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Summer 2010 volume xxxiv, number 3 The Wilson Quarterly Published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars FEATURES www.wilsonquarterly.com

COVER STORY 23 America: Land of Loners? 41 INSIDE ISRAEL By Daniel Akst | Americans have long prized self- Conflict often puts Israel at the world’s center reliance, but today that go-it-alone ethos is stage, but the country’s inner life tends to go contributing to a serious friendship deficit. unexamined. In addition to the hostility of its neighbors, it is grappling with political gridlock 28 Turkey’s Role Reversals and a changing population, even as it enjoys a By Michael Thumann | In Turkey, it’s the secu- vibrant democracy and overachieving economy. larists who often look backward, while pious Israel Through Other Eyes | Muslims are in the forefront of efforts to mod- By Galina Vromen ernize the country. The Despair of Zion | By Walter Reich Israel at 62 | By Yoram Peri 34 The Irish in Paris What Next for the Start-Up Nation? | By Max Byrd | For centuries, Irish émigrés have By Dan Senor and Saul Singer found opportunity and empathy in a European capital not known for its kindness to strangers.

16 The Rude Birth of Immigration Reform ON THE COVER: Photograph by Oded Balilty, design by Michelle Furman. By Katherine Benton-Cohen | A century ago, an Balilty’s Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph shows a Jewish settler influential U.S. immigration commission struggling against Israeli security forces as they forcibly evacuate West Bank settlements in 2006. undertook a policy overhaul whose mistakes The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Woodrow are still with us. Wilson International Center for Scholars.

2 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 DEPARTMENTS

4 EDITOR’S COMMENT Modern Gods, from The Unwanted Sound of The National Interest Everything We Want: A Book About Noise. 5 LETTERS 80 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY By Garret Keizer I, Geminoid, from IEEE Spectrum Reviewed by Megan Buskey Cassava Rising, from Scientific Germania: 8 AT THE CENTER American 101 In Wayward Pursuit of the Publish and Perish? from Nature Germans and Their History. 12 FINDINGS Off the Dolphin Deep End, By Simon Winder from Orion Reviewed by Martin Walker

83 ARTS & LETTERS 102 Stirring the Pot: IN ESSENCE Chapter and Verse, from A History of African Cuisine. New England Review our survey of notable By James C. McCann articles from other The Art of Life, from Isotope journals and magazines Reviewed by Erica Bleeg Michelangelo’s Passion, from Times 103 Strange Days Indeed: Literary Supplement 67 ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS The 1970s: The Golden In Defense of Capitalism, from Age of Paranoia. National Affairs 86 OTHER NATIONS Enterprising Apparatchiks, from By Francis Wheen Debt Karma, from International Demokratizatsiya Reviewed by Michael Moynihan Studies Quarterly Indonesia’s Democracy Pie, from 105 Books as Weapons: 69 POLITICS & GOVERNMENT Journal of Democracy Propaganda, Publishing, and the The Tea Party’s Short Sip, from Red, White, and Balkan, from Battle for Global Markets in the The New York Review of Books Virginia Quarterly Review Era of World War II. Judges for Sale, from Harvard By John B. Hench Law Review Reviewed by John Brown Political Generals, from 106 Seeking the Cure: Parameters 67 CURRENT BOOKS A History of Medicine in America. 89 Made in America: By Ira Rutkow 71 FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE A Social History of American Reviewed by Charles Barber Reaching Out to the Russians, Culture and Character. from Foreign Affairs By Claude S. Fischer 107 Stuff: Measuring Military Might, from Reviewed by Daniel Walker Howe Compulsive Hoarding and the The Journal of Strategic Studies Meaning of Things. 92 Muriel Spark: By Randy O. Frost and The Risks of Oil Independence, The Biography. Gail Steketee from The Washington Quarterly By Martin Stannard Reviewed by Darcy Courteau 73 SOCIETY Reviewed by Michael Anderson 108 The Great Oom: Closing the Achievement Gap, 95 The Flight of the The Improbable Birth of Yoga in from The NBER Digest Intellectuals. America. Toward a Post-Prison Society, By Paul Berman By Robert Love from The American Interest The Other Muslims: Reviewed by Winifred Gallagher Anger Under Siege, from Moderate and Secular. Stranger from Abroad: The Hedgehog Review 110 Edited by Zeyno Baran Hannah Arendt, Martin Heideg- 76 PRESS & MEDIA Reviewed by Jay Tolson ger, Friendship and Forgiveness. By Daniel Maier-Katkin Localized Pain, from 99 The Other Wes Moore: Journalism & Mass One Name and Two Fates. Reviewed by Michelle Sieff Communication Quarterly By Wes Moore 77 RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY Reviewed by Rich Benjamin Atheists Anonymous, from 100 In Pursuit of Silence: Evolutionary Psychology Listening for Meaning in a Relax at Your Peril, from World of Noise. 112 PORTRAIT First Things By George Prochnik Sweating It Out

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 3 The WILSON QUARTERLY EDITOR’S COMMENT

EDITOR Steven Lagerfeld

MANAGING EDITOR James H. Carman

LITERARY EDITOR Sarah L. Courteau No “Ands” About It ASSOCIATE EDITOR Rebecca J. Rosen ASSISTANT EDITOR Megan Buskey

RESEARCHER Elizabeth Lagerfeld

The conjunction and seems to be permanently affixed to Israel. EDITORS AT LARGE Ann Hulbert, James Morris, Jay Tolson Israel and the Palestinians, and the Arabs, and the United States. COPY EDITOR Vincent Ercolano Now, in the wake of Israel’s bloody clash in May with a Turkish aid CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Daniel Akst, Stephen flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza, there is Israel and Bates, Martha Bayles, Max Byrd, Linda Colley, Denis Donoghue, Max Holland, Walter Reich, Alan Ryan, Turkey. Such conjoining is almost unavoidable in regard to a country Amy E. Schwartz, Edward Tenner, Charles Townshend, Alan Wolfe, Bertram Wyatt-Brown that is surrounded by hostile neighbors and can be crossed, at its BOARD OF EDITORIAL ADVISERS narrowest point, in less time than it takes many Americans to get to K. Anthony Appiah, Cynthia Arnson, Amy Chua, Tyler Cowen, Harry Harding, Robert Hathaway, work. But in this issue of the WQ, we dispense with the conjunction, Elizabeth Johns, Jackson Lears, Robert Litwak, Wilfred M. McClay, Blair Ruble, Peter Skerry, insofar as it is possible, and look at Israel itself. Martin Sletzinger, S. Frederick Starr, Martin Walker, Samuel Wells There is a lot to see. Yoram Peri’s political portrait reveals an FOUNDING EDITOR Peter Braestrup (1929–1997)

Israel that is blessed with extraordinary democratic vigor and BUSINESS DIRECTOR Suzanne Napper cursed with paralyzing political gridlock. Dan Senor and Saul CIRCULATION Laura Vail, ProCirc, Miami, Fla. Singer, authors of the bestseller Start-Up Nation, show how The Wilson Quarterly (ISSN-0363-3276) is published in January (Winter), April (Spring), July (Summer), and Israel has capitalized on adversity to transform itself into a October (Autumn) by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 global hub of technological innovation. Walter Reich and Galina Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. Vromen trace Israeli responses to the Arabs beyond Israel’s 20004–3027. Complete article index available online at www.wilsonquarterly.com. Subscriptions: one year, $24; borders—and to those within them. two years, $43. Air mail outside U.S.: one year, $39; two years, $73. Single issues and selected back issues I wish I could say that it was Delphic insight that led us to mailed upon request: $9; outside U.S. and posses- sions, $12. Periodical postage paid at Washington, include in the same issue Michael Thumann’s article on the rise of D.C., and additional mailing offices. All unsolicited Turkey’s Justice and Development Party and its pious Muslim sup- manuscripts should be accompanied by a self- addressed stamped envelope. porters, but it is a subject we have long thought it important to MEMBERS: Send changes of address and all subscrip- tion correspondence with The Wilson Quarterly explore. For almost a decade, Turkey has been in the midst of one of mailing label to: the world’s most unusual and important transformations, as its The Wilson Quarterly P.O. Box 16898 devoutly secularist elite has given ground to a devoutly Islamic one North Hollywood, CA 91615 that seems bent on modernizing and democratizing the country, SUBSCRIBER HOT LINE: 1-800-829-5108 even as it tries to win a bigger leadership role for Turkey in the POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to Islamic world. Thumann provides an invaluable foundation for The Wilson Quarterly, P.O. Box 16898, North Hollywood, CA 91615. understanding what is certain to be one of the big stories to watch in Microfilm copies are available from Bell & Howell Infor- mation and Learning, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI the years ahead. 48106. U.S. newsstand distribution through CMG, Princeton, N.J. For more information contact Tom Prior, Marketing Manager (609) 524-1704 or [email protected]. ADVERTISING: Brett Goldfine, Leonard Media Group. Tel.: (215) 675-9133, Ext. 226 Fax: (215) 675-9376 —Steven Lagerfeld E-mail: [email protected].

