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NA SNEAK PEAK INSIDE SILVER VAULT BRICKS: Pictured left reveals for the very first time the valuable .999 pure fine silver bars inside each State Silver Vault Brick. Pictured right are the State Silver Vault Bricks containing the only U.S. State Silver Bars known to exist with the double forged state proclamation. Residents who find their state listed to the left in bold are authorized to get individual State Silver Bars at just $57 state resident minimum set by the Lincoln Treasury. That’s why everyone should be taking full Vault Bricks loaded with five State Silver Bars before they’re all gone. And here’s the best part. Every state resident who gets at least two Vault Bricks is also getting free shipping and free handling. That’s a real steal because all other state residents must pay over six hundred dollars for each State Vault Brick. TOC_QXP-1127940144.qxp 7/27/2016 2:25 PM Page 1 Contents

AUGUST 15, 2016 | VOLUME LXVIII, NO. 14 | www.nationalreview.com

Jay Nordlinger on Dr. Denis Mukwege ON THE COVER Page 24 p. 22 The Bloody Czar It is common in Russia for people to BOOKS, ARTS avoid certain issues because, & MANNERS otherwise, “it will be impossible to 36 AN ERODED CULTURE Helen Andrews reviews Hillbilly live.” Unfortunately, an issue doesn’t Elegy: A Memoir, by J. D. Vance. disappear simply because it is 37 THE SEDUCTION OF ignored. Of all the dangers that hang BENEDICT ARNOLD over Russia, none is more menacing John Daniel Davidson reviews Valiant Ambition: George than the failure to demand answers Washington, Benedict Arnold, to the 17-year-old mystery of how and the Fate of the American Revolution, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Putin came to power. David Satter 39 UNJUST TAKINGS COVER: ROMAN GENN Matthew J. Franck reviews The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of ARTICLES New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain, by Ilya Somin. LEARNING FROM TRUMP by Ramesh Ponnuru 16 44 RIGHTS BEFORE Some good lessons from a bad nominee. GOVERNMENT CRUZ’S GREAT GAMBLE by Eliana Johnson Jonathan H. Adler reviews Our 17 Republican Constitution: What will future primary voters make of his dramatic convention speech? Securing the Liberty and THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS IN BATON ROUGE by Kevin D. Williamson Sovereignty of We the People, 19 by Randy E. Barnett. In a tense, racially divided city, they matter indeed. TRANSCENDENCE COMMODIFIED by Ian Tuttle 46 FILM: NEW-STYLE CULTURE 21 WAR Michel Houellebecq’s Platform offers a troubling vision of Islam and capitalism. Ross Douthat reviews Ghostbusters. DEALING WITH DARKNESS IN CONGO by Jay Nordlinger 22 47 ABANDONED The work of a singular doctor. Richard Brookhiser observes the summer exodus from New York. FEATURES SECTIONS 24 THE BLOODY CZAR by David Satter Did an act of terrorism carry Putin to power? 4 Letters to the Editor THE WORLD WE HAVE; THE WORLD WE WANT by Henry R. Nau 6 The Week 27 The Long View ...... Rob Long A case for disciplined activism in foreign affairs. 34 35 Athwart ...... James Lileks 30 A SUFFICIENT DEFENSE by David Adesnik 45 Poetry ...... Ted Gilley We must arrest and reverse our military’s gradual decline. 48 Happy Warrior ...... David Harsanyi

NATIONAL REVIEW (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by N ATIONAL 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., 2016. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., N ATIONAL REVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONALREVIEW, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00A.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., NATIONALREVIEW, 215 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to N ATIONAL 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. base_new_milliken-mar 22.qxd 4/4/2016 2:24 PM Page 1 letters--FINAL_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/27/2016 2:52 PM Page 4 Letters

AUGUST 15 ISSUE; PRINTED JULY 28

EDITORINCHIEF Richard Lowry Jefferson’s Wall Senior Editors Richard Brookhiser / Jonah Goldberg / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts I was disturbed to see Donald Critchlow abandon to the hard Left Jefferson’s “Letter to the Literary Editor Michael Potemra Danbury Baptists” (“The Assault on Christians,” July 11). Vice President, Editorial Operations Christopher McEvoy Washington Editor Eliana Johnson Out of context, one can read “wall of separation between Church & State” as indicating Executive Editor Reihan Salam Roving Correspondent Kevin D. Williamson that the church and one’s conscience are tightly circumscribed by an all-powerful state. In National Correspondent Jo hn J. Miller context, Jefferson was promoting rights of conscience and restricting the authority of a Senior Political Correspondent Jim Geraghty Chief Political Correspondent Tim Alberta small government of limited powers. Jefferson specifically said that one “owes account to Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors none other for his faith or his worship.” He wrote that religion is more than going to church Nicholas Frankovich / Fred Schwarz on Sunday; it’s the impetus for everything we do. The First Amendment protects far more Production Editor Katie Hosmer Assistant to the Editor Rachel Ogden than worship; it protects us when we put our faith into works. Research Associate Alessandra Trouwborst Moreover, Jefferson said that the First Amendment is the “expression of the Contributing Editors supreme will of the nation” and codifies “the rights of conscience.” Those are not the Shannen Coffin / Ross Douthat / Daniel Foster Roman Genn / Arthur L. Herman / Lawrence Kudlow words of a secularist. Mark R. Levin / Yuval Levin / Rob Long Jefferson’s letter is a powerful defense of religious liberty. As small-government Mario Loyola / Jim Manzi / Andrew C. McCarthy Kate O’Beirne / Andrew Stuttaford / Robert VerBruggen conservatives respectful of the religion of others, we cannot allow it to be taken out of context and used against religious practice in America. NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor Charles C. W. Cooke Ken Jansen Managing Editors Katherine Connell / Edward John Craig Deputy Managing Editor Nat Brown Flushing, Mich. National-Affairs Columnist John Fund Staff Writer David French Senior Political Reporter Alexis Levinson DOnALD CrITCHLOw reSpOnDS: Mr. Jansen should take a close look at the history and Political Reporter Brendan Bordelon Reporter Katherine Timpf consequences of Jefferson’s concept of a high wall separating church and state. This Associate Editors Molly Powell / Nick Tell concept, articulated by Jefferson and endorsed by James Madison, was a minority position Digital Director Ericka Andersen Assistant Editor Mark Antonio Wright at the time of the Founding. It was not written or intended in the First Amendment, which Technical Services Russell Jenkins required only that there be no federally established church. Web Editorial Assistant Grant DeArmitt Web Developer Wendy Weihs That the First Amendment was intended to protect religious expression from a nationally Web Producer Scott McKim established government, and not government from religious influence, was evident when EDITORS- AT- LARGE Congress sent back Madison’s first draft of the First Amendment because it feared that the Linda Bridges / Kathryn Jean Lopez / John O’Sullivan amendment might be read to prohibit state-sponsored churches, which many in Congress NATIONALREVIEWINSTITUTE were willing to accept. The Congregationalist Church in Massachusetts received public THOMASL. RHODESFELLOW Ian Tuttle funding into the 1830s. even dissenting ministers, for the large part, did not accept the concept of erecting a high wall separating church and state. Instead, they believed that reli- Contributors Hadley Arkes / James Bowman / Eliot A. Cohen gion, specifically Christianity, remained fundamental to maintaining a well-ordered republic. Dinesh D’Souza / Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter / George Gilder It was nativists in the 19th century and the secular Left in the 20th century who Jeffrey Hart / Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler used the concept of a high wall of separation to minimize the power of organized reli- David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune / D. Keith Mano Michael Novak / Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons gion in America. Terry Teachout / Vin Weber As legal scholar philip Hamburger shows in Separation of Church and State (2002), in Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman the late 19th century, the concept of a high wall of separation was revived to attack Accountant Lyudmila Bolotinskaya Business Services Alex Batey Catholics. So-called Blaine amendments were enacted in many states to exclude state fund - Circulation Manager Jason Ng ing and assistance to Catholic schools. Advertising Director Jim Fowler Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet After the Second world war, progressive secularists took the concept further through a Assistant to the Publisher Brooke Rogers series of Supreme Court decisions that ended state aid to Catholic schools, banned prayer Director of Revenue Erik Netcher

PUBLISHERCHAIRMAN in school, and removed religious symbols from public buildings. we have now reached a Jack Fowler John Hillen point where valedictorians cannot thank their Lord, high-school football coaches cannot FOUNDER voluntarily pray with their teams, and teachers, military personn el, and government William F. Buckley Jr. officials cannot discuss their religious views or wear symbols of their Christian faith PATRONSANDBENEFACTORS while exercising their official functions. Robert Agostinelli Dale Brott Jefferson, albeit a deist and anti-clerical in sentiment, might not have envisioned the Mr. and Mrs. Michael Conway Mark and Mary Davis consequences of his views, but these were the results. His concept of erecting a high wall Virginia James of separation between church and state has enabled a war on religious liberty, which Mary Christopher M. Lantrip Brian and Deborah Murdock eberstadt writes about in her new book (It’s Dangerous to Believe). Mr. & Mrs. Richard Spencer Mr. & Mrs. L. Stanton Towne Peter J. Travers Karen Wright Letters may be sub mitted by e-mail to [email protected].

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n Maybe the Democrats should just go back to using fax machines.

n A lot of Republicans got very mad at Ted Cruz for pointedly declining to endorse Donald Trump at the Republican conven- tion. There were three lines of criticism. 1) He was a “jerk,” says Peggy Noonan, who argues that you don’t go to a party and punch the host. But it’s not as though Cruz insulted Trump: He merely said people should vote their consciences. If Trump supporters consider that an insult, they should reconsider their consciences. Moreover, Trump had not insisted on an endorse- ment before letting him speak, so Cruz was coming to the “party” on terms they had agreed to. Trump’s people, however, orchestrated booing to the point that Cruz’s wife had to be escorted to safety. Perhaps Noonan can comment on whether these are acceptable manners in a party host. 2) He was con- demned for breaking his pledge to support the nominee. It was a foolish pledge and he should not have made it, but it also dis- integrated once Trump announced, in the primaries, that he would not abide by his own pledge to do the same. 3) He was attacked for helping Hillary Clinton win. His former supporter Kellyanne Conway, a pollster now working for Trump, told the New York Times that Cruz is not a patriot. But no candidate is entitled to any voter’s support; it’s up to the candidate to earn it. Agree or disagree with Cruz’s decision not to endorse, he is justified in having doubts about Trump’s fitness for office. Watching Trump react by repeating his demented attacks on Cruz’s father cannot have allayed them. by lending him his support and his organization. But Trump just n Some Republican delegates to the convention—many of them can’t bring himself to make it easy for Kasich to come around. Trump opponents, but also supporters who wanted more grassroots input into party decisions—sought to change the n Donald Trump, in an interview with the New York Times, dis- convention rules. An alliance of the Trump campaign and the cussed the future of NATO. Its brief future? Trump was asked Republican National Committee quashed them, denying them whether NATO states, “including the new members in the even a roll-call vote. That alliance ignored anyone who said Baltics, [could] count on the United States to come to their mili - “No!” in voice votes, tried to keep delegates from being able tary aid if they were attacked by Russia.” “Have they fulfilled to hand forms to the relev ant officials, and refused to disclose their obligations to us?” Trump answered. “If they fulfill their which state delegations had petitioned for a roll-call vote. obligations to us, the answer is yes.” Trump supporter Newt Sen a tor Mike Lee (R., Utah), speaking for the petitioning dele- Gingrich, in an interview with CBS, observed dismissively that gates, was a model of calm under pressure. He would probably Estonia was “the suburbs of St. Petersburg.” Many NATO mem- have lost the vote if it had been held; the RNC and Trump bers fall short of their military-spending requirements (Estonia, could have shown political strength that way. But they appear as it happens, pays up—and steps up, suffering battle deaths in to define strength more crudely than that. Iraq and Afghanistan). NATO spending is a matter of internal housekeeping. The loose talk of Trump and his sidekicks has n Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort picked an odd way devalued the guarantee that has kept the peace in Europe for 67 to start the Republican convention: attacking the popular Re - years. Call it “Speak loudly, and carry a tiny stick.” publican governor of the state hosting the convention, John Kasich, and drawing attention to Kasich’s refusal to endorse n Trump’s New York Times interview also touched on the failed Trump. With his typical grace and grammar, Trump himself military coup in Turkey and President Erdogan’s crackdown (at weighed in: “If I were him and gotten beaten that badly I prob - the time of the interview, 50,000 Turks had been jailed). “I think ably wouldn’t show up either.” Trump almost certainly has to win right now when it comes to civil liberties, our country has a lot ROMAN GENN Ohio to win the election, and Kasich could do him a lot of good of problems. . . . We have tremendous problems when you have

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THE WEEK

policemen being shot in the streets, when you have riots, when Montrell Jackson—died; the murderer was shot at the scene. you have Ferguson [and] Baltimore.” We are as bad as everyone Officer Jackson, nine days before he was killed, posted this else, so we should just shut up; Howard Zinn couldn’t have said message on Facebook: “I swear to God I love this city but I it better. But for Trump to believe that his America is like wonder if this city loves me. In uniform I get nasty hateful looks Erdogan’s Turkey, he must not only accept the Left’s narrative and out of uniform some consider me a threat. I’ve experienced that cops deliberately kill blacks, he must also think that the so much in my short life and these last 3 days have tested me to government somehow kills its own cops. He blames America the core. . . . These are trying times. Please don’t let hate infect first, and he blames it dumbly. your heart. This city MUST and WILL get better.” Echoing him, President Obama said, after the crime, “We must temper n Hillary Clinton was asked in a 60 Minutes interview to explain our words and open our hearts—all of us.” Yes. why people see her as corrupt. “I often feel,” she responded, “like there’s the Hillary standard and then there’s the standard for n John Kerry traveled to Vienna to rally his negotiators. They everybody else.” Incredibly, she believes this double standard is were working on an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 working to her detriment: She is the victim of “unfounded, in - treaty designed to protect the ozone layer. The amendment accurate, mean-spirited attacks with no basis in truth.” One sus- would phase out hydrofluorocarbons, which are mainly used as pects that everybody else—at least everybody guilty of criminal refrigerants (in your AC, for example). Secretary Kerry said, misconduct—would prefer to be held to the Hillary standard. “Yesterday, I met in Washington with 45 nations—defense ministers and foreign ministers—as we were working together on the challenge of Daesh, ISIL, and terrorism. It’s hard for some n Virginia Democratic senator Tim Kaine is affable and people to grasp it, but what we, you, are doing here right now is smart, liked by many Republicans. He was a liberal by the of equal importance, because it has the ability to literally save life standards of Virginia in 2005, when he won the governor’s on the planet itself.” It comes as some relief to know that this race. As Virginia has gotten bluer, he has gotten even more administration is working on terrorism, as well as refrigerants. liberal. Now Hillary Clinton has picked him to be her run- n ning mate, necessitating some additional A media era ended when Roger Ailes resigned from Fox moves to the left. He has already discov- News. A former Mike Douglas Show producer and Nixon aide, ered troubling provisions in the Trans- Ailes was a TV pioneer, and Fox is his crowning achievement. Pacific Part nership, just as Clinton has. He built the network from scratch into a juggernaut that changed Kaine, who says he is personally opposed the media and the political landscape. As Charles Krauthammer to abortion, has re - quips, Ailes identified a market niche that was half of America. portedly dropped his A sexual-harassment suit by a former anchor, Gretchen Carlson, opposition to tax - precipitated his fall when it unleashed a flurry of allegations payer subsidies for it. from other women that pointed to a corporate culture worthy of Reporters will continue the worst of Mad Men. Rupert Murdoch has taken the helm as to insert the phrase he searches for a successor. We wish Fox continued success and “de vout Catho lic” into best of luck in the transition to a new chapter. every story on him. n “Alt-right” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was “permanently suspended” from Twitter in June, after he was accused of inciting a “hate mob” to attack the actress Leslie Jones. There n Any schadenfreude derived from watching the Demo cratic is no doubt that Yiannopoulos routinely crosses the line of party squirm after hacked e-mails revealed it to be just as pro- decency on social media; that he violated Twitter’s terms and Clinton as Bernie Sanders supporters believed should be tem- conditions; or that, as a private compan y, Twitter can suspend pered by a disturbing reality: A foreign power appears to be whomever it chooses. But there is nonetheless something a meddling in an American presidential campaign. The best little disturbing about the development. As anybody who has available evidence indicates that Russians penetrated Demo - ventured onto social media can attest, services such as Twitter cratic computers, and that the Putin regime worked with Wiki- are packed full of smut, profanity, and abuse—most of which, Leaks to do maximum damage to Hillary Clinton. This is an alas, is left happily in place. On the face of it, one can under- ominous development, one demonstrating that Russia is ready, stand the company’s desire to clear the medium up. But there willing, and—critically—able to use its intelligence assets to have been few other public suspensions, and the vast array of disrupt American politics. If there is one silver lining in this hate-spewing accounts that ruin the service for everybody con- dark cloud, it’s that the Russian hack has finally awakened tinue to operate. Democrats to the reality of the Russian threat. Mitt Romney was right to say that Russia is a geopolitical rival of our nation. n The Democrats are fighting a two-front war against free And now Democrats might finally agree. speech: In the states, Democratic attorneys general are launch- GETTY IMAGES / ing investigations of global-warming skeptics; in the U.S. n Once again. On July 17, Gavin Eugene Long, an ex-Marine– Capitol, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) is leading a politi- turned–black nationalist, shot six policemen in Baton Rouge in cal jihad against them, with vitriolic public denunciations of retaliation for the shooting death, earlier in the month, of Alton private citizens and firms from the Senate floor. Their crime? BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI Sterling. Three cops—Brad Garafola, Matthew Gerald, and They “funded think tanks,” “paid public-relations firms,” and

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“developed and executed a massive campaign” to spread their over the state’s House Bill 2, which establishes a statewide bath- views—i.e., they engaged in politics the Democrats oppose. room policy with regard to transgender individuals’ use of gov- The main targets here are Exxon and its money, and the Koch ernment facilities. North Carolina stands to brothers and their activism. One of the biggest cheers at the lose an estimated $100 million in eco- DNC came in response to Senator Bernie Sanders’s call to over- nomic benefits from the game’s reloca- turn Citizens United, in which the Supreme Court affirmed that tion. A U.S. representative from the the First Amendment forbids the government to censor a film state, Robert Pittenger, wrote a letter to critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton, then as now a presidential NBA commissioner Adam Silver, not- candidate. This is a full-court press to criminalize political dissent, ing that, while the Chinese government beginning with climate change and energy policy. Global warm- perpetrates forced abortions and forced ing presents complex questions, not only scientific but also organ harvesting, the NBA continues to economic and political. Let’s say, arguendo, that the climate schedule pre-season games in China. Pittenger alarmists are correct, that the evidence is incontrovertible and wrote, “Is the NBA implying China’s abhorrent violation of basic that the necessary policy responses are obvious: How unpopular human rights is acceptable, but North Carolina’s saying men does a dissenting political opinion have to be before it’s illegal shouldn’t use the girls’ locker room is a bridge too far?” to express it? Exxon has for the most part taken the conventional line on the scientific questions but takes policy views different n An appeals court has ruled that Navy submarines may not use from those of Democrats—according to Whitehouse et al., this a sonar-based surveillance system whose low frequencies are isn’t debate, but fraud. There’s fraud here, all right, but it isn’t also used by whales, because the sonar can leave the whales dis- Exxon’s doing. oriented, sometimes even causing their death. The decision is not quite as sweeping as it may sound; it applies to only one particu- n The Harris County (Texas) district attorney’s office dis- lar type of sonar, whose use was already restricted, and the missed all charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt court’s decision turned on the distinction between “negligible of the Center for Medical Progress, both of whom were indicted impact” and “least practicable adverse impact.” So perhaps it’s after their undercover videos suggested that Planned Parent - worth handing a new technical challenge to our Navy, however hood was involved in illegal fetal-tissue trafficking. In January underfunded it may be, in order to save these magnificent sea of this year, the grand jury tasked with investigating Planned mammals. On the other hand, every year millions of birds and Parenthood as a result of the videos instead decided to indict the bats are chopped to bits by wind turbines or fried by solar-power two investigators themselves, charging them with second- plants, and the carnage is taken in stride. What is written off as degree felonies for tampering with governmental records in collateral damage when incurred in pursuit of expensive, erratic order to make fake identity cards. Daleiden also faced a misde- “green” energy becomes unacceptable, it seems, when it helps meanor charge for allegedly attempting to purchase human our armed forces defend America. organs. Since the videos emerged last July, one of Planned Parenthood’s primary defenses has been to accuse the investi- n The Obama administration released 28 pages from a congres- gators of illegal activity, saying their undercover actions ren- sional investigation into the 9/11 attacks, suppressed for 14 years dered the evidence inadmissible. Now that the charges have despite objections from committee members. As predicted, they been dropped, this attempted defense seems to have been strongly suggest Saudi-government support for al-Qaeda and its invalidated—and the prosecution looks like a failed attempt to suicide hijackers, 15 (out of 19) of whom were Saudis. Jarringly, criminalize journalism of which the DA disapproves. suspicion centers on Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to the United States. He and his wife, Princess Haifa, n Speaking of politically motivated prosecutions, Maryland made payments to Osama Bassnan, an operative of a California- prosecutors dropped all remaining charges against three Balti - based Saudi intelligence network that facilitated the jihadists more police officers relating to the death of Freddie Gray, a 25- who plowed Flight 77 into the Pentagon. When apprehended in year-old African American who died after suffering a severe Pakistan in 2002, key al-Qaeda financier Abu Zubaida was carry - spinal injury in a police van following his arrest. State’s attorney ing phone numbers for Bandar’s embassy bodyguard and the Marilyn Mosby—who began her prosecution by declaring that company that managed Bandar’s Aspen chalet. Meanwhile, a she would give voice to rioters’ ultimatum of “no justice, no Saudi interior-ministry official just happens to have stayed in the peace”—has now failed to win a conviction against any of the six same Dulles-area hotel as the Flight 77 hijackers the night before policemen charged (three officers had already been acquitted at the attack. The FBI’s investigation into Saudi complicity was trial). Gray’s death was a tragic accident, not a prosecutable thwarted when the Bush administration permitted well-connected homicide. Officers acted reasonably in arresting Gray, and the Saudis (including bin Laden family members) to be whisked out medical examiner concluded that he would not have been injured of the United States immediately after the attack. Now we know if he had remained where he was placed—prone on the floor. at least a little more of the disturbing truth. While there may be need of reform at the Baltimore Police De - partment, these charges should never have been filed. That they n At the finale of a Bastille Day fireworks display, Mohamed were suggests that Mosby was playing to the mob rather than Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian, drove a 19-ton truck down the following the evidence. Promenade des Anglais in Nice, killing 84 people. Among the murdered were children, three Americans, and an estimated 30 n The National Basketball Association announced in late July Muslims. The killer, who was finally shot at the scene, was a that it will pull the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte, N.C., mental case who beat his estranged wife and led a double life as

