The Decade of Reckoning

CommentaryJANUARY 2020 2010sTHE THE DECADE OF RECKONING

SAVE ME Matthew Continetti FROM MY DEFENDERS! on Populism Ruth R. Commentary Christine Rosen on Social Media Wisse Abe Greenwald on THE NEW ROCKET THREAT TO

JANUARY 2020 : VOLUME 149 NUMBER 1 Anti-Exceptionalism ISRAEL Jonathan $5.95 US : $7.00 CANADA Noah Rothman on Fracking Schanzer John Podhoretz on WHY ARE Getting Things Wrong JEWS BUDDHISTS? Rob Long on Jesse The Stars Nobody Knows Kellerman

JANUARY 2020 Cover.indd 1 12/17/19 11:42 AM WHY LISTEN TO THE COMMENTARY MAGAZINE PODCAST? BECAUSE OUR LISTENERS ARE RIGHT. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “Podhoretz and company are excellent. Come for the insight. Stay for the excellent analysis and the joke of the week.” ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “It’s free! They’re nice! You’ll find out what the hell is going on!” ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ “A bit of solace and sanity in the midst of such political madness. Podhoretz and Rothman offer perceptive and sharp commentary on the day’s topics. A must-listen podcast for all conservatives.”

Commentary Magazine’s The Commentary twice weekly podcast is Magazine Podcast hosted by John Podhoretz, is FREE with your annual Noah Rothman, and subscription to Christine Rosen & Abe Greenwald. Commentary Magazine. THE COMMENTARY MAGAZINE PODCAST www.commentarymagazine.com/podcast EDITOR’S COMMENTARY The Reverse Blood Libel

JOHN PODHORETZ HE SAME day two monsters murdered three support for Israel and his public acknowledgment of people in cold blood in a Jersey City kosher the hostility Jewish advocates for Israel face on college T supermarket—next door to a yeshiva housing campuses are the acts of a neo-Nazi, you are not only 50 defenseless children, which was apparently the committing a category error but a sin against the truth. original target—the Trump administration announced Now, I write this as someone who came under it would extend anti-discrimination protections un- constant daily, even hourly, assault on social media in der the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to American Jews. 2015 and 2016 from noxious Jew-haters who emerged The juxtaposition is important, because one was an from the dank American cultural sewers as the Trump unspeakable act of anti-Semitic evil and the other an campaign gathered steam. These repugnant creatures act of philo-Semitic friendship. And yet listen to the ex- felt empowered by Trump’s cultural divisiveness and ecutive director of the Central Conference of American the hostile rhetoric he used toward illegal immigrants Rabbis speaking about this: “I’ve heard people say this and simply applied them to Jews who were not fall- feels like the first step toward us wearing yellow stars.” ing in line. So I am more than mindful that the rise of Yeah, so have I. But you know, every day I hear Trump has been accompanied by a rise in anti-Semitic people say stupid, factitious, wrong-headed, histori- rhetoric—and, of course and tragically, the targeting of cally demented, and slanderous things. I read Twitter. two synagogues. And, for my sins, I am compelled to read the New York Still, the examples people proffer of Trump’s Times, which is where I came across that quote from own rhetoric being anti-Semitic are almost all in joke Rabbi Hara Person. In my view, part of the responsibil- form, as he teases Jews for their affluence in a manner ity of leadership in a community is standing strong far more akin to Jackie Mason than Father Coughlin— against those within who peddle vile, ignorant, weirdly another sign that Trump’s own cultural style is oddly self-justifying and self-infatuated argle-bargle. But of mired in the 1960s, with his Rat Pack mannerisms course, Rabbi Hara Person of the Central Conference and Borscht Belt cadence (“that Ted Cruz…oy,” he once of American Rabbis didn’t just “hear” people say these intoned before a campaign rally in Indiana, not a state things. She clearly shares a belief in this awful, unspeak- where “oy” is in everyday use). able, vile calumny—the slander that a president who In general, just as Chris Rock can say things agreed to a change in policy to aid American Jews on a white guy can’t say, Jackie Mason can say things a college campuses in their efforts to advocate for the Gentile can’t say. But we know Trump recognizes no Jewish state is an anti-Semite. such boundaries when it comes to manners regarding This is the blood libel in reverse—a false accusa- ethnicities not his own—remember him eating out of a tion of a crime against Jews leveled at someone who has taco bowl to show he loves Mexicans? not only committed no such crime but has extended his Perhaps this simply means he hates everybody. hand in friendship and commonality to us. You are free But if he hates Jews, Donald Trump has a funny way to dislike Trump for many reasons, and most American of showing it—through acts that strengthen us and Jews appear to do so. But if you choose to imagine his strengthen the nation-state of the Jewish people.q

Commentary 1 January 2020 Vol. 149 : No. 1

THE 2010s:

The Decade of Reckoning

Matthew The Populist Decade 13 Continetti

Abe The Anti-Exceptionalism Decade 16 Greenwald Noah The Fracking Decade 19 Rothman Christine The Social-Media Decade 22 Rosen

John The Decade of Reckoning 24 Podhoretz

Articles

Ruth R. Save Me From My Defenders! 27 Wisse A protest against me, and its aftermath, at Bard College.

Jonathan The New Rocket Threat to Israel 33 Schanzer The latest fighting in Gaza is the tip of the iceberg.

Jesse Why Are Jews Buddhists? 37 Kellerman An autobiographical inquiry into the nature of religio-cultural appropriation.

Politics & Ideas

Tal Gorsuch Were the Joys 41 Fortgang A Republic, If You Can Keep It, by Neil Gorsuch, with Jane Nitze and David Feder

Jack Are Millennials (Avocado) Toast? 43 Butler Fear Your Future: How the Deck Is Stacked Against Millennials and Why Socialism Would Make It Worse, by Philip Klein

Evelyn Jewsraelis 45 Gordon #IsraeliJudaism: Portrait of a Cultural Revolution, by Shmuel Rosner and Camil Fuchs

Kevin J. European Disunion 47 McNamara The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy, by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes

Culture & Civilization

Terry All About the Mankiewiczes 49 Teachout Hollywood’s great, sad brothers.

Monthly Commentaries

Editor’s Commentary Social Commentary 1 John Podhoretz Christine Rosen 8 The Reverse Blood Libel No Sex, Please, We’re American

Reader Commentary Jewish Commentary 4 Letters Meir Y. Soloveichik 10 on the November issue British Jews Take Their Stand Hollywood Commentary Rob Long 56 The Nobody Decade READER COMMENTARY

The Next Market Failure

To the Editor: end. He correctly describes the fi- mulated national debt of $10 tril- OAH ROTHMAN has writ- nancial meltdown a decade ago as lion by the time President Obama N ten a most admirable de- not being caused by “market fun- entered office. In the decade since, fense of capitalism and how it damentalism.” But is it right to say the debt has skyrocketed to more has benefited mankind worldwide that it was caused by “economic than $22 trillion. Balanced bud- (“Against the Anti-market Con- tinkering made possible by the gets, which were once a hallmark sensus,” November). federal government”? Here I think of prudent governance, are now a Starting with Adam Smith’s Rothman grossly understates the concept that belongs to past. We “Invisible Hand,” introduced in role played by our economic elites, look at trillion-dollar annual bud- the mid-18th century, free markets who pulled the strings that had get deficits. This has been facilitat- have been a blessing to productive caused this failure. Massive gov- ed by the elimination of free-mar- and industrious societies. “Creative ernment intervention won the ket pricing mechanisms and the destruction,” as described by the day then and continues apace. monetary printing presses at work Austrian economist Joseph Schum- The moral hazard that led to the on quantitative easing and low and peter over a half century ago, has meltdown is alive and well. The negative interest rates. Reluctance been an integral part of the almost huge bailouts paid for by the tax- to allow for market cleansing re- continual rise of the standards of payers may go down in history as cessions, beginning in the 1990s, living for billions. an inflection point in our nation’s has led to unimaginable debts and Rothman only briefly men- economic history. too-big-to-fail behemoths. We are tions, however, what it is that may It took 230 years for the U.S. taking the inheritances meant for bring this wonderful gift to an government to build up an accu- our grandchildren and spending

4 January 2020 them now to keep the illusion of prosperity going. Everyone real- izes that this game must come to an end at some point. The demise of capitalism and the ascendency of total centralized government controls will undeni- January 2020 Vol. 149 : No. 1 ably result in the weakening of our constitutional republic and its democratic ideals. Listening to John Podhoretz, Editor the Democratic presidential candi- Abe Greenwald, Senior Editor dates’ agendas, that day may not be Noah Rothman, Associate Editor that far away. Christine Rosen, Senior Writer Fred Ehrman � New York City Carol Moskot, Publisher Kejda Gjermani, Digital Publisher 1 Malkie Beck, Publishing Associate Noah Rothman writes: � T DOES NOT sound as if Fred Ilya Leyzerzon, Business Director IEhrman and I are in much dis- Stephanie Roberts, Business Manager agreement. As he notes, the moral � hazards that led to the collapse of Terry Teachout, Critic-at-Large the mortgage market and the nec- � essary bailouts that followed are Board of Directors still in place, and they are attribut- Daniel R. Benson, Chairman able to public policy—not the mar- Paul J. Isaac, Michael J. Leffell, ketplace. A well-meaning impulse to extend the benefits of home- Jay P. Lefkowitz, Steven Price, ownership to those who didn’t own Gary L. Rosenthal, Michael W. Schwartz homes due to financial constraints created the bubble. When it burst, cover design: carol moskot another well-intentioned effort to spare Americans the worst of a total economic meltdown gave rise to To send us a letter to the editor: [email protected] a populist backlash that resonates We will edit letters for length and content. still today. We are still reckoning To make a tax-deductible donation: [email protected] with those legacies, but they were For advertising inquiries: [email protected] the product of politicians catering For customer service: [email protected] to constituencies, not the demands of the market. More important than the ret- rospective on how we got here is Commentary (ISSN 0010-2601) is published monthly (except for a combined July/ where we are going, which Mr. August issue) by Commentary, Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization. Editorial and business offices: 561 Seventh Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY, 10018. Telephone: (212) 891-1400. Fax: (212) Ehrman alludes to in his letter. 891-6700. Customer Service: [email protected] or (212) 891-1400. We are now entering the decade in Subscriptions: One year $45, two years $79, three years $109, USA only. To subscribe please go which the debt for our long record to www.commentarymagazine.com/subscribe-digital-print. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, of fiscal profligacy will come due. and additional mailing offices. Subscribers will receive electronic announcements of forthcoming issues. Single copy: U.S. is $5.95; Canada is $7.00. All back issues are available in electronic Social Security’s costs are forecast form at commentarymagazine.com. Postmaster: Send address changes to Commentary, P.O. Box to exceed its revenue in 2020. The 420235, Palm Coast, FL, 32142. Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped, program’s trustees estimate that self-addressed envelope. Letters intended for publication may be edited. Indexed in Reader’s Guide, the fund that allows Medicare to Book Review Digest, and elsewhere. U.S. Newsstand Distribution by COMAG Marketing Group, 155 Village Blvd, Princeton, NJ, 08540. Printed in the USA. Commentary was established in fully reimburse hospitals and nurs- 1945 by the American Jewish Committee, which was the magazine’s publisher through 2006 and continues to support its role as an independent journal of thought and opinion. Copyright ©2020 by Commentary, Inc.; all rights reserved under International and Pan American Copyright Conventions. ing homes will become insolvent in austerity and privatization. The 2026. By the early 2030s, both So- public will demand comfort and cial Security and Medicare will not protection from the vicissitudes The be able to pay the full cost of their of the market, even though the obligations. It’s true that estimates market will have had nothing to Jewishness change with the tax code, actuarial do with the instability and credit tables, and demographic trends, crunch that will result from an of Bernstein and they may change again. But no insolvency crisis. And, as you note, longer does the crisis loom decades the Constitution is often no match in the future. By the end of the next for the fierce urgency of now. and Robbins decade, policymakers will face the To the Editor: very real prospect of a debt crisis. ERRY TEACHOUT underesti- In such a political environment, 1 T mates what Leonard Bernstein it’s hard to imagine that policy- really knew when it came to Jewish- makers will respond by advocating ness (“What Jerome Robbins Knew That Leonard Bernstein Didn’t,” No- vember). Even if we grant that Je- rome Robbins came to terms with The New his Jewishness by working on the choreography to Fiddler on the Roof, his work there, notable though it may be, does not compare to actu- Cargo Cult ally writing at least two compositions where Jewishness was primary—as To the Editor: theory makes something else come Bernstein did with the Kaddish and OSEF JOFFE is absolutely right out right, in addition.” Jeremiah symphonies. While I am Jin his assessment of climate- Today’s global-warming cargo inclined to agree that these are “pre- change fanaticism (“The Religion cultists ignore inconvenient his- tentious pieces of musical costume of Climatism,” November). The bib- torical facts, such as the glacial and jewelry,” as Teachout has described lical references are spot-on. interglacial cycles that have char- them, Bernstein, at least, had the In reading Joffe’s description acterized the past million years, ability to combine his Jewishness of the faith of Climatism, I was not to mention the four ice ages with his creative talent on more than reminded of Richard Feynman, that have preceded the most recent one occasion. Robbins could manage who, in his 1974 lecture about one. None of those, or the emer- only one such effort, after which he cargo cults, said this: “Details that gence from the Little Ice Age, were abandoned the medium in which he could throw doubt on your inter- preceded by CO2 change. They also was so successful in that vein. Even if pretation must be given, if you studiously ignore the exponential Teachout derides Bernstein’s conde- know them. You must do the best decline of the greenhouse-gas ef- scension toward Broadway, it did not, you can—if you know anything at fect of CO2, first noted by Arrhe- ultimately, spoil to any significant all wrong, or possibly wrong—to nius, with 50 percent of its impact degree Bernstein’s overall reputation. explain it. If you make a theory, in the first 20 parts per million So in the end, who knew what for example, and advertise it, or (ppm), so that in this fifth half-life better? If Bernstein had returned to put it out, then you must also put of that decay, the next doubling to Broadway, following Jerome Rob- down all the facts that disagree 800 ppm will increase the effect by bins, would we have had the Kad- with it, as well as those that agree less than 2 percent. dish symphony? Would we have with it. There is also a more subtle But they will be among the missed out on at least the effort to problem. When you have put a lot blessed of Greta and Gore. enlighten the public on one of the of ideas together to make an elabo- Jim Whiting most important of Jewish prayers? rate theory, you want to make sure, Portland, Oregon Or is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave (and when explaining what it fits, that who knows how many other possi- those things it fits are not just the 1 ble flops) ultimately more desirable? things that gave you the idea for Doron Becker the theory; but that the finished Potomac, Maryland

6 Letters : January 2020 A Global Jinx

To the Editor: aunt was the famous/infamous Churches, the Soviet Comintern’s VERY MUCH enjoyed Bruce American “fellow traveler” Anna vehicle for the co-option and sub- I Bawer’s article “The Global- Louise Strong. Her career was as a version of religion. Citizen Fraud” (November). I espe- journalist, author, and propagan- Reg Curtis cially appreciated the part dealing dist—first for the Soviet Union and New Brunswick, Canada with Maurice Strong. This was a then for the Peoples’ Republic of man who drifted across the world China. She was one in a long list of stage like a cloudy day. He reminds American leftists who found their Correction: In Michael Medved’s me of the Li’l Abner character true home in a “workers’ paradise.” article, “‘I Will Make of You a Great Joe Btfsplk, the world’s worst jinx Perhaps Strong’s true education Nation’” (November), the author adorned in his black slouch hat came at the hands of his aunt, and refers to the “assassination of Czar and tail and trailing bad luck it was from her that he developed Nicholas II” in 1881; this is incor- wherever he went. his love of the PRC. In any event, rect. It was Czar Alexander II who Following Strong’s recent among his volunteer positions was was murdered that year. death, it was reported that his one with the World Council of

Commentary 7 SOCIAL COMMENTARY No Sex, Please, We’re American

CHRISTINE ROSEN

OUNGER Americans—Millennials and Gen county level, and found that its arrival explained 7 to 13 Z—might seem like the most sexually liberated percent of the teen-birth-rate decline from 1999 to 2007.” Y and open-minded generations the country has Some cultural conservatives see the new absti- ever seen. They embrace the idea that gender is a fluid nence as a victory for traditionalism and believe we concept, something one determines for oneself and should harness the moment. As Concerned Women for entirely divorced from the sex one happened to be at America’s Penny Nance told NPR: “Schools and public birth. They talk frankly and bluntly about sex on so- health advocates owe it to parents and people of faith cial media. And, as Vice has noted, they are “rejecting to support the young girl or boy who wants to delay sex-ed stereotypes by teaching themselves instead” on sexual behavior. Marriage and delaying sex until at platforms such as YouTube, Tumblr, and Twitter. Teen least adulthood are good goals.” Vogue even recently offered its young readers a how-to Culture warriors may be looking through the guide about anal sex (which the publication refers to as wrong end of the telescope here. Despite the positive going to “fifth base”). side effects of the new abstinence (including lower Despite this unprecedented candor about sex, rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, they aren’t actually having much of it. According to the and abortion), satisfaction in relation to sex seems U.S. General Social Survey, although all Americans are to have declined along with frequency, and attitudes having less sex than they used to, it’s 18- to 29-year-olds among younger Americans about the possibility of find- who have seen the most precipitous decline in activity: ing healthy long-term relationships are not positive. 23 percent of them reported that they have not had sex The steady stream of graphic information in the past year. That’s more than double the number and constant demands to go public with one’s open- who reported being celibate in 2008. minded, sex-positive lifestyle appear to have generated Young men are driving the downward trajectory. more weariness and cynicism than Rabelaisian enthu- As the Washington Post noted, “for most of the past siasm. Data from the General Social Survey show that three decades, 20-something men and women reported more than half of Americans ages 18–34 do not have a similar rates of sexlessness,” but since 2008, “the share steady romantic partner. of men younger than 30 reporting no sex has nearly And although younger Americans are having sex tripled, to 28 percent.” That’s compared with the 8 per- at a later age than previous generations, they are also cent increase in sexlessness among women in the same delaying marriage or deciding not to get married at all age group. As the Atlantic noted, a recent study in the (the percentage of Americans who have never been mar- Journal of Population Economics “examined the intro- ried has been steadily rising). Even those who do choose duction of broadband Internet access at the county-by- to marry are having fewer children during their prime childbearing years; there were approximately half a mil- Christine Rosen is senior writer at Commentary. lion fewer babies born to American women in 2017 than

8 January 2020 in 2007. As Jonathan V. Last outlines meticulously in his with benefits” relationships. According to the annual landmark book What to Expect When No One’s Expect- Singles in America survey from the dating site Match, ing, the choice to have fewer or no children has radical in 2018 “only 11 percent of Gen Z and Millennials date long-term implications for American society. casually.” According to the survey, 58 percent of wom- Cultural conservatives are correct to urge pru- en and 52 percent of men ages 18–39 “doubt whether dence about having sex too young, but they seem to they can handle a relationship.” presume it won’t extend to prudence toward (or rejec- As Boston College professor Kerry Cronin told tion of) creating families. It appears that American USA Today, younger Americans, raised on a message youth are ignorant of and frightened by the prospect of striving, are uncomfortable making themselves vul- of genuine intimacy with another person—a fear we’ve nerable in a relationship with no guarantee of success. already seen blossom in some countries, such as Japan, “In most other areas of your life, when you work hard, where increasingly large numbers of young men have you’re going to succeed,” she said. “Effort correlates forsworn human relationships for virtual ones. to success, and that doesn’t apply in dating…the dif- Some observers blame the new abstinence on ficulty of that for young adults I talk to is that, ‘Why “incels”—involuntarily celibate men—and the “toxic mas- spend my time?’” culinity” they promote on platforms such as 4chan. Ev- About 40 percent of the young people surveyed erywhere we’ve seen hand-wringing articles about “the by Match “want to find self-love and self-actualiza- rage of the incels” and claims that these tion before they find love in another young men aren’t looking for love but for person.” Or, as a 26-year-old woman “absolute male supremacy.” According to Conservatives are told Vice, “a lot of hetero women are this line of thinking, these aren’t troubled waking up to the fact that sex, not all young people confused about the rules correct to urge but a lot, with a man is often less fulfill- for relationships; rather, they are ag- prudence about ing, orgasm-wise, than going solo.” gressive strivers, hungry for “structural having sex too young, The evidence is that younger power,” motivated by misogyny. Americans are abstaining from sex not But it’s fear and confusion, not but they seem to because of effective abstinence-only aggression, that best describes the state presume it won’t education, or because they’ve been of mind of young men, and for good liberated from previous generations’ reason. A 2017 poll by the Economist extend to prudence restrictive norms, or because they found that among Americans ages 18- toward creating have achieved a new level of emotional 29, 17 percent believed that a man ask- families. and moral maturity. It’s because they ing a woman out for a drink “always” or fear intimacy, are confused about the “usually” was sexual harassment; twice new rules of conduct for relationships, as many young respondents as older and have plenty of ways to escape, via ones thought commenting on a woman’s appearance their digital worlds, the often difficult demands of was harassment. As W. Bradford Wilcox and Samuel in-person contact. Sturgeon have argued, polling data reveal that “young Civilized society is, in large measure, about chan- adults are now more concerned than their older peers neling the anarchic energies and hungers of the young about sexual assault, and more likely to view behavior and directing them toward productive ends. The chal- related to sex and dating as troubling.” lenge faced by American society today is precisely that Pop culture contributes to this sensibility; the this youthful energy is being tamped down not by a so- positive relationships valorized in shows and movies ciety that works to tame youth but rather by the young targeted to younger viewers are now as likely to be themselves. This is something new, though it is likely same-sex or trans than heterosexual. Euphoria, HBO’s part of a larger social trend toward loneliness and surreal high-school drama, prominently features a re- alienation, as evidenced by the terrifying increase in lationship between trans Jules and Rue, played by Ze- “deaths of despair” from suicide and addiction among ndaya. By contrast, straight males are often portrayed older Americans. as villains, and the shows are celebrated for it. As the It appears that the social mores conservatives TV critic Phil Owen noted of one such series popular want to see are flourishing not because the virtues with younger viewers, “‘Riverdale’ goes full-on ‘men associated with them are being embraced by younger are evil’ for the best episode of the series so far.” generations but instead out of a paralyzing and impo- No wonder that rather than date, younger tence-producing fear. If this is a victory in the culture Americans prefer to “hang out” or engage in “friends war, it’s a Pyrrhic one.q

