foot- months and die, like insects. Why hadn’t the game is ending; that is the backdrop tall brown heron, described by all the bird he sought shelter from the coming cold? to every new taste and sight. But look at books as shy. When it felt it was being Was the rock his shelter? Then I had to the bounty of those last few deals. observed, it stuck its neck, head, and bill replace it. I studied the micro-terrain to In the farmers’ markets, where city up straight so as to mimic the vertical make sure that, in putting it back, I did dwellers go to remind themselves that lines of cattails. When I became too not crush him. That would be a winger’s food is not produced in the back rooms of observant, it spread its long wings and image of irresponsible charity: salaman- grocery stores, it is the hour of the root: sailed off. See you in 2027. der liberalism. I did my best, and told him orange, yellow, and purple carrots; I admire the stay-behinds. you expect to keep warm. radishes, parsnips, turnips, and beets lie predators at the top of the food chain and There are two ways to take all this. stacked on tables, hairy tips facing out like largish omnivores to stay put (both The proverb says the wind is tempered to plugs awaiting some giant PC tower. The descriptions fit me). In a burst of hope and the shorn lamb. Fall says lambs are shorn corn is mostly done—the corn we eat, the folly, I planted six pear trees. Results have to meet the wind. Fall is the fall into win- corn cows eat, and the corn no one eats but been mixed. One tree has shot up 30 feet ter; seventy or eighty of them ready us Uncle pays for, so that not every acre will and bears no fruit; I must try trimming it for the big freeze. you can resent this, as be a subdivision. Upstate orchards troll for one of these days. Another yields miser- my friend does, or embrace it, like some weekend U-pickers; the all-season pickers able grayish ornaments, like balls of ash. Buddhist/Stoic, half in love with the old have already come up from Jamaica. The others produce pears that are speckled easeful. Nuts harvest themselves. Two hickory and creased like Popeye’s profile, impos- That’s me, when I am melancholy. But trees tower over our house, Philemon and sible to sell, but since I have no intention that is not all I am. The other way to fall is Baucis. In a good year their nuts strike the of doing so I don’t mind. They roast just by living it—to bring in the sheaves, then roof like marbles. They block the gutters fine. One year this time a bear came, ate face the worse. Fill the shopping bag, and feed the gleaners: flying squirrels every windfall, and shook the trees for soak up the rays, salute the migratory (to scratching in the walls, chipmunks darting the rest. Since then I pick early and thor- each his own), then carry on.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Sex at Sunset

o Western eyes, contemporary Japan has a kind The Observer seems to have approached the subject of earnest childlike wackiness, all karaoke in the same belief as P. D. James’s government porn mach ines and manga cartoons and nuttily stores—that it’s nothing that a little more sexual adven- T sadistic game shows. But, to us demography turism can’t cure. So Miss Haworth’s lead was devoted to bores, it’s a sad place that seems to be turning into a the views of a “sex and relationship counselor” and for- theme park of P. D. James’s great dystopian novel The mer dominatrix who specialized in dripping hot wax on Children of Men. As readers may recall from earlier cita- her clients’ nipples and was once invited to North Korea tions in this space, Baroness James’s tale is set in Britain to squeeze the testicles of one of Kim Jong-il’s top gener- in the near future, in a world that is infertile: The last als. In other words, as the Observer puts it, “she doesn’t newborn babe emerged from the womb in 1995, and judge.” Except, that is, when it comes to “the pressure to since then nothing. The Hollywood director Alfonso conform to Japan’s anachronistic family model,” which Cuarón took this broad theme and made a rather ordinary she blames for the young folks checking out of the sex biz little film out of it. But the Japa nese seem determined to altogether. live up to the book’s every telling detail. But, if the pressure to conform were that great, wouldn’t In Lady James’s speculative fiction, pets are doted on there be a lot more conforming? Instead, 49 percent of as child-substitutes, and churches hold christening cere- women under 34 are not in any kind of romantic relation- monies for cats. In contemporary Japanese reality, Tokyo ship, and nor are 61 percent of single men. A third of has some 40 “cat cafés” where lonely solitary citizens Japanese adults under 30 have never dated. Anyone. Ever. can while away an afternoon by renting a feline to touch It’s not that they’ve stopped “having sex”—or are disin- and pet for a couple of companiable hours. In Lady clined to have hot wax poured on their nipples. It’s bigger James’s speculative fiction, all the unneeded toys are than that: It’s a flight from human intimacy. burned, except for the dolls, which childless women They’re not alone in that, of course. A while back, I flew seize on as the nearest thing to a baby and wheel through from a speaking engagement on one side of the Atlantic to the streets. In contemporary Japanese reality, toy makers, a TV booking on the other. And backstage at both events their children’s market dwindling, have instead devel- an attractive thirtysomething woman made the same com- oped dolls for seniors to be the grandchildren they’ll plaint to me. They’d both tried computer dating but were never have: You can dress them up, and put them in a alarmed by the number of chaps who found human contact baby carriage, and the computer chip in the back has too much effort: Instead of meeting and kissing and several dozen phrases of the kind a real grandchild might making out and all that other stuff that involves being in use to enable them to engage in rudimentary social the same room, they’d rather you just sexted them and pleasantries. twitpiced a Weineresque selfie or two. As in other areas, P. D. James’s most audacious fancy is that in a barren the Japanese seem merely to have reached the end point land sex itself becomes a bit of a chore. The authorities of Western ennui a little earlier. frantically sponsor state porn emporia promoting ever By 2020, in the Land of the Rising Sun, adult diapers more recherché forms of erotic activity in an effort to will outsell baby diapers: The sun also sets. In The reverse the populace’s flagging sexual desire just in case Children of Men, the barrenness is a medical condition; man’s seed should recover its potency. Alas, to no avail. in real life, in some of the oldest nations on earth, from As Lady James writes, “Women complain increasingly Madrid to Tokyo, it’s a voluntary societal self-extinc- of what they describe as painful orgasms: the spasm tion. In Europe, the demographic death spiral is ob - achieved but not the pleasure. Pages are devoted to this scured by high Muslim immigration; in Japan, which common phenomenon in the women’s magazines.” retains a cultural aversion to immigration of any kind, As I said, a bold conceit, at least to those who believe that there are no foreigners to be the children you couldn’t shorn of all those boring procreation hang-ups we can finally be bothered having yourself. In welfare states, the be free to indulge our sexual appetites to the full. But it future is premised on social solidarity: The young will seems the Japanese have embraced the no-sex-please- pay for the costs of the old. But, as the West ages, social we’re-dystopian-Brits plot angle, too. In october, Abigail solidarity frays, and in Japan young men aren’t even Haworth of the Observer in London filed a story headlined interested in solidarity with young women, and young “Why Have Young People in Japan Stopped Having Sex?” women can’t afford solidarity with bonnie bairns. So an Not all young people but a whopping percentage: A survey elderly population in need of warm bodies to man the by the Japan Family Planning Asso ciation reported that hospital wards and senior centers is already turning to over a quarter of men aged 16–24 “were not interested in or robot technology. If manga and anime are any indica- despised sexual contact.” For women, it was 45 percent. tion, the post-human nurses and waitresses will be cute enough to make passable sex partners—for anyone who Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). can still be bothered. UNIVERSAL PICTURES

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