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a salsa-dancing gigolo. But for displaced or distressed Muslims, all its centrifuges (over 5,000 are currently operating). But terrorism holds out blood as the final solution. ISIS hailed him Obama has been insisting that the deal will prevent Iran from online as a “soldier of the Islamic State.” Five suspected col- building nuclear weapons for 15 years—which is itself a betrayal laborators—three Tunisians and two Albanians—have been of his prior commitment to prevent an Iranian bomb, period. arrested: the lone-wolf pack. France must step up roadblocks Quite apart from the fact that the deal allows the mullahs, in the and other forms of security at its public celebrations. But the interim, to continue research work and develop an industrial-size strongest measure to repel the menace must be the destruction, “civilian” nuclear program, the replacement centrifuges covered and humiliation, of ISIS in its homeland. by the side deal will be five to ten times more efficient than Iran’s current stock—dramatically reducing the “breakout time” re - n Father Jacques Hamel was celebrating Mass on a Tuesday quired for Iran to build an atomic bomb. In essence, the side deal morning in a suburb of Rouen, France, when two men armed means that even without violating the agreement’s terms, Iran with knives burst in. They shouted in Arabic, forced the 85- could be a nuclear power in nine years. Meanwhile, the regime year-old priest to his knees, and filmed themselves slitting his continues to violate the agreement by purchasing nuclear throat. They held three nuns and two parishioners hostage, material on the market even as it tests ballistic missiles and abets critically injuring one, before being shot dead by police. ISIS terrorism. How much more aid and comfort does the administra- claimed them as “soldiers” who had responded to the call to tion intend to give this enemy? “target Crusader coalition states.” One of them was Adel Ker miche, a 19-year-old jihadist known to French authorities, n The Obama administration established diplomatic relations who had been placed under a lenient form of house arrest after with the Castro dictatorship one year ago. On the anniversary, making multiple attempts to join ISIS in Syria. In the end, he the Miami Herald ran a headline saying, “Cuba’s human rights carried out his mission closer to home. Father Hamel, unlike his abuses worse despite U.S. ties.” Despite, or because of? Well killers, died a martyr’s death. before the anniversary, Berta Soler, the leader of Cuba’s Ladies in White, noted that Obama had made a promise concerning n In the aftermath of the military coup that failed to oust Turkish normalization: It would empower civil society. He made this president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, many Turks are afraid that his promise to Soler, among others, personally. “But we are seeing,” vengeance will remake the country in his authoritarian and said Soler, “that what he has done is give a green light to the Islamist image. Changing the constitution in his own favor, he Cuban government to crush civil society.” If the president has already transformed parliamentary democracy into rule by regrets this consequence of his policy or is even paying atten- himself as president—a classic power grab. Declaring a state of tion, he has yet to say so. emergency, he is, in his words, “cleansing all state institutions.” The purge is on an almost Maoist scale: Among the 58,000 n Only a few ministers of foreign affairs and their international arrested and detained without trial are 12,745 judges, 21,000 lawyers will know about the Paracel and Spratly Islands and the private-school teachers, 118 generals and admirals, about a Scarborough Shoal, mostly uninhabited outcrops of rock in the thousand policemen, and 7,500 soldiers. Some of these men South China Sea. Yet they have the potential to set off a nasty war. have evidently been beaten in custody. Erdogan is accusing Possession is not settled, and rival claims clash. Mainland China, Fethullah Gulen—a colleague-turned-rival who is now in exile 500 miles away, has been building a militarized presence out in Penn syl va nia—of organizing a conspiracy in which aircraft there. The Philippines, 100 miles away, brought its objection to bombed his palace and he escaped with his life by a matter of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which under United Nations minutes. Many people throughout the Middle East believe that auspices is supreme on issues such as this. This court’s recent Erdogan himself conspired to arrange the events that have ruling against Chinese territorial claims raised the temperature. played so conclusively into his hands—and in Turkey especially, At a meeting of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian conspiracy theories are sometimes true. Na tions), the Philippines wanted to include this ruling in an official statement. Secretary of State John Kerry supported this n Another shocking revelation marked the one-year anniversary position at bilateral meetings with other ASEAN representatives. of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Iranian foreign minister Mo - Under pressure, the Philippines withdrew, China got its way, and ham mad Javad Zarif announced a previously undisclosed side the United States has another helping of crow to swallow. deal that enables Iran to replace dismantled centrifuges after only ten years. Mind you, the deal does not require Iran to dismantle n The International Olympic Committee (IOC) punted when asked whether Russian athletes should be allowed to compete in the upcoming Rio Olympics. It recently came out that the Rus - sian state and its intelligence services had colluded with their athletes to engage in a massive doping program during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Agents fed athletes a cocktail of steroids and liquor throughout the games; spies then skulked into the LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES / laboratories that contained drug-test urine samples and swapped the contaminated samples with clean ones. Current IOC presi- PACIFIC PRESS

/ dent Thomas Bach said just last year that the organization has “zero tolerance” when it comes to “doping and any kind of manipulation and corruption.” But that was before he realized AZIZ KARIMOV doping, manipulation, and corruption was the institutional

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practice of Team Putin. Now Bach is allowing Russian athletes Pokémon Go is an online game in which players use cell- to compete so long as they are cleared by their individual sport’s phones to locate and capture virtual game characters. To do this, nfederation. They don’t give out medals for courage. they wander through “the real world,” as gamers quaintly refer to our planet, because stalking the wild Pokémon can take them Australians have a well-deserved reputation for being down- just about anywhere: streets, parks, church, the neighbors’ yard. to-earth, but they are no more immune than any other wealthy So engrossing is the game that some participants need to be nation to interference by social-justice stickybeaks. In recent warned not to play while driving, and places as far-flung as years, Aussie “hate speech” laws have been used to harass Arlington National Cemetery, an Australian courthouse, a Christian pastors, and now some Antipodean authoritarians are Bosnian minefield, and the Kremlin have had to point out that, trying to undo human nature itself. A teachers’ union in New for various reasons, they are not appropriate locales for South Wales has directed its members not to use the terms Pokémon hunting. It is reported that even the U.S. Holocaust “mum” and “dad” when speaking to students, presumably to Museum and the Auschwitz concentration camp have found it avoid some vague notion of “stereotyping.” The guidelines also necessary to ask visitors to abstain from playing Pokémon Go recommend that boys should be “encouraged” to dress like girls onn their premises. The real world still has its claims. and then, somewhat contradictorily, to engage in “non-gender- specific free play.” Meanwhile, an all-female public school For decades, Americans’ lives were governed by the weekly announced a ban on the use of cis-normative terms such as television schedule. If you missed an episode of your favorite “girls,” “ladies,” or “women” to describe its students—before show, you had to wait months for it to come around in reruns, rescinding the order after it was greeted with an encouraging and the wait could be excruciating. Then, in the late 1970s, outburst of ridicule. Australia: where men are men and women videocassette recorders (VCRs) became widely available. nare women, despite their teachers’ best efforts. Early models were expensive and clunky and couldn’t read one another’s tapes, but within a decade they were nearly univer- During the radical street theater in Cleveland, one demon- sal—just in time to be made obsolescent themselves, first by strator got a bit too liberal with the lighter fluid while attempt- videodiscs and then by online streaming. That’s why Japan’s ing to burn an American flag and ended up setting his clothes Funai Electric, the last surviving maker of VCRs, has just on fire. Soon he was blazing away like the Cuyahoga River; stopped producing them. For a dead technology, the VCR has the flames even spread to a few of his fellow protesters. Since been surprisingly lively: Last year Funai sold 750,000 units, the Supreme Court has not yet extended First Amendment mostly in developing nations. And its story might not be com- protection to self-immolation, Cleveland police quickly pletely over. After all, phonograph records have made an doused the flames, and, thankfully, no one was seriously hurt. unlikely comeback among trendsetters, so perhaps someday Dumb lives matter. soon VCRs will do the same. Bearded grad students will rehash

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the Betamax-vs.-VHS debate as they mine their grandparents’ attic for salvageable spare parts, and the ultimate accessory will be a complete original set of Three’s Company tapes.

n Italy’s last king, Umberto II, was exiled from his country in 1946 when it became a republic, ending the reign of the House of Savoy. His grandson and sole male heir, Emanuele Filiberto, has opened a business in California, selling handmade pasta from a food truck. On a recent trip to America, he saw an opening in the market for fresh and affordable high-quality Italian cuisine. He now spends his days driving his bright-blue truck, the “Prince of Venice,” around Los Angeles and dishing out $16 truffle linguine. “I want the Prince of Venice to become a quality brand and hope to add two new trucks by September,” he told an Italian news outlet. We wish him luck in that noble pursuit.

n Garry Marshall broke into the television scene during the 1960s as a joke writer for The Tonight Show back when Jack Paar was in front of the camera. After Marshall moved Donald Trump addresses the Republican National Convention, July 21, 2016. on to writing for The Dick Van Dyke Show during the 1960s, his career to be eating our lunch (now it is the Chinese). He has also long quickly accelerated; before long, he made an issue of law and order—a hot issue now thanks to Black had created beloved TV programs Lives Matter and the assassination of cops. His new concern, that defined the 1970s and ’80s, which first gave him traction in the nomination contest, is illegal including Happy Days, Laverne immigration. Unfortunately all his solutions to these problems and Shirley, and Mork & Mindy. are wrong or beside the point. Trade wars would cripple our Later in life, he proved his talents economy; though the shut factory is always easier to spot, new went beyond the small screen and jobs (including factory jobs) are more numerous. Trump’s created such popular feature films answer to crime is simply to get tough, with no specifics; he as Pretty Woman and The Princess played no role, intellectual or supporting, in the revolution in Diaries. Marshall was equally pro- policing methods (begun in his own city, no less) that brought ficient in front of the camera and behind it, proving himself to be crime down nationwide over the last 20 years. Trump’s border a talented actor, comedian, and voice artist. At a time when the wall, if Mexico pays for it (which it won’t), will have a door in it comedy scene has mostly devolved into the crass and crude, allowing touchback amnesty, which punts the problem. Marshall’s contributions to TV and cinema endure as reminders More important (and more ominous) than his program and its that mass entertainment can be better than that. Dead at 81. R.I.P. shortcomings was his appeal to the hearts of his listeners. He played off Hillary Clinton’s tagline: “Her campaign slogan is 2016 ‘I’m with her.’ You know what my response to that is? I’m with Donald Trump’s Republican Party you, the American people.” He also said: “I am your voice.” This

VIA GETTY IMAGES is an old political role: the reformer, the tribune, the patriot king, HE Cleveland Republican convention was a schizophrenic who comes from outside a corrupt system and cleanses it. It can affair, well suited to a party in the act of transforming easily slide—and in Trump’s case has slid—into demagogy and T itself. Parts of it would not have been out of place at any Caesarism. The man who compulsively mocks his rivals, even WASHINGTON POST GOP convention held during the last 36 years—speakers like in defeat, and who thinks that judges sign bills and that a presi- THE / Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, most of the platform. They and dent could “open up” the laws of libel, has no understanding of it spoke of freedom, small government, and opportunity. But then, checks and balances, coalition-building, or political maneuver.

RICKY CARIOTI as with a molting cicada, there was the new party, represented by He prom ises quick solutions—even in the war against Islamic : its nominee, Donald Trump. terror—and promises to deliver them personally. TRUMP ; Cut through the D-list celebrities (Scott Baio?) and the attrac- Ronald Reagan is dead, even as a memory. The man who tive but somehow-too-present family members (are we electing a spoke of liberty, the vise of big government, the right to life, and president or a royal house?) and go straight, as he would have it, the Evil Empire has been replaced by a man devoted to strength, GETTY IMAGES / to the man himself. Trump’s acceptance speech was long, lacking statism, Planned Parenthood, and Putin. SCHIFF . in his trademark humor, and delivered in a solid shout. But it Old political parties often change their stripes. England’s made a clear case, with one direct and powerful point. Tories changed from the party of squires to one-nation democracy; NANCY R : Trump’s speech spun around three issues, two of which have America’s Democrats stood for slavery and the Klan, then for preoccupied him for decades. Trump has been worrying about civil rights. Trump, win or lose, will take the GOP in an entirely MARSHALL the balance of trade since the 1980s, when the Japanese were said new direction, and not a better one.

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unwilling to acknowledge that mistake forthrightly. More than most Republi - cans, too, Trump advertises his reluc- tance to spend blood and treasure on overseas conflicts where America does not have vital interests at stake. The public wants that reassurance from Republicans,Nationalism. and it is right to want it; conservatives should give it. Trump is running a nationalist campaign. His nationalism has two components: He means to recover the nation’s strength, and to see to it that it is governed in the inter- ests of its citizens. He may exaggerate the nation’s weakness, but that first component is fairly standard conserva- tive fare. The second component may seem banal: What politician advocates a policy on the ground that it would hurt our citizens? But the link between a policy and the interests of Americans is sometimes Some good lessons from a bad nominee attenuated and sometimes forgotten. Immigration provides a stark example. Take, again, that 2013 Senate bill raising BY RAMESH PONNURU immigration levels. Many of the new- comers would be low-skilled. Why this would be good for people who are Learning from Trump already here was not a major subject of VEN E conservatives who oppose wage workers and national cohesion, the senators’ debate. Donald Trump—perhaps espe- and Trump was the only major candidate When Trump says he wants a country cially those conservatives— who shared this concern. Conservatives that works for us, Americans who have could learn a few things from should follow the cue by opposing Mexican ancestry or practice Isla m can him.Immigration. That’s true even if he ends up los- major increases in low-skilled immi- reasonably ask whether they are being ing the election in November. gration and insisting that laws against included in that “us.” Conservatives Before Trump entered illegal immigration be enforced at the should advance a more inclusive nation- the race, the only Republican presiden- workplace. They should offer legal sta- alism—butFun. one that always remembers tial candidate who questioned the need tus to illegal immigrants who have been to put Americans’ interests first. for much higher levels of immigration here for years only after making sure the Jeb Bush said he would cam- was former senator Rick Santorum. offer does not ac t as a magnet for more paign as a “happy warrior,” by which he Almost all of the candidates favored illegal immigration. primarily meant not an angry one. offering legal status to millions of illegal Instead some Republicans are saying Trump has shown, though, that you can immigrants, generally without making that if Hillary Clinton wins, they might have fun campaigning even if you are an sure that new illegal immigration had tryForeign again topolicy. pass something like that angry candidate. Very few of his rivals been effectively cut off beforehand. A 2013 bill. ever seemed to be enjoying themselves 2013 bill that passed the Senate with 68 Trump’s proposed for- as much as Trump was. More often they votes had both features: a large increase eign policy generally ranges from the seemed nervous or calculating or, in in immigration and a path to legal status disastrous (abandoning NATO and the Scott Walker’s case, both. that did not require proof that enforce- World Trade Organization) to the sinis- In one of his early appearances with ment was working. ter (allying with Vladimir Putin). He his running mate, Indiana governor Trump’s position on these issues has says, with no evidence, that George W. Mike Pence, Trump said that the crowd been neither sensible nor stable. De- Bush lied about weapons of mass de - should blame any defeat on him. It is porting all illegal immigrants, as he says struction in Iraq to go to war there. Con- impossible to imagine Hillary Clinton he wants to do, would be an enormous servatives should reject all of this. saying the same thing about her running effort for little benefit—especially since But it is not necessary to embrace a mate, Virginia senator Tim Kaine, Trump has often said that they would be conspiracy theory to see that the Iraq War because they’re both too uptight. ROMAN GENN allowed to come back to the U.S. But was a mistake, and one reason Trump Trump was able to enjoy himself

voters1 6 are right to| worrywww.nationalreview.com that uncon- was able to get away with his remarks is more than most candidatesAUGUST because1 5 , 2 0he 1 6 trolled immigration is bad for bo th low- that too many other Republicans were was winning, and because he has little 3col_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 11:13 PM Page 17

sense of responsibility; and his idea of stand the test of time and be seen as his- fun fairly often turns into gleeful malice. torically courageous while the Marco (That’s the only way I can make sense of Rubios and the Scott Walkers capitulated his crazed insinuations about Rafael Cruz’s Great and bowed at the foot of the emperor,” Cruz’s involvement in the JfK assassi- says a senior Cruz aide. nation.) But Trump can also be an enter- What willGamble future primary voters make Cruz’s gamble is that four years from taining candidate. Other conservatives now, he will compare favorably with might want to think about loosening up. of his dramatic convention speech? Chris Christie, who stood by as Trump The importance of competent man- heaped abuse on him (“No more BY ELIANA JOHNSON agement. Conservatives have generally Oreos!”); Marco Rubio, who mailed in a rejected the idea that the key functionf o 90-second recording that immediately the president is to manage the federal f Ted Cruz has his druthers, when drew comparisons to a hostage video; bureaucracy. The important thing, they future generations refer to The Scott Walker, who offered Trump an say, is to get the federal government to I Speech, they will be talking not uncomfortably tepid endorsement from do fewer things rather than to run it with about Ronald Reagan’s attempt to the convention floor; and John Kasich, maximum efficiency. rescue the Goldwater campaign in 1964 who is doing nothing to help Trump in the Trump takes a different view. He but about the high-wire act that the Texas crucial swing state of Ohio but can right- rarely talks about shrinking the federal senator pulled off at the Republican fully be accused of helping deliver him government but very frequently prom- National Convention this year. the nomination by extending his hopeless ises to make it better at everything it is Cruz may be hated by his colleagues, presidential campaign. Cruz also thinks doing. He says he will take the waste, but he understands the theater of politics he will look good compared with some fraud, and abuse out of Social Secu - and has always been able to light up a who didn’t run this year, including the rity, make the best trade deals, hire the crowd. He wasn’t trying to do that in hawkish Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, best people. Cleveland when he refused to endorse the who half-heartedly defended Trump’s These are mostly empty promises. Republican nominee, Donald Trump. The assertion that the United States might not When interviewers ask Trump just how he would change NAfTA, he babbles in response. He has no plan to reduce Cruz may have suspended his waste in Social Security—and even if he did, the program has a structural mis- presidential campaign in early May, match between its taxes and its benefits that cannot be solved that way. but his electoral operation merely Conservatives, though, often go too far in the other direction. They don’t refocused itself on 2020. talk much or think much about running boos and jeers that he elicited from dele- defend its NATO allies against a Russian the government better, even though gates on the convention floor by declaring incursion, or Mike Pence, who decried the voters want them to. In The Conscience that the fight this year is “not for one par- George W. Bush administration’s betrayal of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater ticular candidate or campaign” and urg- of conservative principles but now stands wrote, “I have little interest in stream- ing Americans to “vote your conscience” accused by many conservatives of sacri- lining government or in making it more added drama to the occasion and gave it ficing his own to join the Trump ticket. efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.” a sense of historical import. The histori- Yet Cruz’s refusal to get behind Trump, He wasn’t wrong about which goal is an Richard Norton Smith characterized as with everything the Texas senator does, more important, but he did get the bal- Nelson Rockefeller’s denunciation of is a case in which his stand for principle has ance wrong. Goldwater at the convention in San the whiff of a hundred different tactical Trump does, too. He doesn’t have Gold - francisco as “one of those rare moments maneuvers intended to position him for the waterite convictions about the proper in history when a page is visibly being long term. for months before Republicans limits of governmental authority, thinks turned.” So it was when Cruz walked off arrived in Cleveland, many labored to no that what’s most important is to run the the convention stage in July. avail in a last-ditch effort to wrench the government well, and seems to believe Turned to what, though? nomination from Trump by freeing con- that the strength of his own ego is suffi- Cruz may have suspended his presiden- vention delegates to vote for a candidate of cient qualification for that task. That’s tial campaign in early May, but his elec- their choosing rather than the candidate to the mix of beliefs that gets a person to toral operation merely refocused itself on whom they were bound by their state pri- say of his nation, “I alone can fix it.” 2020. By refusing, in dramatic fashion, to mary or caucus. The effort failed in part (The meaning would have been very dif- endorse Trump, Cruz has positioned him- because it lacked a visible leader, and Cruz ferent if he had said, “I have the solu- self as the visionary and wise man among was nowhere to be seen when it petered out tions,” or “We Republicans have the those of this year’s also-rans who may on the convention floor. Cruz has “never solutions.”) Conservatives understand look to run again: With the exception of been a ‘Never Trump’ guy,” says Jason that’s an alarming slogan for a chief exec- Ohio’s John Kasich, they have prostrated Johnson, who served as chief strategist on utive—and whatever they learn from themselves before Trump with varying the senator’s campaign. “He’s always Trump, they shouldn’t forget it. levels of enthusiasm. “The speech will said, ‘I’m watching and waiting.’ So the

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Senator Ted Cruz speaks at the Republican National Convention.