Commentary 9 JEWISH COMMENTARY British Jews Take Their Stand

MEIR Y. SOLOVEICHIK

HE UNPRECEDENTED nature of the moment voters affected more than the future of Anglo Jewry, for cannot be overstated. For the first time in sev- they would decide, in the election, what sort of people T eral hundred years, a British chief rabbi pub- they would be: licly pleaded with his countrymen not to vote for one of the nation’s two major political parties. In an op-ed It is not my place to tell any person how they in the Times of London, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis publicly should vote. I regret being in this situation at all. catalogued the malfeasance and misdeeds of the leader I simply pose the question: What will the result of the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn had lavished love of this election say about the moral compass of on terrorists and the enemies of world Jewry, had acted our country? When December 12 arrives, I ask in so unapologetically anti-Semitic a manner that he every person to vote with their conscience. Be in invalidated himself as a potential prime minister. “How no doubt, the very soul of our nation is at stake. complicit in prejudice,” Mirvis asked, “would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be to be considered The chief rabbi’s outcry came on the heels of sev- unfit for office? Would associations with those who have eral others, each also utterly unprecedented. The oldest incited hatred against Jews be enough? Would describ- Jewish newspaper in England, the Jewish Chronicle, ing as ‘friends’ those who endorse the murder of Jews be devoted its entire front page to pleading with those enough? It seems not.” who do not usually read its pages—non-Jews—to save The rot, Mirvis stressed, was not limited to Cor- England by rejecting Corbyn. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, byn; anti-Semitism had permeated the entire member- who sits as an apolitical cross-bencher in the House of ship of the party. Labourites had refused to refrain from Lords, publicly accused the leader of Her Majesty’s Op- comparing Israeli soldiers to Nazis while supporters of position of bigotry. the Labour leadership had hounded “parliamentarians, These events revealed a British Jewry truly terri- members and even staff out of the party for speaking out fied about its future, and they made manifest the larger against anti-Semitism.” One of the most historic politi- specter of anti-Semitism that has once again emerged in cal associations in Britain had itself become an anti-Se- Europe. But they also suggest this is a time for admira- mitic movement: “A new poison—sanctioned from the tion and celebration—of what Anglo Jewry’s leadership top—has taken root in the Labour party.” In closing, the has become. In order to understand why this is so, we chief rabbi emphasized that the question facing British must briefly review the history of this Jewish community from its inception and why this moment in the story of Meir Y. Soloveichik is the rabbi of Congregation British Jewry is upon us. Shearith Israel in New York City and the director of In 1655, another rabbi issued a public outcry in the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Britain on behalf of his people. After the overthrow of the Yeshiva University. monarchy led by Oliver Cromwell in 1649, Menasseh ben

10 January 2020 Israel and other Dutch Sephardim traveled to England multiculturalism, and a plea for Britons to find a way to and pleaded for Jews to be accorded full acceptance in build a common culture predicated on respect for dif- that country. Menasseh’s goal was not achieved, but the ference. What Sacks does not describe is the one form of Jews that had arrived were ultimately allowed to remain. unity that arose from multiculturalism: intersectionali- Still, the Jews who had already arrived were tolerated ty, where diverse groups have come together in a shared and allowed to remain. Since Cromwell, the enemy of the culture of victimhood and a shared hatred of Jews. As monarchy, had never formally welcomed them back to Sohrab Ahmari wrote in these pages: “Precisely because the polity, when the royalty was restored in 1860, there it is a theory of generalized victimhood, intersectional- was no need for Charles II to make waves by asking them ity targets the Jews–the 20th century’s ultimate victims. to leave. Acknowledging the Jews’ profound claims to victim- Throughout the 18th, and even the 19th century, hood would force the intersectional left to admit the ex- there was no formal according of equality to Jewish istential necessity of the State of Israel.” This, however, residents of the United Kingdom. Jews were eventually the intersectional left has refused to do, because “Israel and grudgingly allowed into Parliament, but there is has been prejudged an outpost of Western colonialism. nothing in English history to parallel George Washing- Therefore, the Jews cannot possibly be allowed to ‘win’ ton’s letter to Newport’s Jews: “It is now no more that the intersectional victimhood Olympics.” Rather, Jews toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of must be targeted as the enemy that unites the diverse one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of members of the multicultural left. their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Govern- It should therefore be unsurprising that leftist ment of the United States, which gives to bigotry no anti-Semitism took over one of the most important sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only political parties in the Western world. For American that they who live under its protection should demean observers, it is important to understand why this oc- themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions curred and to be reminded that it can occur here as well. their effectual support.” On Twitter, the Washington Post explained to its read- This contrast is not the biased account of an ers that Mirvis had attacked Labour leaders because of American author; it draws on a reflection by Rabbi their “strong statements on Palestinian rights.” In per- Sacks himself. In his fascinating book, The Home We fect political jujitsu, Jewish fears of anti-Semitism had Build Together, Sacks traces the experience of minori- been turned into a lack of compassion for Palestinian ties in England. For Jews and other minorities, he re- victims. The offending tweet was deleted, but the un- flects, Britain as a polity was akin to what he calls a derlying sentiment that gave rise to its initial publica- “country house”; they were, essentially, akin to guests tion remains. The forces sympathetic to intersectional in Downton Abbey. For these guests, their host—Eng- victimhood exist in our institutions as well, and they land—was “welcoming, hospitable, capable of appar- instinctively apologize, obfuscate, and spin on the anti- ently endless generosity.” There was only one thing Semites’ behalf. wrong: “However generous their host, he remains the As this article goes to print, polls have closed in host, and they are guests. It is his home, not theirs. The Britain, and a resounding defeat for Corbyn and the place belongs to someone else.” For Jewish immigrants, Labour Party has taken place. This electoral result is this “country home” was a godsend; but guests they truly a source of jubilation and celebration; but what remained, and equality this was not. occurred in Anglo Jewry before the election is worth In our time, in reaction to the inequality of this celebrating as well. The stand taken by Rabbis Sacks society, Sacks continues, a new ethos overtook Britain: and Mirvis, and others in England, should inspire multiculturalism. Adopted in the name of equality, it Jewish pride everywhere. After centuries as guests in ended up undermining British society. The “country an English “country home,” and decades as targets of house” for Sacks, was replaced by a hotel, where “there the multicultural left, British Jews spoke as equals in is no dominant culture; there is no national identity. their country. They issued a plea for the future of Brit- There are no outsiders because there are no insiders.” ain to their countrymen, but their outcry has implica- In such a scenario, each group ends up seeing itself tions for the entire free world. It is therefore apt to as threatened by another, and a culture of victimhood paraphrase one of the greatest and most philo-Semitic emerges. Sacks quotes Michael Walzer’s comment of Britons in concluding that, whether the three and that in multicultural politics, “it is an advantage to be a half centuries of Jewish thriving in England comes injured,” and so to succeed “one has to cultivate, as it soon to a close, or whether it continues for many hun- were, a thin skin.” dreds of years, it can well be said that this was their Sacks wrote his book as an eloquent critique of finest hour.q

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AVAILABLE AT 2010sTHE THE DECADE OF RECKONING

The Populist Decade MATTHEW CONTINETTI

ISTORY DOESN’T follow 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. They a schedule. The events didn’t end on January 1, 1970, but on August 9, 1974, that define an era often when Richard Nixon resigned as president. happen before or after the Keep this in mind as you look at retrospectives onset of a new decade. It’s of the 2010s. The calendar decade may be drawing to been said that the Sixties a close, but the tendencies, ideas, movements, senti- didn’t begin on January 1, ments, and personalities associated with the past 10 1960, but on November 22, years may not be quite ready to leave the stage. The HCommentary 13 THE

2010s underlying causes of national popu- rhetoric and “truthful hyperbole” of the Trump years. THE DECADE OF lism have not disappeared. Our times The Great Recession did not trigger populist move- RECKONING continue to be shaped by immigra- ments. It accelerated them. The fact of the downturn may tion, terrorism, and the cultural dis- have mattered less to voters than the elite response to it. tance between voters without college In Europe, austerity policies imposed by Germany on degrees and the credentialed elites who govern them. Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain bolstered anti-EU opin- It would be a mistake to follow the advice of the Bloom- ion. In the spring of 2009, the Tea Party organized against berg editor who wrote in a recent President Obama’s bailouts of headline, “Populism Will Probably politically connected banks and Just Go Away Soon, So Relax.” On auto companies, his stimulus bill, the contrary: The populist epoch THE and his budget increases. The Tea may be only beginning. Party’s critique of American poli- To say that the ’10s be- Great Recession tics soon encompassed health-care gan with the collapse of Lehman did not trigger mandates, tax hikes, bureaucracy, Brothers on September 15, 2008, the Republican Party leadership, doesn’t tell the whole story. The populist movements. and the ways in which the country first shoots of national populism It accelerated them. had departed from the principles were visible by the time of the Wall of the Founders. From the left, Oc- Street panic. In 2005, the Dutch The fact of the cupy Wall Street began in 2011 to and French both voted against a downturn protest income inequality. proposed European Constitution By 2012, elements of both in an expression of discontent may have mattered the Tea Party and Occupy Wall with the EU. In 2006, massive ral- less to voters Street had been integrated into lies of immigrants to the United the GOP and Democratic Party, States, some waving the flags of than the elite respectively. Each bill proposed their countries of origin, sparked response to it. in the GOP-controlled House of a backlash against proposed im- Representatives had to cite the migration reform. That was also In Europe, provision of the Constitution that the year that Congress, against the austerity policies authorized it. To secure his right wishes of the Bush administra- flank, Mitt Romney called himself tion, blocked a proposal to trans- imposed “severely conservative.” To protect fer management of six American by Germany on his left, Obama attacked “you’reports to a company in Dubai. And on-your-own economics” from the on August 29, 2008, John Mc- Portugal, site of Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Cain announced that Sarah Palin Italy, Greece, and Nationalism” speech in Osawato- would be his running mate. mie, Kansas. Obama and Romney The debate over Palin’s Spain bolstered each appropriated Elizabeth War- nomination was a preview of anti-EU opinion. ren’s “You didn’t build that” tirade post-crisis debates over the Tea for their own purposes. Party and Donald Trump. The The 2012 election was very presence on the ticket of this pro-life, evangelical fought primarily on economic grounds between an Christian mother of five, including a son with Down incumbent who had inherited a recession and a chal- syndrome, exposed religious, ideological, geographic, lenger whose personal manner and résumé made it and class divisions between Republicans and Demo- difficult, to say the least, for him to connect with voters crats and within the Republican Party itself. Palin’s who swooned for Sarah Palin. Lurking below the sur- outsider status, her unfamiliarity with political conven- face were the two issues that drive national populism: tion, her down-home persona, and her Red America terrorism and immigration. The attack on the U.S. politics electrified supporters and terrified detractors. consulate in Benghazi demonstrated that the killing She imprinted herself on the election in a way only of Osama bin Laden had not extinguished radical Is- Barack Obama exceeded. Her subsequent criticism of lam. Romney pledged that illegal immigrants would the Independent Payment Advisory Board contained “self-deport” under his administration, and Obama in the Affordable Care Act, which she called a “Death promised in the last days of the campaign to make im- Panel” that would ration care, foreshadowed the wild migration his top domestic priority.

14 The 2010s: The Decade of Reckoning : January 2020 One consequence of Obama’s second term is that Among Trump voters, immigration was the third- terrorism and immigration became fused in the minds most-important issue. of a large part of the electorate. The Republican leader- Support for Trump is correlated not with econom- ship embraced immigration in its post-2012 “autopsy,” ic anxiety but with cultural despair, with the idea that which only widened the divide between the party elite one’s community is under assault by external forces. A and the grassroots. In the summer of 2014, ISIS leader November 2016 study of 125,000 adults by Gallup’s Jon- Omar al-Baghdadi announced the establishment of a athan T. Rothwell and Pablo-Diego-Rosell concluded: terrorist caliphate in Syria-Iraq, and arrivals of unaccompanied The results show mixed evi- minors from the Northern Tri- dence that economic distress angle of Central America spiked AFTER has motivated Trump support. across America’s southern border. San Bernardino, His supporters are less edu- Obama was pressured into a cated and more likely to work military campaign against ISIS Trump announced in blue collar occupations, that slowly reduced the territory his policy of but they earn relatively high under its control, while he cajoled household incomes and are no Mexico into interdicting fami- banning Muslims less likely to be unemployed lies seeking asylum before they from entering or exposed to competition reached the United States. through trade or immigration. Stunningly, however, Obama the United States. On the other hand, living in also expanded his executive am- A Morning Consult racially isolated communities nesty to include the parents of with worse health outcomes, illegal immigrants brought to poll showed that lower social mobility, less so- America as children. He did so de- 60 percent of cial capital, greater reliance spite having said multiple times in on social security income and public that he lacked such power, Republican voters less reliance on capital income, and after an election in which Re- agreed with him. predicts higher levels of Trump publicans maintained their House support. majority and gained control of the By July 2016, Senate. It set back the cause of And a May 2017 study by the immigration reform, infuriated the Pew Research Public Religion Research Institute the Republican base, and ensured Center found that and the Atlantic showed that that the issue would be front and white working-class voters “who center in 2016. the economy and say they often feel like a stranger All of this took place against terrorism were the in their own land and who believe the background of the refugee the U.S. needs protecting against crisis in Europe. The inflow of top issues among foreign influence were 3.5 times more than 1 million Muslim asy- registered voters. more likely to favor Trump than lum seekers from the Middle East those who did not share these con- and Africa radicalized continen- cerns.” However, white working- tal politics. Then the terrorist attacks began: Charlie class voters “who reported being in fair or poor financial Hebdo in January 2015; the Bataclan in November 2015; shape were 1.7 times more likely to support Clinton, an office park in San Bernardino, California, a little less compared to those who were in better financial shape.” than three weeks later; the Brussels airport in March Material causes do not go far enough in explain- 2016; the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in June ing the rise of national populism in the United States, 2016; a truck attack in Nice a month after that; and the England, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Germa- Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017. ny. Immigration, terrorism, and the perception of an After San Bernardino, Trump announced his unresponsive political elite have mattered far more. policy of banning Muslims from entering the United And until these conditions change, our populist de- States. A Morning Consult poll showed that 60 percent cades won’t come to an end.q of Republican voters agreed with him. By July 2016, the Pew Research Center found that the economy and Matthew Continetti is a resident fellow at the terrorism were the top issues among registered voters. American Enterprise Institute.

Commentary 15 The Anti- Exceptionalism Decade ABE GREENWALD

N NOVEMBER, President Donald Trump tionalism, but they are instructive ones. To witness was asked by Fox News for his opinion on Democratic and Republican presidents offer only the pro-democracy, anti-Beijing protests in mealy-mouthed support for those fighting against Hong Kong. “We have to stand with Hong repressive rule is to know that something has gone Kong,” he said of the demonstrators who awry in our understanding of the American creed. had adopted the American National An- And to see both presidents sit on their hands while them as their own song of liberty. “But I’m innocents and allies are killed is to know that the re- also standing with President Xi.” public has been deeply shaken by a loss of confidence How could Trump stand simultaneously with in who we are. In the decade that unfolded between oppressed and oppressor? Perhaps by following the these bookends, we look back on a United States Iexample of his predecessor, President Barack Obama. where both Democrats and Republicans decided In the summer of 2009, hundreds of thousands that their country lacked the moral credibility to be a of Iranians took to the streets to protest the faux- force for good in the world. democratic reelection of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Since Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in Ahmadinejad. The American president steered clear America (1835) and up until very recently, the phrase of commenting for a notably long period of time, even “American exceptionalism” has been understood not while Iranian protestors called out for his encourage- only, or even primarily, as a hierarchical concept—one ment. Finally, Obama, a more polished equivocator that places the United States above all other coun- than Trump, weighed in with these words for those in tries—but as a descriptive one. America, for better or Iran’s Green Movement: “The world is watching and worse, is exceptional. We have the longest-running inspired by their participation, regardless of what the democracy in history. Even in Tocqueville’s time, our ultimate outcome of the election was.” Obama’s press democracy was a wonder, having already proved more secretary, Robert Gibbs, soon declared of Ahmadine- successful and stable than France’s. But America is jad, “He’s the elected leader.” exceptional in other ways. Unlike all other countries, Similarly, when Trump decided to pull American with the late exception of the Soviet Union, we were troops out of northeastern Syria and allow a Turkish founded on an idea, not on the basis of birthright or attack on our Kurdish allies, the precedent had been tribe. That idea—the flourishing of individual lib- set by Obama, who failed to act when Bashar al-Assad’s erty—has given rise to a number of our unique char- campaign of slaughter in Syria began in 2011. acteristics: Americans have historically been fiercely Defending the freedom of others and stopping protective of their freedoms, dismissive of social class, murderous strongmen are not the only components robustly patriotic but suspicious of government, anti- of what’s come to be known as American excep- authoritarian, and pro-religion.

16 The 2010s: The Decade of Reckoning : January 2020 THE

This has had ramifications for good and ill. gust 2019, the project sought through 2010s Americans are more charitable than any other people a series of essays and articles to re- THE DECADE OF on the planet, but we’re also more violent, and the frame the entire American founding RECKONING United States has the highest per capita incarceration as an unremarkable by-product of rate in the world. We offer more equality of opportu- the slave trade. In this reading of U.S. nity than any other country, but fierce and open com- history, claims of American virtue are mostly seen as petition for success means that we are also the world’s patriotic window dressing meant to prettify the coun- most “overworked” people. Such contradictions are try’s otherwise ugly birth. By 2019, the 1619 Project part of our uniqueness. And as Seymour Martin Lipset was only the natural flowering of a decade of activism wrote in his 1996 book, American Exceptionalism: A portraying American institutions as hopelessly rac- Double-Edged Sword, “the greatness of free polities lies ist and calling for reparations for the descendants of in their institutionalization of conflict, of the contin- American slaves. ued struggle for freer and more humanely decent so- Also on the left, the past decade has seen the cieties.” On that score, the United sapping of a traditional Ameri- States has not only been excep- can strength that had long been tional but exceptionally good. part of the country’s exceptional Our checks and balances, propen- BECAUSE nature: our imperviousness to sity for civil and lawful conflict the United States is socialism. Here the groundwork resolution, and ongoing effort to was laid by Obama but built define and refine political liberty a representative on colossally by the Democratic remain models for every other democracy, our Party he left in his wake. Obama nation. The country’s singular spoke of wanting to “spread the readiness to do good in the world leaders reflect wealth around” in order amelio- when no one else will rests on our public sentiment. If rate the hardships of those Amer- self-conception of America as the icans who hadn’t succeeded. He guiding star of human freedom. Obama and Trump also effected a partial govern- But the very conception have been cynical ment takeover of the health- of American exceptionalism is care industry. But it wasn’t until less and less understood, most about American the 2016 presidential election notably by our recent presidents. exceptionalism, elevated Vermont’s socialist sena- At the beginning of his first term tor, Bernie Sanders, into a folk in the White House, Obama told their attitudes are superhero that socialism had a journalist at a G-20 Summit: “I only an openly broken into the political believe in American exception- mainstream. Four years later, alism, just as I suspect that the approximation of the Sanders is once again a main Brits believe in British exception- current state of contender to be the Democratic alism and the Greeks believe in presidential nominee. His effect Greek exceptionalism.” Whereas affairs in our culture. on the party is enormous and has Obama dismissed American ex- pulled almost all the other Demo- ceptionalism as rank nationalism, Trump has champi- cratic candidates toward adopting a more sympathetic oned it as the same. Both presidents have been quick to stance on socialist policies and rhetoric. The Sanders note that the United States is not as virtuous a country phenomenon has also inspired the popular success as we’ve been led to believe. Obama lamented that of the New York socialist congresswoman Alexandria American leaders prefer to “dictate” to other nations Ocasio-Cortez. According to Gallup, “a majority of rather than listen to them. Donald Trump has pointed Democrats have said they view socialism positively in out that “we’ve got a lot of killers” and our country Gallup polling since 2010, including 57 percent in the is not “so innocent.” most recent measure in 2018.” Sadly, neither president is entirely out of step Until the past decade, the U.S. was alone among with his base. For a good portion of the liberal left, major industrial nations in never having produced especially those in the media, the United States is a large-scale socialist movement of any significant exceptional but mostly in its capacity for cruelty and power. There is a rich literature on socialism’s historic deception. The most extraordinary example of this is weakness in the United States, and one of the most the New York Times’ “1619 Project.” Launched in Au- credible explanations for our outlier status is that

