Ponnuru on Romney Long on Paul Fund on Haley ON

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January 23, 2012 $4.99 O’SULLIVAN THE IRON LADY Ponnuru on Romney Long on Paul Fund on Haley ON

TheThe RiseRise ofof RickRick ROBERT COSTA ON SANTORUM’S ASCENDANCE

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JANUARY 23, 2012 | VOLUME LXIV, NO. 1 | www.nationalreview.com

COVER STORY Page 16 The Rise of Rick Suddenly, in the final sprint toward the Kevin D. Williamson on Murray Rothbard p. 32 caucuses, Rick Santorum achieved a last-minute ascent, and with a strong BOOKS, ARTS showing in the Hawkeye State, & MANNERS catapulted into national prominence. Santorum became the latest to take a 43 ALWAYS BET ON BLACK Roger Kimball reviews A Matter of star turn in the GOP field. Robert Costa Principle, by Conrad Black.

COVER: PATRICK FALLON/ZUMA/NEWSCOM 45 LINCOLN’S CONSTITUTION Fred Schwarz reviews Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: ARTICLES Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War, 16 THE RISE OF RICK by Robert Costa by Mark E. Neely Jr. A report on the Santorum insurgency. 46 PISTOL WHIPPING 20 ELECTABLE YOU by Ramesh Ponnuru Robert VerBruggen reviews To unseat Obama, vote Romney. Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America, 24 THE CONSTITUTION AND THE COOT by Rob Long by Adam Winkler. In which we chat with the Paulista at the end of the bar. 48 MUSIC: PRIMA DONNA 26 NIKKI HALEY’S ROUGH START by John Fund ASSOLUTA South Carolina’s rock-star governor collides with reality. Jay Nordlinger has a tête-à-tête with Angela Gheorghiu. 27 FOR SHAME by Daniel Foster Whither the Cinderella Men? 50 FILM: YOU CAN’T GO HOME Ross Douthat reviews Young Adult. 29 THE LIONESS IN WINTER by John O’Sullivan ‘Lady Thatcher’ comes to the big screen. 51 COUNTRY LIFE: RURAL REPAST Richard Brookhiser dines at an FEATURES old favorite. 32 COURTING THE CRANKS by Kevin D. Williamson Murray Rothbard is still hurting the Right. SECTIONS

35 HOW TO END JUDICIAL SUPREMACY by John Yoo 2 Letters to the Editor Newt Gingrich has the right idea but not always the right tactics. 4 The Week 41 Athwart ...... James Lileks ‘ISLAM IS ISLAM, AND THAT’S IT’ 38 by Andrew C. McCarthy 42 The Long View ...... Rob Long The Arab Spring was not hijacked. 47 Poetry ...... Lawrence Dugan 52 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

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A Taxing Debate JANUARY 23 ISSUE; PRINTED JANUARY 5 While I’m no fan of taxation generally, I find myself profoundly disagreeing EDITOR Richard Lowry with the Editors regarding online sales tax (The Week, November 28). They Senior Editors opine that if online retail purchases should be taxed at all, they should be taxed Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones only by the shipping jurisdiction, because “this would keep compliance burdens Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts low and promote tax competition.” Literary Editor Michael Potemra Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy First, in this digital age, the burden is nil to calculate the sales tax applicable National Correspondent John J. Miller Political Reporter Robert Costa in a consumer’s domicile—with the appropriate software, all it requires is the Art Director Luba Kolomytseva Deputy Managing Editors entry of already-necessary information (the purchaser’s address). More impor- Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson tant, a majority of residents in each sales-tax jurisdiction can be presumed to Associate Editors Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen have voted the consumer and his neighbors a sales-tax rate sufficient to support Research Director Katherine Connell Executive Secretary Frances Bronson the local-government services he receives. The consumer who then avoids the Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos local tax by making online purchases, or worse, prefers to pay a lower rate to Contributing Editors Robert H. Bork / Shannen Coffin / John Derbyshire another jurisdiction that provides him no services at all, practices a tragedy of Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum the commons as he continues to receive local government services for nothing. Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin He has no incentive not to increase the local sales tax through the roof, since he Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne intends to get free services while imposing the cost entirely on his neighbors. David B. Rivkin Jr. Collecting the sales tax for the place where it belongs, the consumer’s resi- NATIONALREVIEWONLINE Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez dence, still encourages tax competition of a better kind than having fulfillment Managing Editor Edward John Craig houses flying by night to the cheapest place: Local governments will compete News Editor Daniel Foster Editorial Associates to offer the best cost-per-services deal to individuals and businesses alike, which Brian Bolduc / Charles C. W. Cooke Katrina Trinko in return will put down roots and improve their communities. Web Developer Gareth du Plooy Technical Services Russell Jenkins E. King Alexander Jr. EDITORS- AT- LARGE Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Lake Charles, La. Contributors Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley THE EdITors rEpLy: Even in the age of Google, we suspect, the administrative Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans and overhead costs of complying with 8,000 sales-tax systems in 8,000 juris- Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman dictions would be significantly higher than those of complying with one. James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Further, we are suspicious of the notion that taxing jurisdictions have the right Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune to tax businesses in other jurisdictions. Connecticut has no business taxing D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Texas: That’s why we have 50 different states. Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons Terry Teachout / Taki Theodoracopulos some state and local governments (we’re looking at you, New york) will Vin Weber Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge protest that they are taxing the consumer who lives in the jurisdiction, rather Accounting Manager Galina Veygman than the business outside of it, and thus are well within their rights in demand- Accountant Zofia Baraniak Business Services ing the tax. In that case, let them collect their own taxes rather than conscript- Alex Batey / Kate Murdock Elena Reut / Lucy Zepeda ing businesses into doing so on their behalf. It’s not as though there were a great Circulation Manager Jason Ng shortage of taxmen across the fruited plains. Having governments collect their WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 own taxes from their own taxpayers would also make moot the objection that SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 local consumers would have a strong incentive to use online purchases to evade ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd local taxes while voting high rates for their less clever neighbors. of course, it Advertising Director Jim Fowler would be cumbrous and expensive for the tax collectors to do their own tax col- Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett lecting—in which case, a more intelligent tax regime is called for.

PUBLISHER And we have no objection to businesses’ “flying by night” from high-tax Jack Fowler jurisdictions to low-tax jurisdictions—their customers are doing so (consult the CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes U.s. Census), so why shouldn’t they?

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

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n The Iowa contest came down to a choice between representatives of three exotic religions: Mormonism, Catholicism, and libertarianism.

n The Gingrich campaign issued a paper on the historical and constitutional weakness of the Supreme Court’s claim to supremacy in matters of constitutional interpretation, on the dangerous consequences of that claim for self-governance, national security, and human rights, and on how to cut the Court down to size. This last portion of the paper mixed good ideas—such as legislation to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts where appropriate—with half-baked ones. Summoning judges to explain their decisions to Congress, for example, is an idea both pointless (judges already explain their reasoning) and noxious (congressmen have no constitutional power to browbeat judges). Abolishing liberal courts and replacing them with conservative ones is an attempt to do an end run around the Constitution’s grant of life tenure for federal judges. Liberals, naturally, threw out the good with the bad, convinced as they are that any check on judicial power is a deadly threat to judicial independence and the Constitution (or, more plausibly, to their Constitution). The paper reflected the mixture of elements in the candidate. On one hand he has the boldness and intellectual independence to raise a question that does not occur to many politicians. On the other his lack See page 10. of judgment makes the raising of that question seem dis - creditable. n A left-wing blog said that Mitt Romney was mouthing an old Klan slogan, “Keep America American.” This charge was n Proverbs 26:11 speaks of the dog that returns to his vomit. mouthed by the Washington Post and MSNBC. It transpired Ron Paul’s vomit recently returned to him, in the form of that Romney had used the phrase “keep America America.” newsletters he issued in the late Eighties and early Nineties And he was referring to entrepreneurship, opportunity, and (they bore his name with a shifting set of descriptions: Invest - other savory things. He was not advocating the lynching of ment Letter, Freedom Report, Survival Report). They pur- blacks and Catholics. The Post and MSNBC apologized for, veyed some pretty out-there stuff. After the Los Angeles riots, essentially, pulling a white sheet over the Republican candi- one letter noted, order was restored only “when it came time date. for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.” Another referred to black congresswoman Barbara Jordan as “Barbara n Rep. Paul Ryan does not seem to be the wily type, but he Morondon.” They represented an effort, on the part of some sneaked a last-minute gift under conservatives’ Christmas tree libertarians, to proselytize the disaffected Right—Pat while leaving a lump of coal in Democrats’ stocking with Buchanan supporters, survivalists. Paul says he didn’t write Wyden-Ryan, the bipartisan effort in which he is joined by any of the letters—though he signed them—and he claims not liberal Democratic senator Ron Wyden (Ore.) to seek market- to know who did. His innocence in the matter of low-rent race oriented Medicare reform. Wyden-Ryan would convert jibes thus depends on his incompetence. Paul is a man who Medicare into a premium-support program, in which seniors has been warning that hyperinflation is around the corner for would receive help purchasing private health insurance in the 30 years; who believes that America has no enemies not cre- marketplace. The level of premium support would be capped, ated by its own actions; who deliberately walks right up to the and those who sought more generous benefits whose costs line of 9/11 Trutherism; and who has no plan to curb entitle- exceeded the cap would pay the difference—helping to create ment spending because he claims slashing foreign aid and the real market mechanisms to control health-care costs. The plan military will balance the budget. He is a crank with cunning is in one respect a retreat from the budget Ryan persuaded enough to appeal opportunistically to the fringes of larger House Republicans to vote for, since it would allow seniors to bodies of opinion. Whatever he wrote or didn’t write 20 years stay in the traditional government-run Medicare program. It is

ROMAN GENN ago does not alter Paul’s dog’s breakfast. an advance in another respect, though, since the growth rate of

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REVEALED: Massive Hoard Makes Silver Dollar History American Entrepreneur Sells off Silver Fortune

hen miners found silver in Virginia City in 1857, they Wknew they’d struck the mother lode. For the next twenty years, silver flowed faster than water out of the Nevada desert. It was a Wild West bonanza. After years of frenzied mining, the vein began to dry up and the town slowly died with it. It seemed like there was no more silver to be found in those hills. Until I got a call from a Wild West friend. He was sitting on a collection of silver Actual size coins, minted just after silver was found is 38.1 mm in Virginia City. With the silver market as strong as it is, he decided that it was history for over 120 years. The time to sell off his collection. We had hit remarkable McClaren Hoard has the mother lode again. added another chapter to their amazing A ‘few bags’ become thirty! story. And now you can share in that his- To call my friend a coin collector is an the price of many Morgan dollars has tory. We all want the finest things in life. understatement. When he said he had gone up dramatically in the last six It’s time to start your collection today. a few 1000-coin bags of silver coins I months alone. But because of the sheer Order Today Risk Free was interested. When those silver coins scale of this massive hoard, we have While they last, reserve your McClaren turned out to be New Orleans Mint been able to keep the price at a Hoard New Orleans Morgan Silver Morgan Silver Dollars from the 1880s I pre-frenzy level. Dollar MS62 for only $99.00 + S&H. was intrigued. And when those few bags Each coin will bear the New Orleans turned out to be thirty, I was astounded. 120-year-old Silver Dollars mintmark and be dated 1883-1888 My buddy wasn’t sitting on a collection, for as little as $85! (dates our choice.) he had a hoard! Each of these silver dollars from the McClaren Collection Hoard (named You must be 100% satisfied with your For a man who loves only the best for my friend’s beloved Mercedes order, or simply return it within 30 days things in life, I guess I shouldn’t have SLR McLaren Supercar) are Brilliant by insured mail for a prompt refund of been so surprised. Uncirculated Morgan dollars that look the purchase price. as fresh as they did when they were One of the largest Silver Dollar McClaren Hoard New Orleans Morgan struck by the U.S. Mint in New Orleans hoards in decades Silver Dollar MS62 $99.00 plus s/h For serious numismatists, hoards can over 120 years ago. The coins were come around once in a lifetime. Silver submitted to the Professional Coin Order more and SAVE! hoards are enormous collections of coins Grading Service (PCGS) for certification, Half Banker Roll (10 coins) $95.00 ea. that have been stored away, often secretly, grading and encapsulation. Once plus s/h SAVE $50 for safekeeping. With silver prices steadily inspected, they were awarded the Full Banker Roll (20 coins) $85.00 ea. rising over the past few years, many Uncirculated grade of Mint State plus s/h SAVE $280! silver hoards have been sold off. 62 (MS62) for their amazing quality. Toll-Free 24 hours a day Most assumed that hoards of Morgan My Wild West friend worked for 25 1-888-201-7071 Silver Dollars were a thing of the past… years to amass this huge collection. Offer Code MCH141 until now. He scoured the country looking for the Please mention this code when you call. finest Morgan Silver Dollars. He did that Morgan Dollars are some of the most work for you—and this hidden silver coveted coins on the market today. And treasure is now within your reach. These with the hot silver market, most dealers 14101 Southcross Drive W. coins are over 100 years old—but they Dept. MCH141 cannot keep Morgan Dollars around can now be yours for a little as $85! Burnsville, Minnesota 55337 for long. Due to this heavy demand, These Morgan Dollars have been www.GovMint.com especially for the finest quality pieces, extraordinary pieces of American

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THE WEEK Medicare spending would be set by competitive bidding nature,” etc. He never gets around to demonstrating how the rather than determined by a congressional formula. The more survival of the USSR would have prevented the Amer i can immediately relevant point is that Wyden-Ryan will blunt the housing bubble, though presumably it would have kept glob- Democratic campaign to present Republicans as savagers of al consumption down a great deal by impoverishing many the elderly. We suspect that where Democratic politicos meet, millions of people. It is true that the Soviet Union was not “Wyden” is becoming a dirty word. replaced, at least in Russia, with a decent, democratic, liberal state—which is an indictment of Russian institutions n Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.) has announced that he will and habits, not Western ones. After World War II, Nazi domi- retire from the Senate. It is very likely that the voters of nance in Eastern Europe was displaced largely by Communist Nebraska would have retired him anyway: President Obama dominance; and yet—to forestall the next symposium—the won only 42 percent of the vote in the increasingly conser - world was safer without Hitler. vative state, and many political analysts foresaw a difficult race for the incumbent. Senator Nelson presented himself n President Obama signed the $662 billion defense autho- as a moderate, but in action he was a vote for Harry Reid, rization bill, which had been mired in a phony controversy for Obamacare, and for the stimulus—with moderates like over the treatment of detainees. Congress tried to insert lan- that, who needs liberals? guage directing that enemy combatants be detained and tried Absent Nelson, Chris Cil - under military law, before pulling back; Ron Paul’s follow- lizza of the Washington ers—led by Sen. Rand Paul, the candidate’s son—hysteri- Post writes, the seat cally countered that our modern-day Reich would soon “verges on unwinnable commence rounding up any American citizen deemed an for Democrats.” lacking enemy of the state; and the Obama administration dutifully local talent, Nebraska’s shrieked for its base over the prospect of being barred from Democrats are hoping that giving our wartime enemies gold-plated civilian due Bob Kerrey, currently process. The final version of the bill did nothing to alter living in New York City, what the government has been doing for a decade: Military will seek to claim his old capture (or kill) has been the rule for enemy combatants Senate seat. But Kerrey since Congress authorized combat operations in 2001. This may already have found rule has affected only four American citizens in ten years the secret to success for (three detained, one killed), because only terrorists specifi- Democrats in the Obama cally tied to 9/11, al-Qaeda, or the Taliban qualify as enemy years: head for the coasts. combatants, and these were the only four Americans who met that standard. In a final absurdity, Obama issued a Bush- n Rep. laura Richardson (D., Calif.) is under investigation by like signing statement (his 20th) insisting that American- the Ethics Committee. The public did not know this until citizen enemy combatants would not be indefinitely Richardson accused the committee of investigating her de tained. Presumably he was referring to the ones he has because she is black. The question before the committee is not ordered killed. whether Richardson used her congressional staff for campaign purposes, which is not allowed. The Associated Press n There is a school of thought on the left, exemplified by Paul did a racial, ethnic, and sexual analysis of the Ethics Com - Krugman, that the “Bush tax cuts” are what is mainly respon- mittee: who is black, who is Hispanic, who is white, who’s a sible for the fiscal straits of the United States, and that they man, who’s a woman. You may ask, “Did the congresswoman, represent the triumph of plutocratic interests over those of in fact, violate the rules?” But AP knows what the important the middle class. Recent studies from the Organisation for issues are. Economic Co-operation and Development and the Con gres - sion al Budget Office put paid to that theory: After the Bush n The Nation, which has never quite reconciled itself to the tax cuts, federal income taxes became, in the CBO study’s fact that its side lost the Cold War, has published a sympo- words, “slightly more progressive.” U.S. taxes are about as sium marking 20 years since the fall of the USSR. The flag- redistributive as those of Sweden or Denmark. As NATIONAl ship essay, titled “Is the World Really Safer Without the REvIEW has reported, tax rates on millionaires could be raised Soviet Union?,” was written by Mikhail Gorbachev, the oth- to 100 percent without generating revenue sufficient to bal- ers by an obscure blogger and a left-wing historian. Oddly, no ance the federal budget. Those who are concerned about representative from Ukraine, Poland, or any of the Soviet deficits should be looking mainly at entitlement spending. Union’s other captive nations was asked whether his world Those who are concerned about economic inequality should AP / was safer without the handiwork of someone like Stalin, be looking at primary and secondary education, health-care HERALD - lenin, et al. Gorbachev has been transformed from Com - costs, trade policy, and the investment climate. What the poor munist apparatchik to bundle of New Age clichés, in which lack is good jobs, and raising taxes on the rich will not provide respect he resembles The Nation. He proclaims the 2008 them. financial crisis an indictment of the Western model of poli - THE OMAHA WORLD / tical organization, calls for a “new world order” of “global n Congressional Republicans rightly overcame their resis- governance,” bemoans “hyperprofits and excessive con- tance to extending a payroll-tax cut and thus keeping the

KENT SIEVERS sumption that grinds down the earth’s resources and ruins payroll tax from rising. The Senate reached a bipartisan

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THE WEEK agreement to extend the tax cut for two months, then skipped many blacks or Hispanics fail, the employer can be hit with a town. House Republicans insisted that it return to pass a one- “disparate impact” lawsuit. And an “informal discussion let- year extension. The Democrats and the press hammered ter” recently posted by the Equal Employment Opportunity them for courting the risk of a tax increase should an agree- Commission hints that federal officials plan to crack down on ment not be reached. Finally they caved and passed the two- employers who require high-school diplomas: That require- month extension, and Democrats and the press celebrated a ment discriminates against those with learning disabilities, great political victory. The Republican disarray was dismay- and therefore is illegal unless a diploma is demonstrably “job- ing, but the effects may not be long-lasting. Since nobody’s related” (whatever that means). If the Obama administration taxes have risen, there’s no reason to expect voters to hold a wants hiring to pick back up, perhaps it should make the grudge against Republicans. If this is the sort of victory process less of a minefield. Democrats are now reduced to lauding—dragging Repub- licans to cut taxes—the republic could survive a few more n For all the harmful subsidies the farm lobby has secured, like it. one positive contribution it has made is to keep farms exempt from many of our most burdensome child-labor n Overly aggressive antidiscrimination law has made hiring laws. But that might be drawing to a close: The Obama harder than it should be. It is already exceedingly difficult for administration’s Labor Department has proposed a variety a company to give prospective employees a written test: If too of new rules with the aim of creating “parity” between agri-

Stealth Redistribution

HE government’s response to the Great Recession show the overall increase in spending. Clearly those in has been characterized as a bailout for the rich and need have not been abandoned. T a cold shoulder for the poor. This perception has What has constituted the increase? The average been magnified by the media coverage of the Occupy monthly unemployment-insurance payment received Wall Street movement. The story would present future his- was $834 at the beginning of 2006, while by the end of torians with a puzzle if it were true. How could the most 2010 it was $2,667. Home retention actions (mortgage liberal president in American history, accompanied for his modifications) were almost nonexistent in 2006 but first two years by an equally liberal Congress, be so increased sharply due to pressure from Uncle Sam. uncharitable? Consumer loan charge-offs (commercial banks’ declar- The answer is, they weren’t. Since 2007, and appar- ing that a debt—usually credit-card debt—is unlikely to ently well below the radar, the safety net has expanded be collected) increased significantly over the four-year radically. The benefits available to those who do not period, for the same reason. Other transfers, such as work are sharply higher, and likely explain a good deal of food assistance, increased as well. the high unemployment we still see today. Staying home Yes, unemployment is high, but is it any wonder? and collecting a government check has never been so —KEVIN A. HASSETT attractive. The stark numbers have been highlighted in recent research by University of Chicago economist Casey B. Average Amount of Assistance Per Mulligan. It is very easy to believe that overall spending Un- or Underemployed Individual on social programs has increased following the reces- Younger Than 65 sion, since the program’s automatic stabilizers are always triggered during an economic slump. Mulligan Consumer Loan Charge-offs Home Retention Actions points out that spending increased not only due to the Other Transfers 15,000 recession, but because the eligibility requirements for Unemployment Insurance Medicaid most programs were expanded, and their benefits in - 12,500 creased. Spending per person has gone up, not just total 10,000 spending. The nearby chart taken from the study provides a con- 7,500

cise glimpse of his main results. It represents the average 2005 Dollars 5,000 amount of assistance (inflation-adjusted) that an unem- ployed or underemployed individual under the age of 65 2,500 received from the beginning of 2006 to the end of 2010. 0 The benefit of not working increased sharply over that 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 time, from about $10,000 to $15,000 per year—a 50 per- SOURCE: CASEY B. MULLIGAN, “THE EXPANDING SOCIAL SAFETY NET.” NBER cent increase. And remember that the chart does not WORKING PAPER. DECEMBER 2011. WWW.NBER.ORG/PAPERS/W17654

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THE WEEK cultural and non-agricultural work—for example, under the $1.5m), annual bonuses ($2m guaranteed for the first year), proposal, children under the age of 16 may not operate stock options (on shares worth $18m at the time), and “power-driven equipment.” The department is correct that expense deals (around $200,000 worth). All that for a part- there is no logical reason for treating farms differently than time position! Corzine remained a partner at private-equity other businesses, and the new rules would not apply to chil- firm J. C. Flowers & Co., and also held a visiting professor- dren working on their parents’ farms. But there is also no ship at Princeton. Alas, MF Global filed for bankruptcy a reason for the federal government to prevent children from year and a half later, and Corzine has been trying to explain learning valuable skills, which is all too often a result of to the House Financial Services Committee what happened to child-labor laws. $1.2 billion in customer funds that’s missing from the firm’s accounts. Corzine blamed the little people: “The back office n The spending bill for next year includes a provision giving in Chicago explicitly confirmed to me that the funds were a nine-month reprieve to the incandescent light bulb. The appropriately transferred,” he weaseled to the lawmakers. Department of Energy will not be allowed to spend money That back office has a lot of responsibility. Maybe it should implementing rules that would effectively ban it. Without this get a raise? last-minute switch, the feds would have cast the pale pall and dreary buzz of compact fluorescence over every home in n Faced with a deepening budget crisis and an unemployment America. Democrats inserted language forcing the recipients rate hovering intractably around 11 percent, California legis- of DOE grants over $1 million to meet the mothballed stan- lators busied themselves by passing some 760 new laws in dards. Such grants should continue to be targets for conser - 2011, many of which are now beginning to take effect. One of vative cuts. The branches have been pruned; next up, the these requires children to ride in car seats until attaining eight roots. The obvious joke here is, “How many bureaucrats does years of age or 4 feet 9 inches. An estimated 1.1 million six- it take to screw up the light bulb?” Thanks to this small vic - and seven-year-olds who had graduated to boosterless travel tory, we will have to wait at least until September to hear the under the previous law will undergo the humiliation of return- punch line. ing to their car seats in the New Year, or their parents will risk a minimum fine of $475. Public officials expressed sympathy n Fisker is a maker of hybrid for the inevitable tearful resistance parents will encounter, and high-performance sports one proponent of the mandate recommended they explain to cars. Because its products are their children that “it’s not Mommy and Daddy’s decision, it’s “green,” it received a $529 the law, it’s the police.” Perhaps someone might explain to million loan guarantee as part of public officials that they shouldn’t be acting like Mommy and the Obama stimulus—and then announced that it would be Daddy. making the cars at a facility in Finland instead of in the U.S. And now it has announced a recall of its Karma luxury sedan, n Immediately after U.S. troops departed, Iraqi prime minis- because the batteries are a fire hazard. It appears the company ter Nouri al-Maliki moved against Sunni officials in his coali- has worked quickly to replace the defective battery packs, tion government in a naked sectarian power play. Definitely but then, the battery packs are not the most defective part of emboldened by our departure, and perhaps by President this story. Obama’s otherworldly happy talk about political conditions in Iraq during their recent meeting in Washington, Maliki could n Just before Christmas, New York City witnessed what is be creating the conditions for a return to civil war. The target- known as a “culture clash.” A woman named Meredith Graves ed officials are from Iraqiya, the heavily Sunni party of secu- visited the 9/11 memorial. She had driven up from Tennessee. lar nationalists. Its leaders accused Maliki in the New York At the memorial, she noticed a sign that said “No Guns Times of “attempting to drive us out of Iraqi political life and Allowed.” She remembered that she had her usual pistol in her create an authoritarian one-party state.” The Obama adminis- purse. So, as a polite and conscientious Tennessean would, tration needs to use every remaining lever of our influence to she asked a security guard where she could check it. The pull Maliki back—if, that is, it cares at all about the fate of guard directed her to a policeman. She asked the cop the same Iraq. question. He then arrested her. Graves is due in court on March 19, to be tried for illegal gun possession. New York is n The North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il died at age 69. He not like Tennessee. If convicted, she could get three and a half has been succeeded by his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, aged years in prison. Her mother-in-law, who lives in New Jersey, either 27 or 28. It is not likely that young Kim is capable of was quoted as saying, “Everyone down there [in Tennessee] wielding much real power. The nation’s affairs have probably carries. ...She was being honest, and this is the treatment passed into some kind of regency under Kim’s uncle, Jang they give innocent people.” But if gun laws distinguished Sung Taek, and his clique of military leaders. For U.S. poli- between dangerous and peaceable people, then they wouldn’t cymakers, the transition offers opportunities. North Korea is be gun laws, would they? an international pest, trading in narcotics, counterfeit curren- .