question is, what is he watching and wait- central narrative of this primary as ‘Who favor of a defeated amendment intro- ing for? What he is watching and waiting will stand up to Washington?’”—some- duced by John McCain that would have for was outlined in that speech. We cer- thing that Cruz thought would ultimately allowed the FBI to access Internet- tainly know Hillary Clinton will not live benefit him. He went on to say that voters browsing histories without a court order. up to the values he laid out. The question would begin to question Trump’s judg- His national-security adviser, Victoria is, will our nominee?” ment, at which point Trump’s campaign Coates, says that the senator “has always Days before the convention kicked would inevitably implode. The strategy, seen both sides of the issue”: “Particularly off, Cruz ally Ken Cuccinelli pushed Cruz explained, was to “bear hug” Trump given the way the domestic threat has unsuccessfully for rules changes for the and co-opt “the lion’s share” of his sup- manifested itself over the last two years, 2020 primaries, including limiting the porters when Trump faded. this seemed to him to be a judicious tool first four nominating contests to regis- The opposite happened, of course: It for law enforcement.” tered Republicans by awarding bonus del- was Trump who benefited most from his There are those in Cruz’s orbit who egates to states that close their primaries. status as a Washington outsider and from think Cruz has miscalculated in position- Cruz’s team denied having coordinated the perception that he would shatter the ing himself so firmly against Trump. with Cuccinelli, though such a change status quo—and who stole Cruz’s voters Johnson notes that Cruz said nothing would undoubtedly be in Cruz’s interest out from under him. But Cruz’s assump- negative about Trump in his speech. But and Cuccinelli’s efforts were supported tion remains that he needs Trump voters in if Cruz’s goal is eventually to bring mostly by Cruz delegates. 2020 or 2024, just as he needed Trump Trump voters into his fold, it’s hard to see Cruz’s unwillingness to bend to Trump voters, particularly Reagan Democrats, if how refusing so dramatically to endorse is odd coming from a man who refused to he was going to win in 2016. “I think that’s Trump moves him any closer. Some say say a bad word about him until mid Jan - where this primary was decided, and at the that Trump has outsmarted Cruz every uary—that is, precisely when Trump be - end of the day Trump got more of those step of the way and that allowing Cruz to gan to surpass Cruz in Iowa and threaten votes than I did,” Cruz said in an interview be booed off the stage in Cleveland is his plan to use a victory in the caucuses to on the eve of his speech in Cleveland. merely the latest example. There’s evi- boost himself to the nomination. That’s Reading between the lines of Cruz’s dence to support that theory: Two of the also when Trump began attacking him on speech, one can see that while he re - senator’s largest donors,New the Yorkhedge-fund Times account of his Canadian birth. But Cruz jected Trump, he also embraced a soft billionaire Robert Mercer and his daugh- made clear that his choice to delay the Trumpism. The man who came to the ter Rebekah, told the attack was a matter of strategy, too. “If Senate in 2012 championing free trade that they are “profoundly disappointed” you look at a number of the candidates came to Cleveland championing “trade that Cruz disregarded the pledge he made that took on Donald Trump early on,” he policies that put the interests of American during the campaign to support the Re - told the Wisconsin radio host Charlie farmers and manufacturing jobs over the publican nominee. While Republicans Sykes in March, “they ended up as road- global interests funding the lobbyists.” focus on defeating Hillary Clinton, they kill.” Just a couple of weeks before the Back in the Senate, Cruz’s colleagues are said, “Senator Cruz has chosen to remain Iowa caucuses, Cruz had tweeted that whispering about a “Cruz 2.0”: The sena- in his bunk below, a decision both regret- GETTY IMAGES / Trump was “terrific.” Speaking his mind tor who once routinely favored privacy table and revealing.” behind closed doors, Cruz had also told over security, opposing, for example, the It is certainly revealing. In the coming ALEX WONG attendees at a private fundraiser that he National Security Agency’s bulk collec- years, conservatives and Republicans will

was1 8 grateful for Trump’s| www.nationalreview.com candidacy be - tion of data, has shuffled to the other end decide whether they likeAUGUST what they’ve1 5 , 2 0 1 6 cause Trump had helped to “frame the of the spectrum. He recently voted in seen—or not. 3col_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 11:13 PM Page 19

guard at his funeral as his widow, Dechia and 6,500 staff, has a big socioeconomic Badeaux Gerald, planted a kiss on her late footprint; historically black Southern husband’s coffin. Sheriff’s deputy Brad University nearby is about a fifth that Thoughts and Garafola was white. His widow and four size—and it is segregated on north–south children collapsed together into a pyra- lines. As Nate Silver runs the numbers, Prayers in mid of grief at his funeral as Sheriff Sid only Atlanta is more segregated among Gau treaux eulogized him before a crowd southern cities, but Baton Rouge is poorer Baton Rouge of more than 1,000 mourners. Officer and less educated. It has the usual mix In a tense, racially divided city, Montrell Jack son was black, but he was one sees in similar cities: The Whole they matter indeed slaughtered anyway. He left behind a wife Foods and the wine bars in the part of and an infant son, along with a Facebook town that is indistinguishable from BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON post about the tense times in Baton Rouge Austin or Ath ens, Ga., and the methed- following the Sterling shooting: out hookers working morning shifts on Florida Boulevard, trotting woozily Baton Rouge This city MUST and WILL get better. I’m toward cars as they pull over near the T has become fashionable on the left working in these streets, so any protesters, Pelican Pawn Shop (which is advertising to mock the offering of “thoughts and officers, friends, family, or whoever, if a sale on air conditioners—the heat here prayers,” the usual banality seen on you see me and need a hug or want to say in July is tropical) under the stern gaze of I a prayer, I got you. . . . I swear to God I social media after a natural disaster Alex Jones, whose Infowars billboards love this city but I wonder if this city loves or a terrorist massacre, shared by people me. In uniform I get nasty hateful looks loom over the worst parts of the city. unconnected to the event but com pelled, and out of uniform some consider me a If you drive from the state capitol to by self-importance or political interests threat. . . . I personally want to send the police headquarters out on Airline or both, to connect themselves to it. prayers out to everyone directly affected Highway, you’ll pass some pretty rough Comedienne Samantha Bee threw a by this tra ge dy. These are trying times. spots, and you may see Thomas, who profanity-laced fit over “thoughts and Please don’t let hate infect your heart. exemplifies one of the great southern prayers” after the Or lan do massacre, and habits: Whereas Yankees often grow pre- Corey Ciorciari, Hil lary Rodham Clin- Why Baton Rouge? Nearly everyone emptively aggressive during moments of ton’s gun-policy guy, mocked such good- here agrees that the city has worse racial social tension, southerners tend to will expressions af ter the police ambush problems, and deeper social divides, become pointedly polite, formal to the in Baton Rouge: “Thoughts and prayers than do other cities in the South. They point of iciness. And a big white guy didn’t seem to stop the last 193 mass wonder aloud why they cannot be more with a shaved head getting out of a Jeep shootings this year,” he wrote. “Maybe like Atlanta or Houston. There are not very with out-of-state plates on a desolate we should try something different?” many obvious answers to that. Baton corner of a not-very-nice part of Baton Never mind that Mrs. Clinton is herself a Rouge is a southern state capital and Rouge while the city is convulsed by a big thoughts-and-prayerser, having sent home to a large public university— racially motivated atrocity to approach a them out to the victims in Charleston and Louisiana State, with its 32,000 students black man in a suit and bow tie hawking Nepal, Eid al-Adha celebrants in Mecca, the French, etc. It’s the ultimate exercise in 2016-style political discourse: a shal- low and mean-hearted shiv of a shallow and good-hearted sentiment. Here in Baton Rouge, thoughts and prayers are the main things holding the city together. On July 17, Gavin Long of Kansas City, Mo., was in troubled Baton Rouge for the purpose of hunting white police officers, an act of retribution for the police shooting of Alton Sterling, a low- level criminal with prior convictions on weapons charges who was shot at point- blank range while pinned down by police. Ten days before, five police offi- cers had been massacred in an ambush in

GETTY IMAGES Dallas. Long got his scalps, though in the / end he ended up not distinguishing be- POOL - tween them on racial grounds. The dead included 41-year-old officer Matthew Gerald, who was white. Cana - TRAVIS SPRADLING di an Mounties in cardinal-red tunics stood The family of East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputy Brad Garafola mourns at his funeral.

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The Final Call

copies of is pretty tense. chaplain Bob Ossler of New Jersey is where the daughter of Officer Gerald We both get very polite. But we’re at here, too. He has traveled to many such clutches a teddy bear wearing a blue opposite ends of approximately the scenes and was still in Dallas when news police uniform. It’s the usual 21st-century same business, Thomas and I, and I tell of the Baton Rouge massacre reached Evangelical arena-church gathering, him I admire his dedication, wearing a him. He isn’t the only clergyman on the bearded hipster Christians in spitfire caps suit and tie and hustling psychotic go: Billy Graham Evan gel is tic Associa- hugging each other manfully, men in Nation of Islam propaganda (I don’t put tion maintains a “rapid-response team” “Got Free dom?” T-shirts and a biker in a PATRIOT GUARD it exactly like that) out in this horrifying whose vehicles already are on the scene leather vest emblazed , heat and humidity. He smiles. at the police station down the street. A treacly praise-rock, badly aging tattoos. My experience with the bow-tie setI ( middle-aged woman lays flowers at the It is sunset, and so a hematophagous interviewed Louis Farrakhan ages ago) sidewalk sanctorium and is convulsed swarm—Louisiana is home to 68 spe cies suggests a high baseline level of bark-at- with weeping. When she recovers, I ask of mosquito—comes buzzing in over the-moon craziness, but Thomas turns her about her connection to the events. the low grass and standingAedes water.vexans There out to be pretty much a just-the-facts She doesn’t have one. have been monsoon-level rains, enough guy. He concurs that Baton Rouge seems “Police officers just want to go home to stop traffic, and , the to have made significantly less racial to their families, like everyone else,” “flood water mosquito,” is out in force progress than many other comparable Chaplain Ossler says. He says that in the and vexing for all it is worth. The crowd cities, but its problems are common wake of these horrifying killings, police is almost entirely white, and exactly 50 enough: “We live separately. We work rededicate themselves to their mission: percent of the African Americans pre- separately. We worship separately,” he “The officers I spoke to, they said they sent are media. (“We worship sepa- says. “There’s little economic opportu- just wanted the public to know that they rately,” Thomas said.) Police officers nity and advancement for blacks. And have their back.” stride in, three at a time, with black bars

In the end, thoughts and prayers do matter. They matter more than most other things. And they are, for the moment, whites are lying to themselves about the But does the public have their back? of mourning over their shields. A church reality of racism.”what’s He has lived keeping in Not everywhere. the Apeace young womanin coming Batonwarden Rouge. with a Secret Service–style ear- Baton Rouge his whole life. “It isn’t out ofdeserved the Cash Cow Payday Loans prof- piece and a pig’s-tail cord running down getting better,” he says. “We’re nervous, fers the ritual preamble—“I’m not saying into his golf shirt scans the perimeter. upset, angry, disillusioned, dissatisfied. they to get shot”—before insist- There have been whisperings of protests Especially with our leadership—there’s ing that “they had to expect something.” aimed at dishonoring the dead. But no no real leadership. It’sThe the Final blind Call follow- She continues: “They keep killing us. such threat materializes. ing the blind.” What do they think is going to happen?” Pastor Ryan Frith sounds a penitent I buy a copy of , and There’s a lot of stupidity and ugliness on note. “It seems that our community has there’s a long article about the police both sides. Talk radio in Baton Rouge is been in disarray for the past few weeks. If shootings. It’s heavy on quotes from painful to listen to, and 81 percent of lis- we’re being honest, it’s been in disarray Cor nel West and Avis Jones-DeWeever, teners tell a WWL poll that they expect vio- for years.” His message is based on John with excerpts from Hillary Rodham lence in the wake of the officers’ shootings. 16:33: “I have overcome the world.” Clinton’s most recent speech to the A radio host insists that the problem here is Maybe not quite yet, but they are trying. NAACP. It’s pretty hard on President that men such as Alton Sterling won’t fol- A series of pastors and speakers exhort Barack Obama. low orders. “You can’t fight authority,” the crowd to sympathy, charity, and for- Just past the police headquarters on he says. “What did he think was going to giveness. “Anger, frustration—take it Airline Highway, there’s another very happen?” Strange, really, how a culture and discard it,” says one speaker who polite man, explaining to reporters that that defines itself largely in terms of its doesn’t bother to introduce himself to the they may not park their cars in the parking rebel past—even the local amusement park congregation. “We are here to love our lot of his B-Quik convenience store, is called “Dixie Landin’”—goes suddenly neighbors as ourselves.” One must con- where Long gunned down Of fi cers strait-laced at certain moments. The guys sider that these mosquito-feeding true Gerald and Jackson and Deputy Garafola. with the Confederate-flag stickers on their believers know something that eludes He smiles and gives a three-minute expla- pickup trucks and the clipsthem of their lock- the likes of Samantha Bee and Corey nation that concludes: “This is our busiest back knives sticking up out of the pockets Ciorciari and the rest of us urban location.” It certainly is today. A make - of their jeans—who tells to knuckle sophisticates: In the end, thoughts and shift memorial with the usual flowers and under to authority if they know what’s prayers do matter. They matter more notes has been constructed on the side- good for them? than most other things. And they are, for walk. A few people come to pay their The mood is a lot less eye-for-an-eye at the moment, what’s keeping the peace

respects,2 0 but the ratio| www.nationalreview.com of press to normal the Healing Place Church, where a very in Baton Rouge and manyAUGUST other1 5 ,com-2 0 1 6 human beings is about six to one. Police large crowd gathers for a candlelight vigil, munities like it. 3col_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 11:13 PM Page 21

after the murder of his estranged father, is executives of leisure-hotel chains are bookended by Islam. Michel’s father is happy to trade on the romanticism of the having a fling with his 25-year-old house- Third World, and exploit its poverty, to Transcendence keeper, a North African of secular incli- meet bored Westerners’ desire for escape. nations named Aïcha; it’s her pious In Platform, it is the success of these CommodifiedMichel Houellebecq’s Platform brother, offended for his sister’s honor, efforts that occasions the clash with who bashes in the elder Renault’s skull. Islam. A Jordanian banker whom Michel offers a troubling vision of The book ends with a gruesome attack on meets offers an explanation to which Islam and capitalism a Thailand sex club by Islamist gunmen. Michel is content to subscribe: (Fifteen years on, it’s difficult to ignore BY IAN TUTTLE an eerie resemblance to Omar Mateen’s The problem with Muslims, he told me, recent massacre of patrons at Orlando’s was that the paradise promised by the Prophet already existed here on earth. ICHEL HOUELLEBECQ’s most Pulse nightclub.) There were places on earth where young, recent novel made a stir, Neither Platform nor Submission is available, lascivious girls danced for the partly as a matter of circum- “about” Islam. Houellebecq’s books are M pleasure of men, where one could become stance. On the publication (uniformly) meditations on the sterility of drunk on nectar and listen to celestial date of Submission, which describes the modern life, the hallmark of which is an music; there were about twenty of them ascendancy of a Muslim party in France unyielding pessimism about the future of within five hundred meters of our hotel. in the year 2022, the French humor mag- human existence. His merit is his ability These places were easily accessible. To azine Charlie Hebdo put Houellebecq on to see how the boredom of modern life gain admission, there was absolutely no its cover in the form of a chain-smoking and Islam intersect. need to fulfill the seven duties of a Mus - sorcerer conjuring New Year’s predic- All of Houellebecq’s protagonists are lim, nor to engage in holy war; all you had tions (“In 2015, I lose my teeth. In 2022, I light variations on the same figure: a to do was pay a couple of dollars. celebrate Ramadan!”), and the Kouachi middle-aged male with an acute case of brothers attacked the magazine’s Paris ennui who is trying to find some reason That is, the success of the free market headquarters and murdered twelve peo- to continue living. Michel, the narrator has undercut Islam: What use is there for ple. When Submission finally arrived in of Platform, describes his own situation God when global capitalism has suc- the United States in English translation as follows: ceeded in immanentizing the eschaton? ten months later, France seemingly had The violence of many Muslims, this settled into a tense calm. Then Islamic I was living in a country distinguished Jordanian says, is “no more than a sign State terrorists attacked Paris again, by a placid socialism, where ownership of impotent jealousy.” killing 130 people—including 89 at the of material possessions was guaranteed This is too reductive to be entirely per- by strict legislation, where the banking Bataclan concert hall—and wounding suasive, but the implicit indictment of the system was surrounded by powerful several hundred more. state guarantees. Unless I were to ven- market is suggestive. Houellebecq clear- Now comes another attack. In July, ture beyond what was lawful, I ran no ly sees the market, unchecked by non- Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year- risk of embezzlement or fraudulent economic considerations, as a metastatic old Tunisian living in France, drove a bankruptcy. All in all, I needn’t worry force. In time, everything will be subor- cargo truck into a crowd celebrating anymore. In fact, I never really had. dinated to the impulse to buy and sell. Bastille Day in Nice, a resort town on Money is the measure of all things, and France’s southern coast. The attack killed He finds no particular comfort in this. everything is convertible to coin. About 84 people from more than a dozen coun- After a short recounting of his unre- the newest generation of business-school tries and wounded 300 others. markable résumé, he wonders aloud: graduates, Michel remarks that they “had Since its publication in 2015, literary- “Why had I never shown any real pas- thrown themselves headlong into market minded observers have suggested that sion in my life?” speculation without ever considering Submission is likely to prove prophet- For most of Houellebecq’s characters, looking for paid employment. . . . The ic—and, indeed, neither the devolution the reason for living, if it comes at all, goal of each and every one was extraor- of France into a low-level civil war nor takes the form of a woman’s pelvis. This dinarily simple: to become billionaires the rise of a politics devoted to France’s goes double in Platform, whose central before they turned thirty.” He notes, too, large and unassimilated Muslim popu- characters are promoters of, and enthu- that France has abandoned its historical lation is an unthinkable prospect. But siastic participants in, the sex-tourism imprecations against usury as its tradi- it’s an earlier book in Houellebecq’s industry. But Houellebecq is interested in tional Catholicism has eroded. oeuvre that deserves a second look in more than a simplistic “clash of values”: It follows from all of this that the market our current situation. arch-conservative Muslims versus liber- will, in time, “own” the routes to transcen- Platform, Houellebecq’s third novel, tine Westerners. Sex tourism is presented dence. God and sex become available for was published early in 2001, a few months as a final frontier of commodification. purchase; they’re just the latest commodi- before al-Qaeda attacked the United Sexual pleasure is the only experience left ties. “Everything within the state, nothing States and Islamist terrorism became a in our dull, safe world that might yield outside the state, nothing against the central force in global affairs. The story of what, in an earlier age, was called tran- state,” Mussolini declared. In Platform, Michel Renault, a middle-aged bureau- scendence. But sex tourism brings even the hallmark of modern life is everything crat who joins a group tour to Thailand this under the purview of the market. The within and nothing outside the market.

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Michel’s desire for increasingly intense He was born in 1955 in the Congolese sexual experiences—the bulk of Platform’s city of Bukavu. It is on the border with narrative—is one reaction to this. Islamist Rwanda. Mukwege lives there still. His violence is another. But both prove futile. Dealing with father was a Pentecostal pastor, who, in The market has dragged everything down the course of his duties, would visit the to earth. There is nothing left to transcend Darkness in sick. His son would make these rounds to. “We have created a system in which it with him. And that inspired the boy to has simply become impossible to live,” Congo become a doctor. Mukwege trained as a Michel concludes, “and what’s more, we The work of a singular doctor pediatrician. But then he found that continue to export it.” Congolese women suffered terribly in Houellebecq, like his characters, BY JAY NORDLINGER childbirth, often dying, which women approaches this situation with sociolog- were not doing elsewhere in the world, ical equanimity. The triumph of Homo ENIS MUKWEGE is one of the he knew. So he switched to obstetrics economicus is a fact; perhaps it was in - most honored men in the and gynecology. evitable, perhaps not, but it’s our reality D world. In 2013, he received In 1999, he founded Panzi Hospital, now. Still, he cannot avoid wondering the French Legion of Honor. named for a village on the outskirts of whether we can escape this unlivable The next year, he received the Sakharov Bukavu, now essentially a neighbor- system—and, if so, how. Prize from the European Parliament. hood of Bukavu. He intended to work on Unsentimental Houellebecq goes in The next year, he received an honorary general maternal health. But then came for an age-old answer: “Love sanctifies,” doctorate from Harvard. Yet, in a sense, a wave of rape victims—thousands and says Michel, in passing. “In the absence the work he does is thankless. It must tens of thousands—and Dr. Mukwege of love, nothing can be sanctified.” rank near the worst work in the world, could do no other. Sanctifying love is what Michel finds, impossible to repay. And saintly to do. In 2012, he spoke to the United Nations, albeit only temporarily, with a young Mukwege is a doctor in the country denouncing those responsible for war in woman named Valérie: “She was one of that calls itself “the Democratic Re - Congo, and asking that they be brought those creatures who are capable of devot- public of the Congo.” (Informally, peo- to justice. Several weeks later, armed ing their lives to someone else’s happi- ple say “Congo.”) He treats victims of men entered his home. They terrorized ness, of making that alone their goal. The rape, often of gang rape. A gynecologist, his family. They did not succeed in killing phenomenon is a mystery. Happiness, he tries to heal them physically and Dr. Mukwege, but they killed his friend simplicity, and joy lie within them, but I mentally. The second task is harder, but and bodyguard, Joseph Bizimana. With still do not know how or why it occurs.” the first is hard enough. His patients his family, Dr. Mukwege went abroad. Put another way, this is a relationship range from infants to the elderly. But the women in Congo prevailed on that exists entirely outside the market. Congo is one of those countries de - him to come back. Though they had noth- Its hallmark is a lack of self-interest. The scribed as “war-torn.” For years, it has ing, they sold fruits and vegetables, to “economy” of this relationship is one not been known as “the rape capital of the pay for his plane ticket. Touched, he came of quid pro quo trades, but of gifts. world.” Rape is a weapon of war, maybe back, three months after he had left. This is a marked counterpoint to the ra - the foremost weapon. It is systemic, even In Oslo, I am told that he will need a paciousness of the executives who blithely normal. Boys are trained to rape as child translator: His English is not good enough turn sexual intimacy into a multinational soldiers. The normality of rape has been for an interview. I begin our conversation enterprise. In Houellebecq’s accounting, transferred into the civilian world. In by telling him about a piece I did on global capitalism has exported material Congo, boys and men rape, and girls and Sudan, some ten years ago. It was about wealth and spiritual poverty. The empty- women are raped. That’s the way it is. U.S. policy in view of the genocide in ing out of the West’s spiritual and cultural Jeffrey Gettleman is an Africa corre- Darfur. “I could handle the murder,” I resources in pursuit of sheer economic spondent for the New York Times. In 2012, say. “It was the rape that got me. The con- might has made everyone richer and their he wrote that, every time he goes back to stant rape. I could barely stand to read lives more luxurious—but also increas- Congo, he meets “a whole new set of about it or hear about it. And I was com- ingly inhumane. Part of the solution to the thoroughly traumatized people.” Some of fortable in my office, thousands of miles twilight struggle against Islamism will be them “are impossible to forget, like Anna away. How do you keep your sanity, day reducing the stranglehold of the market in Mburano, an 80-year-old woman who after day, face to face with this evil?” order to make room for the older, non- was gang-raped a few years ago and Translator at his side, he answers in economic concerns that gave life fullness screamed out to the teenage assailants on French. He makes a general statement and meaning. And if there is any chance of top of her: ‘Grandsons! Get off me!’” about common humanity: reaching the restricting the market’s power, of disman- There is worse where that came from. humanity in the other person. I then tell tling the bureaucratic apparatus that has I met Dr. Mukwege at the Oslo him another story, although the inter - grown up around it, and of making possible Free dom Forum in May. I talked with viewee, not the interviewer, is supposed true joy, it is in the charism of the human him about some important questions. to do the talking. being for giving without demanding. First, however, I will give you some About 15 years ago, I did a report on Perhaps, 15 years after Platform, it’s biography. And tell you how to pro- pornography. I talked to researchers and worth listening—before the only alterna- nounce his name, when speaking activists in the area of child pornography. tive is Submission. English: “Moo-KWAY-gay.” I thought they had the most thankless job