Commentary 17 THE

2010s America lacks the ingrained class our exceptional nature. The 2010s saw the rise of the THE DECADE OF resentment that had given birth “nones”—those Americans who don’t identify with RECKONING to socialist movements everywhere any religious faith tradition. Americans have histori- from Russia to England. That ex- cally been more religious than citizens of other wealthy planation is applicable only so long Western democracies. We have also been more likely as the American people continue to resist incitement to ascribe to a universal, as opposed to situational, to class warfare. But here, too, there’s been a change, morality and believe in both God and the Devil. While and it explains why socialism is now a real player in Americans are still more religious than other wealthy our marketplace of ideas. In the past decade, class countries, we are becoming much less so. According to warfare has become a staple of our political rhetoric. a General Social Survey, as of 2018, Americans claiming Since the start of Obama’s first term in office, virtually “no religion” (23.1 percent) are statistically equivalent every prominent Democratic politician in the country in number to American evangelicals (22.8 percent). has come around to adopting Decline in faith has been steep- income inequality as a key talk- est among liberals and the left, ing point or basis for legislation. and according to a 2018 Gallup From Obama’s complaints about AS WE poll, Democrats are now about the top 5 percent of income earn- forget how as religious as the British general ers not paying their fair share public. to Elizabeth Warren’s proposed to think about Because the United States wealth tax, the demonization of and speak about is a representative democracy, the wealthy has been ubiquitous. our leaders reflect public senti- Such sentiments are reflected in American ment. If Obama and Trump have left-wing punditry and activism exceptionalism, been cynical about American ex- as well. This was the decade of ceptionalism, their attitudes are “late capitalism” and Occupy Wall we may also only an approximation of the cur- Street, ideas and movements that fail to rent state of affairs in our culture. inspired visions of the demise of A 2019 Gallup poll found Ameri- billionaires and assorted fat cats. safeguard it can patriotism at record lows. In this, American conser- and, in time, lose The number of Americans who vatives have also played a role. were proud of their country fell to The new right-wing populism our connection 70 percent, a 10-point drop from has taken up its own brand to it altogether. a decade earlier. And fewer than of class warfare. Deriding elites half of all Americans (45 percent) and the cruelties of capitalism, said they were “extremely proud” prominent conservative figures such as Fox News host of their country. A partisan breakdown shows that Tucker Carlson have found common cause with the among Republicans, 76 percent were extremely proud Sanders left in calling for a less-free market. of the U.S., while only 22 percent of Democrats said the Still others on the right, such as First Things same. But perhaps most telling is that fewer than half editor R.R. Reno, now attack free-market capitalism of Democrats (22 percent) and Republicans (45 per- as having exacerbated a crisis of the American soul. cent) claimed to have any pride in our political system. “Thirty years after the end of communism, some voters As we forget how to think about and speak haltingly recognize that our freedom must be directed about American exceptionalism, we may also fail to toward enduring ends if it is to serve something higher safeguard it and, in time, lose our connection to it than itself,” he writes. “And in our age, which has taken altogether. In 1955, the historian Richard Hofstadter economics to be the key to almost everything, that in- wrote of the United States: “It has been our fate as a tuition naturally comes into focus with calls for limits nation not to have ideologies, but to be one.” But that on economic freedom.” He goes on: “It is time, there- notion seems quite alien in 2020. Our politicized na- fore, to set aside the notion that the problems we face tion is now convulsed with ideologies. Public opinion in the West can be solved by stiffer doses of economic continues to fracture into capitalism, socialism, re- freedom.” ligion, atheism, and so on. American exceptionalism Reno’s dubious prescription aside, he is correct seems barely discernable in the mix.q that there is a spiritual crisis in the United States. And this, too, speaks to a discernable turning away from Abe Greenwald is senior editor of Commentary.

18 The 2010s: The Decade of Reckoning : January 2020 The Fracking Decade NOAH ROTHMAN

HE MALADY afflicting the coun- It shattered the rock and released the natural gas try was unmistakable, according trapped inside. A decade later, the petroleum industry to George W. Bush. “America is discovered how to apply Steinsberger’s approach with addicted to oil,” the president directional drilling to free not just natural gas but the observed in his 2006 State of the hydrocarbons that make up crude oil from subterra- Union address. This wasn’t just nean rock formations. an observation. It was a call to At the beginning of the 2010s, the soaring price arms. If the U.S. failed to wean itself off foreign oil, of oil and the low interest rates that followed the col- T the consequences for the domestic economy and U.S. lapse of the mortgage market made the enormous foreign policy would be grave. Doing so would require costs associated with the development of techniques substantial investments in America’s ethanol industry like fracking seem reasonable. Investment dollars as well as the development of oil deposits in pristine poured into the firms that were pioneering uncon- natural parks and off the nation’s shores. ventional drilling methods, and those firms began to In 2008, the U.S. produced an average of just 5 apply those techniques to previously unexplored shale million barrels of oil per day—the nadir of domestic formations across the country. energy production since the exploitation of fossil fuels By 2012, the U.S. was producing more domestic began in the late 19th century. By 2009, the price of energy than it had since 1998, when Steinsberger West Texas Intermediate crude was approaching $150 fracked his first well. The following year, domestic per barrel. The U.S., therefore, was obliged to spend American oil production exceeded imports for the over $1 billion per day on oil imports from foreign coun- first time since 1991. In June 2014, the price of crude tries, few of which could be considered models of good oil peaked at $108 per barrel. On December 18, 2015, governance. America’s thirst for oil propped up abusive President Barack Obama signed a law repealing the governments in places such as the Democratic Republic 1975 ban on the export of domestically produced pe- of Congo, Venezuela, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, troleum products. In January 2016, the global price of Mauritania, and Syria. crude oil plunged to just under $30 per barrel. But even as Bush addressed the nation in 2006, a In November 2014, the Saudis rejected calls from remarkable new technology was quietly coming of age. poorer OPEC member states to cut production rates It would have a profound impact on the American econ- in the effort to prop up sliding crude prices. That slide omy and geopolitics in the decade that followed. That became a collapse, sending benchmark Brent Crude technology—hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”—yielded prices below $72 per barrel. Indeed, led by Saudi an energy boom and scrambled assumptions about how Arabia and Iraq, OPEC’s response to the challenge the world would organize itself in the 2010s and beyond. posed by American wells wasn’t to cut production but In 1998, a petroleum engineer named Nick increase it. “It should be in the interest of OPEC to Steinsberger pumped a slurry of sand, water, and live with lower prices for a little while in order to slow chemicals under high pressure into a shale formation down development projects in the United States,” one beneath a rural town just north of Fort Worth, Texas. petrochemical consultant told Reuters.

Commentary 19 The U.S. did not slow down. HE MOST disorienting seismic shifts attrib- At the end of 2018, the U.S. produced nearly 18 utable to the fracking revolution have been million barrels of petroleum products (crude oil, natu- felt in the Middle East, where oil served as the ral gas, and refinery products) per day. For the first Tlifeblood of rogue regimes for almost a century. time in 40 years, the U.S. had outpaced Saudi Arabia’s The Bush administration found itself at a disad- output, and estimates showed that it also surpassed vantage in its effort to combat an insurgency in Iraq Russian oil production. By 2022, the United States is that was fueled in large measure by Iran. “A big part forecast to become a net energy exporter for the first of the reason why they didn’t ultimately impose really time in nearly 70 years. harsh sanctions on the oil industry is because they The commercial effects of reduced energy prices were concerned about what that would do to the oil were unmistakable, but the impact of the fracking market, the oil price, and the global economy,” said revolution on geopolitics was less immediately ap- Sam Ori of the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy parent. It would not be long, though, before that Institute. But by December 2011, when the Obama would become clear, too. Accord- administration placed sanctions ing to the recent congressional against the Iranian oil sector, the testimony of former National AT THE END OF global oil supply had increased Security Council official Fiona to the point that few feared Hill, Russian President Vladimir 2018, the U.S. negative economic ramifications Putin recognized the threat to produced nearly from reduced Iranian output or his country’s position posed by that Tehran would benefit from American fracking technology as 18 million barrels of increased global oil prices amid a early as 2011. He was soon feeling petroleum products supply crunch. the pain. In November 2013, the The Obama administration U.S.-based multinational Chevron (crude oil, natural lifted those short-lived sanctions signed a deal with Ukraine and gas, and refinery as part of its effort to reach an ac- its Russia-friendly president to commodation with Tehran over its develop the country’s domestic products) per day. nuclear program. When the Trump shale-gas deposits—wresting con- For the first time in administration reimposed them, trol of the country’s energy sector the effect was immediate. Iranian from Moscow, which wields its 40 years, the U.S. had crude exports plummeted. Inter- oil and gas exports like a weapon. outpaced Saudi national oil companies abandoned By late 2014, Russia was forced plans to develop Iranian energy de- to contemplate a net 10 percent Arabia’s output. posits. The Iranian public revolted reduction in domestic spending to against their new normal and, by compensate for the revenue lost amid falling oil prices. late 2019, posed an existential threat to the regime when Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest crude- Tehran was forced to pare back state-provided gasoline oil deposit, but its corrupt and socialist government subsidies. All the while, the price of petroleum products needed oil to trade at around $100 per barrel to cover its in the U.S. remained stable. own costs. By the time Obama halted Venezuelan oil im- If the shale boom allowed America to pursue a ports in 2015—itself an action facilitated by America’s harder line against Iran, it also freed policymakers in renewed production capacity—crude was trading at Washington to move closer to its natural ally in the re- around $50 per barrel. Obama only reluctantly set sanc- gion: Israel. A reduced dependence on foreign oil pro- tions against the Venezuelan regime in response to its ducers “allowed the president to make foreign-policy violent repression of popular anti-government protests, decisions that simply were not available to previous and those sanctions were tailored to avoid targeting the presidents, at least not in my lifetime,” Deputy Energy already struggling Venezuelan oil sector. Those limited Secretary Dan Brouillette told the Financial Times sanctions had little effect on the regime’s behavior. The in March. The Trump administration has tested that Trump administration has since blacklisted the Ven- proposition, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem ezuelan oil tankers trading with Communist Cuba, pro- and recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan hibited American businesses from engaging in transac- Heights—maneuvers that foreign-policy observers tions with the Venezuelan national oil industry, and were once certain would prompt a revolt across the halted U.S. exports of light crude to Venezuela, where it Muslim world. The “Arab Street” suddenly had more was blended, refined, and exported. pressing concerns closer to home to worry about.

20 The 2010s: The Decade of Reckoning : January 2020 THE

A region-wide Sunni–Shia conflict had been jor cause of unnatural earthquakes 2010s brewing for some time, pitting states such as Egypt, the (a myth that persists despite the U.S. THE DECADE OF United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia against Iran Geological Survey’s comprehensive RECKONING and its proxies. This covert conflict has recently taken efforts to debunk it). on a more conventional flavor, culminating in Septem- These efforts have had some ber 2019 in a sophisticated Iran-linked attack on a Saudi success. Colorado—an early supporter and benefi- oil-processing plant. That was the climax of a series of ciary of fracking technology—has since passed laws Iran-backed attacks on the global energy-supply chain, that are intended to make the practice financially which included multiple strikes on foreign-flagged oil unattractive. The state of New York prohibits fracking tankers in the critical Strait of Hormuz. In a time before altogether, which has allowed fracking-rich Pennsyl- fracking, such brazen assaults on the global economic vania alone to exploit the natural gas locked inside order would have been nothing less than casus belli the Marcellus Shale Formation above which New York demanding an international military response. Instead, is providentially situated. No fewer than six of the the strike that crippled the world’s top-tier 2020 Democratic presi- largest petroleum-processing fa- dential candidates have pledged cility drove global energy prices WHY DID to ban fracking outright. up to a meager four-month high. Environmentalists con- Within days, Riyadh had restored a destabilizing cerned about the deleterious ef- 50 percent of the lost production assault on Saudi fects of increased fossil-fuel pro- capacity, and it had returned to duction should be elated by the full pre-attack levels of oil output sovereignty and fact that their fears have not been by the end of the month. the global oil borne out. Despite the radical in- Why did this destabilizing crease in domestic energy produc- assault on Saudi sovereignty market fizzle? The tion, the United States produces and the global oil market fizzle? answer: The United less carbon dioxide from power The answer: the United States, generation than it did in 1985. which now possesses the capac- States, which now Even as the population expands ity to calm roiling panics in the possesses the capac- and the country’s gross national event of an oil shock. When Iran product grows, America’s new struck, the Trump administra- ity to calm roiling reliance on abundant, cleaner- tion immediately announced it panics in the event of burning natural gas has helped would release an unspecified reduce the pollution that would amount of strategic reserves. an oil shock. have once been the by-product of That, combined with a Saudi satisfying America’s energy needs. pledge to bring additional offshore capacity online, In 2009, as world leaders prepared to descend stabilized the market and prevented Iran from start- on Copenhagen for a global climate summit, an anony- ing what might have been a major war. mous whistleblower from within the International En- Revolutionary technological advances are often ergy Agency sent shockwaves through the international accompanied by a popular backlash, and fracking energy community with the revelation that global oil is no exception. Germany, France, Holland, the UK, production would soon enter terminal decline. The and Bulgaria have effectively banned it—increasing world, he reported, had already reached “peak oil.” This their dependence on outputs from outlaw regimes was not so much false as it was a demonstration of why such as Vladimir Putin’s. In March 2019, Israel’s en- straight-line projections are almost always fallacious. vironmental ministry placed a hold on all domestic The period of geopolitical flux that fracking has un- fracking projects. In the United States, environmen- leashed will present its own set of challenges in the next tal activists have convinced Democratic lawmakers decade, but America will meet them from a renewed to impose severe restrictions on the practice, citing position of strength and independence. If the energy unproven claims that the chemical additives used in revolution of the 2010s has made anything clear, it is fracking—most of which are lubricants to facilitate the that it’s never wise to underestimate Americans’ ability dispersal of sand and other material from the black to engineer a better future for themselves.q stuff—contaminate underground sources of drinking water. Some activists even claim that fracking is a ma- Noah Rothman is associate editor of Commentary.

Commentary 21 THE 2010s THE DECADE OF RECKONING The Social-Media Decade CHRISTINE ROSEN

N THE YEARS when social media was still Web,” the story noted. Four years later, when Obama bright, shiny, and relatively new—which is won reelection, MIT Technology Review explained that to say, a decade or so ago—Facebook and “Big Data Will Save Politics.” its ilk were the subjects of feel-good articles President Obama’s enthusiasm for Silicon that collectively suggested Aldous Huxley Valley’s promises lasted throughout his administra- had gotten it wrong: We weren’t moving tion, undisturbed by any concerns about potentially into a dystopian Brave New World but rath- harmful side effects to democracy. As the Obama er a utopian Nice New World. There was the one about White House archives boast, “President Obama is the NASAI astronaut who sent the first tweet from the the first ‘social-media president’: the first to have @ International Space Station, and the New Yorker pro- POTUS on Twitter, the first to go live on Facebook file of Mark Zuckerberg that unironically repeated his from the Oval Office, the first to answer questions claim that Facebook was “trying to make the world a from citizens on YouTube, the first to use a filter on more open place.” Snapchat.” The burgeoning use of social media by Twitter users could thrill to pieces praising the politicians from the president on down mirrored the platform for aiding the democratic “Arab Spring” behavior of the nation. In 2005, according to Pew uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, and other parts Research, only 7 percent of American adults were us- of the Arab world. “Twitter and other social-media ing social media; 10 years later, that number would outlets have become the soft weapons of democracy,” reach 65 percent. gushed former George W. Bush national-security But by 2019, even Obama the “social-media staffer Mark Pfeifle in the Christian Science Monitor president” was chastising Donald Trump for spend- as he argued that Twitter should receive the Nobel ing too much time on Twitter. As the Washington Post Peace Prize. reported, Obama told a group of tech executives, “The Social media’s progressive credentials were other thing that is helpful is not watching TV or read- impeccable. Countless trend stories praised the skill ing social media. Those are two things I would advise, with which Barack Obama’s presidential campaign if you’re president, not to do,” Obama said. “It creates a had used data and social-media platforms. U.S. News lot of noise and clouds your judgment.” & World Report called 2008 the “Facebook election” Obama wasn’t the only former social-media in part because one of the digital strategists working enthusiast to have experienced a change of heart. for the Obama campaign was Facebook co-founder Evidence that privacy violations were the rule rather Chris Hughes. “Obama is a new-generation politician than the exception on platforms such as Facebook, who shrewdly understands the electoral power of the as well as clear cases of foreign governments using

22 The 2010s: The Decade of Reckoning : January 2020 social-media platforms for disinformation campaigns that the people fighting online represent a majority intended to polarize the American electorate, led to a of Americans when it comes to politics. As Pew Re- dramatic shift in opinion about social media in just a search noted in October, “97 percent of tweets from few years. Liberal technocrats who once claimed that U.S. adults that mentioned national politics over the Silicon Valley would run the world better than fusty study period came from just 10 percent of users.” And old democratically elected politicians are now crying those users are highly partisan: “Tweets from users for Big Tech to be broken up in the name of anti-trust, who strongly disapprove of Trump are especially Obama’s and Facebook’s own Chris Hughes foremost prominent: This group generates 80 percent of all among them. Many such people want political ads on tweets from U.S. adults and 72 percent of tweets men- social-media platforms to be censored or banned out- tioning national politics.” right. “Social media is broken. It has poisoned the way Another misunderstanding is that social media we communicate with each other and undermined the is largely responsible for generating the new wave democratic process,” Annalee Newitz lamented in the of populist (and far-right) radicalization that led to New York Times in November. Trump (as well as climate-change skepticism, anti-im- What happened to our love affair with social migrant sentiment, transphobia, and any other policy media? Contrary to much of what has been written, with which left-leaning social-media users disagree). the story of the last decade of social media isn’t a tale Although social media provides a space for like- of Russian-driven misinformation but of a misunder- minded people (even racist, sexist, violent people) standing of human nature. We have not taken the full to find one another, a study by scholars in France, measure of the kinds of problematic behaviors we Canada, and the U.S. on “Right-Wing Populism, Social know these platforms reward. We are confused about Media, and Echo Chambers in Western Democracy” how to respond to their power to amplify and acceler- uncovered no correlation. Quite the opposite: “Over- ate scandals and call-out culture. And we are at a loss all, we do not find evidence that online/social media about how to address their parlous effects not only explain support for right-wing populist candidates on citizens but on the politicians we expect to lead us. and parties. Instead, in the USA, use of online media If one figure can be said to embody all of these decreases support for right-wing populism.” They also trends, it’s former Democratic politician Anthony found “little support for the popular idea that social Weiner. Matt Berman of BuzzFeed makes a persuasive media played a special role for Trump supporters,” case when he argues that Weiner “changed the course adding: “While Trump himself clearly used Twitter of American history when he tweeted out a picture of in special ways, we do not see evidence of something his d--k on May 27, 2011.” As Berman describes, that comparable among his supporters.” single act not only led to the unraveling of Weiner’s Nevertheless, liberals who were happy to scroll career (and a stint in prison for sending explicit ma- by political ads on social media when they were used terial to a minor). It set in motion a series of events, by the Obama campaign to twice win the presidency notably the discovery by the FBI of emails on Weiner’s now want “fact-checking” of anything Trump wants to laptop, that reignited the closed investigation into advertise on Facebook—not only because they loathe Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server 10 days Trump but because they sincerely fear that ordinary before the 2016 election. The reopening of the problem people will believe anything they see (and vote ac- arguably gave us the first real social-media president: cordingly). This, too, is a misunderstanding. A study Donald Trump. of the impact of “fake news” on the 2018 elections by Trump’s broadcasting of his id in real time on researchers at Dartmouth found that “the prevalence Twitter amuses his supporters and appalls his oppo- of fake news and political advertising on Facebook nents. But his use of Twitter is merely a demonstra- seem to be overstated.” tion of the platform’s longstanding and finely engi- Anxious Democrats ought to be heartened to neered purpose: to provoke strong reactions. There’s learn that, according to a study published in November no place for nuance on social media. Like members in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of a well-functioning hive, Twitter users swarm over about the impact of Russia’s misinformation campaign the latest scandal or rumor, attack, then disperse on Twitter during the 2016 election, “the authors found until the next outrage is proffered. That is what they no evidence that trolling accounts maintained by the are meant to do. Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) significantly The frequency and intensity of our recent on- influenced ideology, opinions about social policy is- line wars has led to many misapprehensions about sues, attitudes of partisans toward each other, or pat- their impact on democracy. The first is the belief terns of political following on Twitter.”