4 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 LETTERS

ENTREPRENEURS IN PERIL? Robert E. Litan and Carl Schramm correctly highlight the power of the government in shaping the business climate for start-ups [“An Entrepreneurial Recovery,” Spring ’10]. The Hedgehog Review delivers insightful, Although the government is often seen accessible writing by scholars and cultural as the primary engine of economic critics focused on the most important development, significant growth is vir- questions of our day:What does it mean tually always driven by the private sec- to be human? How do we live with tor (public works projects notwith- our deepest differences? When does a standing). Government infrastructure community become a good community? investments, tax breaks, and marketing Subscribe now to receive our Fall 2010 campaigns are only as successful as the issue,which will include essays by Charles corporate formations or expansions Taylor, Craig Calhoun, Rajeev Bhargava, they inspire. and James Davison Hunter. The private sector simply won’t respond to stimuli that aren’t aligned FIND US ON NEWSSTANDS & with its needs. An entrepreneur I know Subscribe for $25. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK in New York City once met an economic [email protected] | 434-243-8935 development official who excitedly www.hedgehogreview.com touted a program that assisted firms with purchasing local real estate. The entrepreneur was perplexed. “What on opment policy focuses on creating specializing in green energy services, earth made him think that I needed opportunities across a variety of sec- technology, and tourism—or maybe that kind of help?” he later asked me. All tors. With low regulatory barriers and something else entirely. An enlightened too often, economic development offi- ample venture support, cities and public sector will not presume its own cials enact policies that bear little rela- regions can foster innovation and wisdom, but, rather, strive for an envi- tion to entrepreneurs’ needs or focus on growth. The emergence of publicly ronment in which entrepreneurs will developing sectors that may be popular supported CAPCOs (local venture-cap- innovate, invest, and surprise. elsewhere but are not a good fit for ital funds) and business plan competi- David Zipper their localities. After all, how many tions is a particularly promising trend Director of Business Strategy regions can realistically become biotech that supports these aims. and Development hotbeds? Here in Washington, D.C., good Office of the Deputy Mayor for Instead of imposing questionable economic development policy could Planning and Economic Development solutions, intelligent economic devel- foster a local economy full of companies Washington, D.C.

LETTERS may be mailed to The Wilson Quarterly, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. Margaret B. W. Graham, Carl 20004–3027, or sent via facsimile, to (202) 691-4036, or e-mail, to [email protected]. The writer’s telephone number and postal address should be included. For reasons of space, letters are usually edited for Schramm, and Robert E. Litan argue in publication. Some letters are received in response to the editors’ requests for comment. the Spring ’10 issue that entrepreneur-

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 5 LETTERS

ship has played a critical role in FORECASTING exactly the path that the nation American economic success for cen- CHINA’S FUTURE should follow now. turies [“Schumpeter’s Children” and Inspired by Hernando de Soto’s Keming Yang “An Entrepreneurial Recovery”]. The Other Path (1986), Yasheng Lecturer in Sociology Financial innovation has been a par- Huang sees two different paths of University of Durham ticularly successful subset of American development for China: one led by Durham, United Kingdom entrepreneurship. big capitalist corporations in metro- The current financial crisis sug- politan areas, and the other initiated Yasheng Huang is correct that gests, however, that this form of by grassroots entrepreneurs through- policymakers and foreign analysts entrepreneurship must not be out the countryside [“China’s Other should turn their attention to the nature embraced uncritically. The finan- Path,” Spring ’10]. He calls for China’s and distribution of China’s economic cial situation has been poisoned by leadership to revive the rural entre- growth in order to resolve its external years of neglect, dozens of bad deci- preneurship that enjoyed lively imbalances. But returning to an older sions, and a cozy relationship growth in the 1980s, because such a model of development would not be between Washington and Wall resurgence would boost consump- sufficient to substantively affect the Street. The recent wave of financial tion by a vast population, which in trade balance, nor is it an entirely plau- innovations serves not to provide turn would correct the trade imbal- sible possibility under current condi- financing to entrepreneurial firms, ance with the United States. tions. Nonetheless, the policy reorien- but to enrich intermediaries. Both It helps to keep in mind the fol- tation necessary to reinvigorate the articles cite the lack of start-up cap- lowing conditions under which rural economy is closely related to the ital for young enterprises as a rea- entrepreneurship boomed: (1) peas- one required to tackle China’s struc- son for the dearth of companies ants, especially in poor provinces, tural problems. going public. had a very strong desire to have bet- There is no question that house- Acknowledging the present state ter material lives; (2) there were hold consumption in China must rise of affairs, the writers formulate dras- widespread shortages of even the substantially in order to close the tically different interpretations most basic materials; (3) resources savings-investment gap that drives the about America’s prospects. While and labor were cheap and largely trade surplus. Rural households con- both articles argue for “changing the unprotected; (4) local politicians fol- sume so much less than urban ones rules,” Schramm and Litan want to lowed separate policies and the gov- (roughly one-fourth) that rural incomes change the rules that govern the for- ernance structure was in transition. would have to quadruple and con- mation of new firms, while Graham It’s important to remember that sumption rates would have to jump sig- wants to change the way that such grassroots entrepreneurship also nificantly to make a major dent in the firms are financed. Without ad- grew in urban areas in the ’80s, and trade balance. Rural incomes and social dressing the financial crisis, how- that after Deng Xiaoping’s South services should be a major policy pri- ever, money will not flow to the new China tour in 1992, entrepreneur- ority, but a boost in rural consumption firms that create the innovations ship in China experienced another will not ease Sino-American economic needed to fuel growth. Unless we heyday, with many much larger firms tensions. change the incentive structure, “the being consolidated and established. With respect to repeating China’s best and the brightest” will continue China’s leaders know better than early economic miracle for rural house- to make the economy weaker, not anybody else that local entrepre- holds and township and village enter- stronger. neurship is one solution to the “three prises, Huang is half right. Market dis- Zoltan J. Acs nong problem” of agriculture, rural tortions, particularly in the financial Director, Center for Entrepreneurship and areas, and peasants. Rural entrepre- sector, as well as industry preferences Public Policy neurship in China in the ’80s fol- for high-tech, high-value projects hin- George Mason University lowed a productive path, but we need der small-scale entrepreneurship and Fairfax, Va. to think carefully about whether it is promote over-investment at the