INC cy, and WMD expertise. The nation is also a totalitarian hor- , n As CEO and chairman of international derivatives broker- ror show blighted with vast labor camps and periodic famines. age MF Global, Jon Corzine was handsomely remunerated. Regime collapse would be a blessing for international order When he was hired in March 2010, his base salary was $1.5 and for civilized values. That outcome is, however, undesir-

FISKER AUTOMOTIVE million. That is not to speak of sign-on bonus (another able to China and South Korea, which will therefore strive to

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keep the odious Kim despotism in business. While they are everything they could find in the country from the pharaohs to maneuvering to do so, the U.S. should make it plain that ours the present. These researches lasted 20 years. Their handwrit- is the opposite aim. We should step up surveillance, respond ten Description de l’Egypte was in 24 volumes, a monument forcefully to provocations, and set our face firmly against any to orientalist scholarship. Four handwritten copies exist, but deals that benefit the regime. If we cannot bring down the most of the original is now burnt, probably beyond repair. During appalling Kimocracy, we should at least impose some price on the two subsequent centuries, the Institute collected close to its future misbehavior. 200,000 books, documents, maps, and manuscripts. Staff and volunteers tried to salvage what they could after the fire, and n The United States, the European Union, and even the truckloads of damaged items were taken away. What was left on United Nations finally look set to apply real sanctions to pro- the pavements, it is reported, was little more than charcoal debris. hibit the purchase of Iranian oil. So the ayatollahs of Iran are The loss is irreplaceable, and civilization is the poorer. suddenly dropping their habitual air of injured innocence and instead baring their teeth. Any such sanctions, several military n Sometimes the Chinese government sends bureaucrats to and civilian spokesmen in Tehran have declared, will be coun- enforce its one-child policy, telling expectant mothers that tered by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passageway second children result in heavy fines. And sometimes it for oil tankers for all Gulf producers, including Iran. Over a sends thugs, heavy sedatives, and an abortionist. Either way, ten-day period, the Iranian navy has been conducting exercis- it takes a great deal of bravery to stand up for that particular es, and test-firing what are said to be new types of missiles freedom—as Chinese women have been doing in greater and torpedoes. At the same moment, according to the Asso - numbers and with greater publicity lately. One of them, Wu ciated Press, Iranian scientists have announced that they have Weiping, recently told a reporter that she carried a knife when overcome international sanctions and made the rods that fuel she left home towards the end of her second pregnancy Suddenly the ayatollahs of Iran are dropping their habitual air of injured innocence and instead baring their teeth.

nuclear reactors. Iran depends wholly on oil for its income, so because “I was going to fight to the death if they found me.” closure of the strait would be economic suicide on its part. The Who could condemn the children of such a mother as that? regime is thought quite widely to be bluffing, but if not, the U.S. Fifth Fleet, with its 20 or more ships and its combat air- n Chen Guangcheng is a great man. He’s the blind “peasant craft, is in those waters. lawyer” who blew the whistle on forced abortion and steril- ization in his area of Shandong Province. For the last six n Five separate attacks on Christian churches in Nigeria years, he has been brutalized by the dictatorship. He is now on Christmas Day left at least 50 dead. The worst attack, on out of prison, but is enduring a torturous kind of house arrest. St. Theresa Catholic Church in Abuja, the nation’s capital, A variety of brave souls have trooped to his village, Dong - killed 37. An Islamist sect named Boko Haram (“Western shigu, in an effort to see him. For their troubles, they have things forbidden”) claimed responsibility. The group has been beaten, robbed, detained, and “disappeared.” Last killed more than 500 people in terrorist acts these past two month, the movie star Christian Bale made the same journey years, with the pace increasing in recent months. Nigerian to Dongshigu. Like the others, he was denied access, and he president Goodluck Jonathan has declared a state of emer- was even roughed up. Let it be remembered, however, that a gency and promised “decisive measures.” His task is daunt- Hollywood actor performed a noble act. ing, however. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, the eighth most populous in the world. It is also an n Because this was not said about a Republican president, oil exporter, ranked seventh in the world. For all that, the perhaps the tastemakers will take note. Matt Damon told Elle nation is miserably poor and sensationally corrupt. The magazine that “a one-term president with some [manhood]” security services are venal and shambolic. Half the popula- would be better than the incumbent. Damon did not say “man- tion—living mainly in the north—is Muslim. Religious divi- hood,” but an anatomical plural. This was not the first time sions in a nation are challenging enough; when one of the Damon tackled Obama. He expressed disappointment with religions is Islam, they are doubly so; add in widespread dire him as early as last March, prompting the president to zing poverty and rampant corruption, and the prognosis for Damon with a joke at the White House Correspondents’ Nigeria cannot be good. Dinner in May. It’s a free country, and Matt Damon may say what he likes. But why we, or the president of the United n The Institute of Egypt is no more, a victim of the Arab States, should pay attention is a mystery. Vulgarity, it seems, Spring, set on fire in the latest protests in Cairo’s Tahrir it simply a modern accompaniment of holding forth. Toads Square. The Institute dated back to 1798, when the French make a racket, and they breed in swamps. invaded. Napoleon Bonaparte, the army’s commander and someone always pursuing knowledge for its own sake, had n In 2009, President Obama demonstrated his knack for brought with him a team of experts to classify and catalogue diplomacy by returning a bust of Winston Churchill to the

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THE WEEK United Kingdom. The U.K. had loaned the bronze from its art suddenly gone straight, or were they just very close friends collection to Pres. George W. Bush after September 11, and before? With penguins, not everything is black and white. the 43rd president displayed it with pride in the Oval Office. But Obama, ever anxious to alienate our friends and to n Fans of the original Tarzan movies were distressed to hear of assuage our enemies, decided to spurn this symbol of the not- the December 24 death of Cheetah the Chimp, who had co- so-special relationship. Last month, House Speaker John starred with Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller in Boehner introduced a resolution recognizing that the Capitol those memorable productions. Distressed and also surprised, “does not currently appropriately recognize the contributions since the dates of the movies—early 1930s—required Cheetah of Sir Winston Churchill or that of the United Kingdom” and to be an octogenarian. The death announcement was issued by instructing the architect of the Capitol to procure an “appro- the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Florida, which claimed to priate statue or bust” of the former prime minister for the have received Cheetah around 1960 when Weissmuller’s estate building. The resolution passed by voice vote. Now the Senate was dispersed. Primatologists were soon expressing skepti- needs to act, and it shouldn’t have too much to discuss. We cism, noting that the normal lifespan of chimps in captivity is even have a bust in mind. 35 to 45 years, and that the documentation on the deceased’s actually being Cheetah was n The fifth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary was sketchy at best. Suncoast published in November. Among other new coinages it record- Sanctuary, however, is ed the expression “anchor baby,” defined as: “A child born to vigorously defending its a noncitizen mother in a country that grants automatic citi- claim, and promises to zenship to children born on its soil, especially such a child release photographic evi- born to parents seeking to secure eventual citizenship for dence. We expect this con- themselves and often other members of their family.” This troversy to continue for bland objectivity ignited the wrath of the Immigration Policy at least another 80 years, Center, an open-borders lobbying group. Mary Giovagnoli, perhaps eventually join - director of the IPC, stirred up a mighty fuss on the Internet. ing such evergreens as the The American Heritage Dictionary quickly came to heel, fate of D. B. Cooper and posting a revised definition on its website in early December. the authorship of Shake - “Anchor baby” is now flagged as “offensive” and defined to speare’s plays. be “a disparaging term.” Steve Kleinedler, executive editor of the dictionary, groveled that he had “rectified” an “error”— n In a historic moment in 1989, hundreds of thousands of the error, presumably, of having insufficiently politicized a Czechs gathered in the center of Prague to call on Václav work of reference. Havel to be their president. There and then, a democratic Czechoslovakia was freed from the Soviet bloc. It was the tri- n On hearing that the Environmental Protection Agency umph of an individual. All his life, Havel had behaved as if awarded $25,000 to a Utah modern-dance troupe, our first Communism was not worth the attention of a free man. No reaction was: At least the EPA is harming the economy less firebrand by temperament, no revolutionary, he was an artist than usual. Using avant-garde choreography to reduce pollu- who became a dissident by writing plays to defend freedom tion may seem as logical as using synchronized swimming to and to mock its enemies. Rising international fame could not teach Hungarian, but as a representative of the dance troupe protect him from persecution. First he was condemned to explains: “Kinesthetic learning will be used to examine air stacking barrels in a brewery, then he had to serve various quality issues and encourage youth and their families to adopt spells in prison, sometimes doing hard labor. This hardened healthy living practices.” An EPA spokeswoman gamely sug- his determination to do what he thought right. In later writ- gests that dance is “uniquely capable of providing environ- ings, and speeches as president, he could attest from experi- mental education and awareness in a multicultural and ence that Communism had made everyone morally ill, multi-lingual community” (such as famously diverse spiritually impoverished. One more service to his country Utah). “Unique” is indeed the mot juste to describe a program remained. Early in the course of his presidency, Slovak that uses pliés and arabesques to tell kids that pollution is bad. nationalists said that they wanted independence from the Czechs. Havel preferred to maintain unity, but for the sake of n A while back, the Toronto Zoo made news with its pair of peace and yet again freedom he conceded separation of gay penguins, Pedro and Buddy. The two were inseparable, Czechs and Slovaks into two states, sparing them both what catching fish together while nuzzling and attempting to mate; might have been Yugoslav-style violence. R.I.P. observers fancied that their tuxedos always seemed impec - cably pressed. Eventually, though, the zookeepers decided to n As befit a man so voluble and so headstrong, Christopher split them up, much to the fury of gay activists. Canada, being Hitchens left a mixed legacy. His books, except for his charm- slightly warmer than Antarctica, needs to breed its penguins in ing memoir, Hitch-22, were slapdash affairs (what he didn’t captivity, so each one was separately turned loose among the know about Thomas Jefferson would fill a book). His criti- females. The good news, from a family perspective, is that cism relied on the Oxbridge hauteur that makes Americans Buddy (the older of the two) has already found a lady friend. reach for their forelocks. He shone at polemics and contro- Pedro has yet to settle down, though not (as zoo officials mys- versy; unfortunately, many of his causes were terrible. He

AP teriously note) “for lack of trying.” So have Pedro and Buddy came out of the totalitarian Left and he remained a snake-

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THE WEEK handling atheist all his days. His hatred of Bill Clinton, which Romney might easily counter Gingrich’s petulant complaints first won him conservative plaudits, seemed merely mischie- about negative campaigning by promising to be just as tough vous. But life in America and the spectacle of violent jihad on Obama. had an effect on him. He came to appreciate the benefits of a Romney should be careful in his attacks on Santorum. If free society and some of the virtues of a free people. 9/11 gal- he disagrees with Santorum’s approach to winning over blue- vanized him: He saw immediately that it was an act of war, collar voters—and some of the policies Santorum recom- and turned in fury on its captains, cheerleaders, and enablers. mends in that regard deserve criticism—he will nonetheless He took the oath of citizenship at the Jefferson Memorial. His have to express that disagreement in a way that does not deep- struggle with the cancer that finally killed him was notably en his own difficulty in appealing to them. Romney would be gallant. Dead at 62. Could he ever enjoy R., or P.? Let us pray. well within his rights to stress his business and executive credentials, and implicitly or explicitly Santorum’s lack thereof, n She was a highly regarded child actress gone . . . right. and to make the case that he is a stronger general-election Susan Gordon appeared in numerous movies and classic TV candidate. But if he appears to cooperate in a media campaign shows (Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, My Three Sons) from to portray social conservatism as extreme, he will weaken the late Fifties to mid-Sixties, and then she grew up. Not to a himself severely. life of misfortune and rehab, but to marriage, motherhood (she Rep. Michele Bachmann recognized that her campaign is had six children), faith, and happiness. A real role model, she over. As she has said time and again on the trail, she has been passed away last month, at 62. R.I.P. a leading rhetorical opponent of the Obama agenda in the House—and it is to that urgent work she should return. On caucus night it seemed likely that Gov. Rick Perry, too, 2012 would quit the race after a dismal showing. Instead he is After Iowa apparently betting that this race still has more turbulence left in it. If before Iowa he had to prove that he would make a win- He top two vote-getters in the Iowa caucuses, Mitt ning nominee, after it he must also prove that he still has a shot Romney and Rick Santorum, are intelligent, knowl- at the nomination. T edgeable, and politically experienced men who have Gov. Jon Huntsman has the same burden. He must make taken conservative positions on the issues. But their political the case that his record and agenda should yield conserva - situations are very different. tive support at a time when most attention will be on the Senator Santorum, widely regarded as not a serious candi- Santorum–Romney duel. If he fails, then after New Hamp - date mere weeks ago, gets a bigger boost from the results even shire he will face the same choice as Congresswoman though Romney received a handful more votes than he did. His Bachmann. near-victory speech was tremendously affecting as well as savvy, highlighting subtle but important differences between him and other Republicans, differences that might be attractive to voters. It was addressed squarely to middle-class voters, and emphasized that while Santorum supports tax cuts for people in the top income brackets, he does not believe they would be sufficient to restore broad-based growth. And it tied Santorum’s policies and personality together with the theme of dignity: the dignity of each life, including those of the unborn; the dignity of each person, whatever his economic station. Santorum’s heady victory will be followed by daunting challenges. He must raise money and then convert it into orga- nizational capacity in multiple states—and do both of these things quickly. He must also survive press scrutiny that is likely to be more intense and hostile than any he has yet received during this campaign. expect to hear a lot about his remark that as president he would explain the evils of contraception to the nation. even people who share his convictions might balk at this most quixotic use of the bully pulpit. If Repub - licans come to believe that Santorum’s priorities are not their own, they will reject him. Romney has never had a commanding lead in the polls and has not inspired much enthusiasm among Republican voters. His rather complacent speech following the caucuses will not inspire more. He may well believe that he faces no serious AP

/ challenge for the nomination. But the more he shows that he believes this, the less it will be true. He has also won a poten- tially effective enemy in Newt Gingrich, who seems likely to

CHARLIE RIEDEL become a de facto ally of Santorum. On the other hand, The Santorums celebrate in Iowa.

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pressed white shirts—is the look of the ill-at-ease soccer dad, not the con fident frontrunner. Republicans have flocked to him at the eleventh hour, encouraged by his dogged, shoe-string operation, by his accessible, at-ease manner, and, perhaps most notable, by the power of reinvention. A little more than five years ago, Santorum, then a member of the Senate GOP leadership, lost his reelection bid in Pennsylvania to Democrat Bob Casey, the lackluster scion of a popular gover- nor. Even though Santorum was only in his mid-forties, his political obituary was filed. But he neglected to pass away: Instead, he became a television commentator and a popular figure in the conservative movement, stumping for candidates and sustaining relationships with activists. He became, in the words of one aide, “looser, less stuffy.” When he was at the top of the Washington heap, he became a tad insulated, friends say, and it was only when he was tossed into the wilderness that he began to seri- ously engage grassroots groups, working with them as a compatriot and not as a high-powered politician. The Rise of Rick In 2010, Santorum jumped on the A report on the Santorum insurgency Iowa “judge bus” and helped knock liberal justices off of the state’s high court. BY ROBERT COSTA That experience introduced him to many of the volunteers who now work as lead organizers on his presidential campaign, Johnston, Iowa took the stage at the Stoney Creek Inn, including Chuck Laudner, the political nE hot August night in Ames, and those summer doldrums were long strategist who directed his Iowa efforts. Rick Santorum stood on the forgotten. Suddenly, in the final sprint “It’s been a blast to watch this thing basketball court at Iowa State toward the caucuses, he achieved a last- come together,” Laudner says. “The O University’s Hilton Coliseum minute ascent, and with a strong show- biggest thing, to me personally, is that and huddled with his wife, Karen. Few ing in the Hawkeye State, catapulted we’re having fun—he’s having fun. We people noticed him, and his handlers, if into national prominence. Santorum— built this campaign from the ground he had any, were elsewhere. Reporters until recently a B-list former lawmaker, up,” he says. Early on, Santorum recog- breezed past the couple to chat with one whom the talk-show producers kept nized that he’d have to use a different big-name strategists working for Mitt waiting—became the latest to take a star campaign model than the rest of the Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Steps away, turn in the GOP field. field. With few reporters paying atten- under a cavern of Klieg lights, Sean Santorum’s Iowa showing shocked tion, no money, and a candidate who Hannity spoke with Michele Bachmann, Beltway pundits, many of whom wrote looked more like a math teacher than a who was expected to sweep the upcom- him off months ago. They credit his leading man, Laudner says that “every- ing Republican straw poll. Santorum, long, strange trip into the primary’s top thing that we knew about how to gen - surveying the scene, scowled. As he tier to the isolated enthusiasm of mid- erate momentum, in terms of ads and waited for Bachmann to finish the inter- western evangelicals and to finicky media,” was discarded. Organization, view, he tapped his foot like a backup conservatives who settled late on an the campaign’s only option, became player itching to get into the game. also-ran. But on the trail, at Pizza Ranch paramount. NEWSCOM “This is unbelievable,” he told Karen, restaurants and small-town diners, it’s Santorum, often packing only his / shaking his head. “Two questions in the clear that Santorum’s climb is about cellphone and a book, jumped into the ZUMA PRESS beginning, and I had to wave my hand to more than luck or the whims of Iowa’s “Chuck Truck,” the silver Dodge Ram / get them.” social conservatives. It’s not about 1500 pickup owned and driven by Five months later, on a bitterly cold celebrity, either. His usual outfit—single- Laudner. Together, the pair set off to

January night in central Iowa, Santorum color, slightly pilled sweater-vests over hamlets and small cities, from Sioux JERRY MENNENGA

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City to Davenport, asking voters, one an insurgent, to be sure, but one with keep rising as the field tightens, battling by one, to consider Santorum and to mainstream potential. Romney deep into the spring. “I think sign up to be “caucus captains,” the “I’m out there talking about faith, we’re in a position to do that,” Santorum people who speak in the candidate’s family, limited government, and strong says. “We just haven’t had many ups and behalf at each of Iowa’s 1,774 voting national security,” Santorum says. downs. We just haven’t.” precincts. By early December, Santor- “That’s what people don’t really under- When he meets with voters, Santorum um and Laudner had enlisted hundreds. stand about my campaign. It’s not dif- touts his low-key hustle, urging support- By mid-December, as Santorum began ferent messages for different folks. ers to enlist for what could be a long, to finally get a look from on-the-fence Instead, we have a very strong and con- brutal contest. “Mitt Romney has a lot of Republicans, that number began to sistent message, one about who we are money; I have a lot of energy,” he said at creep above 1,000. The website for the as Americans. The foundations of that one event in western Iowa. At the most campaign, RickSantorum.com, was be - are faith and family, as well as free mar- basic level, he says, the decision is be - sieged with donations large and small. kets and limited government.” In other tween settling on a moderate or nomi- From July through September, the cam- words, as he looks to contrast himself nating a fighter. Republicans, he pre dicts, paign collected a mere $700,000. By with Romney, Santorum is casting his will choose him, the candidate with New Year’s Day, it was skyrocketing late-breaking candidacy as a national “energy and ideas who’s willing to face beyond that. one, taking a different tack than Mike the tough questions.” It’s a simple argu- All this was the consequence, Laud - Huckabee, the former Arkansas gover- ment, one rooted in Republican unease ner says, not of a debate zinger or a nor and Baptist preacher who won the with Romney, who has been an able snazzy ad, but of Santorum’s dedication Iowa caucuses last cycle but fizzled campaigner this year but hardly a con- to the road and the 350-plus town-hall when he struggled to build on his evan- servative favorite. meetings he held in farming and meat- gelical base. Santorum suggests that the difference packing communities that barely appear Santorum believes that he can use his between him and Romney is not merely on the state map. Now, as the candidate Senate savvy to complement the fervor political but also temperamental—the If Rick Santorum can raise enough money, his team believes, there is an opening to make Romney sweat on two fronts—knocking him both on his conservatism and on his experience.