Commentary 23 The reason isn’t entirely reassuring, however: increasingly believe they benefit from feeding the red “IRA accounts may not have significantly polarized meat of outrage to their respective bases, constantly the U.S. public, in part because they mostly interacted grandstanding for the chance that a video of them- with individuals who were already highly polarized.” selves will go viral. In treating politics like a hobby, we In fact, there is some evidence that it is not rabid have demanded they act that way.” right-wingers but liberal social-media users whose Second, it takes people away from practicing views have been sharpened to a point. As the Wall politics in real life while simultaneously reassuring Street Journal found, “research by Zach Goldberg, a them that their superficial hot takes on Twitter count political-scientist doctoral candidate at Georgia State as political engagement. “Technological changes have University, suggests that social media contributed strengthened forms of political engagement that are to the radicalization of white liberals on identity is- motivated by emotional needs and a pursuit of per- sues in the late Obama years.” It was during this time sonal gratification rather than a deeper commitment that platforms such as Facebook were “cluttered with to the common good,” Hersh concludes. social-justice clickbait stories like ‘Young Conservative Despite claims about creating a digital “public Tries to Mansplain Hijab in Viral Olympic Photo, Gets square” and connecting the world, social-media plat- it All Wrong.’” forms over the past decade have instead created an of- In his forthcoming book, Politics is for Power, ten toxic, liminal space that continues to defy cultural, political scientist Eitan Hersh calls our collective political, and regulatory efforts to tame it—all while participation in politics through the medium of social remaining wildly popular with the users who spend media “political hobbyism.” He identifies two reasons so much of their time within their confines. Whatever why it is dangerous. First, it makes politics worse by in- social media ends up doing to us in the next 10 years, centivizing the wrong behaviors in our elected leaders. we can’t say we haven’t been warned.q “Our collective treatment of politics as if it were a sport affects how politicians behave,” Hersh writes. “They Christine Rosen is senior writer at Commentary. The Decade of Reckoning JOHN PODHORETZ

S THE decade with no name So here was a good thing in December: the jobs came to an end in December report. It was extraordinary, not only for the 266,000 2019, we found ourselves awash new jobs it reported but for its upward revisions of in all manner of evidence prov- the numbers from previous months. It also showed ing the terrible reality that had significant wage increases year-to-year, suggesting the typified it: the fact that nobody, income stagnation that has characterized much of the especially those charged with the 21st century may finally have reached an end. Even task of running things, really knows or understands more important, job growth and wage increases have whatA the hell is going on. This is true both of good come without any corresponding rise in inflation. And things and of bad things. that, in turn, reveals just how officials in charge of our

24 The 2010s: The Decade of Reckoning : January 2020 THE monetary policy relied on stale ideas and fell back on But it’s not negligible. 2010s a conventional consensus that seemed driven more And here was a bad thing THE DECADE OF by policy entropy than an actual analysis of what was in December: A Washington Post RECKONING happening in the American economy. investigation into an internal Pen- Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review and Neil tagon report completed in 2014 on Irwin of the New York Times agree on this, a rare con- the war in Afghanistan revealed just how entropy fluence of cross-ideological opinion. “The continuing came to dominate the proceedings. We were and are strength of the labor market also lets us cast a retrospec- there because we were and are there. Rationales for tive judgment about the Federal Reserve’s policies over ramping up our forces and ramping down our forces the last few years: They have been too tight,” Ponnuru came and went as well, as did the forces themselves. writes. “If the Fed had believed we could have 3.5 per- Rationales for why we were there came and went as cent unemployment without ex- well. The only constant was the cessive inflation…we would have sense—the correct sense—that had lower unemployment, and WE SAW we couldn’t permit a defeat. But higher wage growth, more rapidly somehow the people in charge of than we did.” a Republican Party our strategy across two decades Irwin echoes Ponnuru: “The and its leadership from presidents on down never mainstream view of the economics really had a strategy—and what profession—held by leaders of the confident that it is particularly shocking in this Federal Reserve, the Congressional could outlast a sec- internal report is that they say Budget Office, private forecasters as much. We never quite under- and many in academia—was that ond-rank TV celeb- stood what exactly we were fight- the United States economy was at, rity candidate get ing for or what kind of society we or close to, full employment.” But were attempting to help build or “as the economy continues to grow mowed down by him strengthen in Afghanistan. The well above what once seemed like as they stood by— fighting men and women we’ve its potential, without inflation or sent there have done everything other clear signs of overheating, their own impotence we asked of them and more. But it’s clearer that the old view of its revealed, their own they were being led by people potential was an extremely costly who could not define victory or mistake.” electorate exposed even an endpoint. Irwin dates this convention- as cliché-riddled and Throughout this young al belief about the inflationary century, the sense that the people dangers of low unemployment to even delusional. who run things in America have 2015, which means the Fed has no idea how to do their jobs has been unnecessarily restraining the economy for half only grown. In this decade alone, we’ve seen the cre- a decade. Obviously this was not intentional. Fed offi- ation of a new government-run health-care system cials would not have wished to interfere with the good with a price tag of $1 trillion that proved comically un- working order of the economy; they want it to provide able to launch a working website. We saw a Supreme prosperity just like everyone else and were acting out Court decision on Obamacare that declared its central of concern that the prospects for prosperity would be mandate a tax on page 35 when, on page 15, it had de- damaged if they did not act cautiously. nied it was a tax and said it was a mandate. We saw an The problem was that, unlike everyone else, they Obama administration declare al Qaeda dead and run had the power to interfere with growth. However well- an election on that basis only to see the rise of ISIS in intended they might have been, they got it wrong—and its stead a year later. the consequences of their actions have been, well, We saw a Republican Party and its leadership consequential. Lost wages and job opportunities can’t confident that it could outlast a second-rank TV celeb- simply be restored as though nothing had happened. rity candidate get mowed down by him as they stood We cannot know what effect their absence may have by—their impotence revealed, their understanding had not only on national financial well-being but the of their own electorate exposed as cliché-riddled and national mood during a decade in which the American even delusional. And a decade after the financial melt- people have been undergoing a spiritual crisis exem- down, venture capitalists and investors alike continue plified by the nightmarish spike in “deaths of despair.” to be gulled by factitious visionary entrepreneurs

Commentary 25 whose genius appears to be incepting pie-in-the-sky seduced Americans to drain the equity from their ideas that separate very rich people from billions of homes and use it to buy consumer goods that lost dollars they don’t know what to do with. most of their value the minute they were bought; but The media companies whose primary task it is financial entities that were supposed to be stewards to offer us a realistic and fact-driven portrait of the of the nation’s wealth instead became generators of world around us have demonstrated they can’t even debt. And the mediators that supposedly existed to offer themselves a realistic and fact-driven portrait of prevent irresponsible and suicidal investing strate- the business they are in. Facebook says jump and they gies—prominent among them the Big Six account- say how high. Facebook says pivot to video and they ing firms and the Securities and Exchange Com- invest tens of millions of dollars mission—became rubber stamps in video—only to have Facebook and ceased serving as impartial say, sorry, the pivot to video is AMERICANS auditors. In these cases, the in- over. The mad rush to use social stitutions upon which we relied media to save themselves from lost faith and trust in didn’t just become ineffectual, the technological changes that the system because they did catastrophic harm. had slashed their profit mar- The 2010s therefore be- gins only hastened their decline. the system had dem- came the decade of reckoning. How, then, are we to imagine onstrated it was un- Americans lost faith and trust these organizations can properly in the system because the sys- evaluate the good working order deserving of faith and tem had demonstrated, and con- of any other enterprise? trust. And so there tinued to demonstrate, it was The media, the govern- undeserving of faith and trust. ment, the venture capitalists, the arose an anti-poli- And so there arose an anti-pol- courts, the Fed—as the belea- tician whose entire itician whose entire worldview guered Casey Stengel said of his was based on a lack of faith in own New York Mets in the first worldview was based institutions and a complete dis- year of their existence when they on a lack of faith in trust of elites. Trump’s somewhat won 40 and lost 120, “can’t any- nihilistic worldview was far more body here play this game?” institutions and a appropriate for the moment, and In his marvelous new book, complete distrust of for the decade, than that of his A Time to Build, Yuval Levin ar- 2016 rival, the most relentlessly gues that the decline of American elites. pasteurized and homogenized faith in the institutions that un- example of the American leader- dergird this country has had and will continue to have ship class ever to seek higher office. Hillary Clinton calamitous ramifications. At the same time, the crisis checked every box on the list. Once, that would have of the institutions is almost entirely the result of their been more than sufficient. But the list itself had been decay; people lose faith in them because they did not discredited. deserve the faith with which they had been entrusted. We enter the next decade in a perplexing na- When the largest religious denomination in America, tional condition. Unemployment is at historic lows. the Catholic Church, sinks into moral quicksand ow- The markets are at historic highs. In recent polling, ing to its refusal to police and punish and purify its 57 percent of the American people say they are better own clergy for taking sexual advantage of children, off than at any time in the past decade. And yet this is what part of the institutional structure of the Church anything but an Era of Good Feeling. It is not morning is left for its adherents to believe in? in America. We have not returned to normalcy. We re- All this pales before the most disastrous failure main unnerved. We had no desire or hunger to witness of our time, the financial meltdown of 2008. Not only it, but we have seen the man behind the curtain, and he had the federal government encouraged the loosening was a sight we cannot unsee.q of lending standards without considering the potential consequences; not only had the Fed effectively John Podhoretz is the editor of Commentary.

26 The 2010s: The Decade of Reckoning : January 2020 Save Me from My Defenders! A protest against me, and its aftermath, at Bard College By Ruth R. Wisse

EING SILENCED or harassed for on the need for public debate on controversial mat- unpopular speech on a university ters. She had theorized about anti-Semitism as a form campus is by now such a mark of of racism, and because I was among those who found distinction that I may be accused of this formulation unhelpful, the conveners thought I exercising bragging rights in describ- might provide some valuable critical engagement. For ing a recent incident in which I was my part, I was readying a second edition of my book involved. The real danger I encoun- on anti-Semitism, Jews and Power, so writing a talk for tered, however, was different from the one against the conference was a way of getting back into a subject which IB had been warned. Read on. that had become much more pressing since I first pub- In January 2019, I received an invitation from lished the book 13 years ago. I accepted the invitation Roger Berkowitz, founding director of Bard’s Hannah and spent many hours preparing the talk. Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, to speak at All the advance arrangements for the conference its annual conference. The topic: “Racism and Anti- were handled graciously, and the courtesies accorded Semitism.” In adopting the name of the German-Jew- me from the moment I arrived at the Bard campus in ish philosopher it describes as “the most taught and New York’s Dutchess County went beyond the usual. arguably most influential political thinker of the 20th Though I am by now among the oldest in any academic century,” the Center emphasized Arendt’s insistence gathering, the solicitude of my greeters actually made me wonder whether I appeared much more fragile Ruth R. Wisse is a senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund than I felt. Unusually, several members of the adminis- and long-time contributor to Commentary. tration showed up for my talk. With the dean, a former

Commentary 27 fellow professor of literature, I conversed about the the email alerting us to the anticipated protest and, 19th-century British novel the way academics used to having arrived before me, had been discussing how do when I began teaching in the late 1960s. to deal with it. Batya, who was to chair my session, Despite the pleasantness of our colloquy, I as- had tried to forestall the protesters earlier that day sumed—correctly, as it turned out—that she was there by asking them to desist, in return for which she said she would call on them first in the question period. Shany and I mused that if I ran a school of higher I objected on the grounds that learning, I would issue a warning to one does not negotiate with thugs who protest the free ex- incoming students to consider whether change of ideas. Shany told us that two years earlier, as he was they were ready for college. about to speak to a small semi- nar on some aspect of political to monitor the proceedings. The previous evening, philosophy, a posse of students—perhaps some of the an email had arrived telling me that though students same ones gathering now—swarmed around him, one would be protesting the session, “the vast majority” of shoving a phone in his face to record his discomfort. those attending the conference would want to hear me, He had refused to proceed then, and he felt angry and and a “campus policy” had been designed to guarantee apprehensive now. that they could: Ours was the last session on the opening day of the two-day conference. The auditorium was about 1. If students protest silently, we simply go on. half full as Batya introduced me and my talk, “Who We allow free speech on all sides. So if they Needs Anti-Semitism?” I assumed the protest had been put up a poster or stand in protest, we carry abandoned, but a couple of sentences into my remarks, on. I know this can be uncomfortable, but our a phalanx of students carrying placards marched into policy is that as long as the protest does not in- the hall and lined up in one of the aisles and in front of terfere with the free speech of the speaker, we the stage, facing the audience. They positioned them- allow it. 2. If students seek to prevent the talk selves between the audience and me, but they did not by chanting or yelling or speaking, we let them yet shout, like infants testing parental limits who had speak for a few minutes and then say that we apparently studied campus policy and disrupted only appreciate their right to speak but we’d like to to the point of anticipated removal. let the speakers speak. 3. If they refuse to allow I found their intrusion intolerably rude and the talk, we ask the audience what they would scolded their backs, “You ought to be ashamed!” and prefer, to hear the speaker or the disruption. 4. then a little more imaginatively began to sing, “They If none of that works we will have security re- shall be, they shall be removed / just like a log that’s move those who are disrupting the talk from floating down the water / They shall be removed!” I the auditorium. The College will not let a few assumed they would be removed, since this was by far students shut down this conference or your the most provocative of the several campus protests I talk. Rest assured, the talk will go on. had ever witnessed and we had been assured that no disruptions would be allowed. Instead, the dean came The policy seemed to me ridiculous. I mused on stage and, taking me gently back to the podium, to the dean that if I ran a school of higher learning, asked whether I could go on with the talk. I assured I would include with letters of acceptance a warning her I could do just about anything, but what about the to incoming students to consider whether they were audience? Could they listen with interrupters doing ready for college. Unless they could confront material everything possible to distract them? There was polite they considered offensive, they should defer for a year applause inviting me to proceed. or until they matured. In the meantime, however, I The video of the event shows only those of us on intended to present my remarks. the stage, not the demonstrators in front of it. During Two panelists had been assigned to my talk, both most of the talk, the disrupters only muttered and tele- of whom were also participating elsewhere at the con- graphed their impatience until, either bored or afraid ference—Batya Ungar-Sargon, opinion editor of the I was being listened to, one of them began shouting. Forward, and Shany Mor, a political philosopher and Only at this point were they escorted out, having research fellow at the Center. They, too, had received clearly accomplished their purpose. Shany called it “a

28 Save Me From My Defenders! : January 2020 way of poisoning a discussion and marking speakers how their political commitment to the civil-rights as objects of hatred.” Batya said they had appropriately struggle and the historic black-Jewish alliance could attended a talk that was really about them. have led to this situation. The brutal truth was that So it proved to be. The point of departure in my the new anti-Semitism arose not in spite of the talk was an opinion piece from the New York Times by black-Jewish alliance but because of it. Transracial Henry Louis Gates Jr. that had been published in 1992. cooperation—epitomized by the historic partnership Entitled “Black Demagogues and Pseudo-Scholars,” between blacks and Jews—posed the greatest threat to Gates’s article warned that while anti-Semitism in the isolationist movement. The Jews’ liberal drive for America was generally on the wane, it was on the rise equal opportunity and an end to discrimination stood among black Americans, with blacks twice as likely as in the way of a politics of grievance that wants equal whites to hold anti-Semitic views. Gates cited research outcome, restitution, political power. The Jews were showing that anti-Semitism was most pronounced accused of wanting tolerance only so that they should “among the younger and more educated blacks,” and be able to dominate. as he was then writing as the newly appointed chair- What most impressed me about Gates’s analysis man of Harvard’s Department of Afro-American Stud- was his grasp of how anti-Semitism works. Avoiding ies, he was understandably concerned. common tropes about hatred and discrimination, he When the piece first appeared, I had just ac- focused on its methodology and political appeal. I did cepted and was about to begin a tenured teaching posi- the same in trying to explain how this movement had tion at Harvard. I was paying close attention to events grown to become modernity’s most successful ideol- on campus and knew that earlier that year, Harvard’s ogy, tracing its origins in late-19th-century Germany Black Student Association had hosted the black stud- to an internal struggle like the one Gates describes ies professor Leonard Jeffries, of City College. Jeffries between proponents of emancipation and those had denounced Jews for running the slave trade and who feared the advent of liberal democracy.* Finger- contrasted the “frigid” whites of the world with the pointing at the Jews drew together large segments sun-warmed blacks. Also speaking at Harvard, Conrad of the population by directing dissatisfaction toward Muhammad, of the Nation of Islam, had blamed the an already suspect target and blaming a group whose Jews for “despoiling the environment and destroying removal would leave room for others. Similar strate- the ozone layer.” Gates cited these and other “crackpot” gies were adapted by political parties of the right and theories being peddled in black academic circles about left across Europe, and then by anti-Zionist Arab and Jews descending from brutish Neanderthals, and the Muslim leaders in the Middle East who found that reemergence of the 19th-century Protocols of the El- organizing politics against Jews in Israel proved even ders of Zion that portrayed Jews plotting to take over more effective than organizing against Jews in other the globe. “Make no mistake,” Gates had written, “this people’s lands. is anti-Semitism from the top down, engineered and promoted by leaders who affect to be speak- Finger-pointing at the Jews drew ing for a larger resentment.” together large segments of the The article gave a crisp description of the power struggle population by directing dissatisfaction within the black community between those in the tradition of toward an already suspect target. Martin Luther King who wanted to normalize black politics by making common cause By now, these same strategies of grievance and with fellow Americans and the leaders who were using blame have penetrated the United States to such a Jew-blame to gain adherents and resorting to classic degree that Henry Lewis Gates, a lovely man, would anti-Jewish tactics for a “barricaded withdrawal into never again write anything like that opinion piece. racial authenticity.” The identity politics that he once deplored had turned The strategy of these demagogues Gates called respectable, and what he once feared might discredit ethnic isolationism—“they know that the more iso- his field of Afro-American Studies was now the guiding lated black America becomes, the greater their power. philosophy of those studies. If that included anti-Sem- And what’s the most efficient way to begin to sever itism, tant pis, say the French: tough luck. Advancing black America from its allies? Bash the Jews.” * See my article “The 20th Century’s Most Successful Ideology,” in American Jews, he wrote, could not understand the February 1991 issue of Commentary.

Commentary 29 well beyond what Gates described, blaming Israel and wrote. “That making every conversation with Jews its Jewish supporters has since taken over the univer- about Israel is racist?” Exactly so: One of the students sity, the media, popular culture, and a large swath of explained that the conversation about anti-Semitism the Democratic Party. “was already inherently about Israel” and therefore After the talk and questions, I was ready for a logically racist as well. This was for Batya a bridge too far. Joining her fellow “Jews,” she then scolded other par- I had assumed the conveners had hoped ticipants at the conference for that Batya’s leftism and her newspaper’s applauding the students rather than supporting the speaker. attacks on Israel would serve to offset my I left the conference early—earlier than I had intend- reputed ‘conservative’ Zionism. ed—so my impression of what followed is based on Batya’s ac- glass of wine at the promised reception. Several peo- count and the ensuing back-and-forth in the press. She ple had come on stage to speak with me, and as I tried left the dinner that evening and quit the conference to steer them out the auditorium to the reception, the following day, “shocked” that some of the faculty two friendly gentlemen came to escort me instead to and conference speakers encouraged this display of the waiting car at the back door. I told them that the racism against Jews (one even argued that the discus- car had been ordered for a half hour later to give me sion hadn’t gone far enough and that Palestinians some time to circulate with the other participants, but should have been invited to speak on anti-Semitism). they assured me I would do better to leave with them. Although members of the administration tendered It took me a moment to understand, and I asked, “Do apologies for what was judged after all to be a disrup- you mean that there are students waiting to provoke tion, Batya and Shany were both dismayed that none me?” Insisting I had no fear of their gauntlet, I tried of the others had defended me. “I’m horrified by your heading out in that direction, but they became a little cowardice, by your self-justifications,” she had said to firmer and courteously—solicitously—led me between the audience before leaving. “You, who I called lumi- them out the back door into the waiting car. They had naries! Whose books I’ve read!” been charged with getting me safely away from any Did she appreciate the irony of her complaint? possible confrontation. When I was told that she had been invited to chair my talk, I had assumed the conveners hoped that Batya’s F THE COLLEGE hoped to avoid adverse publicity prominent leftism and her newspaper’s unceasing by protecting me from nastiness, it had focused on attacks on Israel would serve to offset my reputed I the wrong party. The conference was barely over “conservative” Zionism. Her (now online) paper, the when Batya Ungar-Sargon used her perch at the For- Forward, often opens its pages to those who level the ward to publish an account of her experience, headed “I Zionist-racist charge against Israel and its Jewish sup- Was Protested at Bard College for Being a Jew.” porters, pretending that the war against Israel was not It referred to our panel on anti-Semitism as the directed at Jews. Her awakened consciousness under only one with “three Jews” on it to discuss the topic. fire was therefore surprising, perhaps even to her. “But we’re not even talking about Israel,” she had said But I have Batya Ungar-Sargon to thank, for it was to the conference organizers. “How does that make only from her article that I learned the protesters were sense?” Inviting the protesters to come the next day the Bard chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine instead to her panel on racism and Zionism, she said, (SJP) and that they were protesting against me. I never “Come protest my comments on Zionism. I’ll be talking saw the flyers they circulated, and their signs carrying about the occupation. Bring your signs.” She was trying allegations against me at my session were facing the to maintain the difference so important to liberals be- audience, so I was unable to read them; nor did anyone tween opposing Israel (kosher, legitimate) and oppos- else make me aware that I was their target. (To this day, ing Jews (treyf, illegitimate), but once she found herself I have not been able to obtain a copy of their pamphlet.) lumped together with us on that panel, she realized the I was insulated as carefully as a Zika patient. little storm troop had recognized no such distinction. That changed once a debate over the events “Didn’t they understand that saying we were opened in the Jewish press. Apologists for the protest- responsible for the behavior of the Israeli Jews just ers denounced my “history of bigoted remarks toward because we shared their ethnicity was racist?” she Palestinians and Muslims” and my “horrifyingly racist