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in the world, for three reasons. First, they had to be immersed in evil all day—the evil of child pornography. Second, no- body wanted to hear about the problem. It was too awful. Third, some people would say, “What’s your interest, huh? Do you get your kicks this way? Do you actually like it?” I could not imagine a worse job than these researchers and activists had. Yet it was a job so vital. At this point, Dr. Mukwege sits forward in his chair and fixes me with a gaze of utmost gravity. He then speaks at length, in competent English. “This is a terrible thing that I am living myself. When you see how women suffer for their whole lives . . . I have never seen a woman who was raped who was normal Dr. Denis Mukwege afterward. Most of them, their lives are completely destroyed, psychologically and physically. You see how hard it is to help them. And if it has happened to chil- Child soldiers who become rapists impunity you would take away, if you dren, it’s even worse.” have problems later in life, he says. could?” Yes, says the doctor. I continue, When you do what he does, “sometimes They can neither eat nor sleep. And they “Maybe you make them feel ashamed.” you are just crying. You are operating on kill themselves. The doctor says he doubts it. “It would a young girl and she is incontinent. She Dr. Mukwege outlines the wreckage of be good if they felt shame, but they prob- has no control over her urine or bowels. rape. “The thousands of women who are ably think they have a right.” And she keeps saying, ‘Doctor, what will raped—they will never be normal. And He reflects on epidemics of rape, my future be? Will I ever be able to go to the children born to them of rape. They throughout the world: in the former Yugo - the bathroom?’ Even for you, it’s a trauma. will never be normal, because they are not slavia; in Syria; in Nepal, Colombia, and You are doing your job, but it’s a trauma.” accepted by the mother.” There are the elsewhere. I recall the systematic rape I observe to Dr. Mukwege that he is rapists themselves (for whom we are by the Red Army in Europe at the end of like a soldier at war, seeing the things unlikely to weep, granted). And there is World War II. He says that he met a that people at war see, but unendingly. another category: men who have watched woman who was raped in that period. “Yes,” he says. their wives and daughters raped right in “When she was telling me what hap- Furthermore, “when you try to talk front of them. Typically, they become pened, she started to cry, and it was the about it, you have the impression that impotent. “They say to me one thing, over same as the girls whom I am treating in people don’t want to hear.” This is espe- and over: ‘Doctor, I am not a man.’” Congo. The same words, the same feel- cially true abroad. “You have the impres- I tell him that I think of a phrase from ings. She said, ‘For 60 years, I have been sion that people are thinking, ‘This is the military: “collateral damage.” This is carrying this burden in my heart, but you happening somewhere else, it’s not my not quite right, says Dr. Mukwege, be - have let me break the silence and I feel problem.’ Or they want to protect them- cause collateral damage can be accidental better, even if I will never get healing.’ selves,” which is understandable. or incidental. He believes that warmakers Can you imagine something that can “I have some photos,” says Dr. intend to destroy the very fabric of soci- break the life of someone for 60 years?” Mukwege. “And even for medical staff, ety, the better to dominate society. “There Near the end of our visit, I remark to it’s so hard to see. When you see a baby of is no structure. You have children who Dr. Mukwege that he could be practicing twelve months with the genitals complete- don’t accept their parents, parents who all sorts of medicine. He could be repair- ly destroyed . . . Even if you’re medical don’t accept their children,” and so on. ing the broken arms of boys who hurt staff, you are a father, or you are a mother.” “Women have been raped by children as themselves in soccer. He could be in We talk about the rape victims for a young as their own children. Every value Paris or L.A. or New York, giving ladies while. I then ask, “What about the rapists? in society has been destroyed.” How do facelifts (and making tidy sums). In - Why is there so much rape? Is it because you rise from that? stead, he does the worst. Smiling, he says of a mob mentality?” Dr. Mukwege says I ask Dr. Mukwege how his security is that, when he meets someone who under - GETTY IMAGES / that the answer, in short, is impunity. Boys today. He lives in Panzi Hospital, never stands him, he sleeps better at night. He AFP / and men can get away with rape. So they going out, not even to visit relatives. When feels less alone. rape. Adult soldiers teach child soldiers to he absolutely has to leave—as when travel- Every now and then, you sense that you rape and kill. These children become inhu- ing to the airport—he does so under escort. have met a great man. I certainly think this, GEORGES GOBET man. They enjoy total license. People who “Who resents you?” I ask. “Who en- on leaving Denis Mukwege. Later, I think

create such monsters are among the guilti- dangers your life? Men who don’t like of a phrase that Churchill applied to Dr.2 3 est criminals on earth, says Dr. Mukwege. your stance against rape? Men whose Schweitzer: “a genius of humanity.” 2col_QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/27/2016 12:03 AM Page 24

Rescue workers in the rubble of an apartment building in Volgodonsk, Russia, that was bombed on September 16, 1999, killing 17 people and injuring 69 The Bloody Czar Did an act of terrorism carry Putin to power? BY DAVID SATTER

BELIEVE I that Vladimir Putin came to power as the result of them were murdered between 2003 and 2006. By 2007, when I an act of terror committed against his own people. The evi- testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the dence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings bombings, I was the only person publicly accusing the regime in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which pro- of responsibility who had not been killed. vided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin The bombings terrorized Russia. The Russian authorities into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal blamed Chechen rebels and thereby galvanized popular support Security Service (FSB). Yet, to this day, an indifferent world has for a new war in Chechnya. President Boris Yeltsin and his made little attempt to grasp the significance of what was the entourage were thoroughly hated for their role in the pillaging greatest political provocation since the burning of the Reichstag. of the country. Putin, the head of the FSB, had just been named I have been trying to call attention to the facts behind the Yeltsin’s prime minister and achieved overnight popularity by bombings since 1999. I consider this a moral obligation, be - vowing revenge against those who had murdered innocent cause ignoring the fact that a man in charge of the world’s civilians. He assumed direction of the war and, on the strength largest nuclear arsenal came to power through an act of terror is of initial successes, was elected president easily. highly dangerous in itself. Almost from the start, however, there were doubts about the Russian human-rights defenders Sergei Yushenkov, Yuri provenance of the bombings, which could not have been better Shchekochikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, and Alexander Litvinenko calculated to rescue the fortunes of Yeltsin and his entourage. alsoMr. Satter, worked a senior to shedfellow atlight the Hudson on the Institute apartment and a bombings. fellow at the Johns But all of Suspicions deepened when a fifth bomb was discovered in the Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), has been basement of a building in Ryazan, a city southeast of Moscow, writing about Russia and the Soviet Union for four decades. This article is adapted and those who had placed it turned out to be not Chechen terror- from his new book, The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s ists but agents of the FSB. After these agents were arrested by Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin. local police, Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, said that the TASS VIA GETTY IMAGES

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for hexogen, the explosive used in the four successful apartment apartment building was blown up on Monday and it explodes on bombings. An investigation of the Ryazan incident was published Thursday. This can be evaluated as a provocation.” Seleznev in the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and the public’s misgivings avoided responding, and Zhirinovsky had his microphone grew so widespread that the FSB agreed to a televised meeting turned off when he persisted in demanding an explanation. between its top officials and residents of the affected building. In March 2002, however, Noviye Izvestiya succeeded in ob - The FSB in this way tried to demonstrate its openness, but the taining the transcript of what Seleznev had said on September meeting was a disaster: It left the overwhelming impression that 13, 1999. His precise words were: “Here is a communication the incident in Ryazan was a failed political provocation. which they transmit. According to a report from Rostov-on- Three days after the broadcast, Putin was elected. Attention Don today, this past night, an apartment house was blown up in to the Ryazan incident faded, and it began to appear that the the city of Volgodonsk.” The newspaper asked him who had bombings would become just the latest in the long list of informed him about the bombing in Volgodonsk three days Russia’s unsolved crimes. before it happened. He answered, “Believe me, not [exiled oli- In April 2000, a week after Putin’s election, I decided to go to garch Boris] Berezovsky,” who had accused Putin of orches- Ryazan. The residents of 14–16 Novoselov Street, where the trating the bombing. In this way, he indicated that he was well bomb had been planted, were suffering from heart problems and aware of who, in reality, had given him the information. depression, and their children were afraid to go to sleep at night. Seleznev then told the newspaper that, on September 13, he Those I met were completely convinced that the incident had not had been referring to an explosion on September 15 that was part been a training exercise. “Who can imagine such a thing?” asked of a war between criminal gangs and had not claimed any vic- Vladimir Vasiliev, whose initial reports of suspicious activity tims. Seleznev’s explanation, however, raised more questions had led to the arrest of the FSB agents. “But the claim that it was than it answered. It was hard to understand why such an insignif- a test makes no sense. Does it make sense to test people for vigi - icant incident needed to be reported to the speaker of the Duma lance at a time when the whole country is in a state of panic?” at a time when apartment buildings were being blown up, with Attention to the Ryazan incident faded, and it began to appear that the bombings would become just the latest in the long list of Russia’s unsolved crimes.

Two motions in the Duma to investigate the Ryazan incident hundreds of deaths. And even if Seleznev had been referring to failed in the face of monolithic opposition from the pro-Putin Unity a minor criminal co nflict in Volgodonsk, how was it possible party. In February 2002, a third motion to investigate failed and that he had been informed about it two days in advance? a group of Duma deputies and human-rights activists organized a A new source of accusations against Putin and the FSB emerged “public commission” to seek answers independently. Its chairman in London. Berezovsky, who had been instrumental in facilitat- was Sergei Kovalyev, a Duma deputy and former Soviet dissident. ing Putin’s rise to power but then had gone into exile after being Sergei Yushenkov, another Duma deputy, was the vice chairman. deprived of his influence, held a press conference on March 5, The commission had no official standing, but the Duma deputies 2002, in which he accused the FSB of carrying out the bombings could pose questions to the government in their individual capacity. with Putin’s complicity in order to justify a second Chechen war. The apartment bombings took place while Putin was prime minister and the head of the FSB was Nikolai Patrushev, his Y 2002, the commission members were facing a rising longtime protégé. But the planning for such a complex opera- tide of indifference. The second Chechen war was being tion would have had to begin much earlier, before Putin became prosecuted successfully and an economic boom was prime minister, at a time when Berezovsky was one of the most gainingB momentum. Putin’s popularity rose to an all-time high. powerful members of the leadership. Berezovsky played a crit- Shortly after the commission began its work, however, an ical role in Putin’s ascent, making the case to members of the incident occurred that reminded Russians of just how mysterious Yeltsin entourage that Putin should become prime minister. the apartment bombings were. In March, the newspaper Noviye Berezovsky’s attitude toward Putin changed only when Putin Izvestiya announced the result of its investigation into the fact acted to remove him from power. Berezovsky began to hint and that Gennady Seleznev, the speaker of the Duma and a close then, in December 2001, to state openly that the apartment bomb- associate of Putin, had announced the bombing in Volgodonsk ings had been carried out by the FSB, with the complicity of Putin. on September 13—three days before it occurred. Vladimir Putin could hardly respond to Berezovsky’s accusations by Zhirinovsky, the head of the Liberal Democratic party, told jour- saying that the real initiator had been Berezovsky and that he nalists that same day what Seleznev had said, but they could himself had been just a passive participant. Putin was later to not confirm it, so it was not reported. On September 16, how- accuse Berezovsky of responsibility for every major political ever, the building in Volgodonsk really was blown up, and on murder and terrorist act that took place in Russia, but, in regard September 17 Zhirinovsky demanded an explanation of how to the apartment bombings, he had to remain silent. In the words Seleznev had known about the bombing in advance. of the Russian publicist Andrei Piontkovsky: “The more hopeless “Do you see what is happening in this country?” he said, shout- became [Berezovsky’s] chances of returning to the political arena ing and gesticulating from the podium in the Duma. “You say an in Russia, the louder became his accusations. . . . It seems that he

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opened a completely new form of political business: Blackmail Yuri Shchekochikhin, another member of the public commis- the authorities with the exposure of one’s own crimes.” sion, died three months later. He was the victim of a mysterious The independent commission began its work in February illness that caused his skin to peel off and his internal organs to 2002 and achieved one important success. Yushenkov and collapse. The Russian authorities refused to allow an autopsy, Duma deputy Yuli Rybakov flew to London to attend the March but his relatives managed to send tissue samples to London; 5 press conference organized by Berezovsky. Yushenkov met based on these samples, he was tentatively found to have died fugitive former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who intro- from thallium poisoning. Thallium is the substance also be - duced Yushenkov to Mikhail Trepashkin, a former FSB agent lieved to have been used in the poisoning of Roman Tsepov, and orthodox Communist who had been fired by the FSB after Putin’s former bodyguard, in September 2004. investigating the links between FSB officers and Chechen ShchekochikhinSlaves hadof the been KGB: a friend 20th ofCentury, mine since the Religion the 1980s. of organized crime. After this meeting, Trepashkin began cooper- ShortlyBetrayal before his death, he presented me with a copy of his ating with the public commission. latest book, In April 2002, Yushenkov traveled to the U.S., where he met , about persons forced to work under the Soviet regime Aliona and Tanya Morozov, whose mother had been killed in as informers. Yuri inscribed it: “We are still alive in 2003!” the 1999 explosion in Moscow’s Guryanova Street. The Morozov With the deaths of Yushenkov and Shchekochikhin, Trepashkin sisters were officially crime victims, which meant they could was the only person left actively investigating the apartment present evidence in court proceedings. Tanya Morozova bombings. As the lawyer for Tanya Morozova, he was entitled to agreed to give Trepashkin her power of attorney, allowing him review the FSB file, and he began to search for the original sketch to submit evidence on her behalf. of the suspect. He went through the file carefully but could not The person who rented the basement on Guryanova Street find any picture, suggesting it had been removed from the file. where the bomb had been placed had been using the passport of Acting on a hunch, Trepashkin began going through old Mukhid Laipanov, a resident of the Karachaevo-Cherkesiya newspaper archives in the hope that the original sketch had republic in the North Caucasus. The real Laipanov, however, been published somewhere before the FSB had pulled it from had been killed in an auto accident in February 1999, seven circulation. After an exhaustive search, he finally found it. To months before the bombing took place. The police said that his his surprise, it was a sketch of someone he knew: Vladimir passport had been used by Achemez Gochiyaev, an ethnic Romanovich, an FSB agent who in the mid 1990s had been Karachai and the director of a Moscow construction firm. responsible for investigating Chechen criminal organizations. In the immediate aftermath of the Guryanova Street bomb- Trepashkin next began to search for Blumenfeld, who was ing, the police interviewed Mark Blumenfeld, the building identified in the file as the person who had provided the superintendent. His description of the person who had rented description. He found Blumenfeld, who agreed to talk to him. the basement apartment was used to create a police sketch of a Blumenfeld said that on the morning of the bombing he had suspect. The sketch, however, was then quickly replaced with described to the police the man who had rented the basement one of Gochiyaev, who looked completely different. When space, and that two days later he had been taken to Lefortovo Gochiyaev learned that he was being accused of blowing up a prison, where FSB officers pressured him to change his story building, he went into hiding. and “recognize” a photo of a different man, Gochiyaev. At the end of March 2002, Yuri Felshtinsky, a historian and Trepashkin now was in a position to discredit the official an associate of Litvinenko, received a call from someone who explanation of the bombings, which Viktor Zakharov, the head said he was acting on behalf of Gochiyaev. At the end of April, of the Moscow FSB, had given in September 2000. Zakharov an intermediary turned over a handwritten statement from had said: “We know the entire chain. . . . The direct organizer of Gochiyaev in which he said that he had been set up and had fled the terrorist acts was . . . Gochiyaev, known in Chechnya only because he knew that the FSB was getting ready to kill him. under the nickname ‘The Fox.’ He also led the perpetrators of Trepashkin found Gochiyaev’s testimony convincing and decided the terrorist acts. All of them are adherents of the radical cur- to concentrate on locating the sketch of the original suspect. rent of Wahhabism.” A trial was being prepared for Yusuf Krymshamkhalov and Adam Dekkushev, two members of what the authorities were calling the “band of Gochiyaev” who N the night of April 17, 2003, I was working in my allegedly transported explosives to Volgodonsk. Moscow apartment when I received a callDarkness telling me at Trepashkin was preparing to present the evidence based on Dawn that Sergei Yushenkov had been shot dead in front of the rediscoveredMoskovskiye original sketchNovosti and Blumenfeld’s claims in the entrance to his apartment building. My book court, but first he connected Blumenfeld with Igor Korolkov, a , in which I argued that the FSB was responsible for the reporter for . Blumenfeld confirmed to apartment bombings, was due out in the U.S. in May, and now Korolkov that “the man publicly presented by the investigation Sergei, who held the same view, had been murdered. as Gochiyaev was not in fact Gochiyaev.” Sergei was an active member of the public commission and “In Lefortovo prison,” Blumenfeld also said, “they had been full of enthusiasm when a few months earlier he had showed me a photograp h of Gochiyaev and said I had rented Otold me of plans to expose the real story of the bombings.What horror I got the basement to him. I said I never saw this man. It was insis- upis going and went on in to this the country?window and looked at the surrounding build- tently recommended to me that I identify Gochiyaev. I under- ings, the street lamps, and the all-but-empty street. stood everything and ceased arguing.” I wondered. For the first time in the On the day after his meeting with Korolkov, Trepashkin was

227 6 years I had been| writingwww.nationalreview.com about Russia, I felt afraid even to arrested and his apartment was searched. He wasAUGUST then accused1 5 , 2 0 1 6 leave my apartment. of improper use of classified material and was sentenced to four 2col_QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/27/2016 12:04 AM Page 27

years’ imprisonment in a labor camp in the Urals. As a result, his The World We important testimony was never presented as evidence in court. With the arrest of Trepashkin, the investigation of the apart- ment bombings faltered. Those in Russia who wanted to raise Have; the the issue lacked investigative tools such as subpoena power and were well aware that too active an interest could cost them their lives. The rest of the world was complacent, unwilling to con- sider the implications of a terrorist’s being in charge of the World We Want world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Darkness at Dawn A case for disciplined activism in foreign affairs N May 2003, was published. A month BY HENRY R. NAU later, I presented the book in Washington at the Hudson Institute, where I am a senior fellow. A German film crew arrived with Aliona Morozova. I explained why I believed that the apartment bombings were a provocation. My remarks pro- MERICA vided the central narrativeDisbelief of a film titled “Disbelief,” which A is walking away from the world “as it premiered in 2004 at the Sundance Film Festival. A Russian- wished it to be” in 1945, a world of unprecedented language version of was put on YouTube and circu- peace, democracy, and prosperity. And it is embrac- lated widely in Russia. ing a world “as it is” in 2016 that is rapidly descend- IBut, unfortunately, real action required civic leaders—and per- ing into violence, nationalism, and recession. sons capable of helping to make the bombings a serious political In 1945, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman could only issue were disappearing one by one. Anna Politkovskaya, Rus - dream of the world that exists today. They lived in a brutal and sia’s leading investigative journalist, and Alexander Litvinenko chaotic era that had descended twice in 25 years into the continued to speak out on the case. Politkovskaya was shot dead depravity of horrific war. They did not accept the state of in the elevator of her apartment block on October 7, 2006; affairs as it was. They helped create a better world, one that for Litvinenko died on November 23 from radioactive polonium- 70 years avoided another major global war, vanquished the 210 that had been put in his tea in a London sushi restaurant. scourge of totalitarianism championed by the former Soviet When I moved to Russia to work as an adviser and contribu- Union, spread freedom for the first time throughout the whole tor to Radio Liberty in September 2003, I had no immediate of Europe and significant parts of Asia, and created a global plans to deal with the apartment bombings. But I knew the sub- economy that produced rapid growth and reduced inequality ject would arise eventually. I believe that the Russian authori- as defeated and developing nations steadily closed the gap in ties were aware of this, too. In fact, the apartment bombings are relative wealth and power with the United States. impossible for a conscientious observer to ignore. The circum- Now, America’s leaders, including both major-party presiden- stantial evidence that the bombings were carried out by the FSB tial candidates, dismiss the idea that we can make the world as we is overwhelming. The only reason there is no direct evidence is wish it to be. That’s utopian ideology, they say, a foreign policy that the Putin regime has concealed it. In the case of the Ryazan that leads to military quagmires and diverts us from our hard-core incident, the authorities have sequestered the persons who put national interests. Obama ridiculed his predecessor for muscling the bomb in the basement, the records of the exercise, and the freedom forward in Iraq and Afghanistan and spurned new mil- dummy bomb itself. They putatively did this to protect state itary interventions in Ukraine and Syria. Hillary Clinton, his first secrets, but, according to Russian law, among the things that secretary of state and the Democratic nominee for president, cannot be considered state secrets are facts about “catastrophes intervened in Libya but now regrets it; she has also walked back threatening the security and health of the citizens” and “viola- her commitments to major trade agreements. And Donald Trump, tions of the law by state organs and officials.” the Republican nominee, threatens to undo the pillars of the The greatest barrier to accepting the evidence that points to Truman/Reagan world: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization the FSB as the perpetrator of the bombings is sheer reluctance and the World Trade Organization. They all claim they will defend to believe that such a thing could be possible. By any standard, the core (which for Trump is little more than America’s shores) murdering hundreds of innocent and randomly chosen fellow and avoid the periphery (which for Obama and Clinton appears to citizens in order to hold on to power is an example of cynicism include Ukraine and the disputed islands in the South and East that cannot be comprehended in a normal human context. But it China Seas). Stop trying to make the world as you wish it to be, is fully consistent with the Communist inheritance of Russia they say, and take care of America first, in the world as it is. and with the kind of country that Russia has become. The siren song is tempting. But the world doesn’t get better just Russia never really forgot the apartment bombings. During because we accept it as it is. It depends on what other leaders want. the anti-Putin protests in 2011 and 2012, demonstrators carried And other leaders are making the world the way they wish it to signs referring to the attacks. It is common in Russia for people be. At the core, the Truman/Reagan world might be unraveling. to avoid certain issues because otherwise “it will be impossible Britain exits the European Union; Poland, Hungary, and poten- to live.” Unfortunately, an issue doesn’t disappear simply Mr.tially Nau other is a newprofessor democracies at the George in Washington Europe driftUniversity toward and an the authoritarian author, most because it is ignored. Of all the dangers that hang over Russia, recently, of Conservative Internationalism.