looks ahead, Santorum’s nascent, tight- stirred up in Iowa. “It’s now about the privileged son of a millionaire governor knit team faces significant hurdles. But next step, keeping the character of the versus the scrappy grandson of a coal his Iowa method underscores his abil - campaign intact, that Iowa spirit, and miner who grew up in a middle-class ity to put together a coalition of open- broadening the themes,” says one senior home in western Pennsylvania, the son minded Republicans who respect his adviser. “You’ll hear more about his of an Italian immigrant. Santorum’s old-school politicking in the age of story.” Indeed, at this stage in the race, electoral record, for the most part, Facebook and Twitter. Many of those the years on Capitol Hill are a plus, shows that his blue-collar Catholic voters are suspicious of Romney and Santorum says, with scars from the appeal, coupled with his firebrand uncomfortable with Ron Paul’s doctri- Clinton wars marking him as a conserva - rhetoric, is more than some scrambling naire libertarianism. They’re open to tive warrior, as opposed to Romney’s strategy. In fact, it’s worked for the someone who can connect the tea-party CEO. If he can raise enough money, his 53-year-old attorney since he emerged impulse of the primary to the reality of team believes, there is an opening to on the political scene in 1990 as a 32- conservative governance. make Romney sweat on two fronts— year-old House candidate who was In coming weeks, Santorum’s chal- knocking him both on his conservatism ignored by the National Republican lenge will be to build upon his success— and on his experience, inviting voters to Congressional Committee but still man- tapping donors, hiring staff—and to choose between a veteran legislator and aged to oust Democrat Doug Walgren, dodge the attacks from Romney and the a management consultant. a seven-term incumbent from the Pitts - other candidates left standing. During Romney, who earlier this season jock- burgh suburbs. Four years later, running the final sprint in Iowa, Santorum was eyed for position with a pair of House for the Senate, Santorum toppled another trailed by swarms of journalists, from members (Paul, Bachmann) and a influential liberal, incumbent Democrat print scribes and network producers to scandal-plagued pizza magnate (Herman Harris Wofford. pushy Swiss bloggers. As one might Cain), could have a trickier time with In 2000, he was reelected in an expect, Santorum is confident that he Santorum. In late January and February, increasingly Democratic state. That can sustain his surge. Iowa evangelicals “there is going to be a conservative year, George W. Bush lost Pennsylvania, may have bolstered his bid, but he sees alternative,” Santorum says, and, with but Santorum won handily, boosted by himself as a full-spectrum conservative: his Iowa breakthrough, he’s poised to a better-than-expected margin in the

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wealthy, socially moderate Philadelphia embrace of earmarks, including the suburbs. Then, as in Iowa, Santorum “Bridge to Nowhere,” the infamous credited his zealous commitment to Alaska boondoggle. Electable retail politics. his critics rarely point to As Santorum plods ahead, that’s but these earlier races as an indicator of one of the political ghosts haunting him. You his prowess, citing the benefits of Beyond policy particulars, Santorum incumbency for his 2000 win and the has some conservatives concerned about To unseat Obama, vote Romney Republican wave for his 1994 upset. In his political judgment. They respect their eyes, he is still the Rick Santorum him, they admire him, and they applaud BY RAMESH PONNURU of 2006, who suffered an 18-point loss his family, which has endured tremen- to Casey. dous personal trauma. (In 1996, he and hE only reason I’m sup - But John Brabender, Santorum’s Karen had a son, Gabriel, who died soon porting [Mitt] Romney is close associate and chief adviser since after birth; their daughter, Bella, has tri- because he can win the elec- his first congressional race, rejects the somy 18, a genetic disorder.) But when ‘T tion,” an Iowan named Tim notion that Santorum’s 2006 campaign it comes to politics, he hasn’t won McCleary told the Washington Post in is an omen of disaster. he calls the everyone’s trust. Explaining his 2008 late December. It seems to be a common Casey race an outlier, and those who endorsement of the man he is now run- sentiment among Romney supporters. focus on it, he says, miss the broader ning against, Santorum told NBC News: But Romney’s critics are putting forth a lessons of Santorum’s career, as well as “I made, I hate to say it, a calculated vigorous set of counterarguments that his promise. “You’ve got to remember political decision,” backing Romney to can’t be easily dismissed. his history,” Brabender says. “At the reduce Sen. John McCain’s chances. Some say that he is actually a weak beginning, he had no chance, and then That’s a tough admission for a campaign candidate: someone to whom voters have he wins. In 1992, they redistrict him that asks voters to elevate conservative never really warmed. Or they say that if into a Democrat-heavy district, and he principle over cold pragmatism. nominated he will not be able to motivate wins in a year Clinton won Penn - And conservatives have not forgotten conservatives to show up to vote for him. Some conservatives say that electability is overrated: Merely electing someone Beyond policy particulars, Santorum who calls himself a Republican wouldn’t has some conservatives concerned be much of an accomplishment. Reps. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul have about his political judgment. said in debates that anyone can beat President Obama in November, in which sylvania. If you think about it, every Santorum’s 2004 endorsement of liberal case there is no reason to judge the pri- time he runs, no one thinks he can sur- Republican Arlen Specter, then the mary candidates’ electability. The elec- vive. The stuff we’ve heard all year, it’s senior senator from Pennsylvania. At the tability skeptics often cap their argument nothing new. Obviously, 2006 was one time, Specter was struggling in a close by pointing to John McCain: Didn’t of those years where we beat our heads primary against conservative darling Pat many of the people who call Romney the against the wall. There wasn’t much we Toomey. Many Toomey backers believe strongest of the candidates say the same could do. But people tend to forget that that if Santorum had supported their thing about him four years ago? Look he has always surprised, that he relishes guy, he would have won instead of los- how that turned out. coming back and winning difficult ing a nail-biter, and they’re still bitter The McCain example should indeed areas.” about it. Even Santorum’s confidants serve as a reminder of the fallibility and Romney’s counterargument has been concede that that episode could hurt his provisionality of judgments about elec- that Santorum’s real problem isn’t so credentials as a conservative stalwart. tability. Observers who touted his poten- much his electability as his credibility. Brabender, for his part, isn’t worried. tial strength in a general election—this he may have wooed Iowans, supported In Iowa, Santorum has proved that he observer included—did not predict that by a bloc of pastors and Corn Belt con- can talk like a senator while campaign- a financial crisis would hit the country a servatives—but, as Romney sees it, ing like a tea-party unknown. “he thinks few weeks before that election, and thus Santorum spent much of the past two it was actually beneficial for him to raise the importance of issues with which decades as a Republican grandee with get out of Washington for a while,” the senator had no familiarity. But Mc - close ties to big-government spenders Brabender says. “It turned out to be a Cain nonetheless ran ahead of the rest and K Street lobbyists. Santorum’s crit- huge benefit, as he began to look at a of the Republican ticket in most places; ics point out that, after leaving office, he presidential run, since he came into this and even in retrospect, it is not obvious did work for legislative-policy groups in with fresh eyes, not as someone in a that any of his primary-campaign rivals Washington—work that, while common position of power.” Santorum remains would have done better than he did. Mike enough among former legislators, is not the wonky, youthful politician he’s huckabee never showed any ability to far removed from lobbying. Romney’s always been, but now he’s shown that he reach beyond his evangelical base. Many partisans argue that Santorum will be has survival instincts. That may be of Fred Thompson’s own supporters forced to address the full scope of enough to keep his campaign going came to view his campaign as lethargic. his senatorial record—especially his beyond the Iowa cornfields. And so on.

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You deserve a factual look at . . .

The Deadly Threat of a Nuclear-Armed Iran What can the world, what can the USA, what can Israel do about it? Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has declared publicly – not once, but repeatedly – that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” That effort, the destruction of Israel, seems to be the main goal of Iranian policy. When Iranian missiles are paraded through the streets of Tehran, the destination “to Jerusalem” is clearly stenciled on them.

accomplished that in a daring and unprecedented raid. Iraq’s WhatA deat hare wish the for I sfacts?rael. Ahmadinejad and the ayatollah who is nuclear capability was eliminated in one stroke, never to rise up the “supreme leader” have publicly mused that one or two again. Israel had done the world an enormous service. Had it not nuclear bombs would obliterate Israel, but that, though it would been for Israel’s decisive action, the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait cause devastating damage and millions of casualties, Iran would and, without question, also of Saudi Arabia and its enormous oil survive Israel’s retaliatory attack. Iran is a huge country, with fields, and, for that matter, of Iran, could not have been about 60 million inhabitants, so they are probably correct. And prevented. Saddam Hussein would have been the ruler of the who can doubt that those religious fanatics would not hesitate to world. allow the destruction of much of their country and to sacrifice The solution to the deadly threat that Iran poses to the world a third or even one-half of their is obvious. Of course, diplomacy population in order to eliminate “An attack on the Iranian nuclear installations and persuasion, threats and the hated Jewish state. When our promises, sticks and carrots – country was entangled with the would fall under the heading of “anticipatory every possible means short of Soviet Union in the bitter 40- self-defense,” recognized and sanctioned by military action – should be used year long “cold war,” with both international law and by common sense.” until it becomes clear even to the sides having sufficient nuclear most obdurate that nothing can weapons to destroy the deviate Iran from its chosen path opponent’s country and its people, things were kept in place by of becoming a nuclear power and to dominate the Middle East. MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction. However “evil” the leaders There is reason to believe that the people of Iran, especially the of the Soviet Union (the “Evil Empire”) may have been, there was young people, oppose the oppressive and theocratic regime of one great consolation and assurance: They were not crazy. But their country and are hostile to the mullahs who control the Iranians and other Muslims are crazies, as we understand the everything. But the government has the tools of power firmly in concept. Because they take instructions directly from Allah, who its hands. It controls the instruments of coercion – it can kill tells them to kill the Jews and other infidels, whatever the cost. people and it controls the oil money. While it would be most Israel has no problem with Iran. They share no borders and desirable and in the interest of the world to be able to foment an have no territorial dispute. In fact, they face common Arab overthrow of the Iranian regime, that is an unrealistic and enemies and should be natural allies, as they indeed were under unattainable prospect. the Shah. Iran’s death wish for Israel is based entirely on Regrettably, there is only one solution to the terrible dilemma religious fanaticism. In contrast even to the intractable North confronting the world, the unacceptable danger of a nuclear- Koreans, the determination of the Iranians is immutable. It armed Iran. The terror, the destruction and the 60 million dead cannot be changed by persuasion, by diplomacy, by sanctions or of World War II could have been prevented at several times by threats. during the Nazi regime. But the Allied powers, under the Once Iran is in possession of nuclear weapons, it will not only leadership of Britain’s prime minister Neville Chamberlain, be a deadly danger to Israel, but to all of the Middle East and to opted for appeasement and for “peace in our time.” We cannot virtually all of Europe. The flow of oil from the Middle East, the afford to make that same mistake again. The world must give lifeblood of the industrialized world, would be totally under its Iran an ultimatum: Desist immediately from the development of control and so would be the economies of all nations of the nuclear weapons; if you do not, we shall destroy the facilities that world, very much including the United States. produce them. There still is a window of opportunity to do that. What is to be done? In 1981, then prime minister of Israel That window may close very soon. But who would do the job? Menachem Begin, being aware of Iraq’s nuclear ambitions and The United States would be the obvious choice. But if the United looming realization of those ambitions, decided that its nuclear States were in accord, Israel could do it, just as it did the job in reactor at Osiraq had to be destroyed. The IAF (Israeli Air Force) 1981 in destroying Iraq’s nuclear potential once and for all. An attack on the Iranian nuclear installations would fall under the heading of “anticipatory self-defense,” recognized and sanctioned by international law and by common sense. Nobody really knows for sure how far Iran is from reaching its goal — six months. six years? The experts disagree. But if Iran is not stopped now, it may well be too late not very long from now.

This message has been published and paid for by FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals Facts and Logic About the Middle East and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We P.O. Box 590359 I San Francisco, CA 94159 have virtually no overhead. Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work, for these clarifying messages, and for related direct mail. Gerardo Joffe, President 109 To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org 3col_QXP-1127940387.qxp 1/4/2012 12:07 AM Page 22

Electability isn’t everything, of course: ably. Almost anywhere, a gubernatorial Otherwise Republicans could just nomi- candidate trying to continue a winning nate Obama and call it a day. But elec- streak for his party is going to confront tability matters more in races where the time-for-a-change sentiment, and that main primary candidates have very simi- sentiment is likely to be stronger the lar programs, where the parties’ pro- longer that streak has lasted and the grams differ dramatically, and where smaller the minority the winning party there is a high probability that the gen eral represents. Under Romney’s Republican election will be tight. In the current race predecessors, Massachusetts had turned all three conditions obtain. The fact that even more liberal than it already was. In no judgment about electability can be 1992, the Republican presidential candi- conclusively proven to be right does not date’s share of the vote in the common- excuse us from having to make one. wealth was 8.5 points lower than his Jonathan Last, a writer for The Weekly share of the national vote. In 1996, it was Standard, has made the case that Romney 12.6 points lower; in 2000, 15.4 points lower. Republicans were bound to end has the least-impressive electoral history their streak eventually, and keeping it of any Republican frontrunner in a very going as long as they did was a real long time. Most of the politicians who achievement. chase the White House are proven vote- Keep in mind the liberalism of Massa - getters with very few electoral blemish- chusetts, and Last’s list of former party es on their record. John McCain, Mike nominees does not look so clearly Huckabee, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, Michael stronger than Romney. McCain, Kerry, Dukakis—what unites all of these men is Dole, and Dukakis had all run in states that before getting to the presidential that favored their parties. level, they had demonstrated a talent for None of which makes Romney a poli - getting people to vote for them. tical dynamo. Last’s critique has real force. It is not hard to identify Romney’s Last figures that Romney has run in political weaknesses. If he is the nomi- 22 elections and won only five of them. nee, President Obama will relentlessly He lost to Ted Kennedy by 17 points in attack his work at Bain Capital as vulture 1994, a great Republican year. Even his capitalism. In 2008, his appeal in most greatest political achievement, winning states was limited to the affluent, and election as governor of Massachusetts in political reporters have made great sport 2002, is unimpressive on Last’s telling. of his sometimes awkward interactions Republicans won the three previous gu - with voters on the campaign trail. A sig- bernatorial elections with larger percent- nificant portion of the electorate will hold ages of the vote. And Romney ended the his Mormon religion against him. His party’s winning streak: Republicans lost campaign flailed when Newt Gingrich Itonly the 2006 election as he left office. began to climb in the polls. Romney him- Nothing in Last’s indictment is inaccu- self raised the “issue” of Gingrich’s debts rate, but he has chosen the most hostile to Tiffany, which only made Romney takes a possible interpretation of the facts. It is look foolish. true, for example, that Kennedy beat But the important question about elec- moment. Rom ney, as he beat everyone the Repub - tability isn’t whether Romney has politi- licans ever put up against him in Massa - cal vulnerabilities or even how well he Make a difference chusetts. It is also true that Romney held stacks up against past party nominees. in the lives of the men and women Kennedy to the lowest vote percentage he It’s how he compares with the other who protect our freedom. ever got after his first election (in, yes, a avail able candidates. Compared with VOLUNTEER. DONATE. REMEMBER. good Republican year). Last’s win/loss them, he starts to look much more im- USO.ORG record treats each primary defeat in pressive. 2008, dubiously, as an independent First consider their political résumés. event. Consider them collectively and Several of Romney’s rivals—Speaker his win/loss record is 3–2. (Wins: 1994 Gingrich and Representatives Bachmann Senate primary, 2002 gubernatorial pri- and Paul—have not been elected state - mary, 2002 general election; losses: 1994 wide to any office. (Gingrich hasn’t been Senate general election, 2008 presiden- elected anywhere during this millen- tial primaries.) nium.) One, Gov. Rick Perry, has a It is also possible to read the guberna- perfect record of winning in statewide torial record Last discusses more favor- elections in Texas. But his gubernatorial

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wins came after the state had become the very least an awfully risky premise safely Republican. Gov. Jon Huntsman for a nominee to adopt. was elected in deep-red Utah. Then there’s the question of how the Romney has executive experience, candidates would come across person - which separates him from Repre sen - ally if nominated. This is admittedly tatives Bachmann and Paul, Speaker subjective territory. The danger with Gingrich, and Senator Santorum. Voters Romney is that he will come across as seem to value such experience. Since (in order of increasing political worri- I M P O R T A N T 1928, the presidency has gone only once someness) boring, phony, or uncaring. to someone without strong executive But he seems just as likely to appear N O T I C E credentials—who was not, that is, a intelligent, calm, and responsible. Gin - former governor, former high military grich runs a high risk of projecting an to all National Review commander, or sitting president—over image of grandiosity, instability, and someone who had such qualifications. callousness, Santorum of arrogance and subscribers! (In 1988, when the elder Bush beat self-righteousness. Many people have Massa chusetts governor Michael Du - gotten the impression that Perry is kakis.) Romney is the only one of the dumb. That may be unfair, as it was in current Republican candidates who— the cases of Reagan and the second like Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Bush. But it is an impression that Perry We are moving our George W. Bush—both has executive keeps reinforcing, both in debates and in experience and has won an election in a remarks to reporters. subscription-fulfillment competitive jurisdiction. (Note that this Some weaknesses are easier to address office from would not be true if Gov. Tim Pawlenty than others. Romney at least seems to of Minnesota were still in the race, or understand that he needs to connect with Mount Morris, Ill. Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida had entered middle-income voters, which is why he to Palm Coast, Fla. it.) keeps emphasizing the middle class Please continue Most of the primary candidates are when he talks about taxes. Gingrich can- running on the same agenda, so the dif- not, however, rearrange his marital his - to be vigilant: ferences among their positions are fairly tory. Nor can any of these candidates There are fraudulent small. What differences exist tend to change their basic personalities. Note work in favor of Romney’s electability Gingrich’s recent comparison of his fail- agencies soliciting and against the others. Perry and Romney ure to get on the Virginia primary ballot your National Review both have fairly sensible ideas about how to Pearl Harbor, which no other candidate to reform Social Security, for example. would have made. Gingrich also has a subscription ! renewal But Perry, unlike Romney, has expressed steeper climb in public opinion: Roughly without our authorization. a degree of hostility to the popular pro- half the country already has an unfavor- Please reply only to gram that will be easy for Democrats to able view of him, while closer to a third exploit in the fall. The view of Bach - of the country feels that way about Rom- National Review mann, Perry, and Santorum that abortion ney. renewal notices or should be banned even in the rare cases Romney cannot do much to change the where pregnancies arise from rape or minds of anti-Mormon voters. But two bills—make sure the incest, while defensible (and in my view things might work in his favor. The longer return address is correct), would also be a serious political he spends in the spotlight, the lower his liability. religion may go down the list of associa- Palm Coast, Fla. The candidates would probably have tions people have with him: He could Ignore all requests for different strategies in the fall campaign. become “moderate,” “the Republican renewal that are not George W. Bush adopted “compassionate nom i nee,” and “a rich businessman” be - directly payable conservatism” in large part to ensure that fore he is “the Mormon” in people’s the public did not form an impression of minds. And the closer voters get to the to National Review. him as simply a conservative Christian election, the more they may focus on the from Texas, with all the negative associa- important issues before the country, If you receive any mail or tions that would accompany that impres- which do not include his theology. telephone offer that makes sion. Disagreeing with Bush’s solution is Romney isn’t one of the great political you suspicious contact one thing. Perry seems not to acknowl- talents of American history. (Neither is edge the political problem at all: The Obama, by the way, but that’s another [email protected]@nationalreview.com.. premise of his campaign has been that article.) But he looks like a strong candi- Your cooperation the public wants a pure, uncompromis - date. He might not win in November: I ing conservatism. Many conservatives would rate him as a slight underdog, is greatly appreciated. believe, or want to believe, this premise, myself. But he still looks like the best bet but the evidence for it is weak and it is at to beat Obama.

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the national-defense interests, are princi- conspiracy fruitcakery. Take the first part pled—and not novel—conservative posi- away, and what you have left is basically The tions. You and I may not agree with interchangeable in tone and idiocy with them—I do, mostly, up to the part about any left-wing rag you can get your hands Constitution allowing Iran to bomb Israel—but on the on. Oh, sure, you’ll have to substitute some crackpot scale of 1 to Lyndon LaRouche, words—“corporate fat cats” for “urban they’re barely a 3. And if we’re all really blacks”—but you’ll find that the writers And the Coot honest about it, the sainted Abraham Lin - of both the “Ron Paul” oeuvre and your In which we chat with the Paulista coln did, in fact, violate the Consti tution on standard lefty scandal rag have saved the at the end of the bar several occasions. And over a few beers, phrase “Jewish bankers” on a macro. say, among friends, these are interesting The problem with the crank at the end of BY ROB LONG and diverting topics of conversation. the bar isn’t that he’s one of those flinty But like all of those kinds of conversa- libertarians who demand that we all live in T should be some kind of requirement, tions, they always end up the same way. a Randian paradise of winner-take-all— according to constitutional scholar The conversation winds along interesting that’s what makes libertarians often tire- Adam Freedman, that every presiden- abstractions and what-ifs, and then some- some and irritating, but it’s an interesting I tial election have a candidate who one—usually the old guy at the end of the and thoughtful philosophy—it’s that the represents the Constitution. bar—says something truly out-there— only reason guys like that can see for why The “constitutional candidate” wouldn’t “There’s no constitutional reason, for we don’t live in a splendid constitutional have a prayer of winning, of course—the instance, why the children of illegal immi- utopia is that someone—the government, best way to win the presidency, we’ve grants cannot be eaten”—and then the the guy in the black helicopter, the Jews, learned, is to promise to do all sorts of conversation devolves into weird irra- the urban blacks—is holding us down. extra-constitutional things, to toss the text tional tributaries, and everyone moves on Ron Paul the candidate occupies an and all of its tiresome restrictions and counterweights aside in an orgy of promises and giveaways—but it would be useful, and instructive, to have someone up there on the dais to act as a kind of constitutional ombudsman. Someone tiresome and irritable, probably, who doesn’t mind beginning every sentence with “The Con - stitution doesn’t give you the authority to do that” or “Where does it say in the Con - sti tution that government gets to tell me to lay off the carbs?” That sort of thing. Although if you really think about it, we have had exactly that sort of candidate in the past two presidential elections. Ron Paul debates in 2011. The bad news is that the candidate has been Ron Paul. to something else, but you always have the interesting and useful place in the race. It was always fun to see Paul’s dyspep- feeling that one guy—usually the old guy He’s a principled weirdo, the unlikable old tic, curdled expression during the 16,000 at the end of the bar—really meant it. coot down the street, the guy you have to Republican debates this autumn. (There In other words, there’s Ron Paul, and respect for his stubborn adherence to the were 16,000 of them, weren’t there?) It there’s the Ron Paul newsletters, and you rulebook of the great American experi- was bracing to see him shrug off appeals to cannot have one without the other. One, in ment. And that’s what most voters see weasel-word his responses—just shutter fact, leads inexorably to the other. First in him, too. “Really admire the point of the Fed! dump NATO!—and it was espe- you start talking about sane, grounded view,” they say. “Too bad he’s too weird cially interesting to watch the other stuff—sound money; harmful central to be president.” candidates, who, philosophically, aren’t banking—and then, eventually, you start Whatever the reason for the weird ram- sup posed to be all that different from suggesting how it might have been the blings in the Ron Paul family of publica- Paul, ballet-step around him, like he was Israeli Mossad that bombed the World tions—and to me, anyway, the most likely one of those loud talkers at the neighbor- Trade Center in 1993, or how the AIDS one is: the guy wanted to move some prod- hood bar who make a lot of sense, mostly, virus is quite possibly a product of secret uct, and his customers ate that crap up— but then every now and then say some- government research gone awry. it does suggest a sad conclusion: that the thing—Lincoln was a tyrant!—that makes The Ron Paul newsletters—published job of the constitutional candidate—the AP

/ everyone think, “Oh, I get it. You’re just in the 1980s and 1990s under various ombudsman for the founding document, . . . insane.” hilariously pompous titles, such as “Ron the champion of the framers—is unlikely Ron Paul isn’t insane, of course. His Paul’s Freedom Report” and “The Ron to appeal to anyone except the humorless views on sound money and central bank- Paul Survival Report”—are filled with a crank at the end of the bar. And that’s not

CHARLIE NEIBERGALL ing, and even his narrow interpretation of nutty blend of libertarian boilerplate and Ron Paul’s fault. That’s ours.