30 Save Me From My Defenders! : January 2020 anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic as well as anti-black the kindly Professor Hill draws from the Bard incident, views,” omitting only the wells I had poisoned and perhaps intending to extend even greater protection to the blood I had drawn from murdered Arab children. “protesters” than the college already has in place. Had Nonetheless, though the aggression against me was she shown more faith in their ability to think, she might ugly and the cosseting tender, once I learned what had have set up a meeting between me and the protesters, happened, it was depressingly clear to me that I had insisting that so-called students have the courage to face more to fear from my protectors than my attackers. me with their arguments. Showing me their backsides Case in point: In a response to Batya’s article, merely proved what they are substituting for brains. political studies professor Samantha Hill reported The indulgence of this anti-intellectualism was that while attending services on the Bard campus on the first of Bard’s mistakes. Honest students and teach- Yom Kippur, the day before the conference, she had ers will always find their way to one another, but col- been told by students that they were planning to op- leges that replace the teachings of our civilization with pose my presence. They were all Jewish, some of them academic tasting stations are no longer engaged in members of SJP. One of the students pulled out her higher education. Moreover, the students were almost computer and read a statement attributed to me on certainly steered to SJP and sicced on me by faculty Wikipedia: “Palestinian Arabs [are] people who bleed ideologues who look for converts rather than truth. and breed and advertise their misery.” Hill wrote: They and the parrots they train fear no demotion for their ignorance or censure for their boorishness, I told them that personally and politically, I knowing they will never be required to learn anything did not agree with everything Wisse had said, about the subject. “Openness” is an excuse for moral but she had a right to speak. I made my case as and intellectual indifference that replaced the cultiva- the assistant director of the Arendt Center. I tion of good citizenship. said professor Wisse is 83. She’s a survivor. She The conveners deserve credit for addressing anti- has dedicated her life to the Yiddish language. Semitism in the current academic climate, but the dis- It is not responsible to protest her. I told them rupters, in their way, inadvertently exposed problems this is a panel about anti-Semitism and the with the conference that might otherwise have gone protest will be seen as anti-Semitic. unnoticed. The program notes quoted Hannah Arendt’s The students proceeded with their mostly idea that “political anti-Semitism is more than ‘Jew- nonverbal protest and were removed when they hatred’; rather, it is a pseudoscientific ideology seeking verbally interrupted Professor Wisse’s talk… to prove that Jews are responsible for all the evils of the world.” Arendt called anti-Semitism a form of racism, Where to begin? First of all, I am a survivor of Har- and anti-black racism an ideology like anti-Semitism. vard, not the Nazis, and neither my age, my experience, But the Zionism-is-racism Resolution, passed at the nor my lifetime in Jewish Studies was relevant to what United Nations a month before Arendt’s death in 1975, the students were thinking or planning. If any student in my or- bit had ever offered an opinion on Colleges that replace the teachings of the basis of an excerpted “gotcha!” our civilization with academic tasting quotation on a Wikipedia page— on a computer on Yom Kippur no stations are no longer engaged in the less—I would have asked for an essay several thousand words in work of higher education. length based on its source for the purpose of demonstrating why no such reference is ever had turned her equation upside down. It accused Jews to be trusted. I dismiss as a Googling ignoramus anyone of the racism to which they were themselves subject. In who cites that misrepresentation of what I had written, leading the U.S. effort to prevent this inversion, New but students don’t need facts or arguments when they York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called the Reso- have institutions to coddle them. lution’s passing “a day of infamy,” deliberately echoing “It is our job as professors to teach students how the phrase President Roosevelt had used for the attack to think, not what to think.” “Rather than building on Pearl Harbor. It took American diplomats 16 years walls, we are proud to create an open forum where before they could muster the votes to repeal it. But this people with different opinions can come together to righted wrong had so little effect that Bard students felt stop and think.” These are some of the conclusions that free to tout Zionism=Racism signs.

Commentary 31 Linking racism and anti-Semitism in the confer- cate to reform and ameliorate that misdirected political ence title made it impossible to address the way the charge, universities have welcomed it as just another claim of “racism” was being weaponized by Arab-Mus- point of view. Schools that forbid other forms of hatred lim groups and the post-Soviet left to promote anti- and pass speech codes monitoring slights to all other Jewish aggression. To subsume anti-Jewish politics minorities are only too happy to allow all those other under another category such as racism was to prevent repressed forms of antagonism to emerge in this ac- action against it. The conference made no attempt to ceptable form. They know that unlike other threatening identify, much less investigate, the ideological war- groups, Jews—and Jewish professors—are more likely fare that Arab propagandists, Islamists, Middle East to join their accusers. Who needs anti-Semitism? The scholars, radical leftists, intersectionality activists, grievance brigades and their liberal college protectors. and other aggressors were waging against Israel and As for the revelation that most of Bard’s SJP are themselves Jewish, there has always been a correlation between The conference made no attempt to the level of anti-Jewish hostil- identify the ideological warfare being ity and the number of Jews who defect or join their antagonists. waged against Israel and the Western Whereas many groups typically threaten others, Jews under at- democracies for which it is a stand-in. tack often turn against their own. Anti-Semitism in Europe the Western democracies for which it is a stand-in. generated thousands of converts to Christianity and In fact, if the conveners thought they might get away an even larger number of socialists and Communists, with treating anti-Semitism in today’s college climate some of whom used their claims of political superses- by combining it with racism, the grievance groups had sion to attack their fellow Jews. The growth of anti- seen right through the ruse and organized their pro- Zionist Jews in America and of Jews who ascribe to test against the only session devoted to exposing them. anti-Jewish causes is the most reliable measure of how Unlike racial prejudice, which is straightfor- successfully the war against the Jews is currently being ward, anti-Semitism works through inversion: It holds waged. In a grotesque cycle of causality, Jewish habits Jews responsible for the aggression against them. of accommodation inspire the anti-Jewish politics that Among the general framing questions of the confer- then destroy Jewish moral self-confidence. Jewish ence—which included “What is racism?” “Is anti- apologists in Eastern Europe were called mayofes yidn Semitism a form of racism?” and “Is equality possible for the song their Polish overlords made them perform in a world where prejudice exists?”—there was only for their amusement; today’s mayofes choirs sing out one with built-in bias: “Is it anti-Semitism to criticize on every major American campus. the state of Israel?” The question is fraudulent because Israel is not being “criticized” but blamed for the Arab- AM GRATEFUL for the protection given and the engineered plight of the Palestinians. Arab countries courtesy shown by members of the Bard faculty covering more land than the United States deny Jews I and administration, but it is intolerable that my their single homeland and blame Jews for denying security should come at the expense of the infinitely Arabs theirs. Anti-Semitism is about its owners, not more endangered people of Israel. And not only Israel. its foils. The conference ought to have asked whether No one can say “we did not know” what anti-Israel Arab and Muslim leaders could ever accept the prin- forces intend because anyone with access to a com- ciple of coexistence. puter or library can locate the platforms and sponsors That others repeat some of the same mistaken of groups such as BDS National Committee, National language of the conference merely proves that bad ideas Students for Justice in Palestine, Electronic Intifada, drive out the good—to the very depths of evil. The war Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and their ties with against the Jewish state is not a generic cause like cli- neo-Nazi movements in Germany, all of which aim mate change, or women’s right to abortion, or part of a to take down Israel and the civilization it represents. general attempt to impose political correctness on mat- We know the attraction, especially to academics and ters of gender, race, and class. It is a genocidal assault would-be intellectuals, of inversions like “Zionism- against a particular people. Blaming Israel for Arab racism” and the harm they intend. Free speech comes plight is an article of theological and political faith to with the responsibility to crush the criminality that much of the Arab and Muslim world. Rather than edu- spreads under its protection.q

32 Save Me From My Defenders! : January 2020 The New Rocket Threat to Israel The latest fighting in Gaza is the tip of the iceberg By Jonathan Schanzer

SRAEL’S SOUTHERN population came un- There would be no attempt to spin this, the of- der attack once again in November 2019. ficial said, even as rockets hurtled across the sky above The Iran-backed terrorist group Palestinian him. Israel fired first, he said, by liquidating Baha Abu Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fired more than 450 rock- al-Ata, the PIJ military commander in the Gaza Strip. ets into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Israelis Israel tracked him for months, but he always sur- sprinted to shelters, and the Iron Dome air- rounded himself with human shields. So the Israelis defense system once again shielded them stalked him—and when, at last, he failed to shield him- from the onslaught. Thousands of miles from the ac- self with living human bodies, they struck with deadly tion, sittingI in the back seat of an Uber, I was on the precision. The Israeli Air Force did not just isolate its phone with an Israeli official on the Gaza border who strike to the building, or the floor of the building, or the explained to me, without hesitation, that Israel had room on that floor. It struck al-Ata in his bed, report- picked this fight. edly with only his wife at his side. No one else in the building was hurt. Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance PIJ, in consultation with the group’s paymasters analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is in Tehran, responded with predictable ferocity. Yet as senior vice president for research at Foundation for rocket fire increased, and even when occasional volleys Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow him on Twitter pierced the Iron Dome’s defenses (one struck a high- @JSchanzer. way near the town of Ashdod, narrowly missing traf-

Commentary 33 fic), Israel’s decision makers demonstrated remarkable and allows it to explode in an uninhabited space. restraint. As the official on the phone explained to me, Iran is now working overtime to establish a pro- the Israeli Air Force was calmly and selectively taking gram that will allow its proxies to convert their dumb out PIJ military leaders and operatives when they had rockets into smart ones. The United States began a a clear shot. The majority of the bombing runs, how- process of converting its own unguided rockets into ever, were aimed at PIJ rocket stores. “We’re hunting PGMs back in the late 1990s. The Israelis utilized simi- rockets,” the official said flatly. lar technology. The result was the deadly Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). If the If the Iranian missile project proves Iranian project proves similarly successful, Israel’s enemies will successful, Israel’s enemies will achieve achieve the capability of striking within five to 10 yards of their the capability of striking within five to 10 intended targets. yards of their intended targets. Converting an unguided rocket (what some Israeli military types call “statistical” rock- That kind of cool-headed discipline would not ets) into a precision-guided munition is both simple be possible without the Iron Dome system. When and complicated. It’s simple because all it takes are tail rockets are prevented from hitting their intended fins, a circuit board, and the right software. One for- targets, Israeli officials don’t hear calls from the pub- mer Israeli official estimates that an entire PGM-mak- lic to send in ground troops. And for most defense ing kit might cost as little as $15,000 per munition. But officials (at least in this current government), there it’s also complicated because dismantling a rocket to is no desire to escalate in Gaza. Even as it takes out retrofit it with precision-guided technology and then occasional targets of opportunity, Israel prefers to reassembling it requires knowledge and infrastructure keep its powder dry. The real danger lies to the north, that Iran’s low-tech proxies don’t have. They are labor- where a brutal conflict is brewing. ing to acquire them. But with the Israelis patrolling from the skies with remarkably accurate intelligence, VER THE PAST five years, the Israelis have the tasks of transporting parts and assembling PGMs been fighting a quiet war nearly every night. have become hazardous. Israel’s estimated 300 strikes O During what is now known as the “Campaign in recent years have reduced the PGM talent pool and Between Wars” or “War Between Wars,” the Israelis destroyed a significant amount of hardware. have taken out high-value targets—more than 200 of them, according to estimates published last year, and RAN AND ISRAEL have been playing a quiet it’s probably closer to 300 now—from Syria and Iraq game of chess across the Middle East—difficult to Lebanon and beyond. As early as 2013, the Israelis I for the casual observer to discern but punctu- spoke euphemistically about such strikes, noting that ated by the periodic explosion. The Iranian effort they were targeting “game-changing weapons” that continues despite the occasional setbacks. And so Iran was transferring to its proxies amid the chaos of does the Israeli effort, which is thankless and time- Syria’s civil war. intensive. Both sides understand that when enough Recently, the Israelis have become much more PGMs reach the hands of Israel’s enemies, the effect specific. Their targets are precision-guided munitions, will indeed be game-changing. or PGMs. First, PGMs will force Israel to use far more Iron Until now, Israel has been blessed with ill- Dome interceptors than it currently deploys. The cost equipped enemies. The efforts of Iranian proxies such of each ranges roughly from $50,000 to $100,000. as Hamas, Hezbollah, and PIJ have been mitigated Thus, defending Israel could soon become much more by Iron Dome, which has an 86 percent success rate expensive. If Israel had been forced to shoot down all (some Israeli officials say it’s even higher) in neutral- 450 PIJ rocket volleys with Iron Dome in November, izing incoming enemy projectiles. That rate is boosted the cost would have been as much as $45 million. by the fact that Israel’s foes have been firing unguided, More worrying, with enough PGMs fired at the or “dumb,” rockets. Without GPS or target-acquisition same target, Iran’s proxies may be able to outmaneu- capabilities, many of these rockets undershoot or over- ver, outsmart, or overwhelm Israeli missile-defense shoot their intended targets. When Iron Dome assess- systems, with the result that one or more rockets es a rocket’s errant trajectory, it declines to intercept it would get through. Hamas already claims to be able

34 The New Rocket Threat to Israel : January 2020 to do this with its unguided rockets. Such claims are air strikes on Iranian assets in Iraq and Syria. dubious now. But in the future, if the intended target Critics assert that Netanyahu has cynically is the chemical plant in Haifa, the Kiriya (Israel’s used such strikes as a means to campaign as the defense headquarters) in Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Interna- tougher defense candidate during Israel’s unprec- tional Airport, or a Tel Aviv office building, the results edented two rounds of stalemated elections in 2019. could be catastrophic. As Prime Minister Benjamin But Israeli strikes in Iraq and Syria were not optional Netanyahu’s former national-security adviser Jacob in the eyes of the country’s military planners. Iranian Nagel recently told me, “with enough PGMs, the im- PGMs, or at least PGM parts or infrastructure, were pact on certain targets could be close to the impact of thought to be there. a nuclear weapon.” He adds that, for this reason, “after Targeting precision-guided munitions will be- the Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli leaders cite the PGM come even more complicated in the future. The regime threat as next on their list.” in Iran is not only working assiduously to obscure Currently, the Israelis believe that the Lebanese their transport and assembly. It is also devising ways terrorist organization Hezbollah is the only Iranian to store them under homes, schools, hospitals, apart- proxy group that possesses Iranian PGMs in any sig- ment buildings, refugee camps, and other heavily nificant number. The Israelis are not saying how many populated civilian infrastructure. Israel has already Hezbollah has. But they acknowledge that the efforts dealt with this problem in Gaza. Hamas conducts to interdict PGMs or PGM parts have not completely military operations from within civilian population prevented the technology from reaching Iran’s Leba- centers. The Israelis warn that it will be worse in nese surrogate. And Hezbollah continues to work Lebanon, with Hezbollah’s arsenal already strategi- feverishly on this project. cally embedded in civilian areas. PGMs of an unknown Netanyahu also recently indicated that the Irani- quantity will be among these caches. The decision to an proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, may also have PGMs. strike these weapons on the ground will be excruciat- So far, the Houthis have targeted only Saudi Arabia ing for the IDF. And every strike will create immense with simple rockets, cruise missiles, and drones. Ne- public-relations damage, as images of injured or dead tanyahu’s warning implies that the group may one day civilians fill the television screens and Twitter feeds of target Israel with long-range PGMs at Iran’s urging. news consumers worldwide. Of course, the Iranians have their own arse- Of course, Israel is not the only country forced nal of PGMs—more formidable ones. They are not to deal with this problem. The United States has en- retrofitted but rather built from scratch. And some countered human shields on the battlefields of Iraq of them are even immune to GPS-jamming systems, and Afghanistan, too. The prevalence of the problem which is one of the best countermeasures Israel has prompted President Donald Trump to sign into law against these munitions. the “Sanctioning the Use of Civilians as Defenseless Israel’s military brass would much rather destroy Shields Act.” The bill passed unanimously in both the PGMs on the ground than intercept them in the air. One House and Senate before reaching the president’s desk problem they have is patrolling the vast territory Iran in December 2018. A variant of the bill is also circulat- controls to build, store, and launch its munitions. ing at the United Nations. Iran has, for the past five years, been building These measures are important for two reasons. a land bridge extending across the Levant. The ultimate goal is to establish hegemony across When those complicit in building the the region. But the short-term human-shields infrastructure know goal is far more attainable: to control, via proxy, terri- they can be sanctioned by the U.S., they tory stretching from western Iran through Iraq, into Syria, may be less inclined to contribute. through Lebanon, and all the way to Israel’s doorstep. In addition to deploying He- First, when those complicit in building the human- zbollah in Lebanon, Iran is using the Assad regime in shields infrastructure (tunnels, bunkers, and storage Syria and Shiite militias in Iraq to maintain this real facilities, for example) know they can be sanctioned by estate. Some question whether these proxies would the U.S. government or even the UN, they may be less dare fire on Israel with PGMs. The Israelis have an- inclined to contribute to this cynical project. Being swered that question, in part, with those punishing named can have an immediate impact among the local

Commentary 35 population, which (with a few exceptions) would not with the luxury of time to weigh their options when appreciate being treated like cannon fodder. they must respond to a hailstorm of precision strikes. More important, these measures can enhance Should PGMs pierce Israel’s defenses and hit the operational legitimacy and freedom of the Israel more of the intended targets, the Israeli public will Defense Force in future conflicts. Once it has been demand a response. The political and military leader- established that targeting human-shields infrastruc- ship will be forced to respond more rapidly and with ture is legal and protected from international oppro- greater force. This will increase the odds of mistakes brium (to some extent), Israel’s enemies lose one of on the battlefield and thus the odds of escalation. And their key advantages. if PGMs are fired from multiple locations, the natural result will be a multifront war. NFORTUNATELY for Israel, no amount of If Israel doesn’t find a way to halt Iran’s PGM inspired legislation will stop Hezbollah or project, the very character of its wars will change. U Iran’s other proxy groups from pursuing this Despite a steady stream of attacks perpetrated by their precision project. If anything, when the Iranian PGM enemies in recent years, the Israelis have not needed project comes online, the only significant disruption to fight long or particularly bloody wars. Instead, they to the status quo will be inside Israel. have been conducting limited operations. Israel has, in With PGMs, the era of Iron Dome’s total domi- fact, often been able to determine the beginning and nance may come to an end. This does not mean that end of these flare-ups. Iron Dome’s ability to neutralize the Israelis will stop using this remarkable system to rudimentary rockets has made that possible. But now, protect its citizens from incoming rockets. But bar- with PGMs in play, Israel may no longer be able to dic- ring significant improvements to counter PGMs, Iron tate the terms of conflict when its enemies want one. Dome may no longer provide the Israeli leadership And let there be no doubt: They want one.q

36 The New Rocket Threat to Israel : January 2020 Why Are Jews Buddhists? An autobiographical inquiry into the nature of religio-cultural appropriation By Jesse Kellerman

FIRST MET the Buddha on a cruise ship. I amiable shiftiness. Of the 800-some-odd passengers, was 20, touring the Alaskan coast with my about 30 had turned out. I recognized a few faces from parents and sisters. Friday night we depart- the hallways or the pool. Nobody else had been wear- ed Juneau, bound for Skagway, which was ing a yarmulke, either. a relief. As Sabbath-observant Jews, unable Mumbling negotiations ensued. The schedule to participate in Saturday’s offshore excur- called for “Shabbat services” but had failed to specify a sions, we agreed that if we had to miss one denomination. There were no prayer books provided, port of call, it ought to be Skagway. Skagway? Better to although a handful of folks had thought to bring their stay aboardI and play gin. own. There was no rabbi. Who should lead? Should Neither my father nor I wears a yarmulke on a men and women sit separately? One thing everyone daily basis, other than to pray or study Torah. For me, could agree on: Buddha had to go. at least, this is due not to fear or a desire to pass so He was about two and a half feet high, made of much as to a slightly perverse drive to balance compet- concrete painted metallic gold, smiling out from with- ing identities. Nestled among Jews, as I often am, I in a spotlit alcove along the starboard wall, his palm up become my most secular self. Cast out into the broader in a gesture of peace. Presumably some well-meaning world, I cling to my Jewishness. Travel above all raises interior decorator had stuck him there to lend an oth- in me a frenzy, as I arrive in some far-flung place and erwise sterile space the patina of spirituality. immediately begin scouring the hotel map for syna- The Judaism of my youth sliced the law thin, gogues and cemeteries. along seemingly arbitrary lines. Eating in nonkosher So it was natural that, finding ourselves at sea, restaurants was not something to celebrate or ad- we would consult the ship’s schedule for Sabbath ser- vertise, but it was understandable, even justifiable, vices, even though we rarely went to shul on Friday given Los Angeles’s shortage of decent kosher dining night when on land. Walking into the chapel at 5:00 options. You stuck to dairy or fish; certainly you didn’t p.m., before the early dinner seating, I sensed the same order nonkosher meat, and the consumption of pork or shellfish was inconceivable. Likewise the Sabbath: Jesse Kellerman is a playwright and novelist. His To drive in a car or play Nintendo would have been 10th book, Half Moon Bay, co-authored with his father, humiliating and indecent. But we laughed when our Jonathan Kellerman, will be published in the fall. rabbis at school tried to forbid us from playing basket-