6 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 LETTERS

expense of consumption. Moreover, an emancipation as crucial aspects of Civil insufficient social safety net combined War history and public remembrance with limited access to credit and insur- were exposed as Americans were con- The Official and Exclusive ance encourages excessive saving. fronted with images of bus boycotts, Airline Sponsor of the Addressing these problems would go a freedom rides, and marches. While the Woodrow Wilson Awards and long way toward improving the for- nation confronted its “most ignomin- the Woodrow Wilson Center tunes of small rural and urban enter- ious legacy” through legislation, it did prises, not to mention living standards. not significantly alter the nation’s Civil to the Confederate monument at The poverty-reducing boom of the War memory. However, much has Arlington National Cemetery—a mon- 1980s cannot easily be repeated in the changed over the past 40 years, which ument that glorifies the Lost Cause with 2010s. In 1978, China’s Communist makes me hesitant to accept Clausen’s images of “loyal slaves” and an empha- Party essentially stopped standing in assumption that “what was actually sis on states’ rights. Rather than incite the way of market forces, unleashing a won and lost [in the Civil War] is less further controversy, Obama chose to tidal wave of pent-up potential. Yet settled than you might expect after 150 send an additional wreath to the China’s openness to the outside world years.” African American Civil War Memorial, and 30 years of entrepreneurship have The election of President Barack which celebrates the history of the eaten up many of the easier opportuni- Obama has opened up numerous United States Colored Troops. The ties of the ’80s. The main task for opportunities to discuss the history and states that have organized Civil War China’s economic policymakers today is legacy of slavery and race and our sesquicentennial commissions are fundamentally different: They must understanding of the Civil War specif- choosing to emphasize the “emancipa- actively foster a more hospitable envi- ically. In 2009 the president was peti- tionist legacy” of the Civil War. Virginia, ronment for the types of businesses that tioned to discontinue sending a wreath for example, will hold [ Continued on page 10 ] generate greater returns to laborers, in the service sector in particular, and middle-class entrepreneurs. China’s rural population will benefit, but the real progress in reorienting the econ- omy will be made in the cities. Oliver Melton Visiting Researcher School of Public Policy and Management TransCoop Program: Funding for Scholars in the Tsinghua University Humanities, Social Sciences, Economics and Law Beijing, China The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation will grant up to half of the funding for a new collaborative project, such as a joint study, critical edition or seed money for an international conference, up to a HAS THE LOST maximum of EUR 55,000 over three years. CAUSE LOST? Application for the TransCoop Program is open to scholars at Christopher Clausen’s article research institutions in Germany, the United States, and Canada who are working in the humanities, social sciences, law and [“America’s Changeable Civil War,” economics. Spring ’10] offers a helpful overview of Applications must be submitted jointly by at least one German and the influence that the Lost Cause and one U.S. or Canadian scholar. Ph.D. required. U.S. and/or the broader trend of national reconcil- Canadian funds must cover the balance of the cost of the project. iation exercised on the nation’s collec- Annual deadlines: April 30 and October 31. Details and applications are available at: tive memory through the civil rights movement. Few will deny that the ten- www.humboldt-foundation.de dency to ignore the role of slavery and

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 7 AT THE CENTER

FIGHTING THE LONGER WAR

Four or five one-year deployments to war 2008–09 Woodrow Wilson Center fellow, confirmed zones have become the new normal for members of Kaufmann’s impression, arguing that the catch phrase the U.S. Army. And their families have had to adjust “The Army takes care of its own” is historically inac- to parents or spouses who are absent or are psycho- curate when applied to military families. Since 1991, logically or physically transformed by the experience the Army has decreased the family-oriented benefits of combat. What should the Army do? In late April, and social services it began to expand in the 1980s as the Woodrow Wilson Center’s United States Studies it built an all-volunteer force. Now, Mittelstadt said, program hosted a one-day conference devoted to such cuing an Army video clip from 2007 celebrating the questions: “They Also Serve: Military Families and the resilience of military families, the message is that Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” “families are responsible for their own strength.” Thanks to advances in medicine and emergency What feelings should family members expect to transport, Army fatalities have been fewer in Iraq find in their returned warriors? Nancy Sherman, a and Afghanistan than in past wars of comparable psychoanalyst who is also a professor of philosophy at duration, said Brigadier General Loree K. Sutton, Georgetown University, said veterans experience pow- director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psy- erful, sometimes contradictory, emotions: pride at chological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. Still, having served their country, anxiety about their secu- the difficulties facing the more than 20,000 soldiers rity, and shame, guilt, or depression at having wit- who have been wounded in the two wars can be nessed the deaths of civilians or fellow soldiers. In her tremendous, and many veterans face brutal psycho- book The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and logical struggles even if they return home physically Souls of Our Soldiers, which she began while a fellow intact. The chances of a noncommissioned officer at the Woodrow Wilson Center during the 2006–07 experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder increase academic year, Sherman writes that the “suck it up” with every deployment, with 12 percent exhibiting mentality encouraged by the Army provides few signs of PTSD after one tour, and 27 percent after opportunities for soldiers to emotionally process the three. traumas and moral conflicts encountered in zones of Family members naturally become the primary conflict. caretakers of soldiers who are healing from the Supporting soldiers returning from war “is not a wounds of war. Yet they may have trouble balancing private burden. It’s a public, national burden,” Sher- the needs of the wounded with work, child-care com- man said. Her remark proved prescient. On May 5, mitments, and their own psychological turmoil. Audi- President Barack Obama signed into law the Care- ence member Kristy Kaufmann, a blonde, ponytailed givers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act. Army wife of nine years, pointed out that while the Among the initiatives expanded or established by the Army can teach its recruits coping mechanisms, it act are robust mental health services for veterans, has no comparable way to systematically reach their stipends and housing allowances for caregivers of spouses and families. “One of my biggest concerns is injured warriors, and a pilot child-care program ben- that the military has relied on family members to efitting parents who are undergoing intensive medical take care of other family members, which will work— treatment. At the signing ceremony, President Obama for one or two years of the war,” she said. Now, “we’re invoked the words of Sarah Wade, the wife of a soldier tired.” who sustained serious injuries in Iraq in 2004: “Just Jennifer Mittelstadt, a historian at Pennsylvania like he needed a team in the military to accomplish the State University who studied military welfare as a mission, he needs a team at home in the longer war.”

8 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Lee H. Hamilton, Director A VISIT WITH BERNANKE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair Sander R. Gerber, Vice Chair The Woodrow Wilson Cen- EX OFFICIO MEMBERS: James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, ter usually doesn’t cause much of a Hillary R. Clinton, Secretary of State, G. Wayne Clough, Secretary, stir on Wall Street, but on June 7 it Smithsonian Institution, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, David Ferriero, had the full attention of the finan- Archivist of the United States, James cial world. Following a dinner for Leach, Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities, Kathleen Sebelius, the Center’s Board of Trustees, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Designated Appointee of the Wilson Council, and WilsonAl- President from Within the Federal Government: Vacant liances, famed ABC newsman Sam PRIVATE CITIZEN MEMBERS: Charles E. Donaldson sat down with one of Cobb, Jr., Robin B. Cook, Charles L. Glazer, Carlos M. Gutierrez, Susan Hutchison, Barry Washington’s most powerful play- S. Jackson, Ignacio E. Sanchez ers, Ben Bernanke, the chairman Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke THE WILSON COUNCIL of the U.S. Federal Reserve, for an Sam Donaldson, President hour-long colloquy that quickly time to work,” he explained. “We Elias Aburdene, Weston Adams, Cyrus Ansary, David Bass, Lawrence Bathgate, Theresa Behrendt, Stuart made headlines on news wires and can’t wait until unemployment is Bernstein, James Bindenagel, Rudy Boschwitz, Melva Web sites. where we’d like it to be. We can’t Bucksbaum, Amelia Caiola-Ross, Joseph Cari, Carol Cartwright, Mark Chandler, Holly Clubok, Melvin Donaldson, who is also the pres- wait until inflation gets out of con- Cohen, William Coleman, Elizabeth Dubin, Charles Dubroff, Ruth Dugan, F. Samuel Eberts, Mark Epstein, ident of the Wilson Council, opened trol before we begin the process of Melvyn Estrin, A. Huda Farouki, Joseph Flom, Barbara with the question that was on every- normalizing interest rates.” Ber- Hackman Franklin, Norman Freidkin, Morton Funger, Donald Garcia, Bruce Gelb, Alma Gildenhorn, Michael one’s mind: After the most bruising nanke was characteristically mum Glosserman, Margaret Goodman, Raymond Guenter, Barbara Hall, Edward Hardin, Marilyn Harris, F. Wal- economic stretch since the Great about when the Fed would raise lace Hays, Claudia and Thomas Henteleff, Laurence Depression, is the recovery so frag- rates, but he did say that the deci- Hirsch, Osagie Imasogie, Pamela Johnson, Maha Kad- doura, Nuhad Karaki, Stafford Kelly, Christopher Ken- ile that the U.S. economy could fall sion is determined by looking at nan, Joan Kirkpatrick, Mrs. David Knott, Willem victim to a double-dip recession? employment, inflation, and the Kooyker, Markos Kounalakis, Richard Kramer, Muslim Lakhani, Daniel Lamaute, Raymond Learsy, Harold Bernanke answered with a ten- financial markets “a year and a half Levy, Genevieve Lynch, Frederic and Marlene Malek, B. Thomas Mansbach, Daniel Martin, Anne McCarthy, tative no. “The news is pretty good,” down the road.” Thomas McLarty, Donald McLellan, Maria Emma and he said, pointing out that spending by Bernanke stressed the impor- Vanda McMurtry, John Kenneth Menges, Linda and Tobia Mercuro, Jamie Merisotis, Robert Morris, Kathryn consumers and the private sector has tance of getting the federal budget Mosbacher Wheeler, Stuart Newberger, Jeanne Phillips, Renate Rennie, Edwin Robbins, Wayne Rogers, Nina risen at a steady clip in recent deficit under control, though he Rosenwald, B. Francis Saul, Steven Schmidt, William months. But macroeconomic fore- acknowledged that “it’s really not Seanor, George Shultz, Raja Sidawi, John Sitilides, David Slack, William Slaughter, Eliot Sorel, Diana Davis casting is like “looking through the plausible or possible for us to Spencer, Juan Suarez, Mrs. Alexander J. Tachmindji, entrails,” and “nobody knows with balance our federal budget this year Norma Kline Tiefel, Timothy Towell, Anthony Viscogliosi, Michael Waldorf, Christine Warnke, Pete any certainty,” he added ruefully. or next year.” He declined to say Wilson, Deborah Wince-Smith, Herbert Winokur, Richard Ziman, Nancy Zirkin Even if the economy continues on whether a tax hike or a cut in enti- the road back to health, as Bernanke tlements such as Social Security and The Wilson Center is the nation’s living anticipates, the recovery “won’t feel Medicare would be part of the solu- memorial to Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. It is located terrific because it’s not going to be tion if a deficit reduction plan were at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Penn- sylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. fast,” particularly for the eight million developed. “I’m not going to make 20004–3027. Created by law in 1968, the Center is Washington’s only independent, Americans who have lost their jobs Congress’s decision for them,” wide-ranging institute for advanced study and continue to encounter problems he said, adding jokingly, “They where vital cultural issues and their deep his- torical background are explored through securing full-time employment. wouldn’t pay attention to me research and dialogue. Visit the Center at http://www.wilsoncenter.org. “Monetary policy takes a long anyway.”