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Russia; and South Korea is politically at odds with Japan and the liberal order; and if they do not, they will be defeated not by a economically dependent on a more nationalist China. And at the coalition of liberal powers but by the impersonal forces of history. periphery, dangers threaten to invade the core. Russia, China, and The liberal order in short is composed of “democracies with mixed ISIS do not accept the world as it is. Vladimir Putin seeks a new economies . . . nestling closely under an American security um - Europe, in which Russia exercises a veto power in the former brella” that thrive and expand at the core as long as the United States Soviet republics (including, if he can get away with it, the Baltic avoids quagmires on the periphery and lets history take its course. states). He is creating problems in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria to The idea that today’s liberal order emerged before the Cold keep the West’s influence at bay. Xi Jinping resists the spread of War, had little to do with the Cold War, and progressed as long as Western liberal ideology in Asia, especially in Taiwan and on the the United States avoided quagmires on the periphery is bizarre, Korean Peninsula, and stokes Chinese nationalism and military to say the least. Themade core, certainly as we know it today, did not aggression to keep the West off-balance. And the Islamic State existForeign in 1941. Affairs It had to be created and expanded, not just defended. wages a real war alongside its propaganda campaign to mobilize And it had to be liberal. The West was never open, as the fanatical forces against Western infidels both near and far. account suggests, to “any country that wants to Earlier American leaders understood that visions of the world join, . . . [regardless] of geography, race, religion, or other ascrip- as we wish it to be shape the world as it is today. When President tive characteristics.” It was open to countries that were already Truman decided in 1948 to keep American forces in West Berlin, liberal or, if not, then opposed to Communism and more comfort- he defined the Cold War conflict as an ideological confrontation able aligning with liberal than with Communist countries. between two ways of life, freedom and oppression, not as another Think about it: If the core existed before the Cold War, it must episode in which to balance power or protect territory. Soviet have been composed of the victorious alliance that vanquished actions in Berlin did not threaten American territory or even Fascist Germany and Japan. That alliance included the Soviet European borders (Berlin was inside the Soviet zone of Ger - Union, which is why Rose and his colleagues imagine it was part many). And when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an of the core until Moscow rashly bolted and started the Cold War. evil empire, he rallied the free world to send Communism to the But that core, with the Soviet Union included, also formed the ash heap of history, not to coexist with it indefinitely. United Nations, and the United Nations was not a liberal but a uni- The world today contains fewer risks than it did in 1945 pre- versal order that brought together all countries, liberal or not. And cisely because Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan refused to the United Nations failed spectacularly to deal with the post-war settle for the world as it was. Imagine if there were no more world, either to defend or to expand a liberal world order. democracies today than in 1914. America would be completely If, on the other hand, the core excluded the Soviet Union, it surrounded by authoritarian regimes in Europe and Asia, as it must have been the Atlantic Charter, the U.S.-British statement was in the 1930s. Or imagine that the Soviet Union had won the forged in August 1941 that affirmed liberal principles on behalf Cold War or the Cold War had ended in compromise, with of the relatively few democracies that existed at the time. So what Europe half-free and half-slave. Communism would still exist in was the periphery where, in this benign view of the world, we much of Europe and Asia, and Soviet-style markets would crip- should avoid drawn-out conflicts? Was it Germany and continen- ple globalization and growth. The information age would never tal Europe, where democracies were either weak, as in France have begun. Thankfully, none of this happened, because vision- and Italy, or nonexistent, as in Germany, Spain, Portugal, Greece, ary leaders understood that history is not predestined but an on - and Turkey? Did President Truman get sucked into a quagmire going ideological struggle between freedom and oppression. on the periphery when he refused to abandon Berlin in 1948, against the advice of all his principal advisers, or when he rallied U.N. forces to checkmate Soviet-sponsored aggression in Korea EADERS who accept the world as it is propagate a benign in 1950? Were the subsequent American alliance with Japan and view of history. They talk about a world without strug- Truman’s support for the creation of Israel (again against the gle, in which history is on our side and ideological dif- advice of his principal advisers) further commitments on the ferences are irrelevant. President Obama repeatedly favored periphery that sucked the United States into quagmires? cooperation with the countries whose ideological differences There is no hint of any of these struggles in the benign view were most threatening (China, Iran, Cuba) because he believed of history, no hint that the liberal order had to be envisioned, that the tide of history (modernization, globalization, pluralism) defended at great risk (“nestling” is hardly the right word to would move them inexorably in our direction. describe nuclear deterrence and, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis), This benign view of history ignores the grave risks the United expanded through steady economic development, and, yes, StatesL accepted to make the world a better place. It assumes that made liberal by promoting freedom in Europe and Asia. The the liberal order that exists globally today always existed, even benign view of history credits pragmatists such as George before the ColdForeign War. The Affairs tide of history simply swept along, Kennan, Truman’s adviser, and Brent Scowcroft, Nixon’s and leaving most advanced countries in a relatively peaceful state. George H. W. Bush’s adviser, with ending the Cold War. In In an issue of last fall, Gideon Rose, the editor of truth, they had little to do with that outcome. In the 1940s and that journal, and his colleagues argue that the liberal order existed 1970s, they advocated coexistence and the status quo. They had before World War II and had little to do with the hard-fought no plan to defeat Communism. ideological battles against Fascism and Communism. “So in - Presidents Truman and Reagan did. Truman summoned the stead of saying that the Cold War caused or defined the order,” Marshall Plan and NATO to incubate a partial and struggling Rose writes, “it is more accurate to say that the Soviet Union’s liberal core in Europe and thwarted Soviet-inspired military

2unwillingness 8 to take| www.nationalreview.com part in the order caused the Cold War.” aggression in Korea, even though George KennanAUGUST opposed1 5 , 2this 0 1 6 According to Rose and company, countries are predestined to join extension of the Cold War to the Asian “periphery.” Reagan 2col_QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/27/2016 11:13 AM Page 29

then revitalized this core in both Europe and Asia by branding the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and chal- lenging it to an arms race it could not win (the stick) and a global economic boom it dared not miss (the carrot). At the time, pragmatists howled that Reagan was an ideo- logue who wanted to start a third world war. Truman and Reagan took risks to defeat Communism. Truman, after all, was accused of starting the Cold War. And he may well have. Once he understood that the rapid demobilization of Western forces in Europe (while Soviet forces remained in Eastern Europe) and the creaky domes- tic foundations of Western European countries (where Communist parties participated in coalition governments) invited Soviet intimidation if not attack, he opted to re-arm and risk a “cold” war in order to avoid a “hot” war. Thanks to that decision, free markets and democracy stabilized and spread throughout the Western alliance. Truman failed to do the same in Asia, and the Soviet Union probed for advantage by proxy war in Korea. Imagine if that probe had occurred in Europe because Truman had declared Berlin to be “peripheral” to Western interests. Similarly, Reagan was accused of starting the “New Cold War.” He armed America to the teeth, deployed nuclear missiles in Europe, and revived the American and world economy. He then used this military and economic leverage not to guarantee coexistence but to secure agree- ments that unraveled the Soviet Union. There would have been no end of the Cold War if the United States had remained stuck in the post-Vietnam malaise and economic stagflation that Reagan inherited. Yes, Gorbachev came along—not because of the “tide of history” but because the Reagan renaissance required more- eralism” (a presumed trade-off that sanctioned economic inter- dynamic leadership in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev and other vention to protect workers in return for the removal of trade Soviet officials acknowledged the role that America’s rebound barriers). It moved them in the opposite direction, toward free- and especially its military buildup played in Soviet calculations. market policies. Industries that nationalized during the war Addressing the Politburo in October 1986, a year and a half after were privatized, and fiscal and monetary authorities in the becoming the general secretary of the party, Gorbachev warned United States, Britain, West Germany, and other European his colleagues: “We will be pulled into another round of the arms countries adopted conservative economic policies rather than race that is beyond our capabilities, and we will lose it.” General interventionist ones, encouraging flexible labor markets that Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of the Soviet general staff at the time accommodated freer trade. Had governments intervened to pro- and a hardline critic of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking,” later con- tect labor, as presumed by the theory of embedded liberalism, firmed Gorbachev’s warning: “The Soviet Union could no longer there would have been no post-war trade and economic boom. continue a policy of military confrontation with the U.S. and In fact, the post-war boom nose-dived the minute domestic NATO after 1985.” (Akhromeyev was eventually involved in the policies became more statist and interventionist. In the 1970s, coup to overthrow Gorbachev, and he committed suicide after the Great Society programs, inflationary monetary and fiscal poli- coup failed.) Here was the payoff of the Reagan military buildup. cies, and massive price increases in oil strangled market incen- Critics who celebrate Reagan’s reluctance to use force in periph- tives. American and free-world economies stagnated, performing eral places such as Lebanon completely miss his larger use of not much better than the Soviet economy. military power (the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear Had these conditions persisted, it is unlikely that the Soviet forces, the Strategic Defense Initiative, freedom fighters) to sub- Union would have experienced catastrophic economic pressure. It due the Soviet Union. would have limped along as the West did. And, because of “limits to growth” occasioned by oil and resource shortages (predicted by a computer model at the time), there would have been no invest- ISTORICAL amnesia also distorts the role that economic ment, no innovation, and therefore no information revolution. muscle played in defining and winning the Cold War. How did this situation change? Did the world just limp along True, after World War II, the Western economies were until Bill Clinton arrived? Hillary Clinton says, “The economy mixed, in contrast to the statist, monopolistic economies of does better when you have a Democrat in the White House.” But ROMAN GENN Communist countries. But the early Bretton Woods system did this assessment is preposterous. Bill Clinton inherited a Reagan

not move the Western economies in the direction of statism or economy that boomed from 1983 to 1989 at an average annual2 9 what the liberal academic community heralds as “embedded lib- real rate of 4.5 percent, dipped but still grew during the mild H 2col_QXP-1127940309.qxp 7/27/2016 12:04 AM Page 30

recession years of 1990 and 1991, and then expanded again at 4.4 percent in 1992. That was the year in which Clinton, with the help of Ross Perot, won the White House with 43 percent of the vote A Sufficient on the slogan “It’s the economy, Stupid.” Maybe “it’s the media, Stupid,” that missed this colossal distortion of economic reality. The heavy lifting to reverse the economic paralysis of the 1970s was done by Ronald Reagan. Reagan put in place the Defense tax-cutting, deregulatory policies and free-trade initiatives that created 50 million new jobs in the 1980s and 1990s and pro- We must arrest and reverse our military’s pelled global markets into the information age, eventually gradual decline drawing in the emerging and former Communist nations. And he did so at considerable risk. Reagan’s economic program defied conventional wisdom and tested the alliance. But it BY DAVID ADESNIK worked spectacularly. Even Time magazine declared: “Ronald Reagan can now boast of having engineered one of the most F the Department of Defense can’t figure out a way to stunning economic turnarounds in U.S. history.” defend the United States on a budget of more than half a ‘I trillion dollars a year,” said then–secretary of defense Robert M. Gates in 2009, “then our problems are much O where does this leave us today? It leaves us with two bigger than anything that can be cured by buying a few more ships ways forward. The first is a passive approach that and planes.” Gates’s pointed remark reflects a concern broadly accepts the world as it is, stays out of the Middle East shared by small-government conservatives as well as many liber- Sand other supposedly peripheral areas, and trusts that other als. For the past 25 years, there has been no army, navy, or air leaders and the tide of history will sustain the liberal order. force in the world that comes close to matching its American Alternatively, we can actively lead a world in which authoritar- counterpart in terms of either its prowess on the battlefield or the ian and liberal ways of life continue to compete, we advance size of its budget. In fact, the U.S. spent more on defense last year liberty incrementally where it counts the most, and economic than the next seven top spenders combined. Many are clamoring growth is revived to dispel protectionist and populist anxieties. for a slimmer, cheaper military. But can we defend the country for Both approaches entail risks: The passive approach would less? With a national debt of $19 trillion, how should American risk falling down a precipitous slope as it descends into wider policymakers be thinking about defense spending? war later, as other leaders shaped the agenda and violence esca- Significantly, Gates himself soon discarded the notion that lated (e.g., Russia in Syria). The activist approach would risk $500 billion per year represents the upper bound for a fiscally descending a slippery slope into wider war earlier, as American responsible defense budget. Instead, he decided, spending levels leaders overreached (as the U.S. did in Iraq). But only the should correspond to the intensity of the threats we face and our activist approach can make the world as we wish it to be. strategy for defeating them. Yet Gates reversed himself only after Rather than jettison the activist approach, we should discipline an aggressive campaign to promote efficiency. In 2009–10, he it. Don’t pursue democracy in every country at once. Focus on canceled $300 billion of planned purchases and cut another $178 the countries that matter the most: today, Ukraine and Turkey, billion from projected spending. Yet in his final budget proposal, which lie on the border between Russia and free Europe, and submitted in February 2011, Gates asked for $553 billion for fis- South Korea and Taiwan, which lie between China and free cal year 2012, rising to $611 billion for 2016 (both figures are in Asia (principally Japan). Losing freedom in these countries current dollars and exclude supplemental appropriations for the would endanger the core, and spreading freedom would cost war in Afghanistan). He warned the country “not [to] repeat the less because strong alliances and vibrant markets exist just mistakes of the past by making drastic and ill-conceived cuts to across the border. In the Middle East and South Asia, defeat the overall defense budget” while so many threats remained. radical Islam, but don’t try to spread democracy. Regardless, Congress passed and the president signed the Similarly, create jobs to dispel anxieties over trade and Budget Control Act of 2011—the infamous “sequestration” bill— immigration. Don’t redistribute jobs by protectionism. which ushered in five years of deprivation for the Department of Altogether, some 12 million jobs in the United States, or 8.5 Defense. This year, the Pentagon has a budget of $522 billion, or percent of the work force, have been created by either direct or $89 billion less than what Gates projected (again excluding war- indirect foreign investment. If we take American jobs back related costs, which have plummeted with the withdrawal of all from overseas, other countries will take their jobs back from the but 9,800 troops from Afghanistan). The result is a force that, by United States. Much better would be a stimulus program that the admission of its own leaders, is barely able to execute the mis- did not raise the national debt by even one dollar. Create incen- sions required by the president’s strategy. tives for American industries to invest the $3 trillion they carry When a new president and new Congress take office next January, on their balance sheets because they have no confidence in the their first priority should be to restore the defense budget to the level recovery under Obama, the slowest in post-war history. Gates requested, and they should maintain at least that level of Truman and Reagan knew what they wanted, and the world investment for a minimum of a decade, or until the world becomes became a better place. Today the world is getting less democratic a substantially safer place. After all, when Secretary Gates submitted and prosperous, and the risks of war are rising. Leave it or lead it? his final proposal, the Islamic State existed mainly on paper, Iran As Reagan’s turnaround from the 1970s illustrates, the future is a place we choose, not a necessity that history dictates. Mr. Adesnik is the policy director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.

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USS George H. W. Bush

was weighed down by punishing sanctions, the “reset” with Russia GDP. Thanks to the economic growth of the post-war era, that fig- was still under way, the Taliban were in retreat, and China had not ure declined to less than 5 percent by 1980. The Reagan buildup escalated its campaign of intimidation in the South China Sea. pushed it back up to 6 percent, but it plunged to just 2.9 percent Without a stronger military and the diplomatic leverage it provides, by the time George W. Bush took office. Despite hovering near 4 none of these challenges is likely to be resolved anytime soon. percent in the years after 9/11, the number is now back down to 3.3 percent and headed for an all-time low. Defense spending as a percentage of federal spending is also N the summer of 2014, when President Obama ordered the at a historic low. That is due, in large part, to the inexorable first U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State, there were no growth of mandatory programs—mainly entitlements—which planes within range of the intended targets. Within 30 hours, accounted for 60 percent of outlays in 2014 ($2.1 trillion in cur- Ithe aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush arrived in the Persian rent dollars, or 12.2 percent of GDP), up from 27 percent a half Gulf, where its F/A-18 Hornets began to fly 20 to 30 sorties per century before. In comparison, defense spending accounted for day. For 54 days, there was no other source of American air power. 17.2 percent of outlays in 2014. By 2020, that number will fall to The USS Bush could arrive so quickly only because the U.S. Navy just 12 percent if present trends continue. maintains one carrier on station in the western Pacific and another Contrary to much popular wisdom, defense spending does not in the Middle East. However, because the maintenance and train- drive the budget deficit; entitlements do. During each of the first ing requirements for a cutting-edge force are so demanding, hav- five years of the Obama administration, the deficit was larger ing two carriers on station requires a total inventory of ten (an than the entire defense budget. In other words, even if the United eleventh is scheduled to join the fleet in September). States had not spent a single dollar on defense from 2009 through No other navy has more than a single aircraft carrier—and those 2013, it would still have had a budget deficit every year, often carriers are substantially smaller than their American counterparts. a sizable one. Within five years, according to projections by the American carriers have an air wing that typically consists of 44 Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the cost of mandatory F/A-18s, various surveillance and electronic-warfare planes, and programs will grow by almost $700 billion per year in current 19 helicopters. The Nimitz-class carriers in service today each host dollars, while defense spending will rise by less than $50 bil- a crew of about 4,500 sailors and will serve about 50 years. Each car- lion, a difference that inflation will mostly consume. rier cost an average of almost $9 billion to build, adjusting for inflation. Although entitlement reform has been the white whale of It may seem like overkill for the U.S. to have eleven aircraft car- deficit hawks for decades, the fact remains that the federal gov- riers when no one else has more than one. Yet the U.S. military has ernment can responsibly spend another $90 billion per year on a fundamentally different purpose from those of its adversaries. For defense for at least a decade if the next Congress summons the China, Russia, and others, the primary purpose of armed forces is to ingenuity to make entitlement reform politically palatable. In intimidate and punish nearby states that resist their influence. They fact, the termination of subsidies for Obamacare exchanges are concerned neither with preventing aggression halfway around would by itself cover the cost of rebuilding our military. the world nor with leading the fight against terrorism. To project The constant-dollar value of the defense budget is the sole metric power across the globe, the U.S. requires air, land, and naval forces according to which American military spending is historically with unique expeditionary capabilities—the carrier fleet being just high. In the decade after 9/11, the Pentagon’s base budget (exclud- one example. Thus, comparing the overall size of the U.S. military ing the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan) grew by almost and its budget with that of potential adversaries is of limited use. 50 percent in real terms—a rate of growth not seen since the height Although peerless armed forces may provide the foundation for of the Reagan administration’s buildup. Yet those additional dol- U.S. global leadership, their affordability is an entirely separate lars bought much less than they did in the 1980s. Contrary to the question. For defense analysts, there are three yardsticks for mea- claims of politicians and journalists, the culprit was not waste, suring affordability. First is the constant-dollar value of the fraud, or abuse, but simply the rising cost of goods and services, defense budget; by that measure, today’s defense budgets are rel- especially manpower, in an increasingly wealthy economy. atively high. The other two are defense spending as a percentage There are three basic categories of spending within the De - of GDP and as a percentage of the federal budget; by both of these fense Department’s budget: pay and benefits for both uniformed measures, defense spending is near its all-time low. In the 1950s, personnel and the department’s civilian work force; the cost of the size of the military budget was staggering. It accounted for operations and maintenance (O&M), which covers things such half of all federal spending, or between 9 and 10 percent of U.S. as troop training, vehicle repairs, and fuel; and investment,

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which includes the purchase of new equipment and weapon sys- But in the mid 1990s, procurement spending fell back to its tems, as well as research-and-development costs. mid-1970s nadir of about $60 billion per year in today’s money, Of these three categories, pay and benefits consumes the or about 40 percent of its Reagan-era peak. This period became largest share of the Pentagon budget. When Congress ended the known as the “procurement holiday.” Even though procurement draft and established an all-volunteer force in 1973, the U.S. mil- spending rose after 9/11, it never approached the Reagan-era itary assumed the task of attracting servicemen, a decision that peak, topping out at $114 billion in 2010 (adjusting for inflation), helped transform the demoralized force of the post-Vietnam and much of that new spending had to compensate for the pro- years into the global benchmark for military professionalism— curement holiday. Today, the Abrams tank and its Reagan-era but which, unsurprisingly, has been very expensive. siblings are still the mainstays of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. According to a study by the American Enterprise Institute and These weapon systems have all been retrofitted with newer tech- the Bipartisan Policy Center, total pay and benefits for the troops nology, but they are aging platforms that belong to a previous rose by 60 percent in real terms from 1980 through 2012, even generation. And, as with personnel and operations costs, a dollar though the number of troops fell by 25 percent. A report commis- today does not buy as much in matériel as it did 30 years ago. sioned by the Pentagon considered similar numbers from a dif- ferent angle: In 1982, enlisted personnel had about the same median income as civilians with comparable levels of experi- F the Pentagon now gets less bang for every buck, does re - ence and education; by 2009, the median income for enlisted building the military inevitably require more bucks? Or can personnel corresponded to the 90th percentile of income for austerity wring the inefficiencies out of an organization comparable civilians. The rise in the cost of compensation has knownI for its wasteful habits? been especially sharp in recent years because Congress expanded There is a genuine need for reform at the Pentagon. But the belief health-care benefits for retired military personnel at a time when that common sense alone can generate a windfall is little more than the cost of health care was growing rapidly. In 2000, the an artifact of Reagan-era myths about the Pentagon’s $600 toilet Pentagon spent a little more than $20 billion per year on health seats and $435 hammers—which were just that: myths. care; now it spends almost $50 billion per year, or about 10 per- The real barriers to reform are congressional politics, legitimate cent of its total budget (both figures are in constant dollars). concerns about fairness, and the extraordinary complexity of de - Altogether, the per capita cost of compensation for uniformed veloping cutting-edge technology in the public sector. And personnel has risen 76 percent since 1998, according to an analysis even if all of these reforms came to fruition, the savings would not of the 2015 defense budget by the Center for Strategic and come close to paying for the investment the U.S. military needs. Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). In April 2015, 38 defense experts from across the political And in addition to supporting the troops, the Department of spectrum sent an open letter to the Pentagon and Congress Defense must compensate its roughly 750,000 civilian workers. emphasizing the urgent need for reform. The letter highlighted That cost $69.6 billion in current dollars in 2015, about a 25 per- three priorities for action: closing unnecessary bases, paring back cent per capita increase in real terms since 1998. In total, military the civilian work force, and reforming the military compensation and civi lian compensation cost the Pentagon $245.5 billion last system. The letter warned: “Reforms in these three areas will not year, or 49.4 percent of its annual budget. be easy, painless, or popular.” They will also not be sufficient. Over the past 70 years, the cost of operations and maintenance has The Department of Defense still has excess real estate as a risen, too. CSBA’s analysis of the 2015 defense budget observes that result of the rapid downsizing of the 1990s. As the letter points O&M costs per troop “have grown steadily since the end of World out, five rounds of base closures have led to recurring annual sav- War II at an annual rate of 2.6 percent above inflation.” Over the ings of $12 billion—but the closures ended ten years ago and past 20 years, “the growth has trended higher at a rate of 2.9 percent there is substantial resistance on Capitol Hill to restarting them. annually.” In other words, O&M spending has grown at a rate Understandably, most congressmen are loath to see good jobs in roughly similar to that of the U.S. economy as a whole. This should their districts put on the chopping block, despite research show- not be surprising, since goods and services cost more in wealthier ing that many communities thrive after a local base closure. economies. Although a marginal reduction of O&M cost growth Everyone agrees that there are too many civilians working at the may be possible, that growth will continue and should be accepted Pentagon, but no one is sure which ones are superfluous. The num- as part of the cost of having adequate armed forces. ber of Defense Department civilians has already begun to come What isn’t consumed by the cost of personnel and operations down from its 2011 peak and Congress is pursuing further cuts, may be spent on investment, the third major category of expendi- but they are likely to be gradual at best. ture. Investment is essential to maintaining an edge over potential In the field of compensation reform, Congress actually made sub- adversaries. But despite substantial growth in the defense budget stantial progress last year, yet without generating short-term savings from 2001 through 2011, the growing cost of personnel and oper- that could be used to rebuild the force. Acting on the recommenda- ations restricted how much was available for investment. tions of an independent commission of experts, Congress agreed to During the Reagan buildup, funding for procurement—i.e., replace a portion of the Pentagon’s defined-benefit pension plan the purchase of new equipment and weapon systems—increased with tax-free 401(k)-style individual retirement accounts. The from $85 billion to $169 billion in today’s money. The Abrams department will match contributions to these accounts on a dollar- tank, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the Apache helicopter, and the for-dollar basis up to 5 percent of an individual’s income. However, Blackhawk helicopter became the mainstays of the Army; the concerns about fairness mandated the inclusion of a grandfather Air Force purchased a fleet of F-15 and F-16 fighters while clause so that no currently serving personnel would have their pen- developing the B-2 stealth bomber; and the Navy added 90 new sion plan changed without their consent. Thus, savings will accu- ships and the first of a fleet of F/A-18 fighters. mulate only as new recruits replace their departing predecessors.