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Upstate Coalition, a collection of tea- this ‘local poll’ when we correctly pre- party groups in the Greenville area. “She dicted her gubernatorial victory in 2010,” Nikki Haley’s talked about school choice and zero- Scott Huffmon, the director of the Win - based budgeting in the campaign, and throp poll, commented, noting that his Rough Start now those things have dropped away,” survey predicted Haley’s defeat of Dem - says Talbert Black, the founder of Pal - ocrat Vincent She heen in the general elec- South Carolina’s rock-star governor metto Liberty, a local political action tion. None the less, Team Haley has a point collides with reality committee. when arguing that the survey is some - Haley certainly has seen her approval what suspect. “I have consistently found BY JOHN FUND ratings slump since being sworn in, a durable ten-point Republican-party although just how much is a point of dis- affiliation edge in South Carolina elec- Columbia, S.C. pute. According to a December Win throp tions,” says Haley strategist Jon Lerner. HE race for the Republican presi- University poll, the governor’s approval “The Winthrop poll surveyed 3.6 percent dential nomination has pivoted rating is 35 percent, with only a little more Dem o crats than Republicans, so towards South Car o li na’s Janu ary more than half of Republicans giving there was an inaccurate partisan weigh- T 21 primary. Be cause the state’s her a thumbs-up. Since every statewide ing.” primary voters have selected the eventual GOP nominee in every contested White House race since 1980, every campaign is putting out a maximum effort. One of the aces that Mitt Romney believes he holds in the Palmetto State is the endorsement of Nikki Haley, the new 39-year-old governor who rocketed to political stardom last year by challenging the good-ol’-boy political network in the state. Fueled by endorsements from both Sarah Palin and Romney, Haley was able to marshal tea-party support to crush a sitting attorney general, a sitting congress- man, and the state’s lieutenant governor, winning the GOP nomination and then the general election. It was classic political Cinderella theater, with the story of the state’s first governor from a minority group (Haley is Indian-American) taking place on the 150th anniversary of its secession from Nikki Haley and Mitt Romney in December 2011 the union and providing a powerful symbol of just how far the South has pro- official in South Carolina is a Repub- That appears correct, but fixing it gressed. But one year after she was sworn lican, the GOP controls the legislature, would still leave the governor with an in, enough of the luster has worn off that and Repub licans have a seven-to-one approval rating only in the 40s, which is former governor Mark Sanford, her im - advantage in the congressional delega- what recent private polls I was shown all mediate predecessor and political mentor, tion, the Winthrop survey rang alarm bells pegged her at. A Public Pol i cy Polling sur- is discouraged. “I wonder if she’ll be everywhere. vey in September had her at 41 percent more of a liability to Romney than she is The governor punched back. Ap pear - approval. an asset,” he told me. “She’s taken her eye ing on NBC’s Meet the Press, she dis- That level isn’t what an incumbent gov- off the ball and lost focus.” missed this “local poll” because it also ernor would hope for after a year in office. His comments are echoed by several showed that President Obama would Even Governor Sanford, who crippled his tea-party leaders I spoke with, who say today win South Carolina, which would own administration in 2009 when he her efforts at cutting government have be a bizarre result since he lost the state admitted to leaving the state to meet his been half-hearted at best. “She is increas- by 9 percentage points in 2008. Argentine lover, ended his two terms in ingly falling back in line with legislative But the poll in question didn’t test office a year ago with an approval rating leaders bent on preserving the old sys- President Obama’s general-election pros - near 50 percent. tem,” says Brit Adams, a leader of the pects in South Carolina, only his state - “Everyone knows she has a weak wide approval rating. This came in at 45 governorship in which the major budget AP Mr. Fund, a columnist, is the author of Stealing percent—higher than Haley’s. The gover- decisions are made by a five-member / Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our nor’s office was forced to admit she had control board, on which she is only one Democracy, which was recently published in a new misspoken. vote,” says Ashley Landess, president

edition. “She sure didn’t have a problem with of the free-market South Carolina Policy RAINIER EHRHARDT

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Council. “That said, she hasn’t taken on And as for transparency, he says there’s the power structure like her allies hoped, a clear distinction between rhetoric and but rather accommodated herself to it.” reality in the Haley administration. Col - For Shame Chris Drummond, a former communi- umnist Isaac Bailey of the Myrtle Beach cations director for Governor San ford, Sun News concludes that “she’s done just Whither the Cinderella Men? agrees. “The control board has a reform- about everything to make it impossible minded state treasurer and state comp - for the public to know what she is doing BY DANIEL FOSTER troller and two legislative committee and why, even going out of her way to chairmen and the governor on it,” he told hide or delete emails or using personal OULD you believe me if I me. “Too often the governor is voting to accounts to dodge open document re - told you that America’s logroll with the legislative chairmen quirements.” entitlement problem is not, rather than voting for reform.” Although Indeed, some Republican activists are W at the end of the day, about she will submit her own budget for the furious at her sudden decision to ask the unfunded mandates, changing demo- first time this month, her line-item vetoes state’s environmental board to reverse graphics, out-of-control health-care costs, of last year’s budget were minuscule and, itself and approve a permit to allow a or marginal tax rates, but about shame? in Sanford’s eyes, “prearranged” with leg- dredging project that will benefit the And for the sake of argument, would you islative leaders. “She misled a lot of port of Savannah, Ga., a com pet i tor of further indulge the assertion that the year- reformers. I regret my efforts to help her Charleston’s port. Some Re pub licans ran end spending battle between congression- get elected,” Drummond told me. an ad during a recent football game al Republicans and the White House was Nikki Haley rode to prominence on a between the University of South Carolina not about the payroll tax or the Keystone key issue in 2010. As a state representa- and Clemson accusing her of making a XL pipeline, but about restoring a mea- tive, she bravely led the fight against leg- backroom deal. When the Re pub lican leg- sure of shame to the welfare state? And if islative secrecy, pointing out that less than islature held hearings on the issue, Haley you’ve come with me this far, won’t you 8 percent of the bills passed by the legis- staffers initially refused to testify and come a little farther in accepting that the lature had a roll-call vote. She was ridi- cooperated only after subpoenas were key to understanding the role of shame in culed by Bobby Harrell, Speaker of the issued. the American experiment isn’t found state house, who stripped her of a com- Rob Godfrey, the governor’s commu - within a CBO report or a historical study, mittee assignment and dismissed attempts nications director, says such criticism but in the first act of a good (though not to require roll-call votes “as a waste of shouldn’t surprise anyone because “when great) Russell Crowe boxing movie from taxpayer time and money.” But the issue you run for office as a champion of trans- 2005? of trans par en cy resonated with the public parency, you always set yourself up for and helped propel her to an improbable critics saying you are not transparent primary victory, with sleazy last-minute enough. But the reality is that no governor allegations of adultery barely slowing her in South Carolina history has been as down. transparent as Gov er nor Haley. She goes “Nikki agreed with us that there is a further than is required by law.” Tommy Thompson great disconnect between the people and Many of Haley’s original supporters

the governing elites in South Car o lina,” say they understand she entered office Ashley Landess told me. “We have an without executive experience, and they Grover Norquist electorate that mostly supports small gov- expected some rocky moments. But they ernment, but most of the legislative lead- say hiring a very young staff known more ers are slavish supporters of corporate for its loyalty than its competence has welfare who think they are the conduit to compounded her problems. Mark Sanford prosperity.” She says that, far from break- has an edge of sadness in his voice when ing up that system, the governor has discussing her first year with me: “She’s increasingly coddled it. on the cover of national magazines, her The governor’s office vehemently dis- book will be out in April—I think it can be agrees, and notes that the last leg is la tive confusing, and all this has led her to punt session saw the passage of tort reform, a on some of the really big issues she ran requirement that all spending votes in on.” the legislature be recorded, and a law Nikki Haley remains a political super- requiring that a photo ID be shown at the star in national Republican circles, and polls. She was also a fierce opponent of her charm and fighting spirit are undeni- attempts by the Obama-appointed Na - able. But it’s increasingly clear that many tional Labor Re la tions Board to sanction of the people who elected her are worried Boeing for building a new plant in South that because of either national distractions Tools for Teaching Conservative Thinking Carolina. or an unwillingness to fully confront the Drummond calls most of those issues power structure she ran against, she is “low-lying fruit” that were so popular it’s becoming what last year she said she no surprise the legislature passed them. loathed—just another politician.

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Not convinced? Well, let’s elaborate, quite literally with hat in hand—for the long missing from our thinking about starting first with that last claim. The additional few bucks he needs to turn on entitlements. good-but-not-great boxing pic to which the heat. Some men turn their backs, others Against the backdrop of shameful I refer is Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, offer their two bits with a gentle conde- anecdotes such as the one about the jet- based on the life of Depression-era pugi- scension. One trainer, played by Paul setting Seattle couple in the $1.2 million list James J. Braddock, who went from Giamatti, tells Braddock (who is by now house who have nevertheless collected dockworker to champion of the world in mumbling apologies and choking back more than $100,000 in welfare checks, inspiring fashion. In it we find a standout tears) that he has nothing at all to be sorry the bill attempted to strengthen safe- sequence that elegantly and efficiently for. And, of course, Giamatti’s character is guards that ensure public assistance goes dramatizes the social and cultural value right: Braddock owes no apologies for to the truly needy. Against the shameful of shame, and demonstrates why we miss doing whatever it takes to keep his family backdrop of a recent CBO study showing it so much today. Injury-plagued, semi- together. But Braddock is sorry nonethe- that, over the last 30 years, the share of retired from boxing, and relying on scant less, and more important, he’s ashamed. government transfer payments going to work as a longshoreman, Braddock is It’s a shame so powerful that it kept the poorest 20 percent of Americans has depicted living with his wife and small Braddock from looking for a handout declined from 50 percent to 35 percent, children in a dingy tenement in New until he had exhausted all other possibili- while the share going to the wealthiest Jersey, splitting a single ham steak four ties. And it’s a shame so powerful that by 80 percent has increased from 50 to ways for supper. But even then, he has too the end of the second act, with Braddock 65 percent, the bill introduced modest much pride to tap the government for well on his way to the miraculous cham- means-testing for Medicare. Against the help. It is only after the utility man shuts pionship bout that gives the film its title backdrop of a president who says, to his the heat off, and Braddock’s wife farms and its central metaphor, he returns every shame, that yet another extension of un- the children out to a relative for fear they cent of charity he ever took. employment benefits will be better for the are slipping into pneumonia, that the It’s an inspirational tale and a thorough- American economy than the Keystone fighter relents. ly American one. Or at least, it was a pipeline, the bill took steps to gradually, We cut to the counter at New Jersey’s thoroughly American tale. Now I wonder responsibly reduce the maximum benefit Emergency Relief Administration, where whether the great crime of America’s enti- eligibility from 99 to 59 weeks, checking a woman whose very job it is to adminis- tlement culture is that it has killed all the the descent of that program from insur- ter public assistance counts out $19, looks Cinderella Men at just the moment it ance to de facto welfare. at Braddock with something between needs them most. Indeed, I was moved to Each of these measures is long over- disappointment and pity, and says, “I rewatch the film on the occasion of the due, and each is at its core about shame, never thought I’d see you here, Jimmy.” demise of the House payroll-tax plan that, arguably the social virtue most critical to Braddock, eyes turned downward, col- although chalked up as a mere political the success of the American project. For a lects his money and shuffles off. In the miscalculation, attempted to do some- limited government in which all are free next scene we see Braddock in a smoke- thing far more important for the future of to pursue their own ends requires a cultur- filled saloon inside the old Madison the country than any temporary tax holi- al counterbalancing to assure, as William Square Garden, where he begs a room full day would: It tried—and failed—to rein- F. Buckley Jr. once put it, that not every- of boxing promoters, trainers, and suits— troduce some small measure of shame thing that is legal is reputable. Shame provides such balance. And while we think of it as primarily deployed against undesir- able personal habits—everything from sexual promiscuity to alcoholism—there was once in this country a great shame associated with dependence, with being on the dole. At the start of the Great Depression, “welfare” was largely a private affair, administered by churches and charities, and it was in most cases reserved for wid- ows and the infirm. That changed in 1930, when the federal government first waded into unemployment assistance, and again during the historic first term of Franklin Roosevelt, whose New Deal produced a litany of new “direct relief” programs. Still, the public was suspicious. While contemporary surveys showed Americans broadly supportive of the public-works projects that made assistance contingent on labor, welfare for the able-bodied con-

tinued to be seen as a shameful handout— ROMAN GENN

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a disreputable, if temporarily necessary, affair. even the presentation of Social Security (as with Medicare a generation The Lioness later) as a kind of investment from which one expected no more than a fair return In Winter couldn’t fully alleviate this shame. as none other than Fdr himself announced ‘Lady Thatcher’ comes to at the beginning of 1935, “The federal the big screen government must and shall quit this business of relief.” BY JOHN O’SULLIVAN But things have changed. due in part to the very acceptance and perceived success he Iron Lady”—a term of the new deal and its progeny, the taint coined as a hostile criticism of shame associated with being on the dole of Margaret Thatcher by the has long since faded. What’s worse, this ‘T red army newspaper in moral change has coincided with demo- 1976—proved to be an accurate predic- graphic and actuarial changes that have tion of her impact in the Cold War. It is, made entitlements more lopsidedly redis- however, an ironic and ultimately mis- tributive, and thus unsustainable. now, leading title for this Meryl Streep por- dependence on the federal government— trayal of the last British prime minister to not just by the poor, but by the middle and play a major role on the world stage as even upper classes—for everything from she lives in lonely retirement. a better health insurance to home ownership, col- one would have been The Lioness in lege to retirement, is so complete that most Winter. of us don’t notice the stream of subsidies For the film’s narrative is framed as a until it is interrupted. and worse, we’re not series of flashbacks in the memory of an even ashamed of ourselves. elderly Lady Thatcher grieving over the Indeed the overriding characteristic of death of her husband some years before. our bloated welfare state is its shameless- We first encounter her as a slightly con- ness. There is no shame in the Seattle cou- fused old lady who, having escaped her ple, or the president who thinks putting police escort, is buying a pint of milk in a people back to consumption is better than local store. She returns home to complain putting them back to work. Just as there is about its price to denis, who is as lively no shame in the occupiers who starved in death as he was in life: he crops up coffee shops of business in new york or regularly throughout the movie’s narra- shut down productive ports in oakland tive of his wife’s political career to com- demanding that others pay off their stu- ment on her memories, her decisions, her dent loans or their underwater mortgages. ambition, her guilt, and her selfishness Just as there is no shame in the politicians while she packs his clothes and other who fear-monger on entitlements. effects. When others are around, how - To note this is not, as some would no ever, he conveniently disappears into the doubt imply, to argue for the wholesale woodwork. Whether she is aware that dissolution of the welfare state. Just about “denis” is a hallucination is never really everyone from Paul ryan leftward agrees clear—until the very end of the movie, on a well-tailored safety net for those who when, all his belongings having been cannot help themselves. and to be sure, dispatched to a charity shop, he walks the Great recession, like the Great de - away into the next world, leaving his pression, has seen a dramatic spike in wife alone and bereft. their number. But the depression genera- Several critics otherwise favorable to tion remained possessed of a shame that The Iron Lady have criticized this fram- helped both curb abuses of the welfare ing device as distasteful. To portray a state and power the country into an un- living person, especially a distinguished precedented era of growth. Can we say stateswoman, as suffering from senile NATIONAL REVIEW is the same of ourselves? delusions is thought to be unpleasantly available on iTunes and in So long as we are shameless, our enti- intrusive. That is a fair criticism. But it tlement crisis remains as much moral as need not have been a disabling one if the Android Market. fiscal. The paradox we are left with is that denis’s commentaries had been kept the only society that can make entitle- within limits both of time and of taste. NR APPS ARE FREE TO DOWNLOAD. ments work is one that doesn’t feel enti- They are, however, almost the whole ©NATIONAL REVIEW, Inc., 2012 tled. movie, or at least its central narrative

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theme. Actual historical footage of real speeches by our heroine, and then on to events—the miners’ strike, the Falklands the next item. To some extent, this com- War—is little more than confirmation of pression is a cinematic necessity. The Denis’s insights and observations. Cold War is compressed into Thatcher It matters greatly therefore who “Den - dancing with Reagan, the Berlin Wall is” is and what he says. He is certainly coming down, the Paris conference that not the historical Denis Thatcher, who ended the Cold War (and that received the would have been alarmed at some of the news of her defeat by Michael Heseltine, remarks put in his mouth. He did not which triggered her downfall). Her oppo- believe his wife was moved by ambition sition to the euro is alluded to in a single rather than duty (as he argues in one cru- sentence (perhaps added very recently). cial scene) or that she was “always alone” The 1974 Tory crisis is pictorially rep - rather than a full family member (as he resented by dramatic scenes of rubbish says in his final appearance). The real piling up that really relate to the 1979 Denis Thatcher told friends as early as “winter of discontent” under Labour. And the early 1960s—a few years after his so on. But we get very little context that wife entered parliament—that she would would explain the reasons for these vari- be the first woman prime minister. He ous conflicts—nothing about the revived was inordinately proud and entirely sup- Soviet threat of the mid- to late-1970s, portive of her. nothing about the miners’ leader, Arthur He is presented here as the spokesman Scargill, mounting an explicitly political for the confused paradox at the heart of challenge to the government, nothing this film. It is an anti-feminist film inso- about the erosion of national sovereignty far as it depicts Margaret Thatcher as the Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher within the European Union. This is a film prototypical feminist career woman care- about politics without politics. less toward her family. And it is a femi- the darling of the whole party. All of In the absence of political context, nist film insofar as it shows her defeating which means that if Denis Thatcher, a however, all these different conflicts the massed ranks of prejudiced maledom self-confessed Home Counties Tory, had seem to be united by only one thing: to get to the top. been an unmarried MP at the time, he namely, the nature of Thatcher herself This paradox itself rests on a mystery: would have voted for her too. and her “divisive” leadership. And that is How on earth did Margaret Thatcher get If “Denis” is not Denis, then, who is really the movie’s all-too-evident sub- elected to the leadership of a Tory party he? As a hallucination produced by her text: She is “a battler” who has “battled here composed entirely of male chauvin- mind/imagination/conscience, he is pre- all her life.” She battles her way through ists? The various scenes in which Mrs. sumably a reflection of the inmost “feel- all these various conflicts accompanied Thatcher battles, triumphs over, leads, ings” that, as she boldly tells her doctor, by her tap-dancing cabinet, first as sullen and is eventually betrayed by an all-male she distrusts (preferring “thoughts”). But plotters, then as reluctant warriors coun- three-piece-suited chorus line of Tories has anybody heard Mrs. Thatcher express seling inaction, then as toadying syco- are almost balletic in character, beauti- the “feelings” relayed through “Denis,” phants in the face of her successes, then fully composed, flawlessly filmed, and either today or before she began to suffer as sullen plotters again who realize that aching to be set to music. They have the ravages of age? None of her friends she has finally gone too far and can be some claim to symbolic truth as a de - or former colleagues can remember her brought down. Her career was magnifi- scription of her relationship with the doing so. Nor do they ring true as typi- cent in its way, but was it really neces- patrician Tory “wets” who provided the cally “her.” And that being the case, sary? Did Britain pay too high a price? top leadership of the party for much of “Denis” is really a ventriloquist’s dummy Did her family pay too high a price? Did her time in politics. But these scenes are for the scriptwriter and director. she herself pay too high a price? absurdly false as a portrayal of rank-and- That must be so in some sense, of No! No! No! is an appropriately file Tories (who, among other things, are course. But the defective sense in which Thatcherite answer to those last three socially much more normal than depicted it is true here is that this ventriloquist’s questions. But I shouldn’t let that deter here) and of her rapport with them. Mrs. dummy is also a Greek chorus. He is the you from seeing the movie. Though in Thatcher was the Tory leader most com- truth-teller who gives us the psycholo - the end this is a sentimental story about fortable with the grassroots party since gical reality of Margaret Thatcher that an elder stateswoman reliving her life in Bonar Law (d. 1923). She was elected explains her politics, her rise, and eventu- a melancholy mood, it is a riveting story Tory leader almost entirely with male ally her fall. cleverly told and elevated by a superb votes—but most of them male-back- At first glance the politics described by and uncannily accurate performance bencher votes. (We know the exact total the film is a kaleidoscopic jumble—the from Meryl Streep that goes far beyond of the male-chauvinist vote in that elec- struggle against inflation, the Falklands brilliant imitation. A moving and exciting tion; it was 16—the number of MPs who War, the miners’ strike, the end of the story, but, as our parents used to say, it’s voted for the other right-winger standing Cold War—each conveyed in a few just a story. And one that, even if it were against Ted Heath, an aristocratic Hugh phrases, some footage of rioting and about someone else, I don’t think Lady

ALEX BAILEY Fraser.) She soon established herself as fighting, a handful of bold declaratory Thatcher would go to see.