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 9 LETTERS

[ Continued from page 7 ] a daylong sympo- War. Clausen does write that it was power to protect their freedom. sium in September on slavery and the 1860 election of an antislavery Fred L. Borch III emancipation. party to the White House that trig- Regimental Historian and Archivist Finally, the recent controversy sur- gered secession, but he fails to explain The Judge Advocate General’s Corps rounding Virginia governor Robert the critical role played by Lincoln in U.S. Army McDonnell’s Confederate History both transforming the war and pre- Charlottesville, Va. Month proclamation in April is venting any negotiated end to it. After arguably the clearest indication that we all, Lincoln turned the Civil War from Editor’s Note: You can read Christo- may be witnessing a shift in our collec- a conflict about the Union into a pher Clausen’s comment on the Con- tive memory of the war and its legacy. struggle over freedom. While South- federate History Month controversy The debate and McDonnell’s eventual erners continued to look to the Con- at http://www.wilsonquarterly.com/ revision suggest that a commemora- stitution as the source of their rights blog/index.cfm/From_the_Editors/, tion of Confederate history without any (and justification for their actions), it the WQ’s new blog. mention of slavery is now seen as a was Lincoln who understood that the gross distortion of the past. While it is true foundation of the United States too early to tell, the interpretation of the was the Declaration of Independence HAIL TO THE COURTS war that the public accepts five years and its promise of equality for all James Grant highlights what hence may be unrecognizable to men. It was Lincoln, using his pow- he sees as the undemocratic character Edward A. Pollard and other Confed- ers as president and commander in of judicial review, and he notes with erate apologists. chief, who altered history by issuing irony that the doctrine may be the Kevin M. Levin the Emancipation Proclamation. United States’ most widely replicated History Department Chair And it was Lincoln who, after trans- constitutional feature [“The Rise of St. Anne’s-Belfield School forming the war into a struggle for Juristocracy,” Spring ’10]. I would tem- Author, Civil War Memory blog freedom, refused to entertain any per Grant’s premise that judicial review (http://cwmemory.com) suggestions that the war be ended by is a priori undemocratic, since—as New Charlottesville, Va. negotiation—even though he knew York University professor Ran Hirschl that the Peace Democrats might well has argued—the particulars of histori- Christopher Clausen’s article is defeat him in his bid for reelection in cal and social context make a differ- timely, given the approaching sesqui- 1864. ence. Lochner v. New York (1905) and centennial. But Clausen could not have Clausen also should have Brown v. Board of Education (1954) known when his piece went to press explained that while the majority of are not the same politically. Modern that Virginia’s newly elected governor, white Americans ultimately accepted judicial review in the United States is Robert McDonnell, would run into a the wisdom of ending slavery, they predicated on the recognition that cit- history buzz saw when he proclaimed did not agree—whether they lived in izens are not always protected by the Confederate History Month in April the North or the South—that eman- political majority. In the civil rights era, without mentioning slavery—thus illus- cipation somehow meant African for instance, a variety of impediments trating Clausen’s point that some Amer- Americans were “equal” to whites, to voting left African Americans outside icans continue to suffer from historical much less that blacks should have the electoral process. The line between amnesia about the causes of the Civil political power. Again, it was Lincoln law and politics in the United States is War. who took the radical step of suggest- itself complicated by the history of While Clausen’s thoughts on his- ing that the right to vote be given to rights struggles. torical interpretation are generally some of the newly freed slaves— Cases involving economic decisions well taken, I was quite disappointed because he understood that if newly of the legislature may or may not be in that he did not emphasize the cen- emancipated African Americans a different category from cases in which trality of Abraham Lincoln in the were to have any meaningful life in individuals’ civil rights are at stake. debate over the causes of the Civil America, they had to have political Democracy is best served not by courts

10 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 LETTERS

avoiding review functions altogether, but rather by courts avoiding interfer- If Woodrow WWilsonilson were aalivelive today,today, ence with congressional statutes that take a broad societal approach to com- he’d be bloggingng fforor thethe WQ. mon interests such as health care. READ OUR BLOGL OG Opponents of the recent legislation hope the Supreme Court will set the act From thee EditorsEditors aside. Deference to the legislature is appropriate in cases such as this, in ON THE NEWEEW which the legislature itself has demon- www.wilsonquarterly.comquuarterly.com strably sought to balance and recon- WQ cile broad economic claims and needs. The is a publication of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In some instances, some citizens can receive protection only from the courts. In those cases, judicial review plays a noble role. Alfred C. Aman Roscoe C. O’Byrne Professor of Law Mauer School of Law Indiana University ALSO ON THE SITE: web-exclusive articles, historical video clips, podcasts, Bloomington, Ind. author interviews, subscriber services, and the complete WQ archive.