Commentary 37 If Jews and Buddhists share so much common ground, why have so many Jews become Buddhists while so few Buddhists have become Jews? ball at home, on the grounds that sweatiness was not over his beatific face. in the spirit of the day. This was at the height of Magic Johnson and the Showtime Lakers. Fool, please. HY ARE so many Buddhists Jews? To be Amid our hierarchy of taboos, two stood out for precise: Of the Americans who practice severity coupled to sheer improbability. The first was W Buddhism in one form or another and intermarriage. The second was idolatry. While the whose ethnic origins lie outside traditionally Buddhist former felt dizzyingly remote—I attended religious geographies, why are so many of them also Jewish in all-boys schools—the latter struck me as just silly. Why one way or another? In American JewBu, her exami- in the world would anyone supplicate before an inani- nation of the American Jewish-Buddhist encounter, mate object? What possible attraction could that hold? sociologist Emily Sigalow cites anecdotal evidence The Torah’s continual harping on the subject puzzled suggesting that Jews constitute up to 30 percent of me; the deity, I thought, doth protest too much. Western Buddhists in the United States, far out of To explain this hang-up of His, a number of solu- proportion to their number in the general popula- tions were advanced. We studied the ancient Israelites’ tion. (Living in Berkeley, I tend to regard 30 percent historical position, lonely monotheists among the as overly conservative. Spend any time here and you Molechs and Baals of Canaan. More obscurely, we were could easily conclude that Buddhism is no less a Jew- told that the pre-Talmudic Sages had successfully pe- ish creation than special relativity or babka.) titioned God to excise the idolatrous urge, unlocking a American Jews’ particular fondness for Bud- theological cheat code that had spared my friends and dhism is difficult to account for. Among the theories me from a once-devastating temptation and rendered Sigalow reviews and rejects are religious or cultural it preposterous to the contemporary mind. Oftentimes overlaps, such as “a shared focus on suffering” or an the concept of false gods was recast from the pulpit as emphasis on text study; Jewish overrepresentation in a warning against frivolous pursuits. Materialism was “the segments of society to which Buddhism appeals an idol, as was television. most strongly: the highly educated upper middle As a fan of old-school, blood-and-fats, sacrificial- class, intellectuals, artists, and bohemians”; an innate cult Judaism, I never cared for these feints at rel- attraction toward the “body-based practice” of medita- evance. The plain meaning of the text was and remains tion; identification with “the Buddhist approach to the clear: Don’t bow down to a statue, a tree, the sun. How elimination of war, poverty, racism, prejudice, envi- hard could that be? Not until I stood in the ship chapel, ronmental pollution, intemperance, and drug abuse.” smiling back at Buddha, had I confronted an idol in the To Sigalow, each of these explanations is incom- wild. While the other passengers debated what to do plete. Other systems offer body-based practices: ec- with him, I waited for some dormant pagan yearning static dance, capoeira, Rolfing. If Jews and Buddhists to burst forth, throwing me prostrate in louche venera- share that much common ground, why have so many tion. Honestly, he looked like a fun guy, someone who Jews become Buddhists while so few Buddhists have would share his snacks. become Jews? Ultimately, Sigalow “repudiate[s] any The consensus formed that we could not pray in claim of an intrinsic affinity between these traditions,” his presence. Never mind that we would not be praying locating the point of contact between the two in “the to him. Merely to have an idol—a literal idol—looking historical and social webs that connect them.” on as we recited kaddish was beyond the pale. At the Her chronology of interaction moves through same time, nobody wanted to be the one to remove four phases. The first two span roughly 80 years, him. What if we picked him up and an alarm went off? from the end of the 19th century until the 1950s, en- What if a steward spotted us schlepping him down the compassing the stories of individual American Jews hall? Someone could think we were stealing him or, whose seeking led them to Buddhism—people such worse, being disrespectful. Not to mention that he ap- as Charles T. Strauss, a lace importer who became the peared quite heavy. first convert to Buddhism on U.S. soil, or Julius Gold- In the end we left him there, a tallis draped water, second cousin to Barry, who received ordination

38 Why Are Jews Buddhists? : January 2020 My heart began to pound as I realized what was happening. At last the moment had arrived: My latent pagan nature had, somehow, come to fruition. as a Buddhist priest on no fewer than three occasions. ment coating, until a crane dropped it and a piece of If something’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. the exterior chipped off, revealing the breathtaking These opening chapters are the most interesting gleam beneath. part of Sigalow’s book; they are also the least relevant Sammy handed me a small piece of gold leaf and to the present-day state of affairs. Gamely she draws a invited me to place it as an offering. My initial reaction historical throughline, but it’s evident that Strauss and was to feel that this was very much gilding the lily, or Goldwater are notable primarily as outliers. What’s the Buddha, or whatever. Then I shrugged and started true for the Jews holds for American Buddhism more forward. Then my heart began to pound as I realized generally: Only in the latter half of the 20th century what was happening. At last the moment had arrived: does it truly begin to assume its current shape. Here, My latent pagan nature had, somehow, come to fruition. in the liberalization of the postwar era, we come to the As is common in Thailand, Sammy had spent Zen of the Beats and the rise of the counterculture, a brief period during early adulthood as an ordained currents fairly swimming with Jews. We witness the monk. He was a gentle, funny man with a warm smile, absorption of a specific ritual practice, vipassana (in- and it felt unbelievably gauche to turn to him and sight) meditation, into the standard psychological ar- stammer that I could not, unfortunately, do that. I mamentarium in the form of mindfulness-based stress apologized. I meant no offense. I just couldn’t. reduction (MBSR), or more simply, “mindfulness.” Sammy laughed graciously. He told me not to More than any other aspect of Buddhism, it worry, then went and placed the offering on the altar is meditation that has taken root in our national himself. Returning, he said, “Let’s go to lunch.” consciousness. A 2018 Pew survey found, somewhat Over green-papaya salad, I sat in a cloud of dis- dubiously, that 40 percent of Americans claim to medi- sipating adrenaline, trying to work out my degree of tate at least once a week. The popularity of MBSR no culpability. It was my fee to the tourist agency, after doubt arises in large part from its uniquely American all, that had covered the cost of the gold leaf. I might character: freed of metaphysical encumbrances such not have physically worshipped, but I had subsidized as rebirth and repackaged as a utilitarian commodity worship—the idolatrous equivalent of sponsoring that promises to ease burdens, heighten concentra- kiddush. Meanwhile, my wife chatted with Sammy tion, and enhance overall happiness. Teachers often about his family. He appeared to have forgotten the compare the process to exercise, encouraging lay entire incident, if he had even noticed it to begin with. audiences to strengthen their “mindfulness muscles.” Why would he? How could he have known that he had There are well over a thousand mindfulness apps dragged me right to the edge of the existential pit? To available for download. Many are salutary. Few if any him, it was one small part of the day’s activities. make direct reference to the tradition upon which they ostensibly draw. One might further compare the HE THIRD TIME I met the Buddha, he wasn’t difference between traditional Buddhism and its most even in the room. I had signed up for a nine- highly digested variants to that between aged cheddar T week introductory course on MBSR, held and Kraft singles. And, as with the counterculture, on the psychiatric campus of an Oakland hospital. American Jews such as Jack Kornfield, Sylvia Boor- Guided by a retired engineer with a hypnotic baritone, stein, and Jon Kabat-Zinn have been foremost among we meditated for two and a half hours, broken into the homogenizers. chunks of 30 to 40 minutes. We meditated sitting in chairs or lying on mats spread atop a high-traffic HE SECOND TIME I met the Buddha was on carpet that smelled of stale coffee. We performed the my honeymoon, when my wife and I traveled walking meditation and basic yoga. Someone sneezed. T through Southeast Asia. One of our first stops Someone groaned. My nose itched. I tried to resist in Bangkok was Wat Traimit, home to a five-ton Bud- scratching it. Instead I strove to experience the itch ful- dha made of solid gold. Sammy, our guide, explained ly as it happened in the present moment, to recognize that for years the statue had been hidden under a ce- it as a bodily sensation, to regard it with detachment,

Commentary 39 While many Buddhist principles resonate with me deeply, others stir a deep discomfort. At no point have I thought of myself as anything other than Jewish. and then to let it go. It didn’t work. I scratched my something makes it so. My freshman year of college, I nose. I had to consider myself among the lucky ones. lived on a hall with nine occupants, four of them Sab- My classmates brought with them debilitating chronic bath-observant Jews and five non-Jews, one of whom pain, severe psychological trauma, lifelong depression. approached me midsemester in a state of excitement. My chief complaint was fatherhood. “It’s cool how you guys do Shabbos,” he said. “I could For the past five and a half years I have main- really use that in my life.” He then informed me that tained a spotty practice. I wish I were able to claim, he and several of the other non-Jews had decided to as does a more consistent friend, that I do it every day undertake a Sabbath of their own: no email, no phone. because I do it every day. Meditation serves a straight- On the one hand, how validating; how flatter- forward function in my life, and there are periods when ing, that another could see the beauty and value of a I need it more or less. I sit in the morning, before my practice that hindered my social life and marked me wife and children have woken up, seldom for more than as aberrant. On the other hand, hang on a goddamned 10 minutes at a stretch. Sometimes time runs short, and second. That’s mine. the choice is either to meditate or to pray. Sometimes You don’t have to subscribe to the dharma to the baby starts screaming and I can do neither. Some- realize that such kneejerk possessiveness is wrong, not times I get distracted and spend 45 minutes answering to mention pointless. And the desire for a non-Jewish emails. While many Buddhist principles resonate with Shabbos is infinitely more benign than, say, the antics me deeply, others stir a deep discomfort. At no point of fashion designer John Galliano, who declared his have I thought of myself as anything other than Jewish. love for Hitler before stepping out into the streets of In dissecting the present-day landscape of Amer- Manhattan dressed in Hasidic garb and fake sidelocks. ican JewBus, Sigalow faces a familiar problem: Who is Good faith is what distinguishes homage from mock- a Jew? She opts for the big tent, including “anyone who ery. Besides, I’m grateful to live in a society where Gal- identifies as such, even if they are also an ordained liano’s entitled to be a bigoted prick. Buddhist priest who maintains little to no Jewish A religion that fails to transfer—to other loca- practice.” There’s an added twist: Who is a Buddhist? tions, other times, other minds—is not a religion; it’s By necessity, she must adopt the same standard, and a lone weirdo shouting on a streetcorner. Everywhere thus her subjects range from “prominent communal Buddhism has traveled, it has molded to the shape leaders (e.g., ordained monks, lamas, and roshis) to… of the place: Thailand, Burma, China, the Park Slope casual meditators with little to no involvement in the Jewish Center. Diaspora Judaism arguably provides Buddhist community.” The book is an ethnography, the best example of survival through its peculiar com- more descriptive than normative, and it would be odd bination of rigidity and adaptation. At the same time, and unworkable for Sigalow to play gatekeeper. But it I cannot and do not want to deny the melancholy of is worth nothing the asymmetry such a methodology deracination. The terror I felt in Wat Traimit, that sud- creates. It’s one thing for born Jews to self-identify as den threat of loss of self, ought not to be suppressed. Jews, another for them to self-identify as Buddhists. These tensions strengthen us; they remind us that For the most part, Buddhists-from-birth appear identity is local, temporal, and antifragile. Siddhartha to have responded to this massive crashing of their Gautama found enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, under gates with remarkable equanimity. To be sure, there is the Bodhi Fig Tree. My ancestors, the Levites, stood grumbling in isolated corners. But as one practitioner on the Temple steps, singing psalms while the priests put it to me, a central tenet of the dharma is that at- waded barefoot through blood and sacrificial smoke. tachment leads to suffering. It follows that adherents I acknowledge that this sort of thinking is nostal- relinquish all claims of possession—even with respect gia, and a false one at that. I recognize its futility. Many to their own heritage. days all you need is a slice of American cheese. There I admire this attitude. It also makes me sad. are days, too, when I stalk the supermarket aisles, While I gag at cries of “cultural appropriation,” it’s searching product labels for kosher certification and equally fatuous to insist that simply calling oneself craving the stink of singed fat.q

40 Why Are Jews Buddhists? : January 2020 Politics & Ideas

Gorsuch Were the Joys

A Republic, If You Can Keep It short musings on the American it is not: Justice is not a pretext for By Neil Gorsuch, with Jane way of life, Gorsuch returns to the judges to rule in favor of the most Nitze and David Feder centrality of a particular notion of sympathetic party or the best-liked, Crown Forum, 352 pages justice that exemplifies the Mosaic which is why forms of restraint Law in a manner unusual for a such as originalism, by which Gor- Reviewed by Tal Fortgang high-ranking figure in American such says “everyone gets the ben- public life. efit of the written law’s terms,” are F BARACK Obama was “The A Republic, If You Can Keep so crucial. First Jewish President,” ac- It is an extended exhortation of Justice is not, pointedly, uplift- cording to one magazine, or the American people, and it an- ing the downtrodden or humbling “such a traditional Jew nounces as much with its title. In the wealthy and powerful. sometimes” to another, then citing Benjamin Franklin’s charac- What, then, is it? Gorsuch ex- I Supreme Court Justice Neil Gor- terization of the new form of gov- plains it this way: “The least pow- such might be our country’s chief ernment that he and the Founders erful among us get the same treat- rabbi. Yes, he is an Episcopalian had created, Gorsuch reminds us ment as the most powerful” if the who likes to fish and raise animals to appreciate and uphold the best Constitution is understood prop- in rural Colorado, but such a desig- of our republican tradition. erly. “All litigants, whether popular nation seems apt in light of his new First and foremost among our or reviled, will receive equal protec- book, A Republic, If You Can Keep responsibilities is preserving the tion under law and due process for It. Throughout the collection of Constitution’s quietly radical con- their grievances.” speeches, judicial opinions, and ception of justice, a principle that This vision is akin to a bedrock arises whether Gorsuch is promot- principle throughout the Bible, Tal Fortgang is a senior re- ing originalism, textualism, repub- part of what made it radical in its search associate at the American lican virtue, judicial restraint, or time and what places it at the heart Enterprise Institute. This is his first Lincolnian brotherhood. To under- of Western civilization. It is crystal- appearance in Commentary. stand what it is, let us define what lized in Leviticus 19: “You shall do

Commentary 41 no unrighteousness in judgment: disobeying company orders that You shall not favor the poor nor dis- Keeping put him at risk for hypothermia. favor the mighty, but with justice i Gorsuch wrote in that case that shall you judge your fellow.” It is no our the plain reading of the federal stray verse. It is echoed through- labor law under dispute did not out biblical discussions of the law, republic entails forbid the company from firing in stark contrast to the “unequal maintenance of the “frozen trucker,” as the case weights” the Israelites were com- came to be known. manded to reject. “Justice, justice more than justice In short: Labor law prohibits shall you pursue,” Deuteronomy alone. Our form the TransAm trucking company reminds us—not the preferential from firing an employee if he “re- treatment of wounded or needy or of self-rule fuses to operate a vehicle” out suffering groups. requires judges of fear of injury. But the frozen The creed Gorsuch shares with trucker did not refuse to operate a the Bible is what he calls having and citizens alike vehicle; he abandoned his trailer the “judicial courage” to rule in to be dedicated and drove away. accordance with what the law de- While some judges determined mands, rather than with the party to protecting that “refusing to operate a vehicle” the judge prefers. Gorsuch praises included “choosing to operate a “self-restraint in the exercise of individual rights. vehicle,” Gorsuch could not abide power,” or fealty to the law in the We must also be rewriting the text of the statute. It face of great pressure to favor one was an awkward show of “judicial side of a dispute, as the highest virtuous, civil, courage,” but a correct one none- form of courage. and honest. theless. “It might be fair to ask The model here is Gorsuch’s whether TransAm’s decision was a 19th-century predecessor John wise or kind one,” Gorsuch wrote Marshall Harlan, the “Great Dis- in his dissent. “But it’s not our job senter” who rejected the Court’s professors and eager future litiga- to answer questions like that. Our infamous separate-but-equal deci- tors bound up in the cause of social only task is to decide whether the sion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). equality, ready to bring down the decision was an illegal one.” Justice Harlan appealed to a higher mighty—white, male, heterosexual, For his textualist orthodoxy, law, insisting that the Constitution cisgender, have your pick—while Gorsuch was derided for being itself is “color-blind, and neither raising up the lowly and oppressed. colder than the trucker’s frozen knows nor tolerates classes among That may or may not be a noble and brakes, and Senator Chuck Schum- citizens.” The law is a human in- valuable goal, Justice Gorsuch may er said that the case proved that stantiation reflecting a truth under concede, but it is not justice. Gorsuch “prefers CEOs over truck God, that “the humblest is the peer Keeping a republic entails con- drivers, executives over employers, of the most powerful.” stant and careful maintenance of and corporations over consumers.” more than justice alone. Our form It’s a sad but familiar state ARLAN AND Gorsuch of self-rule requires judges and of affairs. The Senate minority share a view of justice citizens alike to be dedicated to leader either did not understand H with ancient Mosaic protecting individual rights and a judge’s job—to interpret the law roots that today seems supremely mindful of our obligations to be neutrally—or thought that his con- radical. It is a humble yet devas- virtuous, civil, and honest. stituents were not clever enough tating indictment of the injustice It is impossible not to read to understand the distinction. The of social-justice movements that this work of inspiration as a soon-thereafter-confirmed justice they regard certain individuals, subtle defense against the attacks now presents a pithy defense of his by virtue of the circumstances of Senate Democrats leveled against approach: “Rules of grammar play their birth, as moral creditors or then–Judge Gorsuch during his no favorites.” If you do not uphold debtors, and explicitly reject Jus- confirmation hearings in 2017. the law as written, you are not tak- tice Harlan’s color-blindness as yet They slammed Gorsuch for having ing it seriously. Gorsuch shows per- another form of racism. Our na- ruled in a 2016 dissent against a suasively why an outcome such as tion’s law schools are teeming with truck driver who was fired after the fired frozen trucker is the right

42 Politics & Ideas : January 2020 judicial decision, though it may be unfortunate and a bit nasty on the company’s part. Are Millennials On his defenses of the building blocks of a fair and free society the book succeeds. But Gorsuch falters by refusing to take up (Avocado) important aspects of the current debate over judicial activism. A controversy is raging now within conservative legal circles over the Toast? question of “judicial engagement.” This is the notion that an active ju- Fear Your Future: How the Deck nials and Why Socialism Would diciary can and should invalidate Is Stacked Against Millennials Make It Worse, Philip Klein has en- democratically passed laws that and Why Socialism Would Make tered the fray. Klein, executive edi- may trample unwritten liberties It Worse tor of the Washington Examiner, found in the Constitution or its By Philip Klein is firmly on the side of Millennials. amendments. Many conservatives Templeton Press, 200 pages In this slim volume, which also argue against engagement, decry- contains rebuttals of a sort from ing it as a form of improper judi- Reviewed by Jack Butler National Review writers David cial activism, preferring instead Harsanyi and Ramesh Ponnuru, “judicial restraint” that defers to N 2017, Tim Gurner, a Klein makes a convincing case that legislatures in most instances. 35-year-old Australian Baby Boomers really have shafted Ought a judge be vigilant in multimillionaire, achieved Millennials. And, of larger concern the pursuit of liberty, or respect a strange sort of fame for conservatives, this great injus- the equally important principle of when he laid into the finan- tice has made my generation more republican rule? Justice Clarence I cial irresponsibility of his peers, the open to dramatic increases in the Thomas has written that there Millennials. Gurner said on Austra- growth of government. are “founding principles” formed lia’s version of 60 Minutes, “When I “Millennials,” Klein argues, by the Declaration of Indepen- was trying to buy my first home, I “have legitimate reasons to be re- dence and the Constitution, such as wasn’t buying smashed avocado for sentful, particularly toward baby “equality and liberty,” that ought to $19 and four coffees at $4 each.” boomers.” Boomers got to enjoy shape our thinking above and be- And so the meme of avocado toast America’s immense postwar pros- yond constitutional interpretation. as the foodstuff of the heedless nev- perity, yet they “selfishly refused These are unavoidable questions er-grown-up came into being. to grapple with any of the na- for the modern judge, questions This purported Millennial deli- tion’s serious problems and left a that cleave originalists into mul- cacy—which, I will confess, I have staggering level of debt and ob- tiple camps, and Gorsuch leaves never consumed—now serves as ligations for future generations.” the expectant reader squinting for shorthand for a larger debate about The numbers are obvious to those insights into how he goes about ap- the economic fortune of Millenni- willing to see. The national debt proaching them. als like me. Are we wanton disso- is at historic highs, exceeding 100 Still, there is little doubt that lutes, frittering away our earnings percent of GDP for seven consecu- Justice Gorsuch will be a stalwart chasing experiences and Instagram tive years for the first time in histo- defender of justice in the bibli- likes? Or are we hapless victims ry, and only increasing as time goes cal sense during his tenure on of unfavorable economic circum- on. And it is doing so, Klein notes, the high court, which alone is stances, many of them foisted on us “during a time of relative peace enough to celebrate. And though by preceding generations, particu- and prosperity.” Put perhaps more his book is at times unsatisfactory larly Baby Boomers? viscerally, from 1974 to 2018, young to the reader seeking insights into With Fear Your Future: How the Americans’ share of the national a great legal mind, it is a clear Deck Is Stacked Against Millen- debt increased by 28 times while and quietly countercultural call- their income increased only by 4.5 to-arms in the defense of our best Jack Butler is the host of Rico- times, based on Klein’s analysis of republican virtues.q chet’s Young Americans podcast. various government figures.