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Courting the Cranks Murray Rothbard is still hurting the Right

BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

OR most of the past century, left-wing fringe nuttery in writing in The New Republic in 2008. Kirchick’s report inspired American politics came in one color: red. Say what two distinct responses. The first can be summarized: “Eek! you will about Communism—and go ahead and start A Jew!” Save your crayons, kids, unless you can account F with 100 million murders, the Gulag, the Cultural for such verbatim sentiments as “Gay, Zionist Jew James Revolution, the permanent intellectual and moral scars inflicted Kirchick bashes Dr. Ron Paul” and “The people that hate Ron on much of Europe and Asia—Marxism-Leninism had a conve- Paul are the same people that hate Jesus. They are New World niently centralizing effect. From union goons to environmental Order/Illuminati/Zionists/Satanists.” I’ve been around the far radicals to Occupy Wall Street, even today it’s still pretty much right and far left long enough to know that “neocon” and “Zion - one dinky degree of separation between the mainstream Left and ist” are how well-schooled kooks pronounce “dirty Jew.” And the wretched remains of the Communist Party USA and other that was the response of the great Paulite unwashed. historical appendages of the Kremlin, a more or less unbroken The second response, that of the respectable libertarian world, chain of Rosenbergs and Alger Hisses and Harry Dexter Whites. the “Orange Line Mafia” in Washington and its affiliates in sen- On the other hand, right-wing fringe nuttery, which never sitive and sober intellectual enclaves from Manhattan to Orange attached itself to a European totalitarian movement, is one big County, was: “Heavens! How could this be?” Ron Paul’s own bag of political Skittles: a rainbow of fruit flavors, a fair sampling response was a variation on that theme: Libertarians can’t be of which can be found floating around the Ron Paul movement, racists, he argued, because libertarians are individualists, and thanks in no small part to two of the Right’s great confectioners racism is a collectivist idea. Which is all fine and good and dandy, of kookery—Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. but doesn’t get us very far toward answering the question of how Ron Paul’s less-pathetic-than-expected presidential campaign precisely those un-libertarianly racist sentiments ended up in a has brought fresh attention to his newsletters and the occasional- newsletter published by the country’s most influential libertarian ly odious sentiments expressed therein, which were first brought politician. Oops! is not the answer we’re looking for. The answer

to general public attention by the journalist James Kirchick, is: It was all part of a plan. A very stupid plan. ROMAN GENN

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HAT plan was hatched by one Murray Rothbard, a brilliant and that everybody would just leave us the heck alone, and invite man and in many ways an admirable one. He was a tire- us on a jolly little picnic or something, if only we would follow T less exponent of the Austrian school of economics and his foreign-policy prescriptions, which were to have no foreign had a real talent for exposing the self-interested motives of self- policy, because foreign policies are for states, and we weren’t to proclaimed patriots and esurient servants of the public weal who have one of those, either. spent the post-war era building what he dubbed the “welfare- William F. Buckley repaid Rothbard’s attentions with a famous warfare state.” He was also the Right’s example par excellence obituary that begins, “Murray Rothbard had defective judg- of what happens when political positions calcify into ideology ment,” and goes on to recount that in the 1950s Rothbard “physi - and then metastasize into mania. Taking inspiration from the cally applauded Khrushchev in his limousine as it passed by on Vietnam-era anti-war movement and the rise of David Duke, the street. He gave as his reason for this that, after all, Khrushchev he hoped to build a hippie-redneck coalition to resurrect the had killed fewer people than General Eisenhower, his host.” program of the 1930s Right, and his opening bid was the “total (Rothbard regarded Ike’s defeat of Senator Taft at the 1952 con- abolition of the New Deal, the whole kit and kaboodle of the vention as a key moment in the rise of the wrong kind of Right.) welfare state, the Wagner Act, the Social Security Act, going off Rothbard, WFB wrote, ended his days with “about as many gold in 1933, and all the rest. . . . Some would stop at repealing disciples as David Koresh had in his little redoubt in Waco. Yes, the New Deal. Others would press on, to abolition of Woodrow Murray Rothbard believed in freedom, and yes, David Koresh Wilson’s New Freedom, including the Federal Reserve System believed in God.” and especially that mighty instrument of tyranny, the income tax and the Internal Revenue Service.” Okay, your average conser vative-libertarian type might be thinking, so far, so awe- S you might imagine, forging a functioning political some. Then Rothbard adds: “Still others, extremists such as coalition out of Americans who believe that history’s myself, would not stop until we repealed the Federal Judiciary A great villains are George Washington and Abraham Act of 1789, and maybe even think the unthinkable and restore Lincoln and the boys who stormed the beaches at Normandy, the good old Articles of Confederation.” They may not be Topic and who want nothing more than to restore the Articles of A in the nation’s political discourse, but Rothbard had a thing for Confederation as a stepping stone toward achieving total, bliss- the Articles of Confederation—not because they represented, in ful anarchy—and building that coalition around conserva- his mind, a good blueprint for government, since he denied that tives—turns out to be kind of hard. And that is where Rothbard there could be such a thing. He regarded the Articles as overly really went spectacularly wrong. In his more rigorous mode, statist but greatly preferable to their hideous and lamentable Rothbard is defensible as a political theorist; agree with him or replacement, i.e. the Constitution of the United States, the ratifi- not, his critique of the state is compelling and intellectually cation of which he described as a “statist coup d’etat” backed by coherent. As a political strategist, however, he was a disaster, the villain he called “Generalissimo Washington.” Lincoln and and he continues to hobble the libertarian movement from FDR get even worse treatment. It is worth noting that while Ron beyond the grave. Part of that is a consequence of his puritanical Paul promises to restore the American constitutional order, his consistency-at-all-costs approach to politics, which cannot most energetic partisans have as their intellectual North Star a account for the actual variations of human experience and poli - man who despised the Constitution and hoped for its overthrow. tical conditions. (Free advice: Do not bother asking Ron Paul partisans about this. But a big part of it was biographical, too. As talk-radio listen- Take it from one who knows.) ers will appreciate, the more populist elements of the Right are Always keen to distinguish himself from the mid-century wont to wag their fingers accusingly at pundits who are “trapped Right—he loathed NATIONAL REVIEW, and wrote about the mag - in the Beltway” or are Manhattan-dwelling elitists who seldom a zine acidly and obsessively—Rothbard had no time for the sally forth into the Real America. But Rothbard was in fact for libertarian-minded conservative, or even for the fellow anarchist many years a virtual prisoner of New York City, stricken by a who out of patriotism “reveres the American government as the range of phobias—bridges, tunnels, airplanes—that made it all ‘freest in the world’” while “he worships the Founding Fathers . but impossible for him to travel. (He was also terrified of eleva- . . loves and admires the two major enforcement goon-squad tors, which made life in Manhattan inconvenient. One former arms of the State: the army and the police . . . supports their club- colleague relates an amusing story about the near-impossible bing, beating, and torturing of dissenters and opposition move- task of getting Rothbard to attend a reception for Robert Nozick ments to the State. Totally ignorant of the American guilt for the on the 108th floor of the World Trade Center. Led pale and ter- Cold War and of the long-time expansionist nature of U.S. rified from the elevator, Rothbard greeted his fellow libertarians: imperialism, he supports that Cold War in the belief that the “I bring you greetings from Planet Earth.”) Rothbard knew Ayn ‘international Communist conspiracy’ is a direct military threat Rand (and had the good sense to recognize her for a cult leader), to American liberties. Critical of Establishment propaganda in he knew Mises and Nozick and other high-grade intellectuals, domestic affairs, he yet has allowed himself to be totally sucked but he was not, to say the least, exactly up to his armpits in Real in by the Establishment propaganda about the Communist bogey. Americans. Still, he wanted to build a populist movement, and Hence, he supports the American military. . . . Although a he needed allies. And, like many New York intellectuals before self-proclaimed libertarian, he shows no concern whatever for and since, he believed that Real Americans are basically boobs. the genocidal American murder of millions of . . .”—but you get When he noticed that former Ku Klux Klan kingpin David Duke the point: He talked about the Communists approximately the seemed to be getting some traction in Louisiana, he was rapt: way Ron Paul talks about the jihadists and the atomic ayatollahs. Eureka! There is the comrade in liberty for whom I have been He believed that American militarism supplies its own enemies, pining lo these many years. He celebrated the emergence of this

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new avatar of “right-wing populism,” and, when Duke went immigration groups are booming in California, Texas, Florida, down in ignominy, Rothbard wrote mournfully: and other states. . . . Finally, permeating all sectors of this varie- gated right-wing movement, there is a healthy and intense abhor- Well, they finally got David Duke. But he sure scared the bejesus rence of the Federal Reserve. out of them. It took a massive campaign of hysteria, of fear and hate, orchestrated by all wings of the Ruling Elite, from official Secessionists, militias, David Duke: all fantastic on the Fed. right to left, from President Bush and the official Republican Party It is not coincidental that it is anti-Semitism generally and through the New York–Washington-run national media through the Holocaust denial specifically that form the ideological nougat local elites and down to local left-wing activists. It took a massive scare campaign, not only invoking the old bogey images of the holding this particular nut-cluster together. In Rothbard’s view, Klan and Hitler, but also, more concretely, a virtual threat to boy- the state is evil, and war is the characteristic activity of the state. cott Louisiana, to pull out tourists and conventions, to lose jobs by Therefore, there can be no “good wars.” But to your thinking businesses leaving the state. It took a campaign of slander that American, not every war looks like an obviously fraudulent resorted to questioning the sincerity of Duke’s conversion to excuse for Leviathan to gorge on the pillage buffet. The Civil Christianity. War was a horror, but then so was slavery. And Americans are to this day, damn their eyes, sort of proud of shellacking Hitler and That’s right, America—a campaign of “fear and hate” in which Tojo. Rothbard was having none of that: “Lincoln was a master the Klansman was the victim, not the perpetrator, and a political politician, which means that he was a consummate conniver, movement that has no room for Lincoln or Washington but wel- manipulator, and liar. The federal forts were the key to his comes the pillowcases-on-their-heads set, and nobody could successful prosecution of the war. Lying to South Carolina, quite figure out why that never caught on. Rothbard added: Abraham Lincoln managed to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt “There was nothing in Duke’s current program or campaign that and Henry Stimson did at Pearl Harbor 80 years later—maneu- could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleo- vered the Southerners into firing the first shot.” That we should libertarians.” And that’s the problem with Rothbardism—and think of the Japanese imperial army as the cat’s-paw of the FDR Ron Paulism—in a nutshell: I want to abolish the Fed, some administration is prima facie bonkers, but Rothbard has a story KKK wacko wants to abolish the Fed, ergo we’re on the same he wants to tell. The Holocaust tends to get in the way of the Americans are to this day, damn their eyes, sort of proud of shellacking Hitler and Tojo. Rothbard was having none of that.

team, as if everybody who opposes smoking ought to make com- Hitler-was-an-innocent-bystander view of history, and so mon cause with Adolf Hitler: Sure, the Holocaust was awful and Rothbard found himself making common cause with the “revi- all, but Hitler was really good on smoking. And those autobahns sionist” historians of the Third Reich. That sort of revisionism are pretty sweet! Note that it was precisely judgment that WFB has two main expressions: One is the view furthered by, among found Rothbard to lack, and, as it turns out, those who had the others, Pat Buchanan in his Churchill, Hitler, and the Un - judgment to question the sincerity of Duke’s conversion were necessary War, which holds that World War II was just another right to do so: Today, you can find him at the “White World’s case of the British Empire’s fecklessly trying to look out for its Future” conference or hitting the Holocaust-denial circuit with own interests while being enabled by America’s “Anglophile Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. elite.” (Rothbard, like the LaRouche nuts, also wrote suspi- Beyond the Duke campaign, Rothbard found inspiration in a ciously of “Anglophiles,” and a week after the 9/11 attacks, variety of comprehensively bananas causes: the militia move- Rockwell’s website ran a cautionary remembrance by the ment, neo-Confederates, and the like. A few months before the JoAnn B. Rothbard Historian in Residence at the Ludwig von Oklahoma City bombing, he had the bad sense to celebrate a Mises Institute about the runup to World War I: “The Anglophile “glorious phenomenon” that included Willies Find Us a War.”) Rothbard and his faction fully embrace the first form of revi- an erupting “county militia” movement . . . extensive civil dis- sionism and are culpably indulgent of the the second, which obedience by county sheriffs. . . . The Committee of the 50 States, specifically denies that the Holocaust actually happened or holds a states’ rights group, has been resurrected to push the Ultimatum that it was in some way exaggerated. It is this that explains the Resolution, proclaiming the dissolution of the federal govern- association of Rothbard, a secular Jew, with the likes of James J. ment when the national debt reaches $6 trillion. . . . In addition, there are various flourishing separatist and secessionist move- Martin, the libertarian revisionist and publisher who ended his ments: for example, the desire of southwestern Nebraskans and career with a stint on the editorial board of the Institute for northwestern Kansans to get out from under the despotic con- Historical Review, as slimy a bunch of anti-Semites as you will trollers and taxers of their “Eastern” big cities, such as Omaha find outside of a United Nations conference. It is very much the and Wichita. Staten Island wants to secede from horrible New same impulse that today allows the Ron Paul movement to make York City, and Vermont wants out of the U.S. Southern seces- common cause with the conspiracy theorists of the John Birch sionists are on the march again, in such new organizations as the Society: Sure, they’re a bunch of space cadets, but they’re great Southern League and Peaceful Secession, and grassroots anti- on monetary policy.

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He main vector of contagion transmitting rothbardism to the ron Paul movement is Lew rockwell, formerly ron T Paul’s congressional chief of staff and believed by many How to End libertarians to be the author of the controversial passages in the ron Paul newsletters. (rockwell denies this.) rockwell has had a long career on the right. He worked at Hillsdale College and is the founder of the Ludwig von mises Institute, and he has probably Judicial done more than any other figure to keep alive rothbard’s dream of a grand far-right/far-left alliance, with the David Duke pop- ulists and the John Birch Society and the Fed obsessives joining Supremacy up with the Vietnam-vintage anti-war Left. As the current state of American libertarianism suggests, rockwell is every inch as Newt Gingrich has the right idea but not defective a political strategist as rothbard, but without his men- always the right tactics tor’s energy or scholarly flair. What rockwell lacks in intellect, he makes up for in savagery. Like rothbard, he is happy to associate with the worst sort of cranks, among them the late Joseph Sobran, BY JOHN YOO who spent the end of his career hobnobbing with the aforemen- tioned slimy anti-Semites of the Institute for Historical review. ormer House Speaker Newt Gingrich knows how to After WFB fired Sobran from NATIoNAL reVIeW because of his press the Left’s soft spots. even as he fades from the Jewish obsessions, rockwell provided him with an outlet. front of the republican presidential pack, he deserves Sobran’s later output was characterized by such gems as this: F credit for attacking the judiciary’s seizure of power “History is replete with the lesson that a country in which the Jews over some of society’s most important issues. Choosing new get the upper hand is in danger.” Don’t tell it to the people of Supreme Court justices will be one of the next president’s most the American West: one of the zanier proposals floated by influential tools for changing direction on controversies rang- rockwell’s website is to achieve peace in the middle east by ing from the balance between national security and civil liber- establishing a “New Israel” straddling the Nevada–Utah border ties to a woman’s right to an abortion. and relocating Israelis there, a kind of Navajo reservation for Jews Sometimes, however, Gingrich presses so hard that he ends (perhaps with a casino?), a Zionist entity near Zion National Park. up hurting his own cause. He stands on firm constitutional and That sort of flippancy is hardly the exception on Planet rothbard historical ground when he attacks the commonly held idea that and its satellites. Writing about the film Schindler’s List, rothbard Supreme Court decisions bind the president or Con gress and complained that “the only criticism of the film has come from suggests that they could ignore judicial opinions under certain reviewers who claim that the movie is not pro-Jewish or anti- circumstances. He is surely right that the executive and leg- Gentile enough.” (How anti-Jewish is a Holocaust film expected to islative branches have a number of ways to corral wayward be?) Informed that some film-goers had left the theater because of judges, including the power to change the jurisdiction of the a group of black teens jeering at the concentration-camp scenes, courts, to eliminate judgeships, and perhaps to make greater rothbard asked, “So what does Spielberg expect, if he won’t make use of impeachment. shooting scenes sufficiently realistic?” and he pined for the day Unfortunately, Gingrich couldn’t stop there. He undermined when the Holocaust is just another historical curiosity and we the main thrust of his plan, posted in a white paper on his cam- “can put it all behind us.” rockwell, for his part, does not much paign website, by advocating extreme methods for imposing appreciate the differences between the United States and Nazi accountability on judges. He proposed the use of subpoenas to Germany—recent headlines include “Heil obama!” and “Towards drag federal judges before congressional hearings to explain a National Socialist America.” themselves—a counterproductive thought that drew fire from For a man who professes to carry forward the intellectual lega- all sides of the political spectrum. But it would be a shame if cy of the erudite Professor mises, rockwell writes a lot of low- republican politicians concluded that the water is too hot just brow and barely literate sub-Chomskyite dreck: “Like rome, because Gingrich got burned when he tried a running belly- england, and other empires, the U.S. divides to rule. In Arab flop. countries, the subjects of the latest conquests, this is done geo- every year, conservatives and liberals claim some victory at graphically and tribally. The U.S. establishes ‘freedom and the end of a Supreme Court term. Conservatives may praise the democracy,’ that is, mass killing, puppet tyrannies, and control of justices for reading the Second Amendment to protect an indi- the oil. Some human beings like to murder and torture. Serial vidual’s right to bear arms, while liberals may wrap their arms killers, we call them in the private sector. mr. President, madam around Roe v. Wade. But the biggest winner of all is the Court Secretary, General, mr. Director, we call them in the govern- itself, at the expense of the people’s right to self-government. ment.” All of which sounds more Temple U. than Hillsdale to me. Slowly but surely, the justices have expanded their power to Like his mentor rothbard, the rebarbative rockwell, who used decide many of our society’s fundamental political, social, and to contribute occasionally to NATIoNAL reVIeW, is particularly scathing on the subject of your favorite magazine, which he and Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a visiting his acolytes will never forgive for having exiled the Birchers and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He served in the Bush Justice the other conspiracy nuts and Jew-fever sufferers from the con- Department from 2001 to 2003 and is co-author of Taming Globalization: servative movement. I’m probably a little low in the NATIoNAL International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World reVIeW food chain to say so, but: You’re welcome. Order, forthcoming this spring.

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moral questions. Only the Court now decides whether schools had upheld the law. When he took office in 1801, he ordered or states may take skin color into account when admitting all prosecutions dropped and pardoned those already convict- students or doling out public contracts. The justices choose ed. “You seem to think it devolved on the judges to decide the whether religious groups may help educate inner-city children validity of the sedition law,” Jefferson later explained to or deliver welfare while staying true to their beliefs. Use of the Abigail Adams. “But nothing in the Constitution has given death penalty—indeed, each individual execution—goes to them a right to decide for the Executive, more than to the our unelected judges for approval. Executive to decide for them. Both magistracies are equally In recent years, the Court’s power grab has become even independent in the sphere of action assigned to them.” more vividly clear in national security. In Boumediene v. Bush Jefferson was no outlier. Other great presidents used their (2008), five justices—the wandering Anthony Kennedy joined constitutional powers to take on the courts. Andrew Jackson by a liberal bloc of John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth famously vetoed legislation rechartering the Bank of the Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer—took the unpre cedented United States because he believed the law was unconstitu - step of striking down a wartime law enacted by Congress and tional, even though the Supreme Court, the first Congress, and the president. U.S. history has never seen what the Boume - Presidents Washington and James Madison had all approved it. diene majority imposed: Alien enemy prisoners at war with “The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for U.S. forces and detained outside the United States have the itself be guided by its own opinion of the Con sti tu tion,” same right as criminal suspects to challenge their capture in Jackson declared in his veto statement. “The opinion of the civilian courts. Hundreds of years of practice, and the decided judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion views of the elected branches, to which the Con sti tu tion gives of Congress has over the judges,” he emphasized, and “on that all the powers over war, were tossed overboard. point the president is independent of both.” Our greatest presidents agreed with Newt Gin grich’s claim that Supreme Court decisions do not bind the other branches.

Conservatives and their presidential candidates should agree Abraham Lincoln, whom Gingrich explicitly invokes, pre- that the power of judicial review does not confer a bo nus of sents the most aggressive case. In large part, Lincoln rose to judicial supremacy. Judicial review refers to the right of the prominence through his opposition to a single Supreme Court federal courts to refuse to obey laws that violate the Con - decision, Dred Scott v. Sandford, which overturned Con gress’s stitution. As first explained by Chief Justice John Marshall in efforts to restrict slavery in the territories. In his famous Marbury v. Madison (1803), a case may call on federal judges debates with Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln claimed that the to choose between a constitutional provision and an Act of judgment in Dred Scott applied only to the parties in the case Congress when deciding whether a plaintiff or defendant itself, and that the Court’s reasoning explaining the decision should win. A court must uphold the former over the latter; could not compel the other branches. Lincoln, in other words, otherwise “it would be giving to the legislature a practical and would have forced the courts to hear each individual case real omnipotence” and would “subvert the very foundation of before a master could seize a slave; as president, he would give all written constitutions.” the judges no help. “If the policy of the government, upon vital With judicial review, neither the president nor Congress can questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably force the courts to cooperate with their unconstitutional fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court,” Lincoln said in his actions. But notice that this right is not unique to the courts, first inaugural address, “the people will have ceased to be their and Marbury never claimed it was. Presidents and congress- own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their men have the same obligation to refuse to violate the Consti tu - government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” tion. Indeed, many of our nation’s greatest constitutional Our greatest presidents, in other words, agreed with Gin - debates occurred first on Capitol Hill or in the White House grich’s claim that Supreme Court decisions do not bind the before they ever reached the courts. Whether the federal gov- other branches. Judicial supremacy, however, goes far beyond ernment could establish a national bank was first resolved on the Court’s modest power of review, one hemmed in by the the floor of the House and Senate, which passed the bill, and other branches and their own views of the founding document. by Pres. George Washington, who chose to sign it, decades Supremacy stands for the idea that the Supreme Court is not before the Supreme Court upheld the Bank of the United States just an interpreter of the Constitution, but the interpreter—its in McCulloch v. Maryland. opinions prevail over those of any other branch of government. The Court did not announce this stunning doctrine until 1958, as it confronted southern resistance to Brown v. Board of ND the elected branches, at times, have used their Education’s desegregation of the public schools. In Cooper v. unique powers to oppose judicial opinions. Thomas Aaron, the Court declared that state officials could not inter- A Jefferson, for example, refused to accept the constitu- pose a different interpretation of the Four teenth Amendment’s tionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which had made criti- guarantee of equal protection of the laws. It is a “basic princi- cism of the government a crime, even though the federal courts ple,” the Court claimed, that “the federal judiciary is supreme

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in the exposition of the law of the Constitution.” The Supreme had been created by a lame-duck Congress under control of the Court’s decisions, the justices asserted, are “the supreme law Federalist party and filled by Pres. John Ad ams. Congress has of the land”—apparently on a par with the text of the Con - narrowed the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to reduce its stitution itself. ability to review policy, most notably during Re con struc tion, Gingrich is right to criticize the Warren Court’s extrava- when the justices threatened to end military government of the gance; conservatives and their candidates should share his dis- South. Impeachment for reasons other than corruption is not agreement. Cooper itself need not have gone so far; the case unheard of either, though it has not seen much use since involved a conflict between federal and state officials, not Jefferson’s effort to remove Justice Samuel Chase failed in the between the Supreme Court and the president or Con gress. But Senate. So most of Gingrich’s ideas have precedent on their the case heralded the rise of the judiciary as the arbiter of our side; his mistake, I think, is that he attempts to combine all of nation’s controversies. Constitutional litigation became the these tools to retaliate against individual judges or courts for Left’s end run around the democratic process when politics specific decisions, instead of attacking the more general doc- and public opinion blocked its social agenda. It is far easier to trine of judicial supremacy. persuade five justices to find a new right to abortion or homo- Gingrich seeks to correct the judiciary’s half-century left- sexual sodomy, or to drive religion from the public square, or ward lurch, a laudable and monumental task, by fiddling with to expand the rights of criminal defendants, than to persuade a the structure of the courts and judicial independence. All of majority of state and federal legislators. that is fine and well, but in the end it may have little effect. While the question has come up rarely since Cooper, the Conservatives can take a lesson from Pres. Franklin Roo se - Court has gotten away with similar moves at least twice. In velt’s failed court-packing plan. FDR proposed to increase the one case, the justices struck down the Religious Freedom Supreme Court by six seats in an obvious effort to change the Restoration Act of 1993 for attempting to reverse a Supreme justices’ resistance to the New Deal. He lost the bat tle—the bill Court decision that had downgraded protections for religious failed—but won the war. The Court changed direction swiftly, minorities. In another, they blocked a law that sought to over- in decisions that today provide the constitutional theories for turn the oft-criticized Miranda warnings (probably the only Obamacare’s takeover of health care nationwide. But FDR’s part of the Constitution that most Americans can recite from political agenda crashed and burned—the New Deal stalled, memory that is not in the Constitution). Ironically, both deci- southern Democrats blocked the rest of his plans, and his sions issued from the allegedly conservative Rehnquist Court. presidency might well have failed if it had not been for his While Pres. Richard Nixon nominated judges who were hostile greatness in leading the nation through World War II. to the Warren Court revolution, apparently one agreeable part Borrowing from the wisdom of George Costanza, a Re pub - of it was judicial supremacy. And who wouldn’t like it, once he li can president should say to the courts: It’s not you, it’s me. put on the black robes? The Rehnquist Court’s failure to reject Instead of tinkering with the judiciary, conservatives should judicial supremacy shows that this threat to constitutional seek to restore the role of the presidency by using its unique government is not a partisan issue, and that we cannot rely on powers to define the Constitution. A Republican president, for judges alone to confront it. example, could order prosecutors to stop enforcing unconsti - tutional laws that violate federalism, separation of powers, or individual rights. He could veto unconstitutional laws, instead IAGNOSING the courts’ ills should not divide conserva- of leaving the job up to the courts. He could place constitu- tives. Finding the right cure might. Gingrich proposed tionality on a par with cost-benefit analysis in issuing regula- D a number of possible remedies of varying soundness, tions or conducting foreign policy. He could nominate only including restricting the jurisdiction of federal courts, im - judges who reject judicial supremacy and understand the peaching ideological judges, eliminating liberal courts such as courts’ modest role vis-à-vis the political branches. the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (which covers Under rare circumstances, a Republican president could the West Coast), and hauling judges before congressional hear- even refuse to obey a Supreme Court decision. In time of war, ings. The last is simply a bad idea: Gingrich would have fed- he could refuse to release terrorist leaders from Guan tana mo eral marshals lay hands on federal judges, under the power of Bay—should the federal courts ever make the mistake of inter- a subpoena, if they refused to show up before Con gress. fering so excessively in national-security policy. He could take Anyone who recoiled at President Obama’s clumsy partisan inspiration from Lincoln, who in the early days of the Civil attack on the Supreme Court over a campaign-finance case War refused a direct order by Chief Justice Roger Taney to during his 2010 State of the Union address should reject the release a Confederate sympathizer held at Fort McHenry in proposal. Such hearings would be useless anyway—any judge Baltimore (Taney, the author of Dred Scott, was sitting as a cir- worth his salt would merely spend the hearing reading his cuit judge at the time). Just as the courts need not cooperate opinion out loud. with the unconstitutional actions of other branches, the presi- These extremes should not obscure the sensible principle at dent need not let the Supreme Court have its way when the the proposal’s core. The Constitution is not the exclusive pur - Constitution vests all of its war powers in the elected branches. view of the courts, and the elected branches can and should use Of course, presidents should make clear that this extreme mea- their power to influence constitutional meaning themselves. sure would be taken only in times of the direst emergency. Some of Gingrich’s proposals have a historical pedigree. Republican candidates can join Gingrich in restoring the proper Congress, which has the constitutional authority to create the balance of power between the president and the courts, with- lower federal courts, has eliminated judgeships in the past. In out following his suggestion that the extraordinary should 1802, Jeffersonians repealed the new judicial positions that become the everyday.