FOLLOW US ON Facebook, Twitter, AND VIA RSS. DON’T FORGET CIVIL SOCIETY Andrew Curry makes some astute avoid common mistakes in delivering because they are careful to gain an observations in his article on Polish assistance, and are in a good position understanding of the domestic context foreign aid [“Poland’s New Ambi- to offer strong models for the success- in which they operate, and to engage tions,” Spring 2010], but the role of ful transformation of local govern- local partners on the ground. This Polish nongovernmental organiza- ment, civic education, and the press. form of cooperation contrasts strongly tions (NGOs) in democracy assistance Western donors working on democ- with the “Marriott Brigade” model deserves more attention. racy promotion in other parts of the used by Western donors in the early Curry shows how important the former Eastern bloc, such as America’s 1990s, when international aid repre- Solidarity movement was in estab- National Endowment for Democracy, sentatives conducted training sessions lishing democracy in Poland, but he now regularly seek out Polish partners. at a local hotel without setting foot on overlooks the fact that many dissi- Moreover, it was NGO activists the streets of Warsaw. Curry mentions dents active in the Solidarity move- who successfully lobbied the govern- some of the key projects financed by ment went on to form NGOs. These ment to establish the Polish foreign the Polish government, but Polish organizations have been actively ministry’s aid program. These activists NGOs are engaged in many more engaged in democracy assistance in believed that aid from Polish sources activities, an increasing number of other post-communist countries, in would make Poland a more credible which are financed with funds raised part because of the encouragement of democracy promoter. from sources that recognize the Polish Western donors and individuals. Hav- Polish NGOs regularly receive third sector’s unique strengths. ing been recipients of aid in the past, funds from the foreign ministry to Paulina M. Pospieszna Polish NGOs have learned a lot from carry out democracy assistance proj- University of Konstanz Western donors, including how to ects, and they have been successful Bad Friedrichshall, Germany

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 11 FINDINGS brief notes of interest on all topics

But Is It Art? sion. On its Web site, the museum works that deal with language—a Nameless brands advised, “Attendees—from sophisti- lot of his paintings, drawings, and cated art supporters to first-time prints feature bits of slang, popular “Painters make paintings,” the collectors—are encouraged to trust language. His career really achieved philosopher Richard Wollheim their instincts.” blue-chip status, as they say, within observed, “but it takes a representa- Somewhere among the 629 the last 10, 15 years, when his prices tive of the art world to make a work works was an Ed Ruscha. on the art market have gone up of art.” Once a year, California’s Ruscha’s painting Burning enormously. He’s kind of a cult fig- Santa Monica Museum of Art sells Gas Station sold for just under ure. There’s a movie being made paintings denuded of their art- $7 million in 2007, and I Don’t about him. He has done a lot of tele- world imprimatur. You buy an Want No Retro Spective, formerly vision. He’s friends with a lot of peo- eight-by-ten-inch work for $300. owned by the actor Bud Cort, ple in Hollywood who collect his Only after paying do you find out fetched nearly $4 million in 2008. work—Jack Nicholson, Warren the name of the artist. Only then do The Obamas have borrowed a Beatty, Lauren Hutton.” you know if you’ve bought Art. Ruscha painting, I Think I’ll . . . , “Some people say they can spot For the museum’s sixth “Incog- from the National Gallery of Art to the artist here,” Miranda Carroll, the nito” fundraiser, on May 1, nearly hang in the White House residence. Santa Monica museum’s director of 500 artists donated a total of 629 “He’s considered one of the key communications, said on the paintings, photographs, sketches, artists of the second half of the 20th evening of the fundraiser. “But the and other works. When signing century,” Alexandra Schwartz, Ed Ruscha?” She shook her head. their art, they put their signatures author of the new book Ed Ruscha’s “Never.” Ruscha hadn’t produced out of view, and many of them Los Angeles (MIT Press), said in an one of his easily recognizable, changed their styles for the occa- interview. “He’s best known for his language-centered paintings. He’d done something different. At seven o’clock, some 800 peo- ple raced into the museum. The first to reach each work had the chance to buy it by grabbing a tag hanging below. Many $300 decisions were made in haste. Within half an hour, the crowd had thinned. Museum employees in gloves began removing pictures and slipping them into brown paper bags. The buyers stood outside, eating hors d’oeuvres and drinking margaritas, waiting to see The Race for the Ruscha whose works they had gotten.

12 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 FINDINGS

Although the anonymous art and Kopelman paid and, an hour age size of the heads in each paint- the $300 price may have been later, a member of the staff handed ing. (They didn’t study wine because supremely democratic, not every- him his bags. He removed the pic- it didn’t appear in most of the thing was leveled. General admis- tures, turned each one over, then works.) Between ad 1000 and sion cost $100, but for heftier dona- stopped and smiled. He held up a 2000, they found bread grew by 23 tions—$1,500 (“Benefactor”) or pencil drawing of a coffee mug and percent, main dishes by 69 percent, said, “I got the Ruscha.” and plates by 66 percent. The His instincts had served him well. increase began slowly, then acceler- “Ruscha has never done something ated after 1500. There’s nothing iconic for this,” he said. “People look new, it seems, about supersizing. for certain telltale signs of his work, but he disguises it. I looked for some- Anchor Rancor thing that was simple and in pencil. When I picked the coffee cup, I So that’s the way it was wasn’t positive it was his. It was just The most trusted man in America the best sketch in the room.” He had little affection for his successor. would, he added, still enjoy the draw- When Dan Rather replaced him as Ed Ruscha’s Cup of Coffee (2010) ing if he’d been wrong about the cre- anchor of The CBS Evening News in ator. “But I wasn’t.” 1981, Walter Cronkite planned to $5,000 (“Cognoscenti”)—you could As Kopelman showed his appear in CBS documentaries and have attended a champagne preview purchase to bystanders at the news specials. But his appearances two days earlier and given the works museum, many of them seemed to soon dwindled. The network a leisurely inspection. “It made an admire the back of the work no less canceled the series Walter Cronkite’s infinite difference,” said Jonathan than the front. It was, after all, the Universe in its third season and Dayton, who, with his wife, Valerie scrawled signature that made Cup made little use of him on the Faris, directed the film Little Miss of Coffee, as Ruscha had titled it, cer- Evening News. Sunshine. At the preview, Dayton tifiable Art. “Dan Rather and company shut chose a work and drew a map to me out,” Cronkite told historian help him find it again. “I had night- Gospel-Size It! Don Carleton, in an interview that mares about this,” he said. “But I appears in Conversations With went straight for it, and I got it.” Bad roll models Cronkite (University of Texas Press). Will Kopelman, a professional As entrées have grown, so have Cronkite, who died in 2009, wished art adviser—“I create portfolios of waistlines. “It is common for restau- he had resigned from the network marquee artwork for private and rants to serve two to three times corporate clients”—also attended more than what is considered a the preview, where he chose three standard serving size,” complains works for his own collection and the Center for Science in the Public one for a gift. His top-tier ticket Interest. But the expansion of por- then put him and three guests in the tion sizes may go back further than initial group of people through the you think. doors at the fundraiser. He and his For the International Journal of friends arrived five hours early to Obesity (May), Brian Wansink and get to the very front of the line. The Craig S. Wansink examined 52 first into the museum, Kopelman depictions of the Last Supper. They No love lost: Walter Cronkite with Dan Rather ran to the works he wanted and compared the sizes of bread loaves, at the 1981 announcement that Rather would nabbed their tags. He got all four. main dishes, and plates to the aver- succeed him at The CBS Evening News.

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 13 FINDINGS in protest, but he didn’t. “Quite Alliterative Illusion frankly, I was venal,” he said. “They just bought me with a million Misremembering Agnew dollars a year.” Spiro Agnew famously derided In 1986, Laurence Tisch took reporters and commentators as over CBS. “Tisch was making public “nattering nabobs of negativism.” statements about how he expected David Broder, Helen Thomas, Tom to return the news department to Wicker, and countless other jour- the great days of Murrow and nalists have cited the quotation as Cronkite,” the former anchor a classic example of the Nixon recalled. “Rather panicked. He came administration’s assault on the to see me, and we had a very inter- press. But they’re all wrong, Nor- esting hour of his pleading that man P. Lewis writes in American none of this was his fault, that he Stephen Colbert’s shtick is so good that some Journalism (Winter 2010). hadn’t had anything to do with viewers don’t get the joke. Vice President Agnew did give keeping me off the air. I felt that he two speeches in 1969 that con- was trying to get right with me rooms, Kuryokhin said, adding, “I demned the national press as because he thought I had Tisch’s have absolutely irrefutable evidence ear. . . . He pleaded what a great that the October Revolution was friend he’d always been of mine, carried out by people who for many what a great admirer he was of years had been consuming certain mine, and how he looked forward mushrooms. And in the process of now that the air was being cleared being consumed by these people, the [to] our working closely together. It mushrooms displaced their person- was the biggest bunch of crap I ever ality. These people were turning into heard.” Rather, Cronkite added, mushrooms. In other words, I sim- “just reeks of insincerity.” ply want to say that Lenin was a mushroom.” Hardly plausible, yet Comrade Colbert many viewers fell for the hoax. Some even called the station to learn more. Humor, Soviet-style One man who had been taken in When it comes to comedy, Americans said that “like a typical Soviet today are getting more and more like person,” he had believed that Soviets of a few decades ago, Dominic “serious conversations in the media Boyer and Alexei Yurchak write in can be trusted.” Cultural Anthropology (May). In the Boyer and Yurchak see something last years of the Soviet Union, many similar today in The Onion, The Daily citizens embraced stiob, a deadpan, Show, and especially The Colbert subversive type of parody. Stiob so Report. According to a 2009 study, closely mimicked what it was mock- Stephen Colbert’s caricature of a dim ing that some people mistook it for right-wing commentator has some the real thing. conservatives convinced he’s one of In 1991, Sergei Kuryokhin gave a them. As in the Soviet Union, Boyer 90-minute televised lecture that and Yurchak argue, form—the rituals exemplified stiob. Lenin had been a of the contemporary news media— Vice President Spiro Agnew’s most famous line regular user of hallucinogenic mush- can eclipse content. Stiob rules. was not meant as an attack on the press.