Commentary 43 This growth in the debt, he adds, says that it’s doable and points out is driven not by an unusual rev- In the that “we are no longer talking about enue shortfall but rather an excess i children, after all.” of spending in two areas: Social Great Politically, Klein understands Security and Medicare. In 1968, the Millennial view: “If one side these programs accounted for 15.8 Recession’s is telling them to essentially stop percent of the federal budget. In aftermath, whining, and the other side is 2018, they constituted 40 percent, speaking sympathetically about and they are set only to grow as Milliennials still their problems and promising to Baby Boomers continue to retire feel as if they alleviate them, it’s pretty clear and live long, fiscally inconvenient which side they are going to lives. This cavalcade of worrisome don’t have it as choose.” And he does get to offer- figures at times makes a reader feel good as previous ing some positive prescriptions for like astronaut David Bowman go- relieving the Millennial plight. But ing through the Stargate at the end generations. And they remain mostly of the green- of 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, they perceive eyeshade variety. with debt projections flying by in a There is much to be said for green blur instead of stars. this, in Klein’s eyeshades and fiscal probity. But vot- Klein argues that “America does view, ‘as a ers, young and old alike, have proven not redistribute wealth from the somewhat skeptical of budgetary rich to the poor as much as it redis- consequence of restraint and traditional belt-tight- tributes wealth from the young to ening when offered as arguments in the old.” This is true not only of old- the failures of themselves. Whatever the flaws of age entitlements but also of new, capitalism.’ the quasi-socialism of the left—and broader ones, such as Obamacare, there are many—it does offer a vi- which uniquely disadvantage the sion of an easier future, even though young. And it is true also for the because of this loose association of history tells us the goodies on offer broader economy, where Boomers economic distress with capitalism, are a sham. As a result, some on the have either actively enacted or pas- they are increasingly open to what right are convinced that their side sively allowed government policies they perceive as its opposite, even if needs to offer a variation on stat- that have made the job market government action helps explain at ism, redirected toward conservative more credential-mad, education least some of their ills. ends. But that is a dead end. In a more expensive (and student-loan In Klein’s view, Millennials have sprawling and diverse country, one debt worse), and non-rental hous- adopted this stance because they growing only more so every year, it ing less accessible for succeeding have been victimized. But Harsanyi, should make increasingly less sense generations. the first of Klein’s chosen interlocu- to centralize government activity in In the aftermath of the Great tors, brazenly dispels the notion Washington, not more. And in a time Recession, when the oldest of my of Millennial blamelessness, pro- of social anomie and impersonal peers entered the workforce, Mil- claiming that “no generation has government, the prospect of reat- lennials continue to feel as if they ever faced as few serious challenges taching to smaller, more personal don’t have it as good as previous as millennials.” He is right that Mil- institutions should be more attrac- generations. And they perceive this, lennials enjoy certain advantages tive, not less. Klein’s warnings about in Klein’s view, as “a consequence over other generations. And both the danger of debt, well taken as they of the failures of capitalism.” Hence he and Ponnuru are right that some are, cannot address these concerns. the frightening level of comfort of the indicators in which Millenni- Klein still deserves consider- that Millennials have with social- als come out looking poorly are the able credit for taking Millenni- ism (surpassing majority approval result of choices Millennials make. al’s concerns, debatable as they in some polls of young people) or The unanswerable question here might be, seriously. And if my even Communism—and the dispro- is to what extent Millennials—and generation and those that come portionately youthful enthusiasm any of us, really—can make their after don’t pay attention to the for politicians such as (the elderly) own choices in the face of adverse obvious fiscal realities he out- Bernie Sanders and (the youth- material circumstances. Klein ar- lines, we really will be toast. And I ful) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And gues that it’s difficult; Harsanyi doubt it’ll come with avocados.q

44 Politics & Ideas : January 2020 religious groups, largely negating the effect of their higher fertility rates. While the book doesn’t try Jewsraelis to explain this trend, years of polls showing that most Israelis would have preferred halachic solutions to the Jewish state’s problems (for #IsraeliJudaism: Portrait of a and that views national identity as instance, conversion) make me Cultural Revolution a crucial component of Judaism. suspect that the religious estab- By Shmuel Rosner and For instance, 73 percent of Jewish lishment’s unwillingness even to Camil Fuchs Israelis say being Jewish includes consider such solutions is a con- Jewish People Policy Institute, observing Jewish festivals and cus- tributing factor. Precisely because 282 pages toms. And 72 percent say being a “Jewsraelis” love their state, they good Jew includes raising one’s have little use for a version of Ju- Reviewed by Evelyn Gordon children to serve in the Israel De- daism uninterested in supporting fense Forces, while 60 percent say the national project. HROUGH 2,000 years it includes raising one’s children to This drift toward secularism of exile, Judaism sur- live in Israel. means religion is largely losing the vived because rabbin- This fusion of religious and battle for the public square, on ev- ic sages reshaped it national identity characterizes 55 erything from LGBT issues to com- into a portable reli- percent of Israeli Jews, whom mercial activity on Shabbat. And Tgion rather than one anchored to a Rosner and Fuchs infelicitously attempts to reverse this through specific land. But what happens dub “Jewsraelis.” The rest divide state coercion have largely failed, once a Jewish state is reestab- roughly equally among people the authors conclude, because dic- lished? Judaism is changing once whose identity is primarily Jewish tates that the public doesn’t accept again, Shmuel Rosner and Camil (17 percent), primarily Israeli (15 mostly get ignored. Fuchs argue in #IsraeliJudaism: percent), and primarily universal- In general, they argue, econom- Portrait of a Cultural Revolution— ist (13 percent). ics prevails: “Whatever the public only this time, from the bottom up. Israeli Judaism necessarily dif- wants, the public gets.” So, many The book, published in He- fers from both the Diaspora and stores now open on Shabbat even brew in 2018 and English in 2019, pre-state versions, since its na- though it’s technically illegal in is based on a survey of beliefs tional components, like army ser- most municipalities, because it’s and practices among 3,005 Israeli vice, aren’t possible outside a profitable. Indeed, 70 to 80 percent Jews. The survey was commis- Jewish state. Moreover, Judaism of secular Israelis go shopping on sioned by the Jewish People Policy is present in Israel’s public square Shabbat, and around 90 percent Institute, where Rosner is a senior to a degree impossible elsewhere, travel or go to the beach, despite of- fellow; Fuchs was the project’s from public-school classes on the ficial restrictions on Shabbat com- statistician. A book based on a Bible (since it’s part of Israel’s merce and public transportation. survey could easily become an cultural heritage) to the country’s Laws or no laws, “Israelis, all in all, indigestible mass of statistics, but complete shutdown on Yom Kip- do what they please on Shabbat,” Rosner and Fuchs have produced pur. Unsurprisingly, this produces the authors write. a highly readable (and superbly fierce arguments over what Juda- Yet restaurants and hotels in- translated) analysis of what this ism’s public component should creasingly keep kosher, because data actually tell us. look like, including efforts to that, too, is what the public wants: What they tell us, the authors dictate it through legislative or The new Israeli Judaism remains say, is that a “new Judaism” is executive action. strongly traditional despite its emerging in Israel—one that values Yet the book rebuts the popular rejection of halacha. Fully 64 Jewish tradition, though not strict narrative that Israelis are becom- percent of Israeli Jews keep ko- adherence to halacha (Jewish law), ing increasingly religious and reli- sher at home. Almost all attend gious coercion is growing. It notes a Passover seder, and 64 percent Evelyn Gordon is a journal- that the ultra-Orthodox, religious read “the whole Haggadah.” On ist and commentator living in Zionist, and traditional communi- Shabbat, 65 percent light candles Israel. ties are all losing members to less and 68 percent make Kiddush.

Commentary 45 The vast majority of Israelis bar- give more to charity, and volunteer mitzvah their children, and even Though more frequently.” among the “totally secular,” 78 per- i In fact, they write, “the more we cent have their sons (though often half examine what makes Jews in Israel not their daughters) read Torah at Jewish, what keeps them aware the ceremony. of Israeli of their Jewishness, and what Indeed, though half of Israeli Jews define connects them to the rest of the Jews define themselves as secu- Jewish people, we find this almost lar, around two-fifths of secular themselves as always involves action” (emphasis Jews are what the authors term secular, around in original). “Customs or rituals, “somewhat traditional secular”—by daily routines, or annual calen- American Jewish standards quite two-fifths of dars... A robust Jewish sense of self traditional. For instance, 59 percent secular Jews are almost always comes together with keep kosher at home; by compari- action: Jews study, celebrate, and son, a 2013 Pew Research poll found what the authors congregate.” that only 31 percent of Conservative term ‘somewhat But that has always been true. Jews in America (and 7 percent of And indeed, what Rosner and Reform Jews) do so. traditional Fuchs term a “new Judaism” is in Overall, almost 90 percent of secular’—by many ways a return to Judaism’s Jewish Israelis think being Jew- roots. The Judaism of the Bible ish is important, feel Jewish to American also fused religious practice and a very great extent, and expect national identity; biblical com- their children and grandchildren standards quite mandments about Shabbat and to be Jewish. That’s precisely why traditional. kashrut sit alongside command- arguments over the state’s Jewish ments about national life, from identity are so heated, Rosner and establishing courts to measures to Fuchs write: “What is at stake is help the poor to restrictions on the something that is important to often differ on what that entails. As king’s powers. them.” And since 70 years isn’t an example, Rosner and Fuchs cite To take just one example, the very long in a nation’s life, it’s un- the immigration debate. American Bible required all able-bodied men surprising that this issue remains Jews, “shaped by the feeling of be- to participate in “obligatory wars” unresolved. Nevertheless, they say, ing a minority in their own country, (as opposed to wars of choice). And the “Jewsraeli” compound of tradi- will say that the most moral thing despite the inevitable differences tion and nationality clearly exerts to do is to offer shelter and security between a modern Jewish state and “the strongest gravitational pull.” to anyone in need.” But Israeli Jews its biblical predecessors, that paral- As one example, even half of ultra- are “shaped by the feeling of being lels today’s “Jewsraeli” belief that Orthodox respondents said being a majority fighting to remain a ma- being a good Jew includes raising a good Jew includes raising your jority” and deem it “a key moral im- your children to serve in the IDF. children to live in Israel. perative to safeguard Israel’s secu- Both are predicated on the under- Rosner and Fuchs offer impor- rity and character.” Consequently, standing that not only does national tant observations on differences they think the world’s only Jewish survival require an army, but pro- between Israeli and American state should focus on absorbing tecting fellow Jews is a moral good. Judaism. As the authors correctly Jewish refugees rather than open- Zionism, Rosner and Fuchs note, these are largely shaped by ing its doors to everyone. write, sought not only to rescue objective reality. For instance, Is- The authors also challenge the Jews but also to rescue Judaism raeli Jews observe more traditions idea that Jewish identity can be from “exhaustion, paralysis, insig- partly because doing so is easier exclusively about values. In theory, nificance, and irrelevance.” Like in Israel. expressing one’s Judaism through them, I think Israel’s “cultural revo- But the largest differences stem helping others rather than observ- lution” might ultimately revitalize from the requirements of state- ing Shabbat sounds reasonable. Judaism. But if it does, it will be be- hood. Thus while both communi- But in reality, they found, groups cause it’s less a true revolution than ties agree that being a good Jew that engage in more traditional a restoration of Judaism’s original includes being a good person, they practices “are also the ones who dual nature.q

46 Politics & Ideas : January 2020 instructors and inquisitors.” This, then, explains the fresh appeal of nationalism in former Soviet states. European This thesis doesn’t help explain why voters in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United King- dom are expressing populist and Disunion nationalist views similar to those of the Hungarians and Poles. Who, after all, are the imitators imitating? The Light That Failed: Why competing countries as either nice Clearly, something else is going on the West Is Losing the Fight for or not-nice actors doing things in across the Continent. Democracy keeping with their disposition. It Take the European Union. Its By Ivan Krastev and relies on emotional readings and larger members make sweeping de- Stephen Holmes psychological impressions more cisions unilaterally. Might this have Pegasus Books, 246 pages than on-the-ground facts regard- something to do with the union’s ing the countries and policies in instability? There is no more fla- Reviewed by Kevin J. McNamara question. And it takes little account grant unilateralist than German of the actions or policies of either Chancellor Angela Merkel. While HE Light That Failed the EU itself or its most influential Brussels loves to invoke the “rule seeks to explain the members, France and Germany. of law” and “democracy” when- ongoing turmoil With The Light That Failed, Ivan ever it points an accusatory finger within the European Krastev and Stephen Holmes have eastward, there was nothing demo- Union that many see largely written yet another version cratic, or necessarily lawful, about T as evidence of a new East–West Eu- of this psycho-morality tale. Merkel’s unilateral decision to al- ropean divide. Much contemporary Krastev, a fellow at the Institute low more than 1 million migrants analysis of this type follows a com- for Human Sciences, Vienna, and into Europe in 2015. A Bundestag mon blueprint. It goes like this: The Holmes, a professor at New York report concluded that there had United Kingdom has done some- University School of Law, postulate been no legal basis for Merkel’s de- thing bad in voting for Brexit, while that soon after the collapse of the cision, and she never put the issue Poland and Hungary have done Soviet Union and the resulting eu- to a vote either at the Bundestag or similarly bad things in embracing phoria of its liberated nations, things in the EU. She merely discussed it illiberal, populist, and Christian po- took a dark psychological turn. The with a few ministers and aides and litical parties. The argument contin- effort of Central and Eastern Euro- then proceeded. ues that the rise of populism, East pean countries (“the imitators”) to According to a detailed report and West, threatens the health and emulate the countries of the West in Der Spiegel, Merkel also ignored future of the EU, to say nothing of (“the imitated”) required the East to pleas by her interior minister and democracy and liberalism itself. acknowledge the moral superiority the head of the German Federal Po- (When the analysis extends to of the West. What’s more, it meant lice to implement border controls. events beyond Europe, the election the imitators had to accept a West- Merkel’s decision violated Germa- of Donald Trump is viewed as an ad- ern political model that did not al- ny’s asylum laws, and those laws ditional menace.) low for adaptations to local cultures were aligned with the EU “Dublin This approach requires a view of and traditions, and to accept that rule,” which states that all mi- the West “could legitimately claim grants must be returned to the EU Kevin J. McNamara, an as- a right to monitor and evaluate the country-of-entry. With the Dublin sociate scholar of the Foreign Policy progress of imitating countries on an rule effectively erased by Merkel’s Research Institute, is the author of ongoing basis.” The authors say that actions, migrants were left to move Dreams of a Great Small Nation: for the countries of Central and East- around the Continent far and wide, The Mutinous Army That Threat- ern Europe, “the project of adopting into democratic countries whose ened a Revolution, Destroyed an a Western model under Western citizens had no say in the matter. Empire, Founded a Republic, and supervision feels like a confession of Merkel has made other mistakes Remade the Map of Europe (New having failed to escape Central Eu- in the same vein. But Krastev and York: Public Affairs, 2016). rope’s historical vassalage to foreign Holmes see none of this. Rather,

Commentary 47 they lay the blame for the EU’s constantly exposed, through sen- Europe, for example, a “liberal” crisis on European hysterics who sationalized television report- is what we Americans would call supposedly exaggerated the degree ing, to the immigration problems a conservative or libertarian. And of the problem. “Central Europe’s plaguing Western Europe.” And while the authors would never call fear-mongering populists inter- while Krastev and Holmes con- French President Emmanuel Ma- preted the refugee crisis as conclu- demn those leaders for resisting cron a “populist,” there is an argu- sive evidence that liberalism has our “post-national” age, they write ment to be made that he fits the defi- weakened the capacity of nations that “democracy presupposes the nition. He had less than two years’ to defend themselves in a hostile existence of a bounded political experience in government when he world,” they write. But if there was community and is therefore inher- created his own political party (En nothing to “fear,” to what “crisis” ently national. Nationalism cannot Marche!) issued a manifesto entitled are the authors referring? They disappear.” What exactly does this “Révolution,” ran for president, and don’t say so, but the crisis arose di- mean for a republic in the EU, won a triple-digit majority in parlia- rectly from open borders, which do, whose leaders invoke democracy as ment to become the youngest leader in fact, weaken a country’s capacity a totem and condemn nationalism of France since Napoleon. for self-defense. as a crime? The authors don’t say. The Light That Failed offers In a similar contradictory pas- Another problem with The Light simplistic conclusions and ignores sage, the authors condemn Cen- That Failed is that it relies on im- the facts and scenarios that tell a tral and Eastern European leaders portant terms such as “liberal” or more nuanced story or a different for anti-refugee “fear-mongering” “populist” without defining them. In story. Unlike Krastev’s 2017 book, even as they acknowledge that international affairs, this can make After Europe, it’s a disappointing “Central and East Europeans are things quite confusing. In Western piece of work.q

48 Politics & Ideas : January 2020 Culture & Civilization

All About the Mankiewiczes

Hollywood’s great, tem, it was run along factory-like THE THREE HUNDRED IS PEA- sad brothers lines by men who cared only for the NUTS. MILLIONS ARE TO BE bottom line, and most of the artists GRABBED OUT HERE AND YOUR By Terry Teachout it hired knew exactly what they’d ONLY COMPETITION IS IDIOTS. gotten themselves into. They, too, DON’T LET THIS GET AROUND.” HE American film in- were there to make money, and The moneygrabbing, it turned dustry exists to make their attitude toward the industry out, wasn’t quite that simple. A money by making mov- was purely cynical—or so, at any young writer of promise, Mankie- ies. In the days of the rate, they claimed. wicz covered theater for the New Hollywood studio sys- Herman J. Mankiewicz certainly York Times and the New Yorker T seemed to have thought as much and believed himself to be a seri- Terry Teachout is Commen- when, after going to work as a staff ous playwright in the making. He tary’s critic-at-large and the drama writer for Paramount in 1926, he saw the movie business as nothing critic of the Wall Street Journal. sent this telegram to his friend more than a quick way to build Satchmo at the Waldorf, his one- Ben Hecht: “WILL YOU ACCEPT up a “lump sum” (in his words) man play about Louis Armstrong, THREE HUNDRED PER WEEK that would subsidize his more has been produced off Broadway and TO WORK FOR PARAMOUNT PIC- ambitious literary efforts—and en- throughout America. TURES. ALL EXPENSES PAID. couraged other promising writers,

Commentary 49 Herman (left) won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Citizen Kane (1941), while Joseph (right) won four: Best Director and Best Screenplay for A Letter to Three Wives (1950) and Best Director and Best Screenplay for All About Eve (1951). among them Hecht and Joseph L. most brilliant and individual screen larities in their personalities, both Mankiewicz, his younger brother, works of the studio era. of which come through with lively to use it in the same way. Instead, Which Mankiewicz was more clarity. Above all, she tells their it used him. Mank (as Herman was representative of those writers tightly entwined stories thought- known) spent the rest of his life who submitted to Hollywood’s fully and well, with a sympathetic in Hollywood, dying of alcohol- demands? Given the overlapping but honest appreciation of their ism and festering disappointment arcs of their careers, a dual biog- talents—and limitations. after spending a quarter-century raphy of the two men makes per- writing nothing but screenplays, fect sense, and Sydney Ladensohn ANK was the kind of per- most of which were immediately Stern, author of The Brothers son who, when young, is forgettable. Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, M invariably described by Joseph, by contrast, managed to and Hollywood Classics, proves far his friends as a “brilliant conver- get the better of his employers, as more than equal to the formidable sationalist” and is universally ex- well as of the elaborate system they technical challenges of writing pected by them to do great things. created to keep their writers under it.* She succeeds in keeping the Such people are often irresistibly control. Having established himself narrative strands of their lives drawn to failure. It is easy to see, as a producer at MGM in the 1930s sufficiently separate to make for however, why no one foresaw that and early 1940s, he then moved to easy reading while simultaneously failure at the outset of his career, 20th Century-Fox. There he wrote illuminating the instructive simi- least of all Ben Hecht, who dubbed and directed numerous films of his old friend “the Voltaire of Cen- high artistic merit, the most notable * University Press of Mississippi, 480 pag- tral Park West” and unhesitatingly es. An excerpt of the book, “The Anti-Nazi of which, All About Eve (1950), is Movie That Didn’t Get Made,” appeared followed him to Hollywood. “Never universally regarded as one of the in the December issue of Commentary. have I known a man with so quick