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The main lesson of the Arab Spring ought to be that this remaking of Islam has happened only in our own minds, for our own ‘Islam Is Islam, consumption. The Muslims of the Middle east take no note of our reimagining of Islam, being, in the main, either hostile toward or oblivious to Western overtures. Muslims do not mea- And That’s It’ sure themselves against Western perceptions, although the shrewdest among them take note of our eagerly accommodating attitude when determining what tactics will best advance the The Arab Spring was not hijacked cause. That cause is nothing less than Islamic dominance. BY ANDREW C. McCARTHY

he underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fun- he tumult indelibly dubbed “the Arab Spring” in the damentalism,” wrote Samuel huntington. “It is Islam, West, by the credulous and the calculating alike, is eas- ‘T a different civilization whose people are convinced of ier to understand once you grasp two basics. First, the the superiority of their culture.” Not convinced merely in the pas- T most important fact in the Arab world—as well as in sive sense of assuming that they will triumph in the end, Muslim Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other neighboring non- leaders are galvanized by what they take to be a divinely ordained Arab territories—is Islam. It is not poverty, illiteracy, or the lack mission of proselytism—and proselytism not limited to spiritual of modern democratic institutions. These, like anti-Semitism, principles, but encompassing an all-purpose societal code pre- anti-Americanism, and an insular propensity to buy into conspir- scribing rules for everything from warfare and finance to social acy theories featuring infidel villains, are effects of Islam’s interaction and personal hygiene. historian Andrew Bostom regional hegemony and supremacist tendency, not causes of it. notes that in the World War I era, even as the Ottoman empire One need not be led to that which pervades the air one breathes. collapsed and Atatürk symbolically extinguished the caliphate, The second fact is that Islam constitutes a distinct civilization. C. Snouck hurgronje, then the West’s leading scholar of Islam, It is not merely an exotic splash on the gorgeous global mosaic marveled that Muslims remained broadly confident in what he with a few embarrassing cultural eccentricities; it is an entirely called the “idea of universal conquest.” In Islam’s darkest hour, different way of looking at the world. We struggle with this truth, this conviction remained “a central point of union against the which defies our end-of-history smugness. enthralled by diversi- unfaithful.” It looms more powerful in today’s Islamic ascen - ty for its own sake, we have lost the capacity to comprehend a dancy. civilization whose idea of diversity is coercing diverse peoples Of course, conventional wisdom in the West holds that the into obedience to its evolution-resistant norms. Arab Spring spontaneously combusted when Mohamed Bouazizi, So we set about remaking Islam in our own progressive a fruit vendor, set himself ablaze outside the offices of the image: the noble, fundamentally tolerant Religion of Peace. Tunisian klepto-cops who had seized his wares. This suicide We miniaturize the elements of the ummah (the notional global protest, the story goes, ignited a sweeping revolt against the cor- Muslim community) that refuse to go along with the program: ruption and caprices of Arab despots. One by one, the dominos They are assigned labels that scream “fringe!”—Islamist, fun- began to fall: Tunisia, egypt, Yemen, Libya—with rumblings in damentalist, Salafist, Wahhabist, radical, jihadist, extremist, Saudi Arabia and Jordan as well as teetering Syria and rickety militant, or, of course, “conservative” Muslims adhering to Iran. We are to believe that the mass uprising is an unmistakable “political Islam.” manifestation of the “desire for freedom” that, according to Pres. We consequently pretend that Muslims who accurately invoke George W. Bush, “resides in every human heart.” Islamic scripture in the course of forcibly imposing the dictates That proclamation came in the heady days of 2004, when the of classical sharia—the Islamic legal and political system—are democracy project was still a Panglossian dream, not the engaged in “anti-Islamic activity,” as Britain’s former home Pandora’s box it proved to be as Islamic parties began to win secretary Jacqui Smith memorably put it. When the ongoing elections. Like its successor, the Bush administration discour- Islamization campaign is advanced by violence, as inevitably aged all inquiry into Islamic doctrine by anyone seeking to under- happens, we absurdly insist that this aggression cannot have been stand Muslim enmity, indulging the fiction that there is ideologically driven, that surely some American policy or Israeli something we can do to change it. Inexorably, this has fed act of self-defense is to blame, as if these could possibly provide President Obama’s preferred fiction—that we must have done rationales for the murderous jihad waged by Boko haram something to deserve it—as well as the current administration’s Muslims against Nigerian Christians and by egyptian Muslims strident objection to uttering the word “Islam” for any purpose against the Copts, the persecution of the Ahmadi sect by other than hagiography. In this self-imposed ignorance, most Indonesian and Pakistani Muslims, or the internecine killing in Americans still do not know that hurriya, Arabic for “freedom,” Iraq of Sunnis by Shiites and vice versa—a tradition nearly as old connotes “perfect slavery” or absolute submission to Allah, very as Islam itself—which has been predictably renewed upon the nearly the opposite of the Western concept. even if we grant for recent departure of American troops. argument’s sake the dubious proposition that all people crave freedom, Islam and the West have never agreed about what free- Mr. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, dom means. most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage The first count of contemporary Muslims’ indictment of America. Middle eastern dictators is not that they have denied individual

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liberty, but that they have repressed Islam. This is not to say that groups even more impatient for Islamization, collectively identi- other grievances are irrelevant. Muslims have indeed been out- fied by the media as “Salafists” even though this term does not raged by the manner in which their Arafats, Mubaraks, Qaddafis, actually distinguish them from the Brothers, whose founder and Saddams looted the treasuries while the masses lived in (Hassan al-Banna) was a leading Salafist thinker. By contrast, squalor. But the agglomerations of wealth and other regime secular democratic reformers are in their infancy. Elections on a hypocrisies are framed for the masses more as sins against short schedule would obviously favor the former; the latter need Allah’s law than as the inevitable corruptions of absolute power. time to take root and grow. The most influential figures and institutions in Islamic societies Egypt being Egypt, the election campaign was waged with the are those revered for their mastery of Islamic law and jurispru- rhetoric of religious and cultural solidarity. A vote against a rapid dence—such authorities as top Muslim Brotherhood jurist Yusuf transition was depicted as a vote “against Islam” and in favor of al-Qaradawi and Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni the dreaded Western hands said to be guiding the Christians and learning for over a millennium. In places where Islam is the cen- secularists. The vote was the perfect test of the Arab Spring nar- tral fact of life, even Muslims who privately dismiss sharia take rative. pains to honor it publicly. Even regimes that rule by whim nod to Four-to-one: That’s how it went. The democrats were wiped sharia as the backbone of their legal systems, lace their rhetoric out by the Muslim parties, 78 percent to 22 percent. While with scriptural allusions, and seek to rationalize their actions as Western officials dismissed the vote as involving scheduling Islamically appropriate. arcana, it foretold everything that has followed: the electoral If you understand this, you understand why Western beliefs romp in the parliamentary elections, a multi-stage affair in which about the Arab Spring—and the Western conceit that the death of the Brotherhood and the Salafists are inching close to three- one tyranny must herald the birth of liberty—have always been fourths control of the legislature; the ongoing pogrom against the a delusion. There are real democrats, authentically moderate Copts; and the increasing calls for renunciation of the Camp Muslims, and non-Muslims in places such as Egypt and Yemen David Accords, which have kept the peace with Israel for more who long for freedom in the Western sense; but the stubborn fact than 30 years. Surely the Tahrir throngs wanted self-determination, not sharia. Never you mind the fanatical chants of Allahu Akbar! as the dictator fell.

is that they make up a strikingly small fraction of the population: Four-to-one actually proves to be a reliable ratio in examining about 20 percent, a far cry from the Western narrative that posits Islamic developments. In a 2007 poll conducted by World Public a sea of Muslim moderates punctuated by the rare radical atoll. Opinion in conjunction with the University of Maryland, 74 percent of Egyptians favored strict application of sharia in Muslim countries. It was 76 percent in Morocco, 79 percent in Pakistan, HE Muslim Brotherhood is the ummah’s most important and 53 percent in moderate Indonesia. Before American forces organization, unabashedly proclaiming for nearly 90 vacated Iraq, roughly three-quarters of the people they had liber- T years that “the Koran is our law and jihad is our way.” ated regarded them as legitimate jihad targets, and, given the Hamas, a terrorist organization, is its Palestinian branch, and opportunity to vote, Iraqis installed Islamist parties who leading Brotherhood figures do little to disguise their abhorrence promised to hasten the end of American “occupation.” Three out of Israel and Western culture. Thus, when spring fever gripped of four Palestinians deny Israel’s right to exist. Even in our own Tahrir Square, the Obama administration, European govern- country, a recently completed survey found that 80 percent of ments, and the Western media tirelessly repeated the mantra that American mosques promote literature that endorses violent jihad, the Brothers had been relegated to the sidelines. Time had pur- and that these same mosques counsel rigorous sharia compliance. portedly passed the Islamists by, just as it was depositing Mubarak in the rear-view mirror. Surely the Tahrir throngs wanted self-determination, not sharia. Never you mind the fanatical HE Arab Spring is an unshackling of Islam, not an out- chants of Allahu akbar! as the dictator fell. Never mind that break of fervor for freedom in the Western sense. Sheikh Qaradawi was promptly ushered into the square to deliver T Turkey’s third-term prime minister Recep Erdogan, a a fiery Friday sermon to a congregation of nearly a million staunch Brotherhood ally who rejects the notion that there is a Egyptians. “moderate Islam” (“Islam is Islam, and that’s it,” he says), once With a transitional military government in place and openly declared that “democracy is a train where you can get off when solicitous of the Brotherhood, there occurred the most telling, you reach your destination.” The destination for Muslim most tellingly underreported, and most willfully misreported supremacists is the implementation of sharia—the foundation of story of the Arab Spring: a national referendum to determine the any Islamized society, and, eventually, of the reestablished scheduling of elections that would select a new parliament and caliphate. president, with a new constitution to follow. It sounds dry, but it The duration of the ride depends on the peculiar circum- was crucial. The most organized and disciplined factions in stances of each society. Erdogan’s Turkey has become the model Egyptian life are the Brotherhood and self-proclaimed Muslim for Islamist gradualism in more challenging environments:

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Rachid Ghannouchi is swarmed by supporters in Tunis.

Slowly but steadily bend the nation into sharia compliance while competitive with those of the better-known Brothers, and they denying any intent to do so and singing the obligatory paeans to will tug their rivals in a more aggressively Islamist direction. democracy. Erdogan came to this formula after no shortage of Vainly, the West hoped that the country’s American-trained and stumbles—it is now rare to hear such outbursts as “The mosques -equipped armed forces would serve as a brake. But the are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayo- Egyptian military, from which several top al-Qaeda operatives nets, and the faithful our soldiers,” the sort of thing he used to have hailed, is a reflection of Egyptian society, especially as one say in the late Nineties when he was imprisoned for sedition descends to the conscripts of lower rank. The undeniable trend against Atatürk’s secular order. His banned Welfare party even- in Egyptian society is toward Islam. That trend is more blatant tually reemerged as the new and democracy-ready AKP, the only in such basket cases as Libya, where each day brings new Justice and Development party. Ever since a quirk in Turkish evidence that today’s governing “rebels” include yesterday’s al- electoral law put these Islamists in power in 2002, Erdogan has Qaeda jihadists, and in Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin cautiously but demonstrably eroded the secular framework Laden, where even the New York Times concedes al-Qaeda’s Atatürk and his followers spent 80 years building, returning this strength. ostensible NATO ally to the Islamist camp, shifting it from Led by the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic parties have become growing friendship to open hostility toward Israel, co-opting the expert at presenting themselves as moderates and telling the West military that was Atatürk’s bulwark against Islamization, and what it wants to hear while they gradually ensnare societies in the salting the country’s major institutions with Islamic suprema- sharia web, as slowly or quickly as conditions on the ground per- cists. mit. They know that when the West says “democracy,” it means The Turkish model will be the ticket for Brotherhood parties popular elections, not Western democratic culture. They know the that have just prevailed in Tunisian and Moroccan elections. In West has so glorified these elections that the victors can steal them Tunisia, Rachid Ghannouchi, a cagey Islamist of the Erdogan (Iran), refuse to relinquish power when later they lose (Iraq), or stripe, heads the Ennahda party, convincingly elected in October decline to hold further elections (Gaza) without forfeiting their to control the legislature that will replace ousted ruler Zine el- legitimacy. They know that seizing the mantle of “democracy” Abidine Ben Ali. In Morocco, an Islamist party whose namesake casts Islamists as the West’s heroes in the dramas still unfolding in is the AKP won the fall elections, but further Islamization is Egypt, Libya, and Syria. They know that the Obama administra- apt to be slower. Far from being driven from power, King tion and the European Union have deluded themselves into Mohammed VI remains popular, having balanced his affinity for believing that Islamists will be tamed by the responsibilities of the West with deference to sharia norms. Moroccan Islamists are governance. Once in power, they are sure to make virulent anti- NEWSCOM / making significant inroads, though, as are their neighbors to the Americanism their official policy and to contribute materially to COM . east. Algerian Islamists are poised to accede to power this spring the pan-Islamic goal of destroying Israel. after being thwarted by a military coup that blocked what would We should not be under any illusions about why things are ABACAUSA / have been their certain electoral success in 1991. shaking out this way. The Arab Spring has not been hijacked any Egypt, by contrast, will go quickly. There, the most salient more than Islam was hijacked by the suicide terrorists of 9/11. development is not the weakness of secular democrats but the Islam is ascendant because that is the way Muslims of the Middle

NICOLAS FAUQUE impressive electoral strength of the Salafists. Their numbers are East want it.

4 0 | www.nationalreview.com JANUARY 2 3 , 2 0 1 2 lileks_QXP-1127940387.qxp 1/4/2012 12:06 AM Page 41

Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS License to Photocopy

He new year brings new laws—over 40,000 He’ll find a nice farm. This law includes “fully protected rep- statutes at the state level, each another incremen- tiles,” so if you set up shop on the highway shoulder to sell tal criminalization of some element of life. If Javanese burping dragons, forget it—although there’s proba- T every law in the country were eliminated tomor- bly another law forbidding police to ask a dragon about his row and a new batch drawn up, it’s hard to see how we could endangered status, so who knows how it all works out. write more than 500, because after that you’re writing laws as This statute was part of a larger bill about animal cruelty, stupid as “The guy who runs the copier at Kinko’s shall be and requires people who abuse animals to get mental licensed by the state” or banning beer with counseling at their own expense. You caffeine. Hold on: California just did that. say: Why, what of impoverished dog- Apparently perk-me-up lager is a problem The bill also botherers? Don’t worry. The bill provides in the Golden State, but it’s solved for ever for the negotiation of a deferred-payment now. It would never occur to anyone to exempts public schedule for counseling, with a sliding order a tap and a cup of coffee and alter- goat sales. In fee. On and on and on it goes, but you sus- nate sips. If you’re keeping track of these pect it was already against the law to mis- things, the bill to ban the peril of wide- related news, treat animals. Indeed, the statute assures awake beer drinkers was Section 25622 of us that nothing in the law affects enforce- the Business and Professions Code, so if there are public ment of—ready? take a deep breath—the you’ve memorized 25,621 sections, one goat sales in “Lockyer-Polanco-Farr Pet Protection more shouldn’t be a problem. Keep them Act contained in Article 2 (commencing in mind as you go about your daily affairs. California. with Section 122125) of Chapter 5 of Part Number of laws repealed? You can 6 of Division 105 of the Health and Safety guess. The only laws that get repealed these days are sodomy Code, or Sections 597 and 597l of this code.” laws, because we want to get the government out of certain The bill also exempts public goat sales. In related news, bedrooms clucking in disapproval, so it can be hustled into there are public goat sales in California. other bedrooms to shout “Hurrah!” Now and then you’ll read California also attacked “cyber bullying,” the practice of a story about some absurd old law—“It shall be illegal to being mean on social-network sites by use of “electronic brandish a yam at an ox whilst it is in harness”—but when you device.” This includes pagers, in case anyone intends to go ask if it’s been repealed, the answer’s no. It could come in back to 1993 and send a taunting string of numbers. But noth- handy. You never know. ing really compares to this: As for the character of the laws, well, it boils down to DON’T and SHAN’T and DASN’T and other forms of pro- The county clerk shall maintain a register of professional pho- hibition. It’s rare you see a description that begins “California tocopiers, assign a number to each professional photocopier, will now permit,” unless it’s a law about interspecies cohabi- and issue an identification card to each one. Additional cards tation (“The State shall permit a resident to have carnal for employees of professional photocopiers shall be issued upon the payment of ten dollars ($10) for each card. knowledge of a horse with the animal’s consent, which shall (b) The identification card shall be a card not less than 3 1/4 be signified by stamping three times”) or the granting of yet inches by 2 inches, and shall contain at the top the title another right, like extending OSHA benefits to performance “Professional Photocopier” followed by the registrant’s name, artists. Be it resolved: The State shall extend disability pay- address, registration number, date of expiration, and county of ments to anyone who gets repetitive-motion injury playing registration. It shall also contain a photograph of the registrant Rock-Paper-Scissors with a reflection of himself in a mirror in the lower left corner. for six months on end. “It’s overdue, frankly,” said Overdue Frankly, a San Francisco street artist. “Our injuries may not This will quiet the lamentations of those victimized by be as real as those suffered in an industrial accident, but man, rogue photocopiers. But some in the state house might have the cramps I get.” said, Hey, we have photocopier people in governments and Here’s an example of an actual California law, according to schools. We can’t expect them to pay $10. And so: “If the the National Conference of State Legislatures. “New legisla- Commission on State Mandates determines that this act con- tion in California increases the misdemeanor penalty for ani- tains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement to local mal neglect and makes it a crime to sell a live animal on any agencies and school districts for those costs shall be made street, highway, public right-of-way, parking lot, or carnival.” pursuant to Part 7 (commencing with Section 17500) of That’ll stop folks from an impulse purchase of an elephant Division 4 of Title 2 of the Government Code.” when the fair’s in town. They only end up getting dumped on No doubt there are hundreds of lawyers who specialize in a country road, eventually. Dad, what will happen to Jumbo? Part 7 of Division 4 of Title 2, to say nothing of the educators who teach its arcane and subtle ways. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. And they say government stifles job creation.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

wondering what’s next. And I’m over? Why is everyone looking at wondering if this means I get to me that way? kidnap Sandra Bullock now. Not quite getting all that’s going on, #youknowyoureindangerwhen I From the Twitter feed clearly. thought this Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream tasted funny. of Kim Jong Un, Dad is gone. I’m eating pizza and Gave some to my cat and she just crying. Looking though old photos collapsed. Bad batch? @youthcaptain of him. Don’t see the resemblance. But maybe that’s just a protective #youknowyoureindangerwhen In a Wondering why they bothered to measure. #thatawkwardfeeling meeting with generals, suggested make Sex and the City 2. that we create an all-girl topless and Walking along the funeral proces- bottomless army. Who would be Problem with Cheetos: orange fin- sion watching the people go crazy able to resist such a thing? General gers. Gets all over my black jump- with grief. Am I wrong or is this a Park grabbed me by the throat and suit. Dad goes ballistic. Calls me too perfect time to try to pick up girls? started strangling me. fat to be a dictator. Solution: get a Get the sympathy vote? great big spoon. No telltale dust! #donthatetheplayer Wow! Everyone is so uptight right #Igotsolutions now. General Yoo tried to stab me in Once when I told Dad that I should the heart with a pencil just now. Got Home alone! Dad’s on a train! I can represent DPRK on American Idol, lodged in the fatty tissue around my hop around on my big piano key he threw his tea cup at me. Left a left pectoral. Dad? Are you still mad thing! #lovethemovieBig scar. I told him I hated him. Now I about the Ben & Jerry’s? Saved my run my fingers over that scar and life! The best thing about Dad being think, Dad, why couldn’t you just away on a trip is that I can do my love me for me? Nobody misses Dad more than me. Risky Business dance. Here’s me in But this is really giving me the my undies: Twitpic tinyurl.345.23 Standing in front of Dad’s casket opportunity to shine. For instance, thinking about that song “Cat’s in according to the newspaper, I Things suddenly weird here. Was the Cradle.” He never had time for invented Facebook! Cool, huh? dancing in my underwear to David me. And now it’s too late. Tweeps, #thingsyoudidntknowaboutme Guetta and Usher (LOVE “Without hold your kids close and tell them You!”) and 2 generals just walked in that you love them. Mom just showed me something and looked at me and then told me great! Picture of Generals Yoo and to get dressed. Something’s up. Wondering when I get to choose my Park hanging by piano wire! bride. Very interested in Pippa Celebrated by frying some peanut- OMG. Just heard from Party Center. Middleton. Unclear how to go about butter sandwiches. #ilovemymom They think Dad may be dead. He abducting her. #buildingbridges hasn’t moved in 17 hours. Another Pyongyang newspaper reports that hour and it will be a record. Worried. Big picture of Dad on the funeral my weight is 180. Which is fantastic car. Had a moment alone with it. because I could have swore I was Waiting for news about Dad, watch- Told it I loved it and would always about 290. Nice to know the jump- ing reruns on iPad. Why were there miss it. It didn’t say anything. Just suits have shrunk somehow. 2 Darrens in Bewitched? Help, looked on impassively. Just like Tweeps? Dad. Just like Dad. Hey! Let’s crowdsource the next move. Should I 1) invade South Lots of activity. No one tells me any- Have to go into big series of meet- Korea. 2) appear in a Bollywood thing. Think something really bad is ings with the army. Won’t be fun. film. 3) marry cougar hottie Helen happening. Am trying to remember They think I’m too young and not Mirren? PLEASE RT! that food is not a stress reliever and tough enough. Am wearing all black that I will regret eating the entire which is slimming. #whyimsexy @youthcaptain is now the Mayor of scallion cake. #foodisnotlove the Democratic People’s Republic Don’t like the vibe here in this meet- of Korea. #foursquare L Please RT. ing. Keep talking about “question of succession.” Question? Hello? Hey! Tweeps! Hold me to this! No So everyone is looking at me and Don’t we all know who is taking carbs in 2012! For serious.