14 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 FINDINGS

biased and error-ridden. President with games of chance. At a slot Health Services raided a ware- Richard Nixon fine-tuned the lan- machine, almost hitting the jack- house full of Cocaine. Street value: guage in one of them and declared pot doesn’t increase your odds of $200,000. proudly, “This really flicks the scab cashing in with the next push of Now, Cocaine is back. California- off, doesn’t it?” “Nattering nabobs,” the button. Our brains, however, based Redux tweaked the typeface however, came in a 1970 speech may not recognize the distinction. for the name on the cans—the origi- in San Diego, when Agnew was For gamblers and campaigning for Republicans nongamblers alike, the in the midterm elections. The same region of the mid- “nabobs” were opponents of Nixon brain is activated by both administration policy, especially in near misses and Vietnam. jackpots, Henry W. “You have it right—the Agnew Chase and Luke Clark speech in San Diego, which I report in The Journal of wrote, criticized the defeatists Neuroscience (May 5). in general rather than the press The strength of the near- in particular,” speechwriter- miss response in the turned-columnist William Safire brain correlates with the e-mailed Lewis in 2006. (Safire degree of gambling died in 2009.) “I suppose many in addiction—that is, prob- the media delighted in being lem gamblers exhibit a attacked by Agnew and so stronger response to assumed they were his target in near misses than casual that speech. Over the years I gamblers do. The would occasionally point this out, researchers speculate but it’s tough to go up against a that the neurotransmit- myth.” ter dopamine gives gam- Cocaine gets a makeover. Press coverage at the time of blers a jolt of pleasure Agnew’s speech placed the phrase when they come close to winning. nal looked too much like white pow- in its correct context. But less than So they keep playing. And hoping. der for regulators—and got rid of the a year later, a Newsday columnist slogan “The Legal Alternative.” In a cited “nattering nabobs” as an Marketing Cocaine disclaimer printed on the cans, attack on the press. The New York Redux now declares, “This product Times and Time soon followed. Redux redux is not intended to be an alternative “Journalists who wear the ‘nat- The energy drink called Cocaine to an illicit street drug, and anyone tering nabobs’ phrase as a badge of got off to a rocky start when it who thinks otherwise is an idiot.” honor,” Lewis observes, “are mere- went on the market a few years These changes satisfied the FDA, ly proving that Agnew was right ago. As we reported (Summer though not Texas, which still bans about their penchant for repeating 2007), the Food and Drug Admin- the beverage. inaccurate information.” istration sent a menacing letter to Peru won’t allow it either, ac- the manufacturer, Redux Bever- cording to Jamey Kirby, president of Bad Wiring ages. Illinois and Connecticut Redux. Peruvian officials maintain threatened to sue Redux, and that the name is misleading. To mar- Dopamine dopes Texas barred the company from ket the drink there, Redux would In games of skill, a near miss can selling Cocaine there. In Dallas, need to add extract of coca leaf. mean you’re improving. Not so agents of the Department of State —Stephen Bates

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 15 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The Rude Birth of Immigration Reform

As America debates immigration reform, it is in danger of repeating the mistakes made a century ago when the flawed foundations of today’s policies were established.

BY KATHERINE BENTON-COHEN

In 1908, Anna Herkner donned the tat- The overcrowding on the ship would have been even tered peasant clothing of a Bohemian immigrant and worse had the financial panic of 1907 not sharply boarded a crowded steamer bound for the United States. reduced immigrant crossings from the record 1.4 million She was shocked at what she found. In steerage, women of the previous year. Eighty percent of the new arrivals weakened by seasickness were mauled by crew members, were, like many of Herkner’s fellow passengers, from and some were reportedly raped. Nauseated passen- southern and eastern Europe. But Herkner was not gers lay “in a sort of stupor” in their cramped berths. counted among them. She underwent her ordeal not “Only the fresh breeze from the sea overcame the sick- because she was immigrating to the New World, but ening odors. The vile language of the men, the screams because she had been hired by a federal commission to of the women defending themselves, the crying of chil- study those who were. Iowa born, she held a degree in dren, wretched because of their surroundings, and prac- Slavic languages from the University of California, tically every sound that reached the ear, irritated beyond Berkeley, and had been a social worker in a Polish neigh- endurance. There was no sight before which the eye did borhood in Baltimore. After three undercover journeys not prefer to close. Everything was dirty, sticky, and dis- by sea, she wrote a report for the commission chronicling agreeable to the touch. Every impression was offensive.” her experiences and those of nine other agents, and call- Herkner’s 12-day voyage offered “abundant opportu- ing for better enforcement of American laws regulating nity to weaken the body and emplant there germs of dis- transatlantic vessels. ease to develop later.... Surely it is not the introduction The United States was in the midst of a surge of to American institutions that will tend to make them immigration that would drive the foreign-born share of respected.” the population to 14.7 percent, a level that has been rivaled, but not surpassed, only in recent times. The Katherine Benton-Cohen is an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University and the author of Borderline Americans: Racial “new immigrants” of the early 20th century were pri- Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands (2009). As a 2009–10 marily Italians, eastern European Jews, and Slavs. As a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, she worked on a book about the Dillingham Commission. group they tended to be darker skinned, and poorer, than

16 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 A crowd of immigrants taunts a single “last Yankee” in this 1888 anti- immigration cartoon. In reality, immi- grants rather than native-born Ameri- cans were targets of discrimination in the land of the free.

“the colored races.” Secretary of State Elihu Root compared the immigrants to “the invasion of barbarians into the Roman Empire.” In the American West, many newcomers were Japanese, and the response was even harsher, including rigid segregation and physical as well as verbal attacks. Federal barriers to almost all Chinese immigration had been erected in 1882. One California congressman declared that the arrival of Japanese immigrants posed a “race problem as men- acing as the negro problem in the South.” Anti-immigrant sen- timent was not confined to one region. In 1906, a third of the letters written to members of Congress called for tighter con- trols on immigration. A century later, the rhetoric is directed at different groups, but sometimes sounds similar. As Arizona’s notorious new statute highlights, national most previous immigrants. A small number were polit- immigration reform seems just as urgent now as it did ical radicals. More alarming to many in overwhelm- to many Americans then. ingly Protestant America, most of the immigrants were Herkner’s report was part of 41 volumes produced Catholics or Jews. Critics questioned the newcomers’ “fit- between 1907 and 1911 by the U.S. Immigration Com- ness for democracy.” Some worried that Italians would mission, chaired by Senator William P. Dillingham upend American race relations, because they lacked the (R-Vt.). What became known as the Dillingham Com- “Anglo-Saxon repugnance” toward intermarriage with mission examined almost every imaginable aspect of the