50 Culture & Civilization : January 2020 an eye and ear—and tongue, for return ticket to Manhattan. He had the strut of fools,” Hecht wrote. Orson no choice but to stay in Hollywood, The potential was clearly there in i eventually acquiring a reputation abundance, and it took longer for Welles for irresponsibility that made stu- Hecht to spot the weaknesses of dio heads reluctant to hire him, character concealed by his dazzling was incapable of not least because he also liked to quickness of wit. writing a script insult them to their faces. In the Born in 1897, Herman was the most celebrated of his ripostes, he oldest son of a family of secular on his own. went after Columbia’s Harry Cohn, German Jews. He became a jour- So he turned who informed his colleagues one nalist after serving in World War day that he had an infallible way to I, working for George S. Kaufman to Herman spot a bad film during a screening: on the drama page of the New Mankiewicz “When I sit still, it’s a hit. When I’m York Times and later becoming antsy…it’s a sure flop.” To which the first theater critic of the New and hired him Mank replied, in the version of the Yorker. Stage-struck from college to collaborate oft-quoted anecdote cited in The onward, he longed to emulate Brothers Mankiewicz: “In other Kaufman, who successfully wrote on a screenplay words, you have a monitor ass and directed plays throughout his inspired by the wired to a hundred million other tenure at the Times, and he had asses.” Mank’s willingness to say the talent to do so. But Kaufman life of newspaper such things was part of why he was had the iron determination neces- loved by his fellow writers—and sary to turn himself into a theater magnate William hated by their bosses. professional. Not so Herman, a Randolph Joseph, who saw the effects of hard-drinking bon vivant who, like his brother’s self-destructive be- so many newspapermen, lacked Hearst. havior up close and loyally bailed the self-discipline that would have him out of innumerable financial allowed him to do more than toss crises, came to feel that Mank was off quotable wisecracks about the Brothers’ Monkey Business (1931) trying to escape the sting of failure world and its follies. and Horse Feathers (1932) and by “rendering himself unable to But Hollywood was made for W.C. Fields’s Million Dollar Legs prove he could achieve—and in men like Herman, whom it hired (1931). Even so, he hungered for the end, destroying himself with- by the carload to participate in the the undiluted pride of individual out guilt.” Only once did he suc- making of a product arising not authorship and so continued to try ceed in bucking the system. from individual vision but from to write stage plays with Kaufman In 1939, RKO, which was in a collective process of creation. A and Marc Connelly, though he dire financial straits and so was newspaper columnist capable of was unable to hold up his end of willing to take big chances, signed salting someone else’s first draft their abortive collaborations. By the tyro Orson Welles to a two- with snappy one-liners was as valu- that point, he was both a well-paid picture contract that gave him the able to that process as a seasoned screenwriter and a drunken de- unprecedented right of final cut playwright conversant with the generate gambler who lost much on his own films. In return, Welles finer points of theatrical construc- of his salary playing poker with would write, direct, and star in tion. Moreover, both kinds of writer his colleagues. “They can’t fire those films. What his new employ- could function independently, with me,” he assured Sara, his long- ers did not know was that Welles their contributions subsequently suffering wife. “I owe them too was incapable of writing a script on blended into a coherent whole by much money.” his own. So he turned to Herman, the studio producers under whom Mank’s growing indebtedness who had just been fired by MGM, they worked. kept him from breaking free of the and hired him to collaborate on a Despite the rigidity of this cycle of dependency familiar to screenplay inspired by the life of assembly-line system, Mank put other writers who had come to Cali- newspaper magnate William Ran- a personal stamp on some of the fornia to make their “lump sums” dolph Hearst. early sound comedies on which but found those sums squandered The result was Citizen Kane, he worked, most notably the Marx on swimming pools rather than a the story of a wealthy, monstrously

Commentary 51 vain publisher who dreamed in Welles was never again allowed to described by Stern in The Brothers vain of winning high political of- make a studio-backed movie over Mankiewicz: fice, posthumously told not from which he had anything like full a single point of view but from creative control. MGM’s writers toiled in gold- that of five different people who As for Mank, who was forced to en handcuffs. They enjoyed knew Kane as an adult but were do battle with Welles, a notorious comfortable, spacious offices, not privy to the childhood disap- credit hog, to receive on-screen first-rate secretaries, reason- pointment that set him on the path billing for his work on Kane, he able hours, and the prestige to final failure. Long fascinated by never wrote another film of any of knowing they were at the Hearst’s career, Mank was chiefly consequence. Demoralized by its top studio….In exchange, the responsible for the film’s initiat- commercial failure and his own writers functioned as cogs in ing concept, as well as for much persistent inability to finish any- [production chief Irving] Thal- of Kane’s sardonic dialogue and thing other than a screenplay, berg’s dehumanizing machine: He routinely shifted them from project to project and assigned more than one writer to the same picture at the same time, often without their knowledge.

Irresistibly attractive to women (his romantic conquests included Joan Crawford and Loretta Young) and increasingly powerful as a filmmaker, Joseph had no obvious reason for personal dissatisfaction. Yet he could not live with the fact that the studio system prevented him from having the final say over his own creative work.* His initial response to this frustrating reality was to try his hand at producing. Shifting to MGM’s production side in 1936, he worked on such top-tier Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, and Ann Sothern inA Letter to Three Wives (1949). films as Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and George Cukor’s The Philadelphia innovative structure. The 24-year- he worked instead on potboilers, Story (1940). But their success did old Welles imposed his prodigious drinking to fatal excess and dying not satisfy him: Joseph still longed directorial vision on the first draft at the age of 55 in 1953, disap- to write, and he concluded, as did of their jointly written screenplay pointed to the bitter end. “I seem Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder and turned it into a fully realized to become more and more of a rat before him, that to satisfy his own piece of high cinematic art. in a trap of my own construction, a creative urge he would have to di- Fine as it was, no other studio trap that I regularly repair when- rect his own scripts. As he explained would have dared to go near Citi- ever there seems to be danger of in a 1947 essay, “the direction of a zen Kane, whose jarringly disjunc- some opening that will enable me screenplay is the second half of the tive narrative approach was so far to escape,” he had told a friend nine writer’s work,” revealingly citing removed from accepted styles of years earlier. Kane as a case in point. filmmaking that it flopped at the This was why he moved to Fox box office (albeit in part because OSEPH Mankiewicz, by con- in 1944, exacting from his new Hearst’s henchmen went to great trast, had no trouble sat- bosses a contract that allowed him lengths to suppress it). And de- J isfying his money-minded to make his own films without spite the lavish praise of critics employers, for he was prepared * Hence the oft-quoted Hollywood joke, and the fact that its two authors to work within the production “Did you hear the one about the Polish shared an Oscar for its screenplay, system perfected by MGM, well starlet? She f--ked the writer.”

52 Culture & Civilization : January 2020 Bette Davis, Joe Mankiewicz, and Gary Merrill behind the scenes of All About Eve (1950). front-office interference. Follow- a prize role from an aging stage with amused, even affectionate, ing a series of apprentice efforts, star. Like Kane before it, All About detachment, much of it voiced by he scored with A Letter to Three Eve is a fictional “biography” of a the film’s most sharply drawn char- Wives (1949), a witty study of celebrity whose tale is told from acter, Addison DeWitt, a viperine suburban marriage and its dis- multiple points of view and whose drama critic: contents. It won him best-director subject matter is not so much the and best-screenplay Oscars and theater as celebrity itself. And There are in general two types established its creator in a single while the plot is soap opera–ish, of theatrical producers. One has stroke as a creative talent ca- its treatment is anything but that. a great many wealthier friends pable of making intelligent films As Joseph explained to Darryl F. who will risk a tax-deductible that nonetheless had mass-market Zanuck, the producer of All About loss. This type is interested in box-office appeal. Bolstered by its Eve, his intention was to make “a art. The other is one to whom success, he promptly wrote and very funny and penetrating high each production means poten- directed two more films for Fox, comedy about the theater” that tial ruin or fortune. This type is No Way Out (1950), a socially con- would “show up some of the weak- out to make a buck. scious crime drama that gave Sid- nesses of our longhaired brethren ney Poitier his first leading role, of the theater which they fondly As the film’s director, Joseph and All About Eve, the first film keep describing as ‘Hollywood.’” was in a position to ensure that his in which Joseph employed all his This description suggests that screenplay would be shot as writ- talents to maximum effect. Joseph had a nagging inferiority ten. Presumably, then, it was his Based on a short story by Mary complex when it came to theater. intention for All About Eve to come Orr, All About Eve centers on a con- Yet he was somehow able to por- across as a kind of filmed play, one niving young actress who steals tray the foibles of its practitioners whose dramatic effect has little to

Commentary 53 do with its visual elements. The cial filmmakers are unapologetic success of All About Eve derives Alas, about the artistic validity of their instead from the solidity of its dra- i chosen medium. Quentin Taran- matic carpentry and the crisp bril- Joseph tino, for example, told an inter- liance of its dialogue, spoken with viewer in 2009 that Joseph “could consummate flair by the perfectly Mankiewicz have held the script for All About balanced cast. was no more Eve up against every play ever It may be for this reason that written for the American stage and Joseph, even though he won an- capable than his said, ‘Suck my d--k!’ It’s that good.” other pair of Oscars for All About brother Herman Nor is Tarantino’s proposition self- Eve, still felt that he had some- evidently absurd: To the contrary, thing to prove. Whatever the rea- of functioning All About Eve is at least as effective son, he moved back to New York in either as a stage as any American stage comedy of 1951, seeking to reinvent himself its time. But the noisy belligerence in middle age as a highbrow artist artist or a writer with which Tarantino asserts its by staging La Bohème at the Met- of original absolute claim to primacy suggests ropolitan Opera and directing a that he, too, may suspect deep screen version of Julius Caesar in plays for stage down inside that there are more between more conventional proj- or screen, and things in heaven and earth than are ects. Alas, he was no more capable dreamt of in Pulp Fiction, or even than his brother of functioning ei- nothing he Jackie Brown. ther as a stage artist or a writer of At the same time, though, one original plays for stage or screen. did after All need not believe that All About He was a filmmaker pur sang, and About Eve was Eve is a better work of art than, though he stayed at the top of the say, Lost in Yonkers or The House Hollywood heap throughout the memorable. of Blue Leaves—or, for that mat- waning years of the studio system, ter, Citizen Kane—to appreciate its nothing that he did after All About artistic excellence. And no matter Eve was as memorable. man of coming to terms with the how complex a problem of critical essentially commercial nature of judgment is posed by a collectively IXTEEN YEARS before his the industry to which both men created work of art like All About death in 1993, Joseph made devoted their lives. To be sure, he Eve, surely the point is to relish S a startling confession to his changed his tune a few years later, the finished product for what it is first biographer: telling his daughter, “I’ve touched rather than deprecate it for what it more people with my movies… is not. But neither of the Mankie- I’ve done so little original work in than if I’d written one or two lousy wicz brothers was capable in the my life….I’ve pissed away what I novels. Or plays.” But while that end of defending the artistic valid- had.…I don’t know whether I’ll was nothing more than the truth, ity of the medium to which they go down as a leading film direc- it was a truth Joseph found hard devoted their lives. Such was their tor of my time. I don’t know if I’ll to accept, just as Herman Mankie- shared tragedy, one no less sad for even go down as a leading film wicz was even more painfully the fact that it was so well-compen- writer of my time. aware that he had failed to live up sated. If they had only had the self- to the great expectations of his col- assurance to know as much, their He had been, it appears, no leagues—and his brother. lives—especially Herman’s—might more capable at bottom than Her- Nowadays, of course, commer- have turned out very differently.q

54 Culture & Civilization : January 2020 HOLLYWOOD COMMENTARY continued from page 56 through the Ameri- it’s possible that my Venice Beach coffee shop will be can demographic timeline like a mouse through a boa overrun by people who are not famous to you but are constrictor—a visible bump inching its way from child- nevertheless extremely famous. hood to adulthood and on to other things. The actor’s For a while, it’s been easy for Hollywood gran- name and the title of his series were fun tidbits of trivia dees to wave off the stampede of unknowns, gobbling incoming college freshmen would share to break the up advertising dollars and viewer share. And while ice at parties and connect with their fellow students. there may be unlimited amounts of money to spend on But if you were a few years older or younger, you’d advertising, and though it’s possible that viewers have have no idea what they were talking about. It’s not, as an unquenchable thirst for more monthly entertain- Norma Desmond would have it, that he was once big ment fees, there are still only 24 hours in a day. The and then the pictures got small. He was never big. And average user of Snapchat spends about 30 minutes a the pictures were already small enough to fit into your day on the app, a few minutes less than the average pocket. Facebook user spends on that service. For YouTube, For years, there was a small pantheon of famous the number is slightly smaller—maybe 20 minutes Hollywood people, and they were pretty easy to keep per day—but when you start to add up the amount of track of. If you watched the Oscars, the Emmys, and time audiences are spending watching entertainment the Golden Globes, you could be confident that you created by and starring nobody in particular, it should had a handle on the celebrity population. Just as the make Hollywood nervous. elite New York Social Register was once defined as Chasen’s, in other words, is going to need a big- the number of people who could fit into Mrs. Astor’s ger banquet hall. Or, would need one, had Chasen’s not ballroom, the Hollywood Celebrity Elite—including closed for good in 1995. It’s now a Bristol Farms Super- the television, radio, and feature-film divisions—could market, open to everyone. Which is a rather poignant fit into the three main dining rooms at the old and very metaphor. exclusive Chasen’s Restaurant. Years ago I was waiting for my car at the valet The past decade—with its relentless expansion of stand outside a restaurant in Beverly Hills, which is things to click on—has ushered in a new kind of fame, about the only place in that stratified and roped-off something we might call the “Who the Hell Is That? Is community where we are all, briefly, at the same level. That a Famous Person? I Never Heard of That Person” I was standing next to one of the biggest and most suc- Era. cessful feature-film producers in the business—he was YouTube, the streaming video service that in waiting for his Tesla; I, for my Subaru Outback—and we many ways kicked off the Decade of the Nobodies, has were both watching a scene unfold across the street. An created an army of international superstars who could Indian gentleman was being interviewed by a television plop down next to you at the local coffee spot in near crew. He was clearly an important person to them. The anonymity—as long as you’re somewhere between 30 producer turned to me and asked, “Who is that guy?” and 60 years old. Snapchat—and its (possibly sinister) It turned out that I knew who he was. He was a Chinese competitor, TikTok—are star-making ma- huge star of Bollywood films. “Shah Rukh Khan,” I said. chines, turning attractive young nobodies into attrac- “One of the biggest stars in the world.” tive young nobodies with seriously large audiences. The producer looked at me and shrugged. YouTube is an easier platform upon which to “I never heard of him,” he said. make potfuls of money—the top performers on the Which isn’t the same thing as not being fa- service can make tens of millions of dollars a year—but mous. As the choices get wider and the screens get it’s only a matter of time before Snapchat and TikTok smaller—a process that has been accelerating for the can offer their stars similar pay packages. And you’ll past decade—there will be more and more extremely be lucky if you can name two of them. With Apple and famous people you cannot recognize. Which is why Disney and AT&T now competing with Netflix and they will likely be wearing T-shirts with their own Amazon by introducing new streaming programming, names on them.q

Commentary 55 HOLLYWOOD COMMENTARY A Decade of Nobodies ROB LONG

N MY OLD neighborhood in Venice Beach, Cali- handsome, slim young teen with the paunchy sorta- fornia, there was a scruffy and disheveled young homeless-y twentysomething guy with the croissant, Iman who hung around the local coffee shop. uncomfortably reminding us of the ravages of time and Well, there were many of those, of course—Ven- the Reaper who cannot be avoided. ice is a pretty laid-back, ramshackle kind of place—but More likely, though, it was an example of how this one was different. In the first place, he was a the definition of stardom has changed over the past paying customer. This was a particularly fancy cof- decade. As the media choices have fragmented into a fee shop, so the fact that the young man could afford kaleidoscope of channels and streamers and apps, it’s a daily cortado and a pistachio croissant meant that possible to be a very famous person that no one has despite the outfit, he was not home- ever heard of. One day you’re the big- less. In the second place, he almost gest star for a certain age segment, the always wore a T-shirt with the name THE next you’re sitting anonymously next to of an obscure (to me) designer on it. me at Intelligentsia Coffee on Abbott “That’s not an obscure de- Kinney Boulevard. signer,” a friend of mine told me, 2010s This isn’t the same thing as hav- when I pointed him out one morn- THE DECADE OF ing and losing a generational appeal, of ing. “That’s his name. He’s wearing RECKONING course. The oldsters who cluck-clucked a T-shirt with his own name on it.” at Elvis Presley’s swiveling hips didn’t “How do you know?” I asked. approve of what he was doing with his “Because I recognize him from his old show on pelvis, but they certainly knew who he was. It was the the Disney Channel. I mean, I wouldn’t without the T- same for the Beatles, Bobby Sherman, Madonna, and shirt, probably. He’s older now and chunkier. But with even Titanic-era Leonardo diCaprio. One definition of the face and the name so close together, yeah, it’s him.” stardom, from roughly the beginning of time until the It wasn’t entirely clear what the former child YouTube explosion about a decade ago, is a personality star was aiming at. Maybe it was an easy way to head who is simply too big to ignore. off interruptions—“Excuse me, I don’t mean to dis- I’m not talking about the old school rise-and-fall turb you, but my friend and I were wondering if you of a movie star, either. The young man sitting next to were—I mean, are—the guy from that Disney show?” me wasn’t having a Norma Desmond moment. His Or maybe it was a sly and clever piece of performance “stardom” had come on a targeted cable outfit, and art, forcing the viewer to compare the memory of the his fan base had been what the colorful phrasemakers in the media business like to call pre’s, tweens, and Rob Long has been the executive producer of six TV early teens. By the time his show was on and off the series. air, his audience had aged continued on page 55

56 Culture & Civilization : January 2020 YOU DESERVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH... Two-State Solution Still Possible? While sympathy for Palestinian self-rule is understandable, proponents of the two-state solution must resolve seven tough questions before it can be realistic. The two-state solution—one for Palestinian Arabs, one for 5. When will the Palestinians create a self- Israel, living side by side in peace and security—has long sustaining economy? While the Palestinian Authority been an inviolable principle for both the U.S. and Israel. (PA) and Hamas have received billions of dollars in aid But today, intractable obstacles make two states seem more from the U.S., the European Union and Arab states, a dangerous fantasy than a viable alternative. neither group has invested in infrastructure sufficient What are the facts? to create viable economies. Unemployment in the West Bank is 18%; it’s 52% in Gaza. Without massive Hope of Palestinian independence by the United States international welfare, both entities would collapse. and Israel has since 2000 produced three offers of a Palestinian state in up to 97% of Judea-Samaria (the West 6. What would prevent terrorist Hamas from Hamas clearly Bank), including a capital in Jerusalem. But profound conquering a new Palestinian state? has superior military might: It violently took over Gaza changes in the region—and persistent Arab in 2007, today has 20,000 men under rejection of these offers—make a Palestinian arms and commands tens of thousands state threatening to Israel and the entire Major obstacles of rockets. It also has a well-organized region. Until we can resolve these thorny currently political arm and is supported financially questions, two states can’t yet be considered a by Iran. If a Palestinian state were solution: make the two- formed under the Palestinian Authority, 1. When will Palestinian Arabs recognize state solution how could the U.S., Israel, Jordan and Israel as the national home of the Jewish untenable. Egypt protect the new state from a coup people? For 71 years, the Arabs have by Islamist Hamas terrorists? steadfastly refused to accept the Jewish state—preserving the hope that someday the Jews will be 7. When will the Palestinians institute political driven from the Holy Land. Indeed, according to a recent freedoms and rule of law? Like many Middle East poll, 57% of Palestinians believe their main national goal dictatorships, neither Palestinian “governments” support should be a one-state solution, reclaiming all of historic civil rights or rule of law. The U.N. Special Coordinator Palestine from the river to the sea. Should Westerners has reported that in Palestinian jurisdictions, “condi- insist on something most Palestinians don’t want? tions for rule of law” are non-existent. Human Rights Watch reports that the PA is “arresting, abusing and 2. When will the two warring Palestinian factions— criminally charging journalists who express peaceful Hamas and Fatah—reconcile? Ever since Hamas, the criticism.” Civilian security in both territories is com- Muslim terror group, won Palestinian elections in 2006 and pletely outside of civilian control. then violently seized Gaza, it has waged war with the ruling Fatah party in the West Bank. Not only are Gaza and the At one time, a two-state solution seemed reasonable—before West Bank separated geographically, but for 13 years these the Palestinians turned down generous peace offers by Israel two factions have fought bitterly, despite their peace efforts in 2000, 2001 and 2008, before Hamas seized Gaza and and those of other Arab nations. Until Fatah and Hamas launched three wars against Israel, before Iran blossomed declare peace, Israel has no negotiating partner. into a regional cancer, before the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars, before ISIS and al Qaeda, and before 14 years of 3. When will Hamas retract its sworn mission to corrupt rule by Mahmoud Abbas. Until major problems are destroy Israel? Hamas controls Gaza and is today allied resolved, the two-state solution seems at best indefensible— with Iran—both of which advocate Israel’s destruction and, worse, irresponsible and dangerous. and spend tens of millions of dollars supporting anti- Israel terror attacks. How can Israel achieve security This message has been published and paid for by when the Hamas charter and its every action focus on eliminating the Jewish state by military force? 4. When will the Palestinians hold national elections? Facts and Logic About the Middle East Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was elected to P.O. Box 3460, Berkeley, CA 94703 a four-year term in 2005. He has now served 14 years James Sinkinson, President without standing for election, and neither Palestinians Gerardo Joffe (z"l), Founder in Judea-Samaria nor Gaza have held national elections FLAME is a tax-exempt, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of facts regarding developments in since 2006—they are totalitarian entities. Will creating a the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the new Arab dictatorship help create peace? United States, Israel and other allies in the region. You tax-deductible contributions are welcome. To receive free FLAME updates, visit our website: www.factsandlogic.org

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