4 2 | www.nationalreview.com JANUARY 2 3 , 2 0 1 2 books1-23_QXP-1127940387.qxp 1/3/2012 8:43 PM Page 43 Books, Arts & Manners

there anymore?—but let’s draw a veil in his early sixties—but it was enough to over that sorry invalid and concentrate allow for a sentence of six and a half Always Bet our attention on the United States. It years in a federal penitentiary. was not so long ago that we could call it This book is Lord Black’s riveting On Black “the land of the free.” Increasingly, account of this saga, from his first news- though, it is the land of the regulated. paper acquisition, for $500, when he ROGER KIMBALL Many commentators, myself included, was still at university, up through his have dragged out Tocqueville’s famous legal travails, his incarceration, and his passages on “What Sort of Despotism recent legal victories. He tells the fasci- Democratic nations Have to Fear” to nating story of his acquisition, in 1986, illustrate the problem. Primarily, it is of the Telegraph—the event, he writes, despotism through infantilization, tyr - from which “all else follows.” If getting anny through dependence. an eight-page local paper for $500 In our legal system, there are many seemed like a good deal, acquiring the facets to this spectacle of encroaching Telegraph for $30 million (Can.) was despotism. If you want an overview, even better. “Mr. Black,” said Robert allow me to recommend Harvey Silver - Maxwell at the time, “has landed Brit - glate’s Three Felonies a Day: How the ain’s largest fish with history’s smallest Feds Target the Innocent, which I pub- hook.” lished at Encounter Books. If you want a There are two reasons to buy and A Matter of Principle, by Conrad Black detailed, pulse-rattling account of what read this book. One is its entertainment (McClelland & Stewart, 592 pp., $35) happens to a prominent individual when value, which is high. Black is a masterly the Feds target him, let me recommend stylist and engaging narrative historian. n the United States, as in most Conrad Black’s A Matter of Principle, He sets out to tell his story and winds other modern democratic re - which I wish I had published at En - up telling the story of his, and our, times. gimes, one of the most important counter, but McClelland & Stewart got The book bristles with illuminating I political issues today concerns there before me. anec dotes and character sketches, not to the relation between the individual and Conrad Black—since 2001, Lord mention intelligent asides on matters the coercive power of the state, which is Black of Crossharbour—will be well historical and political. When the U.S. suddenly up for fundamental renego - known to readers of nR. He writes fre- responded with military action to the tiation. This is an odd turn of events, quently and forcefully for the magazine terrorist attacks of 9/11, it was widely since one of the main points of being a and its online emanation. The Canadian- criticized by testosterone-challenged modern democratic regime was to have born historian is the author of magis - wets who insisted it seek “permission” worked out a way of securing the in - terial biographies of FDR and Richard from the U.n. But whence, Lord Black dividual against arbitrary and intru- nixon, among other books. In the 1990s wonders, did the idea arise “that the sive state power. Did folks like James he presided over Hollinger Inter na - armed forces of the United States could Madison and Alexander Hamilton labor tional, the world’s third-largest media be deployed in response to successive in vain? no. They helped devise a splen- empire, a complex enterprise that in - acts of war against the United States did system of checks and balances. Hu - cluded plum publications in Canada, only with the permission of the other man ingenuity, however, never rests, England (the London Telegraph, The permanent members of the United neither are the forces of despotism idle. Spectator), the U.S., Australia, and Israel. nations Security Council”? I’ve often Clever ways around those checks, new In the opening years of the present mil- wondered that myself. reasons to ignore the balances, are al - lennium, disgruntled minority share- The book is also a gratifying trove of ways being discovered, with the result holders of his company succeeded in gossip. Did you know, for example, that that liberal-democratic societies are enlisting the attention of overzealous the newspaper editor Max Hastings put increasingly illiberal and non- if not regulators and, eventually, overzealous it about that British prime minister John anti-democratic. U.S. Attorneys. That yielded a highly Major tucked his shirt inside his under- The European Union is a case in publicized four-month trial in Chi- pants? From his position as proprietor of point—is anything put to a popular vote cago—that bastion of legal rectitude the Telegraph, Lord Black knew, well, and fair play—which ended with Lord everyone. He was close to Margaret Mr. Kimball, editor and publisher of The New Black’s conviction on three counts of Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, and WFB, Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books, is the fraud and one of obstruction of justice. for starters. London and new York soci- author of several books, including The Fortunes of This fell a long way short of the laundry ety was at his beck and call. (Speaking Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age list of charges prosecutors initially had of knowing people, perhaps this is the of Amnesia, forthcoming from St. Augustine’s brought—they wanted him put away for place to note that I know and greatly Press. some 30 years, a life sentence for a man admire Lord Black. I will not, however,

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS let that deter me from praising his book. nearly unfettered deployment of state convincingly denies criminal wrong - Even the picture captions are brilliant. I power against individuals. When Lord doing, instantly appealed his convic - particularly liked the one about Judge Black sought to defend himself by en- tion. His appeal was initially denied by Richard Posner. Of course, quandoque gaging the storied Brendan Sullivan of a three-judge panel presided over by bonus Homerus dormitat: There are a Williams & Connolly, the government Richard Posner. But the case was heard few slips that will doubtless be correct- froze a large portion of his assets so by the Supreme Court, which decided ed in one of the many future editions of he could not supply the required $25 that the “honest services law” that was this book. The Waugh who wrote Scoop million retainer. Deprive a chap of used to convict him of fraud was too was Evelyn, not Auberon; the Conser - expert legal counsel, you deprive him vague and ordered a federal court to vative leader was Alec Douglas-Home, of justice. It is a story of threats and review the decision. Lord Black was not “Alec-Douglas,” etc.) harassment of Lord Black’s friends and then, after two and a half years in prison, But what ensures A Matter of Prin - asso ciates by various government granted bail. But when Richard Posner ciple an important place in the library of agencies from the FBI on down: Testify “reviewed” his decision, he decided that liberty is not its entertainment value but against Conrad Black, they insisted, so if the fraud charges couldn’t stand, there its careful anatomy of prosecutorial we can win a high-profile conviction, or was still the obstruction charge. That abuse, that triumphalist system whose else we’ll indict you, too. It’s a story of charge, in fact, provided the one Perry end is not justice but intimidation (of us) what Mark Steyn, who wrote a brilliant, Mason moment of the trial. The prose- and aggrandizement (of the govern- near-daily account of Lord Black’s trial cution gleefully played a security video- ment). File under the venerable princi- for the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, tape of Lord Black and his chauffeur A Matter of Principle is not really a ‘rise and fall’ narrative. There is much heartache and loss chronicled in the book, but it ends on an upward arc.

ple: “Innocent until investigated.” “For called “statute creep”: Take a law removing boxes from his Toronto office. the last six and a half years,” Lord Black designed to combat racketeering, say, How’s that for “Gotcha!”? writes, “I have been fighting for my and apply it to a businessman who, Not so good, actually. Lord Black’s financial life, physical freedom, and whatever he may have done, has not secretary was packing up because he what remains of my reputation against engaged in racketeering. It’s the story, had been evicted from the premises. the most powerful organization in the too, of a U.S. Attorney—the egregious Two attorneys hired to deal with a U.S. world, the U.S. government.” Patrick Fitzgerald—run amok, and of a Securities and Exchange Commission A word about reputations and their “special monitor,” former SEC chair- investigation into Hollinger’s affairs fragility. A year or so ago, I was proud man Richard Breeden, who began by testified that they hadn’t notified him of to publish in The New Criterion a long claiming that Conrad Black was guilty the SEC’s interest in the documents he essay by Lord Black about the fate of of a “$500 million kleptocracy” but removed. When ordered to return them, newspapers in a digital world. I was at a who went on to pocket over $25 million he did so tout de suite. So where, pray party in upstate Connecticut with some for his own “services” to Hollinger. tell, is the obstruction? Ask Judge Amy early copies of the issue and, ever alert When the case against Black began, St. Eve. She must have discerned it to enlist support for The New Criterion, Patrick Fitzgerald got up on his highest somewhere, for she decided to send him I gave a copy to someone identified as a horse and declared that this was a case back to prison for another seven months. likely prospect. As he scanned the table of “a systematic fraud of the share - He gets out in the spring and then, being of contents, his benevolent expression holders.” His concern for Hollinger’s a felon who is not a U.S. citizen, he must dissolved into one of glowering con- “shareholders” is rich: When Black was leave the country. tempt. “Conrad Black! He’s a thief and booted out of Hollinger in 2004, the Meanwhile, though (this is the real a blackguard.” Really? I asked him stock was trading in the neighborhood upward bit of the arc), Conrad Black has what he knew about the case against of $18. It quickly collapsed, and now not been idle. He recently won “substan- Lord Black, which turned out to be the company is no more. It was picked tial” damages—reportedly, a healthy what he’d read in organs such as the New clean by those appointed to rescue it seven-figure sum—in a libel suit against York Times, i.e., nothing, or near enough before being absorbed into the Sun- Richard Breeden and others. He has for government work. The truth of the Times Media Group. How’s that for the many other libel suits pending. On case didn’t matter, only the publicity, shareholders? Christ mas 2005, Lord Black reports, which I suppose is what reputation is A Matter of Principle is not really a he read the Book of Job: “I discovered all about. “rise and fall” narrative, however. There that while Job had endured more severe Lord Black was not without re - is much heartache and loss chronicled in oppression than I had, he had been much sources; how would ordinary folk fare the book, but it ends on an upward arc. less patient.” His patience, I am happy to under such an onslaught? In part, the Lord Black, who acknowledges he may say, is beginning to be rewarded. Long book is an admonitory tale about the have been guilty of “misjudgment” but may it be.

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union be more perfect than a permanent ordered the prisoner freed and declared one? And fourth, a union that allowed the Fugitive Slave Act, under which he Lincoln’s for secession would be absurd on its was being held, unconstitutional. The face, since it could never last. Debat - U.S. Supreme Court nullified the writ. Constitution able, to be sure—though, a month after So a decision intended to entrench slav- Lincoln delivered his address, Con fed - ery was invoked to support the army that FRED SCHWARZ er ate batteries fired on Fort Sumter, would end it. making the point academic. Better yet, the Ableman decision had Secession was not the most contro - been written by Supreme Court chief versial constitutional question to arise justice Roger Taney, of Dred Scott during the Civil War, just the first. The infamy. Until his death in 1864, Taney best-known such issue was habeas cor- missed no chance to advance his severe pus. In the chaotic spring of 1861, Lin - states’-rights views: He wrote one of the coln suspended the right to habeas in first decisions invalidating Lincoln’s certain areas of Maryland where pro- suspension of habeas corpus (Lincoln Confederate sentiment was active, and ignored it), and when the army’s right began arresting suspected insurrection- to conscript soldiers was contested, he ists. He did so without authorization drew up rulings against the practice, from Congress, which the Constitution ready for use when a suitable case came Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: seems to require (Congress, which was before him, though fortunately none did. Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War, not in session at the time, finally gave (In general, neely notes, the civil rights by Mark E. Neely Jr. (North Carolina, him the power in March 1863). of soldiers got little attention during the 408 pp., $35) Judges, legal scholars, and Lincoln war: Suspected deserters were stripped himself supplied learned reasoning to naked and subjected to an intense spray n early February 1861, President- justify the suspension, all of which of cold water, sharp enough in some elect Abraham Lincoln sat down boiled down to saying: The founders cases to break the skin, until they con- in his Springfield law office to cannot possibly have meant to forbid fessed.) I write his inaugural address. Since this, therefore they didn’t. Lincoln was a Other constitutional issues covered in his election the previous november, subtle and eloquent political theorist, the book include the shaky legal status seven states had seceded from the union, but above all a practical man, and he had of the Emancipation Proclamation (even and he knew that nobody would care a war to win. Most of his supporters fell Lincoln had doubts), the ramifications about his administration’s plans for in - into line, though some turned against the of the lack of a congressional declara- ternal improvements or tariff reform; all president as he expanded the suspension tion of war (not very great, it turned the nation wanted to know was what he beyond battle zones and active acts of out), and the validity of the first-ever would do about the rebellion. insurrection and used it throughout federal issuance of fiat money (con- The logical first step was to explain the country against merely “disloyal” firmed on the ground that it was neces- why secession was illegal, but as Penn speech and writings. Before long, news- sary for the war effort and thus for the State professor Mark E. neely Jr. writes paper editors, anti-war legislators, and nation’s survival). A welcome inclusion in his engrossing new book: “He ob - uncooperative judges were being held is the book’s treatment of southern contained a copy of the Constitution from without charges; in at least one case, an stitutional thought, which was debated his law partner. When he examined it, he army officer arrested a judge who had in considerable depth before and during discovered, perhaps to his surprise and arrested army officers who had arrested the Confederacy’s brief existence. For certainly to his dismay, that it offered no civilians. example, neely explores Confederate straightforward solution. Even the fee- For all the high-profile cases involv- citizens’ uneasy reaction, in a land ble Articles of Confederation had said at ing purported sedition, though, habeas that had twice rebelled against an over - least that the Union was perpetual . . . was most often invoked on behalf of sol- weening central government, when Jef- [but] nothing in the Constitution expli - diers seeking discharge from the army ferson Davis suspended habeas corpus citly declared the Union perpetual.” because they had signed up while still in Richmond and began arresting dissi- Faced with the possibility of asking minors. In a number of these cases, the dents. Americans to die for a principle he had question arose: Did the president have Overall, neely credits the South with to scratch his head over to explain, Lin - the power to overrule a habeas writ maintaining a genuinely egalitarian coln, ever the resourceful lawyer, came issued by a state judge? It turned out democracy (for white males only, of up with several justifications of varying that, with delicious irony, the adminis- course), an open and spirited debate soundness. First, he said, the union’s tration could cite a clear-cut precedent, over secession, and a sincere belief in perpetuity was implicit. Second, since Ableman v. Booth (1859), in which a states’ rights that was not merely a cover all the states had agreed to create the state court’s habeas writ for a federal for justifying slavery. This last point, as union, all would have to agree to dis- prisoner was quashed—only, in that others have noted, was a handicap in solve it. Third, the Constitution had cre- case, the prisoner was a Wisconsin abo- building the strong central government ated a “more perfect union” than the litionist who had helped free a fugitive needed to prosecute a war: Confederate Articles, and how could an impermanent slave. Wisconsin’s supreme court had judges taxed their ingenuity to justify

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS conscription by the central government guiding hand, unfolded like the after- when states were being left defenseless math of many American wars: The against Yankee invaders. grossest violations of civil rights disap- Pistol At several points Neely takes up the peared when the crisis was over, as did question, much discussed nowadays in (for a while) such unwelcome wartime Whipping historical circles, of whether national- innovations as federal conscription, ism inevitably leads to authoritarianism. paper money, and eventually the income ROBERT VERBRUGGEN He answers in the negative, even feeling tax; but the overall expansion of federal compelled to point out that “in the mid- power at the states’ expense remained. It dle of the nineteenth century, national- would be easy for conservatives to decry ism was not pathological.” He also this, but considering that southern state dismisses the assertion that southern governments had allowed the enslave- institutions in all areas of life were de- ment of a large part of their population signed to mimic the master-slave rela- and led their people into a suicidal war, tionship, another thesis that has recently it’s hard to argue that the shift was all been fashionable on college campuses. bad. A more important question for most In addition, while federal power tends of us is how the Constitution held up to expand following a war, so does na - under the strains of wartime. Did it tionalism—or, as conservatives would emerge from the conflict stronger be- call it, patriotism. This gives liberals Gunfight: The Battle over the cause it had been clarified—with the something to gripe about too. As always, Right to Bear Arms in America, “compact theory” discredited, secession however, we should be wary of general- by Adam Winkler (Norton, and nullification put to rest, and neces- izing from past wars to current ones; 361 pp., $27.95) sary amendments added? Or did war among other differences, past wars usu- make the Constitution weaker, because ally had an end. istrict of columbia v. so much fudging had been needed to get In the final analysis, most constitu- Heller and mcDonald v. around its awkward parts? tional debates boil down to a question chicago, the two recent The case for stronger: War reinforces of rules vs. tools. The first of these ap - D Supreme Court gun cases, the Constitution by focusing attention proaches sees the Constitution as a set of resolved a lot of conflicts, but they left and discussion upon it, reminding un - rules that must be followed scrupulous- a lot of work to be done. Local, state, worldly theorists of down-to-earth rely and exactly, however odd or quaint and federal governments may no longer alities, bringing open questions before they seem, until they are changed. The ban handguns, but they have to decide courts for resolution, and inspiring the latter views the Constitution as a box of among other forms of gun control— development of new interpretations and tools that can be wielded to achieve a with the threat of being overruled in the discarding of old doctrines (the desired result, and if you have to use a court if they go too far. In Gunfight, transcontinental railroad could not chisel as a screwdriver and drive nails constitutional-law professor Adam Wink - have been built until secession removed with a pair of pliers, it’s okay so long as ler tells the story of the Second Amend - southern constitutional objections). More - you don’t need too much duct tape to ment and makes the case that the over, the Civil War proved that a consti- hold it together. The unique stresses of Su preme Court did the right thing, both tutional republic could hold together war test and refine our principles regard- by protecting an individual right to under stress, after mixed experiences ing how strictly we follow the rules and bear arms and by leaving many forms of globally in that regard in the first half how far we allow the repurposing of gun control on the table. Some topics of the 19th century. tools. deserve more discussion than they re - The case for weaker, by contrast, is As Robert VerBruggen wrote in these ceive, the book’s whiplash-inducing more a case for lost innocence, a real- pages (Nov. 15, 2010), discussing brown lack of organization is frustrating, and ization of the fallacy of thinking that (as v. board of Education: “In its fight an anti-gun bias is evident in places, Daniel Webster put it during the debate against racism, America has used but on the whole, Gunfight offers read- over the Compromise of 1850) “what is highly questionable means at key junc- ers a concise and balanced account of right may be distinguished from what is tures—means that were legitimate only where the Amer ican gun debate stands wrong with the precision of an algebraic because of the extreme severity of the and how it got there. equation.” The document once thought wrong they sought to remedy.” Fiddling Over the course of several decades to be an impenetrable bulwark against with the Constitution must occur only in the middle of the 20th century, invasions of fundamental rights turns in response to a great emergency or a gun-control advocates managed to out in a crisis to be full of holes—and if severe long-term problem where every plant a great fiction in the mind of the the government can get away with vio- other avenue has been exhausted, not as American public: the idea that the lating it during a war, the argument goes, a shortcut for impatient reformers. If we Second Amendment protects only a it can do so anytime. always apply this severe criterion before “collective right”—the right of states to But it doesn’t—and that’s the key. The we reluctantly resort to bending the form militias—despite its unambigu- Civil War’s aftermath, which, tragically, Constitution, we will be assured of still ous declaration that the right belongs to had to take place without Lincoln’s having a Constitution to bend. “the people.” Even numerous appellate

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courts, trying to construe a poorly writ- tions, though, are his explorations of his rush to paint himself as a moderate ten Supreme Court decision from the what the right to bear arms means in a crusader against the “extremes” (on both 1930s, adopted this interpretation. But post-Heller and post-McDonald world. sides, but especially the evil National by the time the Supreme Court heard its As he points out, the fact that the Su- Rifle Association), he always sounds recent cases, this theory was dead; even preme Court has taken handgun bans off sensible, but his claims often fall apart the defenders of gun control made little the table should not only quell the on closer analysis. use of it. fears of gun-rights hardliners, but also For example, he spends much of his As Winkler explains, historical re- cool the jets of the most extreme gun- brief discussion of the Columbine mas- search had simply made this idea un - grabbers. Thus are both sides pushed sacre on Robyn Anderson, a friend of tenable. At the time of the founding, toward the middle, and forced to consid- the teenaged killers who bought guns various sources—including commen - er the more reasonable measures that are for them. Anderson didn’t want to buy tators and Second Amendment pre - still on the table—and rightly so, consti- guns through a federally licensed dealer, cursors in state constitutions—made tutionally speaking. because that would have left a paper it perfectly clear that the Second As Winkler explains, gun control is trail, so she bought them from a private Amend ment protected an individual much more a part of American history seller instead, which could be done right, even if the main purpose of that than some may realize—and he isn’t without a background check. Anderson right was to stop the federal govern- afraid to explore the dark side of gun later said that if an anonymous purchase ment from disarming members of state control’s past. From the nation’s found- hadn’t been an option, she wouldn’t militias. And Winkler traces the right to ing, despite the Second Amendment and have bought the guns. From this, Wink - bear arms even farther back than that, similar provisions in state constitutions, ler argues that if private sales had to go noting that the English Bill of Rights state and local governments passed var- through licensed dealers, a measure the protected individual gun ownership ious laws restricting gun rights—from NRA continued to oppose even after the (at least for Protestants). banning concealed carry, to limiting killings, Columbine “might have been Winkler spends little time, however, how ammunition might be stored, to avoided.” on an alternative theory that developed: confiscating privately owned guns for But this is unlikely, thanks to facts the “limited individual right” interpreta- militia use. Few observers alleged that that Winkler doesn’t provide. Anderson tion that was championed by numerous these provisions violated the right to was not the only source of Columbine historians and other academics, and that bear arms. And in the South, govern- guns; a different acquaintance sold the animated the liberal judges’ dissent in ments and private militias went to great killers the TEC-9 that became Dylan Heller, the first of the two recent cases. lengths to disarm blacks—a problem Klebold’s primary weapon. And in a In this interpretation, the right to bear that helped give rise to the Fourteenth video released after the shootings, Eric arms is somewhat like the right to serve Amendment, which applied the Second Harris said that if they’d failed to get the on a jury—it’s a right retained by indi- Amendment to the states. guns the way they did, “We would have vidual people, but it’s merely a right to Winkler is much better at explaining found someone else. . . . We would have be considered for government service, the history and constitutional law of gun gone on and on.” in this case the militia. Winkler outlines control than at evaluating which kinds And unlike the two men who helped the basics of this argument and notes of gun control might actually work. In the killers get the TEC-9, Anderson that its proponents are a distinct minor - ity, but more detail would have been helpful. FACELESS DREAMS FULL OF NUMBERS However, Winkler does a fantastic job of explaining how the Heller case—a Every now and then for a few days challenge to Washington, D.C.’s hand- The same dream presents a problem that can’t gun ban—made it to the Supreme Court. He interviews all of the participants and Quite be solved or sent away. It comes explains all of the tactical maneuver - Like the dawn breeze, something to be counted ing and infighting on both sides. (The Or explained but you never quite know how National Rifle Association opposed the Or why. A house in University City— suit, preferring to wait until the Supreme Who lives in it? A group of students ask Court was more conservative; some What book should be read? But the questions gun-control supporters similarly urged Are never as clear as these. You get D.C. not to appeal the case to the Court, The first half but not the second, the house fearing an adverse ruling.) He also gives a play-by-play of the arguments And the students but no words, no voice before the Court, right down to Clarence And above all never a face. Thomas’s silence and Antonin Scalia’s It comes back openly helping the pro-gun lawyer, Alan Until you recognize it for a dream Gura, argue his case. (“You want to say, And it dissolves in the face of reality. ‘Yes.’ That’s your answer.”) Winkler’s most valuable contribu- —LAWRENCE DUGAN