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 17 Immigration immigrant experience. Fieldworkers canvassed hun- study ultimately led to action. dreds of factories, mills, and farms for 20 volumes of data The nine men appointed to the commission spanned on “immigrants in industries.” A report on “white slav- the geographic and political spectrum. Seven were Repub- ery” (forced prostitution) electrified the public and licans and two were Democrats, with views on immigration prompted the passage of the Mann Act of 1910, which that were not defined by party. Roosevelt named three of forbade the transport of women over state lines “for the members: U.S. Commissioner of Labor Charles P. immoral purposes.” Ranging from Los Angeles to Neill, Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor William B. Wheeler, and Cornell University economist Jere- miah Jenks. Not one com- THE COMMISSIONERS WERE appalled missioner was an immi- grant, and none were of by the large number of immigrant women southern or eastern Euro- pean stock. There were no who worked outside the home. Jews. Neill, the only Cath- olic, was closest to the immi- grant experience; his par- Boston, social workers and economists studied the ents had been born in Ireland. Three members held homes, schools, and banks of immigrants, as well as the Ph.D.’s—Jenks, Neill, and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge asylums and prisons that incarcerated them. Altogether, (R-Mass.), who had earned Harvard’s first doctorate in the commission spent an unprecedented $1 million, political science. employed 300 workers, and gathered original data on Advanced education and distance from the immigrant some three million people. That early experience and the experience were supposed to ensure the commissioners’ legislation it led to show the importance of “getting the impartiality in an era when reformers worshiped expertise facts” about immigration straight, but they also warn us and believed that finding “objective truth” would allow about the creeping biases with which we approach “facts” them to make decisions free of political and other consid- about immigration and the need to look beyond the erations. But what did objectivity and facts mean to these passions of the day toward the potential unintended men? Jenks was president of the American Economic consequences of the policy choices we make. Association but also had published a text for YMCA adult education courses titled The Political and Social Signifi- cance of the Teachings of Jesus. Lodge was a trained social he Dillingham Commission owed its existence to scientist, but he was also, in the words of historian John a chance act of political reaction. In 1906, the San Higham, immigration’s “most dangerous adversary.” He T Francisco School Board started a diplomatic first introduced a literacy-test bill while serving in the firestorm when it decided to segregate Japanese students, House in 1892; two years earlier, he had published an arti- infuriating a Japanese government that was still basking in cle purporting to “prove” that the English “race” was supe- its triumph in the Russo-Japanese War. President rior to all others. Theodore Roosevelt and his allies used the uproar to push More damaging to immigrants’ interests was the the Immigration Act of 1907 through Congress, omitting researchers’ steadfast commitment to the concept of the a much-debated provision requiring all male immigrants “American standard of living,” which sounded scientific but to be literate but giving the president authority to deny invited subjective judgments about how immigrants lived. entry to people holding Japanese passports on certain On its face, the concept assumed that all jobs should pay technical grounds. The idea was to reduce immigration well enough to allow a working man to own a home and without public embarrassment to the Japanese. The com- support a wife and children. This standard was supposed mission came as part of the package, a classic Washington to demonstrate the Dillingham Commission’s commit- promise to study the problem further. In this case, however, ment to carrying out a study that was “chiefly” economic in

18 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Immigration

No juryof peers: The eminences of the Dillingham Commission included Senator HenryCabot Lodge (front row,second from left),with Senator William P. Dillingham to his left and U.S. Commissioner of Labor Charles P. Neill at the far right. Economist Jeremiah Jenks is second from left in the back. character. In fact, it served mainly to let the commission near Pittsburgh, Lauck wrote, “As to the tractability of the recast its arguments in more seemingly acceptable terms. Slovaks, Magyars, and Croatians, there is no apparent dif- As one prominent magazine editor explained, “It is not the ference. . . . The Italians, on the other hand, are thought less cultural deficit of a husky country lad from Croatia that of than any of the more recent immigrants, and are con- threatens American standards. It is the fact that he sells his sidered treacherous and hard to control.” At another plant, working day for less money than a family can live on.” however, “a very different opinion . . . is expressed.” There, Cultural biases inevitably tainted the commission’s Magyars and Croatians were “tractable, but none are con- work. The “American standard of living” hid moralizing sidered very industrious.” Instead, the “Poles are considered assumptions about the roles of women and men, housing more intelligent and industrious.” How could objective choices, consumer culture, and ethics. Commission adviser science be fashioned from such assessments? H. Parker Willis, for example, said that the high percent- Lauck empathized with the “American” workingmen he ages of immigrant women who worked for wages showed saw as imperiled by Slavic and Italian newcomers in the “the extent to which the immigrant has been reduced not hardscrabble coal fields and steel mills of western Penn- merely personally, but in family life, to a basis of commer- sylvania. Such enterprises were undergoing wholesale cial exploitation.” Economist W. Jett Lauck, who oversaw “racial displacements,” as the commission put it. Lauck later the commission’s ambitious industrial studies, designed said that he had once belonged to “the sect of conservatism detailed surveys for his field agents to use, but left undefined and thought America was a land of great opportunities, but such terms as “assimilation, adaptability, tractability, [and] my impression from visiting these districts . . . led me to progressiveness.” Yet one man’s assimilation can be think that . . . our democracy was pretty much of a failure.” another’s capitulation; tractability could be desirable, or The poverty appalled him, as did the ill education and the synonymous with the dreaded un-American “docility” of divisions—geographic, cultural, linguistic, and economic— “backward races.” Surveying the situation at a steel plant between Americans and new immigrants.

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 19 Immigration

With expressions ranging from excited to weary,immigrants haul their earthly belongings through Ellis Island in the first decade of the 20th century.

Lauck had been trained as an economist at the Uni- more-experienced American workers into better positions. versity of Chicago, but he was also one of eight children Furthermore, the newcomers were making the raw mate- born to a West Virginia railroad engineer. His strong rials and industrial products of a capitalist economy identification with “American workers” like his father cheaper for consumers. In this sense, they might have propelled him toward the conclusion that “our industrial been good for the American standard of living. system has become saturated with an alien unskilled The Dillingham Commission operated under the labor force of low standards, which so far has been sweeping assumption that the federal government impossible to assimilate industrially, socially, or politi- had the right to create immigration policies enforce- cally, and which has broken down American standards able on its own shores, on the open seas, and at foreign of work and compensation.” ports. At least in the domestic sphere, this assertion of Then as now, however, even apparently solid evidence authority was built on a relatively recent foundation. that immigrants displaced large numbers of native-born Until the 1880s, individual states had crafted immi- workers was actually quite tenuous. In 1912, an economist gration policies, though by 1907 the federal govern- and Russian Jewish émigré named Isaac Hourwich used ment’s right to regulate immigration was well the commission’s own data to show that Italians, Bohemi- established. The commissioners, however, had even ans, and Slovaks were not taking native-born workers’ bigger ideas. They grasped immigration’s global jobs; rather, by taking low-wage jobs, they were pushing nature, and understood it in the framework of the

20 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Immigration imperialistic ambition found in many quarters in the 1910 and 1911. Few people, if any, read them in their aftermath of the Spanish-American War. They had no entirety. Instead, readers focused on the first volume, compunction about reaching far into Europe to study with its concise 40-page summary and recommenda- and shape immigration policy. Lodge was the Senate’s tions. The imprimatur of objectivity gave to these rec- grand lion of imperialism, and Dillingham, though a ommendations the hard gleam of “fact.” As The New less polarizing figure, was just as fervent. The most York Times put it, the commission had shown that prominent staff members of the commission had “aliens are not being, and cannot be assimilated— designed government programs in the Philip- pines and Puerto Rico, two colonies acquired as a “THERE IS NO ROOM EITHER for result of the recent war. Yet some of the “immigra- the cheap man or the cheap goods,” tion problem” was a direct result of imperialism: declared Calvin Coolidge. Japanese immigration had increased when Hawaii became American soil, and thus a stepping- cannot be, that is, unless some check is placed upon stone between Asia and California. The world was their continued influx.” coming to the United States, and the United States Among the recommendations were a literacy test, was reaching out to the world. a permanent bar to Asian immigration, “legislation As the brouhaha over segregation in San Fran- restricting the further admission of . . . unskilled cisco illustrated, immigration could not be viewed labor,” and some sort of quota system. Dillingham solely in terms of its domestic implications, and the and fellow commission member Representative John commission was willing to cast a wide net. Five mem- L. Burnett (D-Ala.), who chaired the Senate and bers, accompanied by their wives, spent several House committees on immigration, respectively, months in Europe investigating emigrants’ villages immediately introduced bills based on the recom- and exit ports and consulting with officials. In 1909 mendations. The literacy test passed both houses Dillingham sailed to Hawaii, a U.S. colony since 1898, three times. President William Howard Taft vetoed it to examine Japanese immigration there. (Not sur- once, Woodrow Wilson twice. Both men worried about prisingly, when the commission requested additional its fairness and constitutionality, and the reactions of appropriations in 1909, these junkets were lambasted immigrant voters. By 1917, recession and world war on the House floor.) Ultimately, the aim was to har- had slowed immigration, but Congress finally passed monize the laws of other nations with those of the the literacy test, over Wilson’s second veto. United States. The Immigration Act of 1907 had authorized Roosevelt to create an international com- mission to fashion global immigration and emigration s isolationist sentiment resurged after World policies. But, as would occur many times in the future, War I, resistance to immigration did likewise. In the imperatives of domestic politics in the United A 1921, Vice President Calvin Coolidge addressed States had already scotched any prospects for inter- American housewives (who had won the right to vote national cooperation. With their people barred from only the year before) in a Good Housekeeping article with American shores, for example, the governments of the telltale title, “Whose Country Is This?” His verdict Japan and China could hardly be expected to join in was clear: “Measured practically, it would be suicidal for cooperative efforts. us to let down the bars for the inflowing of cheap man- The Dillingham Commission presented its massive hood, just as, commercially, it would be unsound for this reports to Congress in installments throughout late country to allow her markets to be overflooded with