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The next major target for compensation reform is the military while delaying the development and acquisition of up-to-date health-care system. But the process of reform is unlikely to be weapon systems. The result is a consensus among the most senior much simpler, either technically or politically, than reforming officers in each of the military services that their troops can no health care in the country as a whole. The CBO estimates that the longer execute the country’s defense strategy. At a hearing before Pentagon could save as much as $10 billion per year if it no the Senate Armed Services Committee in January 2015, then–Army longer allowed retired military personnel to purchase health chief of staff General Ray Odierno reported that “readiness has been insurance at a steep discoun t (for as little as one-sixth the cost of degraded to its lowest level in 20 years. Today we only have 33 per- similar coverage in the private sector). Yet taking benefits away cent of our brigades ready to the extent we would expect them to be from those who served their country is extremely unpopular in if asked to fight.” Then–chief of naval operations Admiral Jonathan the halls of Congress, especially because retired service mem- Greenert said, “Our contingency-response force, that’s what’s on bers are a vocal and well-organized constituency. call from the United States, is one-third of what it should be and The defense-policy bill for 2016 also included fairly aggressive what it needs to be.” The Air Force chief of staff, General Mark legislation, championed by Senate Armed Services Committee Welsh, said that if his airplanes are like cars, “we currently have chairman John McCain, to decentralize control of the weapons- twelve fleets of airplanes that qualify for antique license plates in the development-and-acquisition process in order to prevent cost state of Virginia,” emphasizing: “We must modernize our air force.” overruns, such as those that have plagued the new F-35 stealth In the years after the Berlin Wall came down, the size of the fighter and Ford-class aircraft carriers. Calculating the savings U.S. Army fell rapidly, from 770,000 active-duty soldiers to just associated with such reforms is extremely difficult, however, 482,000. It rose to 560,000 because of the wars in Iraq and since cost overruns that never happen are like Conan Doyle’s dog Afghanistan but is now being cut to 450,000 soldiers and may that didn’t bark. Six years ago, Congress passed another set of have to fall as low as 420,000 becau se of the BCA. The percep- acquisition reforms whose implementation received positive tion that the Army’s job is to fight unpopular guerrilla wars has reviews from the Government Accountability Office. Yet the made it an attractive target for cuts. Take away the hammer, Congressional Research Service cautions that the impact of the according to this school of thought, and we won’t be tempted to reforms “may not be quantifiable until the next generation of strike too many nails. Yet Americans have a dismal record of weapon systems [is] in production.” anticipating when and why their country will require dominant One last reform under way is the Pentagon’s painfully slow ground forces. The First and Second World Wars, as well as the effort to improve its bookkeeping so that the Department of De - Korean War, the Gulf War, and the invasion of Afghanistan, all fense can perform a proper audit. While this should generate came as surprises. Right now, the Army is not just too small— some savings, there is little reason to expect that they will be Gates recommended 520,000 soldiers—but also far behind on its substantial. All in all, reforms, while necessary, can generate requirements for training and its plans for modernization. only a fraction of the capital necessary to rebuild the U.S. mili- When the Wall came down, there were 566 ships in the Navy tary after the deprivation of the past five years and the wear and battle fleet, a number that had fallen to 318 by September 11. Now tear of more than a decade of fighting terrorism. it stands at 276 and will continue falling if the BCA remains on the books—even though there is a bipartisan consensus that the fleet should have at least 300 ships, and probably more. One of the costs he real problem is not at the Pentagon, but in Congress, of having too few ships, despite incessant demand, is that deploy- which passed the Budget Control Act and “sequestration” ments have gotten longer, wearing out both the ships and their despite their obvious detriment to our defense capabilities. sailors. On aircraft carriers, F/A-18 fighters with an expected life TSequestration refers to the automatic and indiscriminate cuts that span of 6,000 flying hours are staying in the air for 8,000, 9,000, or go into effect if Congress appropriates more than is allowed by the more. The current situation will worsen without new investments. Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011. In practice, there are two sets The Air Force also has to contend with a fleet whose maintenance of spending limits enshrined by the BCA. The first set of limits cut costs are rising along with its age. The average F-15 is now more defense spending by about $50 billion per year for a decade, or than 27 years old, almost the age of the average pilot. Although old $487 billion in total, compared with what Secretary Gates requested planes can be patched up and modernized, there is no way to give in 2011. The BCA also stipulated that if a special “super commit- them stealth technology or advanced networking capabilities. The tee” could not identify an additional $1.2 trillion of savings over ten one plane that has those capabilities is the in-development F-35, years, an even lower set of spending limits would come into effect, which has been plagued by cost overruns and technical delays. Yet requiring an additional $495 billion of cuts to the defense budget those are sunk costs. The only question now—for the Navy and over the life of the act. In total, the BCA has resulted in almost $1 Marine Corps as well as the Air Force—is whether the country trillion of defense cuts. will pay to give its aviators a next-generation fighter. Since 2011, various negotiations have restored about 10 percent of those cuts; for example, the Obama–Boehner budget deal of last November, which revised the BCA caps upward modestly, restored UR large-scale military unpreparedness cannot be $25 billion to the 2016 defense budget and will permit a $15 billion addressed by the reforms the Pentagon is already pursu- addition in 2017. Yet while such revisions can slow the erosion of ing. When conservatives find themselves at a crossroads, military preparedness—a necessity in light of growing threats— theyO often ask, “What would Reagan do?” In this instance, the they are not sufficient to do what military leaders agree must be answer is clear. A return to Gates-level defense budgets is the first done: rebuild the force. step to reversing our military decline. In light of the current pres- To implement the cuts mandated by the BCA, the Pentagon has ident’s pursuit of foreign and defense policies worthy of Jimmy been forced to reduce the size and readiness of the armed forces Carter, a return to Reaganesque principles is due.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2:

“I ally the most famous man in the know what it is they call the change world, okay? I’m a major major voter. Mr. Manafort Paul has told me celebrity and that’s something you’re this informations. What I want to not getting with anyone else, and NSA Intercept know is what your plan? What your UNIDENTIFIEDwhen I tell you MALE that IVOICE have it#2: all han- plan? A lot of money I am spending on dled I mean it.” you and right now I see Chachi only UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #1: “Stop Begin extract: and your daughter selling her dresses with the bashing of NATO.” UNIDENTIFIEDand more nonsense MALE and no VOICE progress #1: “Okay, Static.25072016 Voices. 08:49GMT and it is angry. Very angry.” first, the NATO thing is what you guys UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #1: UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2: are telling me. It’s we’re taking “What’s angry?” UNIDENTIFIEDEstonia this MALE and we’reVOICE #2: grabbing UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #1: Hungary that and—” “Hello?UNIDENTIFIED Is this thingMALE on? VOICE Can #2:you hear “What?” “This me, Commander?” UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE “You #2: is later for! This is later the plan! “Da, said, ‘It is angry.’ What is angry?” Election after! Not for now saying to da. You are coming into my device UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #1: the people! Brain damage you have! UNIDENTIFIEDvery well. Please MALEcontinue VOICE with your #1: “What? What is angry?” UNIDENTIFIEDHead use! Why MALEam I necess VOICEary #1: to report.” say this?” “What?”Garbled off-mic voices. UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2: “Well, okay, first I’d like to say it’s “You’re not being very nice to me.” all going basically superb. It’s a top- UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2: class convention and you wouldn’t “Paying you am I! Monstrous sums for believe the bounce we’re getting. “No. It the bankruptcy to avert! I ask a simple Historic bounce. Unreal. And look at is not angry. I am angry. I am angry. I task in repayment—just become the UNIDENTIFIEDthe polls! I’m even MALE with VOICE Crooked #2: amUNIDENTIFIED very angry. MALEWhat isVOICE the money #1: for president in the White House. Why Hillary! Isn’t that—” to you we are giving? What?” makeSound this of chuckling. so hard you insist?” UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #1: UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2: “The “Don’t.” money for to you . . . ? I’m lost. Sorry.” UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #1: UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2:“Don’t Hey, fat man, run for the pres-“We what?” giveident you office money, now yes? Lots of money.Yes, “Sorry. “This WeBoss, say, but will cost No I just love the way you talk. There was thing. This thing you say, with the matter the cost, we, andwill youhelp say,you with UNIDENTIFIEDthis cartoon, ‘Boris MALE and VOICE Natasha #2: .’ And Crooked Hillary and the other non- the money and the things, and you we need say, and I could swear—” UNIDENTIFIEDsense. Please just MALE be VOICEbeing the#1: facts to the leaks from Party of Democrats “I do be giving, da?” e-mail computer files not know this cartoon. I am worried “Okay. Okay, nice money for me thank you about other cartoon. Cartoon I pay lot Jeez.UNIDENTIFIED Just showing MALE myVOICE enthusiasm #2: please , and you say, UNIDENTIFIEDof money to. Cartoon MALE who VOICE cannot get #1: here.” his popularity above 50.” “It is , but then I see troubles with UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2: irritating, this enthusiasm. I have lim- the polls and people liking you not at “Again. Not nice.” ited time. I am busy running a country all and I think maybe this fat man is “Not here and thinking about Estonia and not the fat man I needed. Maybe I nice you think? You don’t know what wasting my time you are just now needed the man with the hair or the is not nice. What I will say to you, doing. Just to please tell me how you manUNIDENTIFIED with the MALEother VOICEthing #1:or maybe what you will hear is your own words, are going to address the issue with the the very fat man—” if you do not do what has been asked UNIDENTIFIEDvoters and the notMALE liking VOICE you #1:that they UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2:“Okay, and paid for. I will say, You. Are. Fire. are enacting.” first, I never called you ‘Boss.’” ThatSound is ofwhat chuckling. I will say.” “You “Is talk funny, okay? It’s weird, but okay. importantUNIDENTIFIED not! MALE Plan VOICEwhere #1: is? Plan UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #1: Look, I have it all under control. We where is?” do a little bit of hating-her stuff, then “I call “Sorry. we also get the ones who are out of you ‘Commander’ and it’s sort of It’s just funnyEnd to me.”extract work, and then appeal to the change semi-serious. But okay. Simmer voter, which is what they call—” down. Simmer down. I am quite liter- 3 4 | www.nationalreview.com AUGUST 1 5 , 2 0 1 6 lileks--READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 10:35 PM Page 35

Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS DNC Hacks Get Hacked

IKI EAKS O L dumped a ton of hacked e-mails T : T?m Fithins-Dwibble, Director of Men’s Outreach ROM from the Democratic National Committee, F : DWS W UBJECT and you can search for terms that tell you S : re: Bernie Bros which donor electrocuted his horse for I appreciate the fast turnaround but re: sports—need insurance money. Only one did this, as far as I can tell. So something more traditional. Male cheerleaders for Vassar what? Mitt Romney probably electrocuted a horse on the lacrosse team good idea but looking for something with roof of his car and gave it cancer, and the horse also lied chest hair and gasoline-related—see if Planned Parenthood about WMD in Iraq. Good riddance. sponsors NASCAR. The e-mail disclosuresJeopardy! led to the resignation of Debbie P.S. Sorry about the name I had you down for transitioning Wasserman Schultz, a humorless, hectoring hack who’d be next month. the last question in the category of Unbearable O Florida Politicians if it weren’t for Alan Grayson. You don’t T : DWS ROM have the time to plow through all the e-mails, so here are F : [email protected] ISCLOSURE UBJECT some excerpts I noticed. D : After many hours of S : how dare you reading these tedious exchanges, it’s possible I’m halluci- I hear from people you are planning to attack me and say nating and making these up. They could be fake, but as Dan I do not believe in an all-wise, bene volent creator with a Rather reminded us after he saved Brian Williams from glorious beard and a love for all humanity. If so you are vile Serbian sniper fire during Hurricane Katrina, some things and this is beneath you. I do believe in Marx. are fake but accurate. O T : HRC O ROM T : Chip Jawson (nbc.com) F : DWS ROM UBJECT F : Nigella Fructos-Abuella, DNC Media Relations S : Felt the Bern UBJECT S : suggested changes We have a leak in the organization. Someone in the Many thanks for sending your Justice Dept. investigation Democratic National Committee is communicating with story before it goes online. We have some concerns which we one of the candidates. I suspect Troy in IT. He is always hope you will address; most of our objections can be fixed if angry and has a beard and tattoos—actually, I think he has you just do a search for “investigation” and replace with “par- a tattoo of a beard. I am going to send out an e-mail to the tisan fishing expedition.” inner circle that says we are planning to say “Feel the Bern” The first paragraph, which discusses the private-server is insensitive to people with urinary-tract infections. Will issue, should be moved down six paragraphs and replaced keep you in the loop. with a story (attached) about Mrs. Clinton sharing Internet cat O videos with refugee children in a spontaneous moment of T : DWS ROM human interaction. F : HRC UBJECT Thanks! Hope to see you at the lake this weekend for the S : Innocuous yoga-related e-mail official DNC Fishing Expedition. While stretching today and strengthening my core I thought we should use “Feel the Burma” to emphasize my foreign- O T : Tim Fithins-Dwibble, Director of Men’s Outreach policy success in Myanmar. I could say “He wants you to feel ROM F : DWS the Bern, but I say we should feel the Burma.” I think a video UBJECT S : Bernie Bros of this put on the YouTube would get viral!! Huma agrees. Tim—we have polling that shows HRC helped by attacks O from male Sanders supporters, b/c it underscores the fact that T : Everyone in party ROM she is a woman and is threatening to the patriarchy (I was just F : Jim-Bob Smershovich UBJECT talking about this with HRC, Huma, Loretta, and Valerie). We S : survey need to show some men support HRC too b/c they respect Please to be saying hello to you-all Americans in our fine strong women. Can you make some ads and make a buy on and democratically organization that is about the future and some sports websites? Thanks. also the inequality of the incomes. This is to give the head- up about a survey you will be receiving about the DNC O T : DWS Internet satisfaction. It is to judge password for strength, ROM F : T?m Fithins-Dwibble, Director of Men’s Outreach because password should be strong, and respected. So UBJECT S : re: Bernie Bros enter password for test. The survey is to be from the com- Media buy complete—samples attached! pany, Cageybee.ru. Mr.P.S. Lileks Pls blogs note at www.lileks.com. name change; am now nonbinary gender You will be automatically entered to win a kombucha colonic, so take the survey. You’ll be vlad you did! P.S. That should be “glad”—stupid auto-correcting. 3 5 books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 7:50 PM Page 36 Books, Arts & Manners

An Eroded 2012 miniseries earned himself the couraging workers to bring their broth- cognomen “Crazy Jim,” no mean feat in ers and cousins out from Kentucky. Culture the context. This was good for the firms and also From this dysfunctional milieu, J.D. good for the workers, in terms of what HELEN ANDREWS managed to work his way to Ohio State modern social science would call their and Yale Law School, by way of a stint “non-cognitive skills.” A man is less in the Marines. He has since served as likely to slack off or quit on a whim if law clerk to a U.S. senator, clerk to a he knows it will reflect badly on the district-court judge, executive at a bio - uncle who got him the job. Family- tech firm, and contributor to this maga- based hiring systems fell foul of federal zine. The purpose of his memoir, he anti-discrimination law, and the old says, is to explain the factors that make bonds of morale and mutual supervi- it so difficult to escape the redneck ghetto sion have gone with them. in places like his hometown of Middle - Efforts to boost homeownership town, Ohio, as well as the factors that have had the perverse effect of immo- made it possible in his case. bilizing families who might have Poor whites need as many tribunes moved to better job markets if they’d Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir, by J. D. Vance like Vance as they can get, the way had a lease instead of a mortgage. (Harper, 272 pp., $27.99) things have been going for them. Section 8 housing vouchers make it dif- Mortality rates for middle-aged white ficult for families on the cusp of middle- Americans have risen since the turn of class stability to limit their exposure to the millennium, fueled by suicide, drug poverty and its pathologies—as Vance D ANCE S Born. . V Fighting’ memoir belongs on overdoses, and liver disease, as well as learns when Mamaw’s neighbor regis- a shelf with Senator Jim Webb’s heart disease and diabetes. The illegiti- ters the house next to hers to accept as an intelligent macy rate for whites is close to 30 per- Section 8 vouchers, and his new tenants and vivid exploration of Scots- cent. There are towns in the Midwest immediately enliven the neighborhood Irish culture in the United States. That’s where more than a third of working-age with late-night fighting and obvious not a very long shelf, to be sure. The men are employed less than 20 hours a drug use. Scots-Irish aren’t ones for book-learnin’, week. These signs of distress have One reason many white working- much less book-writin’. Country singing gone neglected as LGBTQ identity class communities are so demoralized and fighting, in uniform and otherwise, politics and Black Lives Matter antics now, relative to periods when their are more their style. Since the first have monopolized the attention of the material conditions were worse, is that proto-hillbillies came over from Ulster Acela corridor. their cultural resources have been erod- in the 18th century, their contributions To the extent that white-trash ed, in many cases by government pro- to American preaching, generalship, and America’s troubles figure at all in the grams. It is not just that welfare has Jprofessional wrestling have outpaced national conversation, the suggestion has replaced delicate networks of mutual their contributions to American letters. been that they have only themselves to aid. Licensing requirements for foster Which is surprising, since the Scots- blame. If these bitter clingers get outhus- parents have made it difficult for Irish offer the would-be prose chronicler tled for low-skill jobs by immigrants who extended families to take in relatives no shortage of colorful material. can’t speak English, then that just goes to from troubled homes. Squadrons of Take Vance’s family, who might have show what poor-quality workers they social workers and therapists have been happier being less colorful. His were in the first place. If China is out- undermined the ethic of self-reliance mother is a drunk withHer five ex-husbands competing them in global trade, well, the and tough love that once gave hillbillies who, by the end of the book, has made free market doesn’t give prizes for effort. the grit to see through hard times. “I the jump to heroin. mother, Mamaw, As Kevin D. Williamson has written in didn’t know she had a therapist or the who more than anyone else raised this magazine: “The truth about these money to afford one,” Vance reflects young J.D., got pregnant at 13 back in dysfunctional, downscale communities is when his mother invites him to join her the holler and once lit her own husband that they deserve to die. . . . Nobody did for a session to address his “anger prob- on fire. Papaw was a Vance, of the this to them. They failed themselves.”Hillbilly lems.” Chances are she wasn’t the one Kentucky Vances, who distinguished ElegyBut government bears some share of footing the bill. Alas, in her case as in themselves in the feud between the Hat - the blame, as the reader of others, training in the therapeutic fields and the McCoys—indeed, the will notice. To take an underap- vocabulary only serves to make her HelenVance Andrews played is a byresearcher Tom atBerenger the Centre forin the preciated example: Many Rust Belt more adept at coming up with excuses Independent Studies in Sydney, Australia. factories (including Middletown’s own for her behavior.

3 6 | www.nationalreview.com Armco Steel) long had family-based Perhaps poor white America’sAUGUST 1 5prob-, 2 0 1 6 employment programs, actively en - lems are not entirely their fault af ter all. books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 7:50 PM Page 37

Still, the solutions lie in their own should prioritize Usha and figure out a hands, surely. “What they need isn’t career move that actually suits you.” The analgesics, literal or political,” William- Vance and Usha later married. (Think son argues. “They need real opportunity, of that next time someone accuses the which means that they need real change, Tiger Mother of caring only about Seduction of which means that they need U-Haul.” worldly success.) Could mobility be the answer for com- The second thing that Vance’s com- Benedict munities like Vance’s? munity needs, apart from frank instruc- Was it the answer last time? In the tion in basic life skills, is church—real era of Harry M. Caudill’s 1963 book church, not the vague affiliation with Arnold Night Comes to the Cumberlands, the Christianity that most of them have right JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON poor whites of Appalachia moved to now. “Th e only conservative Protestants better opportunity in droves—hence I knew who attended church regularly the Dwight Yoakam ballad of Kentucky were my dad and his family,” Vance emigration, “Reading, Writ ing, and writes (he means his dad’s new family Route 23.” It worked for a time, but as with the woman he married when J.D. Vance explains: “Now they struggle to was four). Even Mamaw, who read the escape Middletown, too. That’s be- Bible most nights, “couldn’t say ‘orga- cause the problems so prevalent in nized religion’ without contempt.” In Jackson [Ky.] have slowly crept into the book, Vance contrasts his father’s the communities of people who left Pentecostal strictness unfavorably with Vance concludes, ‘These problems of Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict family, faith, and culture aren’t like a Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, by Rubik’s cube, and I don’t think that Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking, 448 pp., $30)

solutions (as most understand the term) UST about the only thing most Americans know about Benedict really exist.’ Arnold is that he was a traitor, Appalachia.” Nothing magical in the Mamaw’s more relaxed attitude to gays the turncoat par excellence of Ohio dirt prevented Vance’s mother and rock music, but the reader can’t help JAmerica’s founding. Today, his name is from cycling through abusive noticing that Pentecostalism works for synonymous with “trait”or. boyfriends or driving her car into a his dad in a way that lone-wolf faithi- Beyond that, we tend to know as little tree. Even Vance himself, when he ness doesn’t work for his other relatives. about Arnold as we do about the rest of made it to New Haven, soon realized It actually succeeds in giving him per- the American Revolution. To the extent that his physical relocation would sonal fulfilment and a framework for that it is still taught in schools, the War have to be followed by considerable healthy relationships. Something for of Independence is presented as a rather mental adaptation. future missionaries to rural America to tidy affair. The Founders issued the His greatest guide in that process, keep in mind. Declaration of Independence, George after the Marine Corps, was Yale Law None of this amounts to a policy Washington and his army spent a hard professor Amy Chua. Like the Marines, agenda, as Vance well realizes. “People winter at Valley Forge and then crossed Chua assumed maximum ignorance in sometimes ask whether I think there’s the Delaware, there was an exchange of raw recruits like Vance, who as a first- anything we can do to ‘solve’ the prob- musket fire and cannonry at Yorktown, year law student did not even know he lems of my community,” he concludes. and that was that. A new nation was was supposed to wear a suit to job “But these problems of family, faith, and born: Happy Fourth of July. interviews. Chua clearly has a gift for culture aren’t like a Rubik’s cube, and I The reality is of course more compli- social-capital crib notes. Her notorious don’t think that solutions (as most cated—and vastly more compelling. book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother understand the term) really exist.” The American Revolution was anything (2011) also laid out in plain English Donald Trump begs to differ. As the but tidy, and the war was unlike any things that high-achieving meritocrats Scots-Irish and the rest of the white previous military conflict. It was a already knew but considered it gauche working class continue to be the subject world war that lasted more than eight to articulate. Her bluntest and best of debate in the run-up to the November years, spanned two oceans and three advice to Vance was not to take a election, they can be grateful that a voice continents, involved four European clerkship that, while prestigious, lay as eloquent as Vance’s has emerged to powers, and saw the largest deployment outside the path of his specific ambi- give a firsthand account of their world. of ships and troops ever assembled by tions: “This clerkship is the type of In the absence of a Jim Webb veep pick, thing that destroys relationships. If it’ll be the best thing to happen for them Mr. Davidson is a senior correspondent for you want my advice, I think you this summer. The Federalist.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

the British Empire. From it emerged a Arnold’s transformation from trusted congressmen who wanted to replace wholly new form of government, pro- patriot to unrepentant traitor. Washington with General Gates in the claimed by a fledgling and fractious But Arnold is not the only villain in aftermath of the British occupation of republic clinging to the edge of a vast this story. The revolution was rife with Philadelphia. “They dare not appear unsettled wilderness. men whose ambition for wealth and openly as your enemy,” wrote one of In the middle of all this was Bene - prestige took precedence over their coun- Washington’s friends; their strategy dict Arnold, a war hero who earned the try’s interests. Congress was plagued by instead would be “to throw such obsta- title “American Hannibal” for his dar- favoritism as delegates routinely put cles and difficulties in your way as to ing but unsuccessful assault on Quebec their particular states, and their friends, force you to resign.” Dispersing the early in the war. He went on to distin- above the interests of the army and the cabal would be a matter of patience guish himself as a patriot and valiant war effort. and perseverance—qualities that battlefield commander willing to risk Washington was commander-in-chief Washington had already demonstrated everything for victory. In the end, of of the Continental Army, but Congress in his dealings with a meddlesome course, he convinced himself that the reserved the right to appoint generals. Congress and his waging of a defen- real enemy wasn’t Britain but his fellow As Philbrick notes, “the inherently polit- sive war against a vastly superior Americans, who were tearing the coun- ical selection process had created a list British force. try apart. As far as Arnold was con- of generals that even John Adams had to Even as the Conway cabal raged, cerned, he betrayed his country to save admit was of exceptionally inferior Washington’s army would nearly starve it from itself. quality.” To make matters worse, by to death at Valley Forge because of No contemporary author is better suit- 1777 Congress had adopted a quota sys- Congress’s unwillingness and inability ed to reintroduce readers to this high tem that allotted only two major gener- to give it adequate provisions. It’s a