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS faced no repercussions for knowingly “Shame on me!” she says. She has no buying firearms on behalf of people who Music problem whatsoever with being a prima couldn’t buy them themselves. it’s hard donna. “i’m proud of it,” she says. “i’ve to see how what Anderson did was better Prima Donna always been proud of it. And i always than selling a handgun to the killers knew it”—always knew she was one. directly, but it meant the difference When she was five years old, she sang between a six-year prison sentence and Assoluta with her sister in front of an audience. She getting off scot free. Perhaps back- saw the emotions in that audience. She ground checks for private gun transac- JAY NORDLINGER saw similar emotions in Carnegie hall, tions are a good idea. But they probably for her Adriana. “i have seen this reaction wouldn’t have prevented Columbine, ngelA gheorghiu waltzes all my life.” and perhaps we should try less aggres- down to the lobby of the Plaza her sister, elena, died several years ago sive measures first—such as making hotel in new York. We will in a car accident. When she mentions her sure that people who do what Anderson A have a tête-à-tête in the Cham - death—maybe halfway through our con- did get prison time. pagne Bar. Who is gheorghiu? in prosaic versation—she falls suddenly silent and Also lacking is Winkler’s discussion terms, she is a romanian soprano born in somber. of the “cop-killer bullets” controversy 1965. in less prosaic terms, she is “the romania, when they were growing up, of the 1980s. in his telling, some well- most glamorous and gifted opera singer of was one of the worst of the Communist meaning legislators tried to ban hand- our time.” i have quoted from her website. dictatorships. There were not many oppor- gun bullets made of unusually hard This is publicist’s hyperbole, of course— tunities for budding singers (or for anyone substances—which had been designed but it is not far off. else). “imagine me to be an American!” to help police officers and soldiers gheorghiu is not only an extraordinary says gheorghiu. imagine if she had been pierce heavy materials such as car doors singer and performer, she is great copy. an American. “everything i did, i did only and windshields, but also could pierce There is often controversy swirling about because of me—moi!” She worked and the body armor that police officers her, as well as excitement. She has run-ins scrapped for everything she achieved. themselves wore. The nrA opposed the with opera administrators and stage direc- She did have a teacher, of whom she measure, offering ridiculous arguments: tors. She has marriages and romances. speaks gratefully. her name was Mia Why single out armor-piercing handgun People love to gossip about her, snipe at Barbu, and she taught Angela for some bullets when most rifle bullets pierce her, hate her, adore her. five years—from the time the girl was 14 armor too? (Because most criminals use She is certainly a top-notch interviewee. until she was 18. “i did my canto lessons,” easily concealable handguns, not bulky in the Champagne Bar, she is amusing, says gheorghiu, “pure canto. All the stud- rifles.) And shouldn’t we be worried that frank, coquettish, catty, and smart as hell. ies” (the Vaccai method and so on). But banning ammunition whose only civil- She speaks in a flavorful english, mixing she did everything “very quick.” What ian purpose is to kill police officers will in French, italian, and romanian. it is an can take others years, she says, took her lead to a slippery slope? (uh, no.) This opera-world patois. And her name, by just a day. She remembers a particular annoyed a number of gun-rights sup- the way, is pronounced (something like) occasion: Barbu said to her, “Breathe.” porters, especially cops, and eventually ghee’or-ghee’oo. Angela breathed. The teacher said, “That’s a measure passed. it is now the evening after a concert it! Don’t ever change that.” While the nrA opposed some early performance of Adriana Lecouvreur at According to gheorghiu, she has never measures to ban “cop-killer bullets,” it Carnegie hall. The title role was taken by had any teaching or coaching help since did not do so on principle. As howard gheorghiu, of course, and she, Adriana, is she was 18. There are two reasons for this, Kurtz wrote in the Washington Post in an actress. So is gheorghiu, very much. in she says: “First, i really want to be origi- 1984, “All sides in the dispute say they fact, she tells me, the national Theatre in nal. even if i make a mistake, it’s me. support a worthy goal: protecting the Bucharest has invited her to appear in a Second, i understand canto very well, trust police from bullets made of several hard play, just straight, “basta with the music.” me. You can ask my colleagues.” alloys.” What the nrA objected to was She is looking forward to it. her first trip out of the eastern bloc the overly broad language in the early We talk a bit about ionesco, the late was to Vienna, where she was agog at the bills. The nrA helped improve the leg- playwright, whose daughter she knows. beauty and the abundance. She couldn’t islation, and the organization did not (“elle habite à Paris.”) We also talk about understand why people weren’t celebrat- oppose the bill that eventually passed, enescu, the composer. “Did he write any ing in the streets. They were walking though some more hard-core gun-rights songs?” i ask. (i can’t remember.) oh, yes, around as though such beauty and abun- groups did. she says. gheorghiu has done recitals, dance were normal. She stared at the meat, on the whole, Gunfight offers a wide- and done them well. But she does not the fruit, the flowers. i mention to her ranging and readable account of the look with favor on, for example, an all- that rené Pape—the Dresden-born bass— struggle over gun rights in America, Schumann evening. “it’s nice,” she says, had the same reaction when he first went touching on history, politics, policy, and “but not nice enough. Something is miss- to Austria. She says, “The shops in legal wrangling. it is a good introduc- ing. it’s like a prelude to making love. i romania—not like in germany, excuse tion for newcomers to the debate, and want more!” me—were completely empty. Just white. even veterans are sure to find interesting What she is, principally, is an opera star, Just white.” new tidbits of information. born to be. She is fully aware of this fact. in 1994, she had a big breakthrough,

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singing La traviata with Georg Solti in explain this. She hesitates (which is un - London. As she reminds me, the conduc- usual for her). I hazard, “Is it because men tor was then 82, and cried when hearing desire you and, when they can’t have you, the young soprano sing “Addio del pas- get angry?” She gives me a look that sato” in a rehearsal room. Overcome, he says, Bingo. That is a major reason, yes. had to leave that room. He made a much- “Thank you for helping me,” she says. circulated statement, to wit, “The girl is Gheorghiu provokes big emotions, in wonderful. She can do anything.” colleagues and audiences alike, in a field Two years later, having ditched her of big emotions. She is an especially oper- husband (whose name she retains), she atic personality in a field (naturally) filled married Roberto Alagna, the Italian- with them. And an opera role takes a lot French tenor. The ceremony took place out of her, she says. “I’m not just making during a performance of La bohème on a sound. I am living that sound. I am liv- the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, ing the personnage. And it costs me.” She Mayor Rudolph Giuliani presiding. In cites her latest outing in Adriana. “After the years that followed, the legend of the monologue, I thought I was going to Gheorghiu grew and grew. She walked faint.” away from productions, and was dis- Singing cannot go on forever, and I ask missed from them. She made incendiary Gheorghiu a delicate question: Does she and delicious statements to the press— fear retirement? Not at all, she says. She e.g., “If directors want to do something has thought about it for a long time. And Angela Gheorghiu in London last September new with operas, why not do something an idea has come to her strongly in just the beautiful?” She canceled performances status and independence. Frankly, they last month: She will direct. I say, “Then on what seemed like whims. may lack the guts as well. you will be the boss.” “No!” she protests. They are never whims, says Gheorghiu In a Met Traviata two seasons ago, In opera, there can be no boss, as it is a in the Champagne Bar. If she feels she Gheorghiu clashed with Leonard Slatkin, collaborative process. Everyone has a part cannot do her best, why should she suffer, the conductor. He did not return after the to play, and each part is connected to and why should the audience suffer? opening night. Slatkin has admitted that he another. Once, she relates, a conductor Callas did the same, she says. “She said, was ill-prepared for the opera, but has also was trying to boss her around. “I’m do - ‘I’m not good enough tonight—ciao, claimed that the diva was intolerable to ing the personnage,” she told him. He ragazzi.’” That is what a prima donna him (not hard to believe). I ask her, “Do retorted, “I’m not [merely] accompanying worth the name should do, says Gheor- you have any regrets about the Traviata you.” She answered, “Oh, you’re not ghiu. with Slatkin?” She does not recognize the accompanying me? Then change your job, Her latest album, by the way, is called name, or affects not to do so. After a few dear. Of course you are accompanying Homage to Maria Callas—Favourite moments, she says, “Ah, the conductor. me. Excuse me?” Opera Arias (EMI). In conjunction with He left. This happened.” Okay, but why Gheorghiu loves being famous, as she this album, she has made a video that takes did he leave? Gheorghiu makes the gen - readily confirms. But she says there is a advantage of some technical wizardry: eral point that people often use her as a big downside to having the kind of career She appears to sing a duet with Callas her- scapegoat. “My name helps, you know she has. You are “everywhere and no - self. “Why not?” says Gheorghiu. “She’s what I mean?” If a person is having where,” and are “alone almost all of the with EMI. She’s my colleague.” problems, he can blame the raven-haired time.” There is always a post-performance For her conflicts with directors, Gheor - terror from Transylvania. “I don’t care. tristesse, “a little emptiness.” You go back ghiu makes no apologies. She feels she Use my name, but use it well: Ghee’or- to your hotel room, talk on the phone, click must stand up to those who would under- GHEE’oo!” through YouTube. The roar and adulation mine composers, librettists, and their There are books of opera anecdotes, of the crowd are gone. And “I want it operas. In her mind, she is defending art and I suggest to this soprano that books back!” says Gheorghiu. “All that love, I against the barbarians. Take the current in the future will have whole chapters want it back! It’s never enough for me.” Faust at the Met (please). She was to devoted to her. Yes, she says, “and I’m not But then there is another performance, appear in it but withdrew because she finished yet!” I ask her about one of my more roars, more adulation—“a rinasci- could not abide the production. It trans- favorite stories: Did she really demand mento” (rebirth). plants Faust into the nuclear age (etc.). hair and makeup for a radio interview? After we say goodbye, she goes off This production was a “fiasco” at the No, she says: There was a photo-shoot the with companions to a concert by Sting. English National Opera, Gheorghiu says, same day as the radio interview. Too bad, She has a nickname for him: “Stingo” and it is a fiasco here in New York. More - I say, it’s such a good story. Yes, she says, (rhymes with Ringo). “He’s such a nice over, why should she and other experi- “but I have lots of others.” artist,” she says. Gheorghiu herself is an enced singers be good boys and girls and Unquestionably, she is the target of artist and a half: a great opera singer, an AP / obey a “Mr. Nobody” (i.e., the director)? some envy, jealousy, and overall resent- immortal. And whatever else you may say I can assure readers that many, many ment. She lets me in on a secret: It’s worse about her—and you could say plenty— singers wish they could take the stands from men than from women. “Really?” I she is just about the fizziest guest the

JONATHAN SHORT that Gheorghiu takes. But they lack the ask. “Yes,” she says. I ask whether she can Champagne Bar will ever see.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS scene. His latest film, Young Adult, re- pance awaiting the former queen bee, Film teams him with the Juno screenwriter which would leave her both personally Diablo Cody, and it pushes past the tragi- humbled and morally improved. Young comedy of his earlier movies into far Adult supplies comeuppances in abun- You Can’t darker terrain. Sold as a black comedy in dance, and it even provides a romantic the Bad Santa/Bad Teacher vein, Young alternative to Mavis’s married ex, in the Go Home Adult is really a tragedy disguised with form of Patton Oswalt’s Matt, a limping laugh lines, which turns the clichés of comic-book geek whose locker was next ROSS DOUTHAT high-school dramas and adult rom-coms to hers but whom she remembers only to bleak and entirely unsentimental ends. because of the vicious, life-altering beat- ne of the early trailers for The Reitman’s protagonist is Mavis Gary ing he endured at the hands of a gang of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, (Charlize Theron), a former high-school cruel jocks. the David Fincher adaptation queen bee—gorgeous, leggy, and self- But as the movie proceeds, we realize O of history’s most successful centered—who’s grown up to be the super- that Mavis isn’t just a spoiled princess in Swedish potboiler, promised “the feel- ficially successful ghostwriter of a series need of a reality check, or a superficially bad movie of the year.” It was a good line, of popular Gossip Girl–style young-adult “unlikeable” heroine who’s really decent but it wasn’t truth in advertising. Despite novels. Her career pays for a large, arid, way down underneath. She’s a deeply its long parade of rapes, assaults, and and unkempt apartment in a Minneapolis damaged person, less deplorable than serial murders, The Dragon Tattoo in all high-rise, a Mini Cooper, and the kind of pitiable, with no easy happy ending its iterations (the Stieg Larsson novel, yappy little dog that every reality-TV star- awaiting her—in Mercury, or anywhere the Swedish film, and now Fincher’s ver- let seems to covet—which isn’t a surprise, on Planet earth. Young Adult isn’t inter- sion) is fundamentally a conventional since Mavis’s flat-screen is constantly ested in teaching the self-absorbed prom revenge fantasy: Dirty Harry for nerdy blaring the troubles of Real Housewives, queen a few lessons in humility. It’s up to Marxists, you might say, in which a left- Bachelorettes, and Kar dash ians. something harder and more interesting: portraying the prom queen as a damaged, defeated, tragic figure, a former victim - izer who’s become her own most tortured victim. This portrait doesn’t quite add up to a consistent whole, because Reitman and Cody never quite decide where to lay the stresses. Sometimes they seem to be simply portraying a beautiful narcissist whose pathologies have hardened disas- trously with age. Sometimes they seem to be making a movie about the wages of alcoholism, since most of Mavis’s disas- trous behavior is floated on a tide of liq- uid courage. (Oswalt’s Matt becomes her confidant in part because he distills his own spirits and happily supplies her with Charlize Theron in Young Adult them.) Then near the end, the filmmakers wing journalist and the leather-clad les- It takes a birth announcement from suddenly supply their protagonist with a bian computer whiz who sleeps with him her high-school beau (Patrick Wilson) to tragic secret that makes her psychologi- mete out long-overdue justice to rich jolt her out of this endless feedback loop cal profile seem almost too pat, and her woman-hating nazis. Despite its lurid of narcissism, and into a feedback loop behavior in Mercury too predictable. material and exotic locales, it actually of self-delusion instead. After eyeing the But even when they’ve over-egged the boasts one of the more predictable story baby picture for a while, Mavis decides pudding, Theron’s performance manages arcs of Hollywood’s holiday season—and to head back to her hometown of Mer - to hold it all together. Young Adult is not indeed, of any project that the prickly cury, pretending that she has real-estate a pleasant movie, to put it mildly, and it Fincher has undertaken. business to conduct in order to buy time isn’t an entirely successful one. It’s worth To find the real feel-bad movie of the to seduce her ex-boyfriend away from seeing, though, for the fearlessly plausi- year, you’ll have to turn to a less ec - domesticity and back into her bed. What ble way that its lovely star inhabits a fre- centric but equally talented director: follows is an escalating series of un - quently repellent character, finding both Jason Reitman (the son of the comedy comfortable come-ons, in which Mavis moral abysses and raw humanity in one impresario Ivan Reitman), whose oeu- proves that you can’t go back to high of popular culture’s great clichés. This vre—Thank You for Smoking, Juno, school, even as her sense of entitlement isn’t a movie that makes you root for the and 2009’s Up in the Air—has quietly plumbs ever-more-horrifying depths. bad girl. But once you’ve seen it, you’ll established him as one of the sharpest In a more conventional movie, there never feel quite so comfortable rooting

MANDATE PICTURES observers of the contemporary American would be a grand small-town comeup- against her again.

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to a cement-mining fortune (just about again, but his batting average was much Country Life the only fortune ever made in the county). higher than ty Cobb’s. With help, he bought an 18th-century Small businesses are a labor of stone building, originally a tavern, then Sisyphus, and restaurants belong in a Rural a wreck. With sweat equity he restored special circle of hades. Starting up is the roof and sealed the walls. he opened famously murderous, but the long haul Repast for business, and in the first month was can be a killer too. Another favorite visited by the restaurant critic for the restaurant of mine, this one in the city, New York Times, who, delighted, gave lasted 24 years, then, with the sudden- him four stars. ness of a chase scene in a silent film— he had a lot to learn. his wines at first the economic downturn was one of the came from jugs. When a skeptical guest bad guys—it all ended; the owner questioned the wine steward (like the moved out of town and is looking for chef, a teenager), he said, “We have work as a waiter. Something equally white, red, and rosé—what else do you drastic unfolded upstate. For a while the want?” In defense of the chef and his chef had a store in a house across the team, this was the end of the Mad Men way that sold little goodies and tourist era, when Americans drank mostly cock- items; then he rented that out. In the RICHARD BROOKHISER tails. So he learned, but he also had what stony bowels of the old tavern he also cannot be taught—a flair for the work. had a bistro, with a cheaper menu. then hAt in the world was that? Skill and talent will take you far in that closed. then everything closed. Ahead of us on the dark the world. We acquire skill by learning Gossip, the sewer of malice and envy, road (night falls before and practicing the basics until we have supplied details, but I did not want to W five o’clock this time of mastered them; talent is the aptitude know. I am idealistic enough, and child- year, and there are few houses to break that smoothes the path of mastery. the ish enough, to wish to remember the the gloom), six red lights appeared, angles are true, the engine runs, the chef only at his best. arranged in a triangle: three-two-one. A books balance. Flair is different, and Children and work are all that most of Christmas tree? Some unknown traffic extra; it is the quality of daring, play, or us ever achieve, and both offer fore- signal? they moved along ahead of us at wildness that adds the shimmer of an tastes of our end. Children survive us, cruising speed for a mile or two as we followed the creek. But at the stoplight before the bridge, we caught up to them, An artist with flair can be a and saw that they were lights on the back long-haired maniac, or dull as dirt. of a large fuel truck. Only an emergency would bring such But when you meet his work you step a rig out on a holiday night. It preceded us, over the falls, into the town parking back in appreciation. lot where we were bound. “I bet it’s going to the restaurant,” I told my wife. overtone, or of heat lines rising off a but they move away and become them- “It could be a long night.” road on a hot day. Flair when you see it selves, not our own dear creations. And Gastronomically, upstate is a desert. makes you step back and nod. Attitude is work ends with retirement, or failure— there is a college town with kid places: often considered, wrongly, a marker for the little interment before the big one. bars, ethnic stuff. there is a fish market flair. But flair resides in the act or the So it was pleasant—no, it was great— with a good seafood restaurant attached, thing itself. An artist with flair can be a to learn that the restaurant was reopen- hung with stuffed sailfish and sharks. In long-haired maniac, or dull as dirt. But ing, for three holiday nights. true, they one of the old Jewish destinations (the when you meet his work you step back needed a fuel delivery at the last minute, only Jews who still come up here are in appreciation. and there was a slight whiff of gas in the hasids), there is a bakery that makes the menus at the restaurant were main room. So we ate in the bar. But good bagels. Otherwise the lone and arranged like partitas. there could be the carrot pasta pinwheel was as good level sands stretch far away—except for five courses—amuse-bouche, soup or as ever, the shrimp cocktail was one this restaurant. appetizer, entrée, cheese, dessert—or shrimp nestled in an endive stuck in a the story of its founding has become sometimes seven—soup and appetizer; I plaster cup decorated with Cupids, the a local legend. Once upon a time there forget the seventh. One night one of the venison was another homer. Gossip, was a young man who wanted to be a entrées was a banana risotto with squid. now friendly, burbles about some possi- chef. his parents were already in the Banana risotto with squid! It sounded ble new deal. Who knows? Sooner or business—they owned a pizzeria—but like the punch line of a joke told at the later the restaurant will go dark for his father, with the willfulness often Culinary Institute of America. I looked good, and there will be nothing like it attributed to the Irish, but proper only to back at it three times, until I felt I was again ever, except in memory, which the Italians, refused to help his son. the being dared to order it. I did, and it was will go dark too. But for now, it was son approached the local rich man, heir a home run. the chef whiffed now and good to be home again.

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Our Sick State

COUple of months back, I was with a friend of and I’d be ponying up 500 bucks. Instead, I put away the mine when she suddenly collapsed and I found credit card and fished out a $20 bill. myself having to run her to the emergency room. And then I thought of the opportunity cost not only to me A After a fairly harrowing 14 hours, the hospital but to the four cars behind. It seemed a very expensive way released her, the doctor writing her a prescription for the to buy 18 bucks’ worth of pills. still-very-intense pain she was in. So we stopped at her local It turned out my friend’s prescription was denied because Kinney Drugs in Vermont. someone at the pharmacy had transposed two numbers. Oh, Despite having been called in by the doc, the prescription well. Could happen to anyone. And, in fact, it does. Speaking wasn’t ready. Come back in an hour. Heigh-ho. So we left it as an unassimilated foreigner, I notice when you’re standing an hour and a half, and then, not wishing to make another in line that the big difference between a trip to the pharmacy pointless trip, called the pharmacy just to in the U.S. and one in the rest of the developed make sure. No, sorry, the druggist said. They world is that in America the druggists spend ran the insurance number and it was denied. I don’t quite virtually their entire time talking about not So they canceled the prescription. Without the medicine but the “customer”’s degree of calling the patient to tell her they’d canceled know what access to it. For example, while guest-hosting it. I passed the phone to my friend, lying you’d call for Fox News just after Christmas, I was taken on the couch like a tubercular Victorian ill while in New York. Saw a doc, got a pre- heroine, and she explained that her em - these rituals, scription, this time went to a Duane Reade ployer had recently switched plans from pharmacy on Sixth Avenue. The lady ahead of Blue Cross/Blue Shield to Cigna and, midst but the term me was going away for New Year’s. Too bad. groans, gave them the new policy number. ‘private Her health-care provider declined to provide She waited another hour in pain and we her with a renewal of her prescriptions before then returned to Kinney Drugs, using the health-care the 31st. The stylishly accoutered lady ahead convenient drive-thru lane. of her had a better strike rate. After some This time, they had the drugs. My pal system’ delay, the pharmacist returned. She informed handed over her new insurance card. After doesn’t seem her (and the rest of us) that the good news was some 15 minutes, the clerk returned and said that her insurer had approved her Ortho, but the insurer had declined it. There were two the most the bad news was that they’d denied her cars backed up behind us. My friend said that Valtrex. Ortho is a birth-control pill. Valtrex is couldn’t be right, the number was valid, obvious fit. a herpes medication. Had her dinner date been could they please run the number again. They a couple of places behind me in line, the news did. Same result. There were now four cars behind us. The might have cast a bit of a damper on his evening. As it was, it clerk suggested we drive around the building, join the back of occasioned general amusement among the women present. the drive-thru line, and maybe when she’d taken care of the I don’t quite know what you’d call these rituals, but the four cars behind things would have quietened down suffi- term “private health-care system” doesn’t seem the most ciently for her to call someone and try to find out what the obvious fit. Indeed, as in so many other areas of American problem was. life—the Fannie-Freddied mortgage market, the six-figure Never mind my friend’s crippling pain, spare a thought for college education—the main purpose of these dysfunctional me: I’d had to spend untold hours being kindly and supportive labyrinths ever more disconnected from any genuinely free and sympathetic, which is not a role to which I’m naturally market seems to be to discredit the very concept of a “private” suited, and the strain was beginning to tell. In that useful system and thus soften up the electorate for statist fixes. I’ve Americanism, I didn’t need this in my life right now. So I argued for years in these pages that governmentalized health enquired of Kinney Drugs whether it would be possible for us care fundamentally transforms the relationship between citi- just to pay for the prescription—you know, with money—and zen and state in ways that make it all but impossible to have then bugger off to resume our lives. She went off to see genuinely conservative government ever again. But at least whether that was still possible. Upon her return, I grabbed my the Canadian and British systems have the saving grace of an wallet and pulled out a credit card. equality of awfulness. Both Obamacare and, alas, Romney - “That will be eighteen dollars and 79 cents,” she said. care seem designed to combine the worst aspects of the Oh. For whatever reason—perhaps the sheer dogged deter- Scottish NHS and America’s present third-party pseudo- mination required to negotiate this time-consuming transac- market—and thus a scale of bloated, bureaucratic, inflation to a successful conclusion—I had assumed this would be tionary capriciousness unknown to human history. one of those expensive pills about which one hears so much In free, functioning societies, it ought to be easy to buy a bottle of pills. The fact that it isn’t is one reason why Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline (www.steynonline.com). America has a real bad headache.

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