Arnold is not the only villain in this story. The revolution

was rife withMayflower men whose ambition for wealth and prestige dramaIn thanthe HeartNathanieltook of the Philbrick. Seaprecedence Author als to overeach state. their Since Connecticut, country’swonder interests. that Washington endured such of the award-winning books Arnold’s home state, already had two terrible treatment from civilian over- and , Philbrick major generals, Congress denied him a seers and managed to keep his army has a knack for cinematic depictions and promotion that nearly all his contempo- together; a lesser man would have either dramatic pacing, and he uses these to raries agreed he had earned by his battle- resigned in disgust or declared himself great effect in his new book. field conduct. He was to see himself emperor and taken what his army needed The Revolutionary War, writes Phil - passed over in favor of five less accom- by force. brick, wasn’t just a rebellion against plished brigadier generals. Or he would have done what Arnold Great Britain; it was also a civil war “so Outraged, Arnold wrote to Wash- did: conclude that the country’s experi- widespread and destructive that an ington that he viewed the non-promotion ment in freedom had failed and that the entire continent was seeded with the “as a very civil way of requesting my only way to restore peace and order dark inevitability of even more devastat- resignation.” In a letter to General was to help the British win the war. ing cataclysms to come.” Along the Horatio Gates, Arnold was less re - Indeed, the country was barely holding ragged edge of British-occupied New strained. “When I received a commis- itself together in 1778 and 1779. No York, “where neither side held sway, sion of brigadier I did not expect state wanted to pay for anything out- neighbor preyed upon neighbor in a Congress had made me for their sport, or side its borders, which meant that the swirling cat-and-dog fight that trans- pastime, to displace, or disgrace when- Continental Army, viewed with increas- formed large swaths of the Hudson ever they thought proper,” he wrote. “If ing suspicion and disdain by state legis- River Valley, Long Island, and New this plan is pursued no gentleman who latures, was perpetually underfunded. Jersey into lawless wastelands.” It was has any regard forwhim his reputationand caprice will The national government barely existed. the same along stretches of the New risk it with a body of men who seemed Local militiamen were thought by some England coast, where Viking-style raids to be governed by .” to be the true patriots, but in reality by alternating boatloads of patriots and Arnold may have been brave on the many of them were nothing more than loyalists harassed towns and villages. battlefield, but he was also impetuous local thugs hired to harass and intimi- Then there was the espionage. The and egotistical. Washington was just the date citizens, especially wealthy ones, British and the Americans both devel- opposite, which is why he was able to whose loyalties were suspect merely oped vast spy networks, and, much like defeat the Conway cabal. Although because of their class. raiding coastal villages or joining a band never quite a full-blown conspiracy, the Nowhere was this more apparent of highwaymen, spying held out the cabal, named after an Irish-born briga - than in Philadelphia, where Wash -

promise3 8 of handsome| www.nationalreview.com payments—an dier general from France named Thomas ington appointed ArnoldAUGUST to be military1 5 , 2 0 1 6 inducement that would play a part in Conway, was a faction of officers and governor after the British withdrew in books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 7:50 PM Page 39

Unjust Takings

MATTHEW J. FRANCK

The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain, by Ilya Somin (Chicago, 336 pp., $30)

Benedict Arnold HAPPEN to agree with it 100 percent.” That was Donald Trump, speaking to Fox Kelo v.News City of anchor New London Neil Cavuto the summer of 1778. Arnold was sym- ordinary act.” Arnold decided, with several months ago. The “it” in question pathetic to the plight of the city’s much encouragement from his young was , a 2005 wealthy denizens, in part because that wife, that he would tip the balance of decision in which the U.S. Supreme year he began courting Peggy Shippen, the war in favor of the British, first by Court gave its blessing to a local govern- the daughter of a prominent suspected obtaining command of the crucial ment’s seizure of private homes so that loyalist. (He would marry her a year fortress at West Point and then by sur- commercial-real-estate developers could later.) When American forces took con- rendering it. Arnold viewed himself as bulldoze them and build something in trol of the city, thousands of citizens singlehandedly restoring peace and their place in the name of “economic who had spent the winter outside order to his beloved country and be - development”—leading, the city hoped,Kelo Philadelphia poured back in, and they lieved that, if he succeeded, he would be ‘Ito higher tax revenues. had little sympathy for those who had hailed as a hero. It is no wonder Trump loves the stayed behind during the British occu- Philbrick writes that Arnold consid- ruling. As a real-estate developer who pation. Many residents were suspect- ered himself “the leading personage in has ingratiated himself with local ed of fraternizing with, if not aiding, the drama that was his life” and that, in authorities who can serve his interests, the enemy. The city, writes Philbrick, contrast, “Washington’s sense of right he has exploited an expansive definition “was at the vortex of an increasingly and wrong existed outside the impul- of eminent domain—traditionally, the rancorous struggle involving almost sive demands of his own self-interest.” power of government to force the sale of all the seminal issues related to creat- Washington believed that to break the private property for public use—for his ing a functioning democratic republic, rules or fail in his duty would, in his own projects. Just ask Vera Coking, who issues that would not begin to be own words, renderto himself “lost to my fought the State of New Jersey’s effort resolved until the Constitutional Con - ownin character.” Arnold, says Philbrick, to seize her home in Atlantic City and vention of 1787.” was “not lost his own character, but turn it over to Trump for a limo parking When mostly trumped-up charges lost it.” lot next to his Trump Plaza casino-hotel. were brought against Arnold by state Philbrick’s achievement is not just to Vera Coking won her case in a New authorities looking to make an example shed light on the traitor’s character. He Jersey court. Not so fortunate were Susette of him for cozying up to the city’s also illuminates a singular time in Kelo and a half dozen other homeowners upper class, it pushed him over the American history, when the fate of the in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of edge. Temporarily unable to walk country depended on the ability of men New London, Conn. They were swept up GETTY IMAGES / because of an injured leg—another such as Washington to resist the tempta- inMr. an Franck ambitious is the director “redevel of the Williamopment” E. andproject unappreciated sacrifice for his coun- tion to put their ambition ahead of their Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the try—Arnold concluded, writes Phil - honor. In the end, it was a close-run Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in STOCK MONTAGE brick, that “he must do what he had thing. As General Gates’s adjutant would Princeton, N.J.

SPONSOREDalways done: BY Nattackation ahisl Re venemiesiew Insti tandute later write, “a state of revolution i s the 3 9 redeem himself through a single, extra- most seducing on earth.” two page Caribbean 2016 cruise AUG 15 ISSUE_Panama cruise.qxd 7/26/2016 12:21 PM Page 1

THE NATIONAL REVIEW Sailing November 13–20 on Holland America’s Nieuw Amsterdam 2016 Post-Election Cruise PLEASE JOIN Victor Davis Hanson, Sheriff David Clarke, Heather Higgins, Steven Hayward, Dinesh D’Souza, Bing West, Jonah Goldberg, Andrew McCarthy, John Podhoretz, Kevin Williamson, Neal Freeman, John Yoo, Richard Allen, James Lileks, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Eliana Johnson, Charles C. W. Cooke, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jim Geraghty, Katherine Timpf, John J. Miller, John Hillen, David French, Reihan Salam, Rob Long, & Charmaine Yoest as we visit Ft. Lauderdale, Half Moon Cay, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, & Key West

oin us on the National Review 2016 Post-Election moviemaker Dinesh D’Souza, best-selling author and pol- Caribbean Cruise, certain to be the conservative event icy expert Steven Hayward, pro-life champion Charmaine of the year. Featuring an all-star Yoest, conservative legal expert John Yoo, Jcast, this affordable trip—prices start NRO editor-at-large Kathryn Jean Lopez, at $1,999 a person (based on double Commentary editor John Podhoretz, former occupancy), and just $2,699 for a sin- NR Washington Editor and Buckley expert gle—will take place November 13– Neal Freeman, NR senior editors Jonah 20, 2016, aboard Holland America Goldberg, Jay Nordlinger and Ramesh Line’s beautiful MS Nieuw Amsterdam. Ponnuru, NR essayists David French, From politics, the elections, the Charles Cooke, Kevin Williamson, and presidency, and domestic policy to eco- Reihan Salam, NR Washington Editor nomics, national security, and foreign Eliana Johnson, NR columnists Rob Long affairs, there’s so much to debate and and James Lileks, ace political writers Jim review, and that’s precisely what our Geraghty and John Miller, and culture- conservative analysts, writers, and scene reporter Kat Timpf. experts will do on the Nieuw We’re expecting over 500 people to Amsterdam, your luxury getaway for fas- attend. They’ll enjoy our exclusive event cinating discussion of events, trends, program, which will include eight scintil- and the 2016 elections. SHERIFF DAVID CLARKE lating seminars featuring NR’s editors and We’re thrilled to annonce: Milwaukee SIGNS ON AS SPEAKER! guest speakers; two fun “Night Owl” ses- County Sheriff David Clarke will be sions; three revelrous pool-side cocktail joining our terrific line-up of speake rs, receptions; late-night “smoker” featuring superior H. which will also include historian Victor Davis Hanson, ter- Upmann cigars (and complimentary cognac); and intimate rorism and defense experts Richard Allen, Bing West, dining on at least two evenings with a guest speaker. Andrew McCarthy, and John Hillen, Independent All that and more will take place over a spectacular Women’s Forum chairman Heather Higgins, conservative week of world-class cruising on the beautiful and luxuri- ous Nieuw Amsterdam, which JOIN U S FOR SEVEN BALMY DAYS AN D C OOL CONSERVATIVE NIGH TS will sail a Western Caribbean DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT itinerary that includes Ft. SUN/Nov. 13 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 4:00PM evening cocktail reception Lauderdale, Grand Cayman (always an ideal place to MON/Nov. 14 Half Moon Cay, Bahamas 8:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminar “Night Owl” session snorkel—you must visit Sting Ray City, or catch the other TUE/Nov. 15 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars rays on Seven Mile Beach), WED/Nov. 16 Georgetown, Grand Cayman 8:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminar Half Moon Cay (Holland evening cocktail reception America’s private island, THU/Nov. 17 Cozumel, Mexico 11:00AM 11:00PM morning seminar late-night Smoker home to a most pristine blue lagoon and tons of fun), FRI/Nov. 18 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars “Night Owl” session Cozumel (your gateway to the Mayan ruins at Tulum), and SAT/Nov. 19 Key West, FL 8:00AM 5:00PM afternoon seminar evening cocktail reception Key West (with its beaches, beaches and beaches—and of SUN/Nov. 20 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 7:00AM Debark course lime pie). two page Caribbean 2016 cruise AUG 15 ISSUE_Panama cruise.qxd 7/26/2016 12:21 PM Page 2

RATES START AT JUST $1,999 P/P! THE CONSERVATIVE EVENT OF

THE YEAR — DON’T MISS IT! Nieuw Amsterdam Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and great entertainment await you on the . Prices And for those times when we are “at sea,” or you feel like are per-person, based onNational double Review occupancy, and include port staying on board, the Nieuw Amsterdam (need I say it offers fees, taxes, gratuities, all meals, entertainment, and admittanceo t andC participationategories C t o in N all 17-younger: $ 567functions. 18-up: Per-person $ 748 well-appointed, spacious staterooms and countless amenities, ratesCa forteg third/fourthory VC person17-younger: in cabin (by $ age617 and 18-up: category): $ 798 and hosts a stellar staff that provides unsurpassed service and Categories SS & SA 17-younger: $ 670 18-up: $ 851 sumptuous cuisine?) has a classy, terrific spa, a must-attend DELUXE SUITE Magnificent quarters (from 506 sq. Culinary Arts Center, exceptional evening entertainment, ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge, per- pools, luxury boutiques, plenty of nooks and crannies to hide sonal concierge, complimentary laundry/dry- in with a good book, and, oh yeah, a casino! cleaning service, large private verandah, con- vertible king-size bed, whirlpool bath/show- NR’s 2016 Post-Election Cruise will be remarkable, and er, dressing room, large sitting area, DVD, affordable. Prices start as low as $1,999 a person, with mini-bar, refrigerator, safe, much more. “Single” cabins starting at only $2,699 (in many cases our Category SA rates are lower than we charged in 2012!). And they can go DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,899 P/P even lower: Get a friend or family member to reserve a cabin SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 7,599 (a single or a couple who are first-time NR cruisers), and SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (from 273 you’ll receive an additional $100 discount (and so will they). sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed If you’ve always wanted to go on an NR cruise but could (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool bath/shower, never pull the trigger, couldn’t send in the application, chick- large sitting area, TV/DVD, mini-bar, refriger- ator, floor-to-ceiling windows, safe, and ened out, for whatever reason, you’ve just got to give in. Make much more. the National Review 2016 Post-Election Caribbean Cruise the one where you finally yes. You will not regret that deci- Category SS DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,799 P/P sion: Take the trip of a lifetime with America’s preeminent SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,999 intellectuals, policy analysts, and political experts. Reserve your cabin online at www.nrcruise.com. Or call The Cruise DELUXE OUTSIDE Spacious cabin (from 213 sq. ft.) Authority (M-F, 9AM to 5PM EST) at 800-707-1634. features private verandah, queen-size bed (Single and worried you’ll be a fifth wheel? Don’t: About a (convertible to 2 twins), bath/shower, sitting area, mini-bar, TV/DVD, refrigerator, third of our contingent, a most happy and welcoming crowd, and floor-to-ceiling windows. are single travelers.) Category VA Come. You’ll be glad you did. We’ll see you—in the compa- DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,899 P/P ny of Sheriff David Clarke, Victor Davis Hanson, Bing SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,299 West, Heather Higgins, Steven Hayward, Richard Allen, John Yoo, Dinesh D’Souza, Jonah Goldberg, Andrew LARGE OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters (from McCarthy, John Podhoretz, Neal Freeman, James Lileks, 174 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to Kathryn Jean Lopez, Eliana Johnson, Charles Cooke, 2 twins), bathtub/shower, sitting area, TV/DVD, large ocean-view windows. Kevin Williamson, Jay Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jim Geraghty, Jillian Melchior, Rob Long, John J. Miller, Category C Charmaine Yoest, David Fr ench, Reihan Salam, and Kat DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,399 P/P SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,299 Timpf—this November 13-20 aboard the Nieuw Amsterdam on the National Review 2016 Post-Election Caribbean Cruise. LARGE INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters (from 151 sq. ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twins), shower, For more information or to apply online go to sitting area, TV/DVD.

www.nrcruise.com Category J or call The Cruise Authority at DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 1,999 P/P SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,699 1-800-707-1634 Carribian 2016_appl_carribian 2p+application_jack.qxd 5/4/2016 1:14 AM Page 1

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better

near a former naval installation, a project upheld a scheme that, in Somin’s words, these local properties to use, it is that local authorities evidently hoped “forcibly displaced some five thousand not plausiblepublic to call the resulting trans- would become a new corporate home for African Americans and transferred the fer from private owner A to private the Pfizer pharmaceutical corporation, property they lived on to Bermanwhite real- owner B a Kelouse. which would be attracted by a wholly new estate developers,” in the name of “alle- The good news, then, if we may call mix of office buildings, conference and viating urban ‘blight.’” In , the it that, is that was decided not hotel facilities, and upscale housing. Most Court unanimously deferred to legisla- unanimously but only over the objec- of the owners of the desired properties tive judgment of what constitutes “public tions of very strong dissents by Justices consented to sell their properties, how - use.” With “blight” understood as a public O’Connor (joined by Rehnquist, Scalia, ever reluctantly. Kelo and the others who evil, and the transfer of blighted property and Thomas) and Thomas (writing for resisted fought their case all the way to to new owners who will improve it himself alone). Their cogent argu- the Supreme Court, and lost in a 5–4 understood as a public good, all that is ments about the almost-anything-goes squeaker, whose details, legal implica- necessary is to say that whatever serves approach to the public-use requirement tions, and aftermath are comprehensively the public good, however understood by taken by Justice John Paul Stevens, in treated by Ilya Somin, a professor at the those charged with seeking it, is a “pub- his majority opinion, helped to fan the AntoninThe Scalia Grasping Law Hand School at George lic use” that can justify the property’s flamesKelo of public outrage that erupted in Mason University, in his aptly titled new condemnation and seizure through emi- response to the ruling. In the decade book, . nent domain. since , public awareness of eminent- The case turned on the question of From “blight,”Hawaii the Court Housing moved Authority on, to domain abuse has increased dramatically, what “public use” means in the Fifth thev. Midkiff breaking up, 30 years later, of a landed and some states have taken positive Amendment clause reading, “Nor shall “oligopoly,” in steps, either in their legislatures or private property be taken for public use, (1984). Here the seizure of through popular referenda, to rein in this without just compensation.” Somin great tracts of land, concentrated in the often destructive power. Kelo

The good news, if we may call it that, is that was decided not unanimously, but only over the Keloobjections never quite explains how natural it isof handsvery of a fewstrong owners, was dissents held to be . And the lawsuit (along with the that this clause, with its conjunction constitutionalMidkiff simply by virtue of its subsequent campaign to reverse it or at “nor,” should be placed immediately planned future resale to former tenants. least to contain its effects) was itself after the clause that says no person too was a unanimous decision, made possible only through the efforts of “shall be deprived of life, liberty, or with the opinion by Justice Sandra Day public-interest litigators working pro property without due process of law.” O’Connor offering a capacious under- bono, in this case the lawyers of the There was already, at the time of the standing of “land reform” as satisfying Institute for Justice (IJ). Somin rightly Founding, a well-established under- the public-use requirement. praises their research, their development standing that no “due process of law” Few people in comfortable circum- of compelling legal arguments, and their could compel the direct transfer of prop- s tances will notice the plight of poor city persistence on behalf of clients of mod- erty from one owner to another—even dwellersMidkiff thrown out of their homes by a est means who would otherwise have with compensation, let alone without. “blight” designation, and the details of been unable to sustain the costs of years From a general legal principle that theKelo case did not attract much of litigation. It’s a model that was pio- particular property owners shall not be attention in the rest of the country. But the neered in the last century by the ACLU directly dispossessed even by govern- case presented something different. and the NAACP but that has more ment decree, the power of eminent Here were modest but well-kept homes in recently flowered in specialized advocacy domain carves out an exception when a decidedly unblighted neighborhood— organizations on the conservative and the property is fairly paid for and put to not run-down tenements owned by libertarian side, including the IJ, the “public use,” either owned thereafter as slumlords or great estates whose few Alliance Defending Freedom, the Becket government property (e.g., as a road, owners dominated an entire communi- Fund for Religious Liberty, and the park, courthouse, etc.) or, if in private ty’s market in land. Here the notion of Pacific Legal Foundation. There are hands, used in such a way as to serve or public-good-as-public-use would have times when litigation shops such as these benefit the community (as in a private to be stretched to include nothing more can seem like people who have hammers grist mill, railroad, or gas pipeline). justifiable than the intersecting ambi- (in this case, lawsuits claiming rights) in Somin thoroughly explains the unfor- tions of local developers (to turn a prof- their hands and see a world full of nails. tunate expansion of the “public use”Ber - it) and local public officials (to augment ButThe many Grasping times aHand nail is decidedly a nail, requirementman v. Parker that took hold by the mid their treasury with increased tax rev- and a hammer is just the thing.

SPONSORED20th century. BY InNa itstio 1954nal R erulingview I ninst itute enue). Whatever one might say about is part journalism,4 3 , the Supreme Court whether “economic development” put part jurisprudence, and part public-policy books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 7:50 PM Page 44

BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS

Kelo Rights analysis. Somin demonstrates how pow- is not enough. Congress and the president erful the arguments against are may act as rivals, but they may also col- from any originalist standpoint in consti- Before lude for mutual advantage. Fulfilling the tutional law, and even how powerful Constitution’s republican promise re - they are from several of the most promi- Government quires something more, a third branch of nent perspectives that might be taken of government, the judiciary, with the obli - a “living Constitution.” Despite all the JONATHAN H. ADLER gation to enforce these limits and ensure stated goals of developers and local gov- that the government acts only withinMarbury per- ernments, property seizures for private missiblev. Madison bounds. As the great chief jus- development ventures frequently pro- tice John Marshall explained in duce more harm than good, with costly , the judiciary, when called displacements, homeowners receiving upon in a proper case, has a solemn obli - less compensation than they would will- gation to say “what the law is” and to rec- ingly accept in a free market, jobs that ognize that “a legislative act contrary to were promised not materializing in the the Constitution is not law.” promised numbers, distortions of the Most debates about constitutional law policymaking process through rent- focus on what the Constitution means, seeking behavior, and the exacerbation what it prohibits and what it requires. of class inequalities. Our Republican Constitution: Securing the Liberty Barnett asks us to focus also on “the On virtually any measure of justice, and Sovereignty of We the People, by Randy E. proper role of judges in enforcing that such uses of eminent domain are dubi- Barnett (Broadside, 320 pp., $26.99) meaning,” and to question the wide- ous at best. And that’s when they actually spread embrace of judicial deference work out more or less as intended. In his and restraint. discussion of the Fort Trumbull case, The idea that the judiciary has an obli - N Somin shows the real human costs to his important new book, gation to constrain the democratically Susette Kelo and t he other homeowners Randy Barnett—a GeorgetownThe Volokh elected branches is not always a popular there—and the disastrous results of the Con spiracyUniver sity law professor and my one. For much of the 20th century, legal aborted development project, which has fellow blogger at scholars on both the left and the right left behind only Keloa wasteland inhabited —reminds us that the have called for judges to defer to demo - by stray cats. Constitution did not create a democracy: cratically elected branches, much as And what of ’s aftermath? Ten It sought to constrain democratic im- Presi dent Obama urged the Supreme years on, as Somin shows in copious pulses and was, in many key respects, Court to heed the will of a “majority of a detail, the record of reform is mixed. quite undemocratic. democNFIBratically v. Sebelius elected Congress” when The people, the legislatures, and the By invoking the idea of a “Republican the Affordable Care Act was challenged judiciaries of some states—but by no Constitution,” Barnett means to call our in . means all—have undertaken by referen- attention to key features of the docu- Barnett challenges this view. The idea dum, legislation, or interpretation of ment’s structure and design, features that of judicial restraint is not a product of the state takings clauses to constrain the Iare often glossed over in contemporary Founding or of the original understand- ways in which property may be seized in debates about “judicial activism” and ing of the Constitution so much as it is an the name of a “public use.” Some of “judicial restraint.” The Constitution, as invention of the Progressive era. As these efforts have made a substantial written, is undemocratic in that it seeks to Barnett observes, “progressives gave us difference, others only a marginal one, blunt the exercise of majoritarian power. the concepts of ‘judicial restraint’ and still others hardly any difference at all. It does this by dividing and limiting gov- ‘deference’ to the majoritarian branches” Throughout this skillfully assembled ernment power so as to constrain the abil- so as to counteract judicial resistance to book, Somin has his cards face-up on ity of political majorities to enact their their ideological program. the table. In his view, not only an “eco- will; the purpose of these limits is to pro- Although initially advanced by pro- nomic development” but even a more tect the natural rights of the people. The gressives, the idea of judicial restraint restrictive “blight” rationale for the separation of powers makes it difficult to was subsequently embraced by conserv- transfer of property from owner A to enact new laws, and the enumeration of atives, largely in reaction to the Warren owner B is a violation of the Consti- powers limits the ways in which the fed- Court’s excesses. They diagnosed the tution. But he is scrupulously fair eral government may act. problem as one of judicial power rather throughout to every constitutional per- The Constitution is not self-enforcing, than of judicial decisions unmoored spective on these questions, and scrupu- however. The division of power between from history or text. Both progressive lous too in his weighing of every policy a legislative and an executive branch may and conservative proponents of judicial variable, every interest at stake, and serveMr. Adler to islimit the inaugural the power Johan of Verheij each, Memorial but this restraint have embraced what Barnett every measure of reform that might be Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve calls the “Democratic Constitution,” a taken. The story of the use and abuse of University School of Law. His latest book is constitutional ideal that sees “We the eminent domain is an unfinished one. Business and the Roberts Court. People” as a collective and presupposes

But4 4 this is the book| www.nationalreview.comfor understanding that government precedesAUGUST the rights1 5 , 2 0of 1 6 the story so far. individuals. From this premise, the idea books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 7:50 PM Page 45

that judges should defer to democratic judges as agents of these citizens have a false promise of judicial restraint in majorities follows. Yet as a matter of law judicial duty to critically assess whether favor of more-direct engagement with a and history, Barnett argues, the theory of the legislature has improperly exceeded its judge’s duty to say what the law is and a Democratic Constitution has it back- just powers to infringe upon the sovereign- enforce constitutional limits on govern- ward and is “inconsistent with the most ty of We the People.” What this means in ment power. As such, it is a welcome cor- basic premises of the Constitution.” practice is that judges must carefully scru- rective to the reflexive call for deference Barnett’s alternative vision, of a tinize legislative enactments, operating and legislative supremacy. “Republican Constitution,”as individuals is based on under the premise that sovereign individu- The book is also timely. Today we live the recognition that ultimate sovereignty als would not delegate to the government not so much under a “Democratic Con - resides “in the people .” any authority to impose unreasonable and stitution” as under a bureaucratic one. Consistent with the understanding of the unjustified restraints on individual liberty. The idea that courts should stand aside to Constitution’s framers—and the text they In other words, a “rational basis” test must, let the majoritarian branches work their adopted—the “Republican Constitution in practice, actually consider whether a will has given way to the idea that the views the natural and inalienable rights given law has a permissible rationale: political branches may delegate their of these joint and firstequal come sovereign rights indi-and Judges must force government officers to power to unaccountable agencies that, in thenviduals comes as governmentpreceding the formation of governments, so .” The Constitution, as written, creates a republic that restrains government power, The Constitution creates a republic for the protection of liberty, as much as it facilitates its exercise. While creating a that restrains government power, for framework for necessary government the protection of liberty, as much as it action, the constitutional structure is also supply reasons for restrictions on individ- turn, are due the same degree of defer- designed to frustrate the exercise of such ual liberty and, wherefacilitates such are lacking,Our be itsence exercise. from the judicial branch. This marks power and constrain the ability of politi- willingRepublican to strike Constitution laws down. an even greater betrayal of the Consti - cal majorities to work their will. Fidelity Although Barnett is a libertarian, tution’s vision, and a greater threat to the to the Constitution requires fealty to both is not a libertar- liberty it is meant to protect. When the of these purposes and, above all, to the ian book. Embracing Barnett’s prescrip- bureaucratic imperative is combined Constitution’sMarbury text. tions does not require embracing the with the Democratic Constitution’s As Chief Justice Marshall counseled in libertarian conception of the Constitution doctrines of restraint, the result is judi- , the whole purpose of a written thatRestoring Barnett the has Lost advanced Constitution in some of his cial abdication and a betrayal of our constitution is to fix limits on government other work (most notably, his 2004 book Constitution’s real premise. power. When judges ignore the textual ). To say By itself, a resurgence of our Re - limitations on government power, this is that judges must enforce the text and publican Constitution may not be enough not judicial “restraint” so much as judicialthe structure—and ensure that enacted laws to restore American constitutional govern- abdication.law that governs As those Barnett who explains,govern us the contain some minimum rationality—is ment, but it would be a tremendous start. Republican Constitution “provides not to authorize unconstrained judicial This book therefore merits wide reader- and activismOur Republican but to expect Constitution judges to be active ship and careful consideration. It starts a it is put in writing so it can be enforced within specified bounds. conversation about the nature of our against the servants of the people.” If is a lucid Constitution and our country that is des- changing conditions suggest that constitu- and powerful call for judges to reject the perately needed and long overdue. tional constraints should be altered, it is not for judges to make these alterations ANTE MERIDIEM but for the people to act through the for Ivy amendment process. Until that point, judges are obligated to enforce the Con- What I desire in the morning stitution by its terms, even if it means is the music of guitar, its pottery-dull notes rejecting the work of democratic majori- knocking knees in the lower strings ties and elected representatives. and in the upper notes a skittering like Barnett’s theory endorses adherence to the black-capped chickadee that surfs the wind the original public meaning of the constitu- rushing through our hedge, tional text and judicial fealty to the textual limits on government power contained planting its claws like fingers across therein. Perhaps more controversially, the little fretless board of a branch and Barnett argues that it also requires greater plucking spiders’ eggs for breakfast. judicial scrutiny of government action that —TED GILLEY is not directly constrained by the text. As

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Film New-Style Culture War

ROSS DOUTHAT

M Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, and Leslie Jones in Ghostbusters ’ old enough to remember the days when culture-war contro- versy about a movie or a TV Saturday Night Live show usually involved some Ghostbusters transgressive, taboo-busting scene or the ideological war over the new, all- has a gonzo energy plot or character—a bare buttock! a gay female . as their team’s gearhead, Andy Garcia kiss!—provoking boycotts or protests BridesmaidsThat war brokeSpy out as soon as the has some fun as the mayor of New York, from family-values conservatives. Maybe movie was announced, with Paul Feig of and Chris Hemsworth is fabulous as the that still happens: The Reverend Donald and directing and his dumb-as-rocks studmuffin they hire to Wildmon’s American Family Association comedic leading ladies, Kristen Wiig answer phones. is still technically in business, after all. and Melissa McCarthy, stepping into the But the story doesn’t have a single But the world has changed, the old taboos ghostbustingmen shoes of Bill Murray and truly inspired idea. Like every summer are all gone, nobody pays attention to Dan Aykroyd. Apparently many people blockbuster these days, the movie con- Ireligious moralists, and we have a new (manyGhostbusters , I should stress) feel very, spicuously lacks a second act, and then it kind of controversy now. very, very attached to the Murray degenerates into predictable and endless In the new-model culture war, shows —a great movie, a fun CGI-laden fight scenes that by summer- and movies and singers don’t get in trou- movie, but not a movie I can entirely movie standards now look ridiculously ble for transgressing the bounds of Judeo- understand obsessing over. But obsess it cheap. (Feig seems to have attempted to Christian decency. They get in trouble seems they do: Turning the story over to recreate the look and feel of the original’s for sins against political correctness: for a clutch of chicks (not the only c-word FX, though presumably at a zillion times cultural insensitivity and inappropriate that would be hurled their way) was just the cost.) Apart from some heavy-handed appropriation, for inadequate representa- a bridge too far, and soon a wave of truly references to its own controversial sta- tion of various minorities, for promoting toxic hate greeted every online mention tus—online trolls taking cheap shotsThe at “rape culture” and ratifying traditional of the movie. Simpsonsour heroines, a pudgy villain who resem- gender roles, and so on through the social- GhostbustersAt which point it was time for the bles the Comic Book Guy from justice catechism. Hit productions can social-justice apparatus to fight back. —the movie never makes any- make theirGame nudity of andThrones violence as graphic became a cause célèbre, a thing interesting or novel out of its gen- as they want, but an awkward is-it-rape? chance to stick it to the fanboys, an der switch, and never deploysSpy its scene on Girls or the absence opportunity to prove that gender doesn’t professed feminism to any real artistic of a major black character from Lena matter and ghostbusting is for every- end (unlike Feig’s last movie, , in Dunham’s will launch outrage, one—all the genders and races and sexu- which McCarthy’s chubby CIA desk think pieces, tweetstorms. alities and identities. When the movie jockey–turned–superspy was actually a All this ideological policing, in turn, finally arrivedGhost busters this month, the critical clever commentary on the Bond genre’s has provoked a backlash from the reaction made it very clear: You must see gender politics). realms of fan culture that has spread the new , you will personally Yet despite the wan mediocrity of the like kudzu across the Internet. This dismantle a piece of the patriarchy when movie, the controversy rages on. Indeed, backlash often gets tagged as “right- you buy a ticket, and if you help boost its as I write this, Yiannopoulos has been wing,” and in a sense it is—but again, opening-weekend numbers high enough, banned from Twitter for allegedly encour- not in any traditional-values, pastors- the tears of the fanboys will be just so, so aging the prolonged online abuse of on-their-soapbox sort of way. As a re - very delicious. Leslie Jones, the very tall black comedi- sponse to PC it offers performative And all this controversy, all this sound enne who plays the token black female vulgarity, misogyny, and bigotry; it’s and fury, for a film that is, at bottom, just Ghostbuster. much more Trumpian than traditionalist. a nothingburger: a minor, intermittently It would be hard to come up with a bet- Indeed, the world of Trump support- funny, inoffensive reboot, and just another ter distillation of all that’s wrong with pop ers and anti-PC culture warriors over- disappointingGhostbusters summertime example of culture, its fans, and its critics. The rut of laps, most notably in the person of Milo Hollywood’s creative drought. big-budget reboots, the pulsing obses- Yiannopoulos, the gay alt-right provo- The new isn’t truly terri- sions of fanboys, the critics as an arm of COLUMBIA PICTURES cateur. And Yiannopoulos has been bl e, because at least its cast is good at Team Progressivism—it’s all here.

prominently4 6 involved| www.nationalreview.com in the latest, comedy. McCarthy and Wiig always Where have you gone,AUGUST Donald1 5Wild, 2 0 1- 6 most depressing pop-culture conflict: have good chemistry, Kate McKinnon of mon? A nation turns its lonely eyes . . . books_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/26/2016 7:50 PM Page 47

stolidly studying their Fodor’s. In the red- even if the bench seats two, precluding, City Desk sauce joints, Dino sings “Volare” to empty with an artfully extended leg, company. upholstered booths. The Chinese restau- Nature is something we choreograph, Abandoned rants draw their families, but the round- tranquility something we fight for. eyed culture-noshers are MIA. As you cannot miss the feeling that the Empty though the city seems, don’t city has been evacuated, so you come to try anything stupid; points of egress and recognize and watch for the signs of ingress for beachgoers are off-limits. In (partial) repopulation. The young man almost 40 years I have been to the marching into the lobby with a bag of Hamptons only twice, the Jersey shore golf clubs slung over his back, li ke a pil- once; Penn Station and the Holland grim’s cross. The young women with Tunnel should be avoided religiously. But tans, the unfortunate young women with in the summertime other venues of des- sunburns. The couples, weary from fun, peration and mayhem take on an air of exercise, and the long drive back, stand- calm. The big shows at the big museum ing by their idling curbside SUVs, con- are pleasant; you can actually read the text sidering how many trips it will take to RICHARD BROOKHISER panels, you can see the art without look- bring up the luggage and their child. ing through someone’s hair. The rush- Outside the university housing, the rum- HE road was wide enough to hour cab stake-out—looking for one ble of wheeled linen carts groaning with have accommodated four vehi- going the way you want, looking for one furniture and appliances as children and cles abreast. For wayfarers on going perpendicular to the way you want, parents prepare to acquire life lessons and foot there were paths on either looking for one going in the opposite spend $60,000, respectively. side.T The line of the road was straight as an arrow, a marvel of engineering; drains at intervals, another far-sighted innovation, The center of the largest city in the carried the runoff of downpours to the sea. The buildings in which the natives country can turn itself into a lived, empty now, were large enough to hold dozens of families. These too were ghost town. straight-edged, made of cut-stone blocks direction in case the cabbie is willing to In a few months—whoops, make that a or bricks. Where only a few rock pigeons make a U-turn—is simplified: hand up, few weeks—everything will be back to now flap, one has to imagine the scenes of wait at most a couple of light changes, boisterous normal. Fall openings, plays, vanished activity: farmers bringing their your chariot awaits. At the gym there are concerts. Diplomats returning to the big produce to market, couples with children empty exercise bicycles, and you don’t diplomat box. Playoff wild-card slots van- and tame dogs, peoples from every even have to sit next to someone bellow- ishing out of reach. The presidential cam- clime—Negroes from below the Sahara, ing on his smartphone. paign slipping into high gear (God help yellow-skinned Asians, redheads from Why do we flee the place we flocked us). Kids at the high school, security distant Britain. to? What do we dislike about the life guards on the sidewalk allowing (or not It is a New York street in the summer. we love? City-dwellers came here for allowing) morning latecomers to sneak in, The center of the largest city in the motion, impact, conjunction, disparity. If shooing them to the subway after they country can turn itself into a ghost town. all they needed for happiness was a lawn, burst out at the end of the afternoon. The magician flings open his gloved a car, and a swimming pool they could Traffic jams, dark clothes, local apples (if hand: The coins you put there are sud- have stayed where they were born. But coming from 90 miles away is local). Cool denly gone. The great emptyings out are they needed something else, and now air, noise in the night, bustle. over the Fourth of July and Labor Day: that they have it they need, at least peri- There is one other time the city can be Summertime, baby! then, Summer’s over! odically, to desert it. See how they transformed. It does not come as pre- But every dog-day weekend sees an exo- fetishize the places in the city that are dictably as the doldrums of summer, but dus, and even during the week, when stur- unlike it. Where once stood a women’s when it comes, it comes to equal effect. dy Americans are supposed to be earning prison, next door to a Gothic courthouse That is with 15 or 20 inches of snow. our secular/Puritan marks of election, that is now a library, there is a fenced Commerce and government call it quits. unlike effete and socialized Europeans, garden, maybe a third of an acre. A brick Every car sits in its own igloo. Even dogs there is a noticeable thinning out. A young path circles through the plantings that and their owners stay inside. What do man told me that when Bernie Sanders enclose a tiny lawn; at intervals, like the sparrows do, there is nothing for them to gave a speech in Prospect Park on the eve hours on some otherworldly clock, are scavenge. Here and there, a few lights: in of the primary, you could get into any benches. It is the bower of bliss in the apartment windows; neon from delis; traf- restaurant in Brooklyn. Now it’s as if city that never sleeps. Yet even here ener- fic lights, signaling to no one. Boundless Sanders is orating somewhere every night. gy leaks in. The flowers are as groomed and bare, the lone and level snows stretch Your favorite Brazilian place supports a as red-carpet celebs, and the benches far away. The only thing moving is some perimeter of customers at its outdoor are always occupied, sharp-eyed city well-wrapped man on cross-country skis, tables, but inside only a few foreigners sit, dwellers having staked them out and, striding up the road.

SPONSORED BY National Review Institute 4 7 backpage--READY_QXP-1127940387.qxp 7/27/2016 2:48 PM Page 48

Happy Warrior BY DAVID HARSANYI Liberated Warrior

SHOULD confess that it’s become increasingly hard for speech that was built on notions of limited government or I me to find topics that satisfy the objective of a column individual freedom. The man mentioned the words “liberty” named “Happy Warrior.” “Angry Warrior,” perhaps. or “freedom” exactly once in a swirling 75-minute word “Dejected Warrior,” maybe. “What-in-the-Holy-Hell- salad—and only in the course of promising to make free Do-You-People-Think-You’re-Doing? Warrior,” definitely. trade less free. “I, and I alone,” a messianic Trump ex - Keeping up good cheer? Well, the struggle is real.Mr. claimed, can save America from a regime of job-stealing And the Republican National Convention did nothing to globalism and rampant criminality that, in reality, not a sin- lift my sagging spirits. Surely I can’t be alone. Trump’s gle person in that auditorium actually lives under. acceptance speech, with its halting blasts of authoritarian After listening to him and the parade of glum speakers rage aimed at an imaginary dystopia, sucked much of the featured at the convention—there was not a Happy Warrior light, joy, idealism, and intellectualism out of conservatism. in the entire lot—I decided to read through some transcripts But, as one of the most popular Trumpian radio hosts likes of Ronald Reagan’s speeches. They are not all as cheery as to say, let not your heart be troubled! At least, not completely. admirers may romanticize, but most of them are full of So before I wash down this Zoloft with my last swig of rhetoric that champions community, freedom, and merit— vodka, let me point out that it’s an invigorating and freeing making them significantly different from the aggrieved, experience to be part of the principled counter-revolution. victimized tone of today’s Republican party. There can be real joy in it. Yet the truth is that many thousands of Republicans stood My working theory is that this newfound freedom among and cheered for Trump. Millions more will enthusiastically conservatives is what most enrages Republicans who vote for him. Many in the Republican-entertainment com- accuse Never Trumpers of treachery. As the president of the plex—once allies of the cause—helped make this possible Susan B. Anthony List unintentionally revealed last week, by normalizing his autocratic language and corrupting the anger directed at Ted Cruz’s “Vote Your Conscience” their own stated values to comport with his. It is also true convention speech wasn’t merely about a lack of partisan that a great many blue-collar Americans, and other tradi- unity. “Why is he the only one who gets to be pure?” she tional conservative constituencies, agree with Trump’s wondered aloud. unsympathetic depiction of American life. They are angry. A good Republican is now someone who stands athwart But one can acknowledge their anxieties without trying to history, yelling “Fall in line, you traitors. We did!” exceed their fury. She’s wrong, of course. You too can be pure. This can be The great social critic Robert Nisbet once defined conser- Year Zero. This is creative destruction. It is punk rock. It is vatism as the “protection of the social order—family, neigh- the ultimate do-it-yourself project. The chance to grow a borhood, local community, and region foremost—from the movement from the ground up. Consider it a startup. ravishments of the centralized political state.” If you agree Hey, it’s going to be a blast huddling with the entire mem- even broadly with this definition, you probably understand bership of the New Federalist party in the quiet car of the that conservatism is, more often than not, on the defensive, NYC-bound Acela for our inaugural convention in 2020. pushing back against modernism and utopianism and social- (Mollie Hemingway for president, y’all!) Unless, that is, ism and authoritarianism and a whole bunch of other -isms Trump wins and we find ourselves brushing up on our con- and stupid ideas. It will rarely get the credit it deserves. versational Russian at the Laura Ingraham Center for When William F. Buckley Jr. launched this magazine with Quality Thought in gorgeous West Palm Beach, Fla. Either its statement of defiance, for example, conservatism was in way, it’s a fight worth having. even worse shape than it is today. “We must bring down the Happy Warriorism will be unique moving forward. Be - thing called liberalism,” Buckley wrote a few years later, cause, let’s face it, this election cycle has seen our dis- “which is powerful but decadent, and salvage a thing called course—never what one might call salubrious to begin conservatism, which is weak but viable.” with—devolve into an ALL-CAPS Twitter tirade festooned Buckley and Reagan—among others—injected a wit and with exclamation points. intellectual dynamism into a fossilized party of genuine I have to admit, it was perplexing to watch a self-styled liberal-establishment typ es. Today’s conservative holdouts visionary such as Newt Gingrich refer to Cruz’s non- have a similar task. It is not to adopt Pollyannaish rhetoric endorsement of Trump—a speech filled with positive con- or avoid hard criticisms of the corruption of our political servative idealism and principled constitutionalism—as system—neither of those men engaged in that sort of self- “chilling” but describe the GOP nominee’s gloomy, regres- delusion. To the contrary. Nor does it mean aping the poli- sive rhetoric as “Reaganesque.” cies and rhetoric that were successful half a century ago. How can this be? After all, Donald Trump doesn’t even The idea that citizens are helpless without a strongman or Mr.pretend Harsanyi to beis a conservative. senior editor of The There Federalist was almost. nothing in his the state to lift them is cheerless and depressing. The American ideal of liberty is still a joyous and idealistic one. We can’t give up on it. 4 8 | www.nationalreview.com AUGUST 1 5 , 2 0 1 6 base_new_milliken-mar 22.qxd 7/11/2016 2:23 PM Page 1

At a High School Conference at the Reagan Ranch...

Your Teenager Can Walk in President Reagan’s Footsteps and Learn Conservative Ideas You can send your child to visit life will expand his or her knowledge Ronald Reagan’s California ranch of economics, American history, to learn about the 20th Century’s personal responsibility, and President greatest president. What better way Reagan’s lasting accomplishments to celebrate freedom than by walking through a series of innovative in President Reagan’s footsteps lectures, discussions, and briefings. and learning about the ideas he For dates and information, and to championed? register a student for this invaluable, At a Young America’s Foundation historical experience, please contact High School Conference at the Young America’s Foundation’s Reagan Ranch, the student in your conference director at 800-USA-1776.

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“The Vietnam War need not have been lost...”

4(%,/34-!.$!4%/&(%!6%. The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam Geoffrey Shaw, Ph.D. GO DINH DIEM, the fi rst president of the Republic of NVietnam, possessed the Confucian “Mandate of Heaven”, a moral and political authority that was widely recognized by all Vietnamese. This devout Roman Catholic leader never lost this mandate in the eyes of his people; rather, he was taken down by a military coup sponsored by the U.S. government, which resulted in his brutal murder. Based on his research of original sources, including declassifi ed documents of the U.S. government, military historian Geoffrey Shaw chronicles the Kennedy administration’s betrayal of this ally, which proved to be not only a moral failure but also a political disaster that led America into a protracted and costly war. Along the way, Shaw reveals a President Diem very different from the despot portrayed by the press during its coverage of Vietnam. From eyewitness accounts of military, intelligence, and diplomatic sources, Shaw draws the portrait of a man with rare integrity, a patriot who strove to free his country from Western colonialism while protecting it from Communism. LMH-H . . . 350 pages, Sewn Hardcover, $24.95

'EOFFREY3HAW 0H$., received his doctorate in history from the Uni- versity of Manitoba, with a focus on US diplomatic and military history in Southeast Asia. He was an Assistant Professor of History for the American Military University for 14 years, and has written and spoken widely about US military involvement in Vietnam and the Middle East. /RDERONLINEATADISCOUNT
6ISITWWWIGNATIUSCOM Also available as an e-book

02!)3%&/2 THE LOST MANDATE OF HEAVEN

“A candid account of the killing of Ngo Dinh Diem, the rea- “A remarkable book that fi nally sets the record straight with sons for it, who was responsible, why it happened, and the disas- copious documentation on the assassination of Diem, which was trous results. Particularly agonizing for Americans who read this ultimately responsible for our loss of the war. A must read.” clearly stated and tightly argued book is the fact that the fi nal ADMIRAL JOHN M. P OINDEXTER U.S. Navy (ret.), Vietnam defeat was not really on battle grounds, but on political National Security Advisor to President Reagan and moral grounds. The Vietnam War need not have been lost. “Finally, a serious, well-researched, and objective historical Overwhelming evidence supports it. “ work that lays bare the myths and falsehoods surrounding JAMES V. S CHALL, 3*, President Diem. Shaw has produced a truly monumental and Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University highly readable account. Any serious student of the “This masterpiece will likely emerge as the defi nitive work on Vietnam War must read this book.” this troublesome subject. An exceedingly well-written and en- COLONEL ANDREW R. F INLAYSON, U.S. Marine Corps (ret.), gaging read, replete with signifi cant revelations and exposés.” Author, Killer Kane WILLIAM L. S TEARMAN, P H.D., Director of the National “A remarkably detailed, well-researched, and Security Council’s Indochina staff, 1973–1976 well-written book about President Diem. It took half a “Amidst a new time of national strategic misdirection and century for someone committed and brave enough to unravel hubris, the case of Diem demands to be revisited. the Machiavellian plot to kill him.” This book is essential reading.” NGHIA M . V O Director of Saigon Arts, Culture, THOMAS A. M ARKS, P H.$., and Education Institute (SACEI) Author, Maoist People’s War in Post-Vietnam Asia

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