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 21 Immigration cheap goods, the product of cheap labor. There is no ers in the Southwest lobbied for an exemption for room either for the cheap man or the cheap goods.” Mexicans in the literacy law, and immigrants from the That year, Congress passed the first quotas on Western Hemisphere were not subject to the quotas immigration in U.S. history; three years later, it made of the 1920s. Mexicans began to come in larger num- the restrictions even tighter. The quotas were based on bers to fill agricultural and industrial jobs once occu- the distribution of national origins in the U.S. popu- pied by Chinese, Japanese, and European workers. lation found in the 1890 Census—before the rush of Some were technically “illegal,” a status that before immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. After had applied almost solely to Chinese. 1929, a tiny quota of 150,000 would be shared by all The “immigration problem” the Dillingham Com- Europeans (Canadians and Mexicans were exempted mission identified and studied a century ago differs as were wives and children of U.S. citizens). This had from the one the United States faces today, but the the effect of cutting immigration to about one-tenth commission unwittingly did a great deal to help cre- of its level in 1908 when Anna Herkner had made her ate our current difficulties. The strict quotas gave voyage. For Asians, the restrictions were even more those who yearned to come to America few choices— severe. The same 1917 law that had imposed a literacy a dilemma the people in steerage class with Herkner test on immigrants also created an “Asiatic barred never had to face. The laws recommended by the zone,” closing the door to virtually all Asians, and Dillingham Commission created the United States’ made those who were already in the United States modern immigration framework, which has been ineligible for citizenship. renovated—most comprehensively in 1965, when the national-origins quotas and literacy test were abol- ished, and 1986—but never dismantled. n the heated debates during the early 20th cen- Today, many Americans are concerned about the tury, few people gave much thought to the racial background of immigrants, their impact on I longer-term consequences of restricting immi- political and cultural institutions, and their threat to, gration, but these were many and profound. African yes, the “American standard of living.” These concerns Americans had already begun what became known as echo those that motivated the Dillingham study. But the Great Migration from the South to replace immi- the results of the commission’s work—strict quotas, grants in northern and midwestern factories during bad social science about “racial displacements,” and World War I, and their numbers increased as quotas unforeseen consequences—might give us pause. The dried up the supply of foreign-born labor. Black ghet- Dillingham Commission thought a lot more about tos replaced Italian and Jewish ones. Deprived of how to exclude immigrants than how to incorporate new arrivals from the Old Country, immigrant groups them. retained their distinctive cultural and religious tra- Many people today believe we need a quota system that ditions, but these inevitably changed to accommodate can be adjusted in response to economic conditions—an American mores. The immigrants and their descen- idea considered but rejected during the Dillingham era. dants began to see commonalities with people of We also need a flexible frame of mind in which to under- other European origins, and contrasted themselves stand today’s immigrants—not as “an invasion of barbar- with African Americans. In a sense, the immigration ians,” as Elihu Root saw them, but as Americans in the restrictions consolidated the category of “white,” as making. The immigrants who so frightened the commis- national and ethnic labels lost their force. sion indeed became Americans; they birthed a large por- At the same time, the quotas ensured an increase tion of the generation that fought in World War II and in Mexican immigration, an issue the Dillingham helped create the nation’s postwar prosperity. Commission had not thought important enough to Today, the challenge of crafting an immigration pol- address in any of its final recommendations. The icy free of unintended consequences remains. The les- United States did not even count immigrants arriv- sons of the Dillingham Commission suggest it will not ing across land borders until 1908. In 1917, employ- be easy. ■

22 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

America: Land of Loners?

Americans, plugged in and on the move, are confiding in their pets, their computers, and their spouses. What they need is to rediscover the value of friendship.

BY DANIEL AKST

Science-fiction writers make the best seers. Sun, Americans have been engaged in wholesale flight from In the late 1950s far-sighted Isaac Asimov imagined a sunny one another, decamping for suburbs and Sunbelt, splinter- planet called Solaria, on which a scant 20,000 humans dwelt ing into ever smaller households, and conducting more and on far-flung estates and visited one another only virtually, by more of their relationships online, where avatars flourish. The materializing as “trimensional images”—avatars, in other churn rate of domestic relations is especially remarkable, and words. “They live completely apart,” a helpful robot explained has rendered family life in the United States uniquely unsta- to a visiting earthling, “and never see one another except ble. “No other comparable nation,” the sociologist Andrew J. under the most extraordinary circumstances.” Cherlin observes, “has such a high level of multiple marital We have not, of course, turned into Solarians here on and cohabiting unions.” earth, strictly limiting our numbers and shunning our fellow Oceans of ink have been spilled on these developments, humans in revulsion. Yet it’s hard not to see some Solarian yet hardly any attention is paid to the one institution— parallels in modern life. Since Asimov wrote The Naked friendship—that could pick up some of the interpersonal slack. But while sizzling eros hogs the spotlight these days— Daniel Akst, a contributing editor to The Wilson Quarterly, is the sex sells, after all—too many of us overlook philia, the slower- author of We Have Met the Enemy: Self-Control in an Age of Excess, forth- coming in January from Penguin Press. burning and longer-lasting complement. That’s ironic,

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 23 Friendship because today “friends” are everywhere in our culture—the really is “love without his wings,” we can all be grateful for its average Facebook user has 130—and friendship, of a diluted earthbound nature. kind, is our most characteristic relationship: voluntary, flex- But we live now in a climate in which friends appear dis- ible, a “lite” alternative to the caloric meshugaas of family life. pensable. While most of us wouldn’t last long outside the But in restricting ourselves to the thin gruel of modern intricate web of interdependence that supplies all our phys- friendships, we miss out on the more nourishing fare that ical needs—imagine no electricity, money, or sewers—we’ve deeper ones have to offer. Aristotle, who saw friendship as come to demand of ourselves truly radical levels of emotional essential to human flourishing, shrewdly observed that it self-sufficiency. In America today, half of adults are unmar- ried, and more than a quarter live alone. As Robert Putnam THE GENIUS OF FRIENDSHIP rests showed in his 2000 book Bowling Alone, civic involve- firmly on its limitations. Think of it as the ment and private associa- tions were on the wane at the moderate passion. end of the 20th century. Sev- eral years later, social scien- tists made headlines with a survey showing that Ameri- comes in three distinct flavors: those based on usefulness cans had a third fewer nonfamily confidants than two (contacts), on pleasure (drinking buddies), and on a shared decades earlier. A quarter of us had no such confidants at all. pursuit of virtue—the highest form of all. True friends, he con- In a separate study, Nicholas Christakis and James tended, are simply drawn to the goodness in one another, Fowler, authors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our goodness that today we might define in terms of common Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (2009), sur- passions and sensibilities. veyed more than 3,000 randomly chosen Americans and It’s possible that Aristotle took all this too seriously, but found they had an average of four “close social contacts” with today the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, and whom they could discuss important matters or spend free in our culture we take friendship—a state of strong mutual time. But only half of these contacts were solely friends; the affection in which sex or kinship isn’t primary—far too rest were a variety of others, including spouses and children. lightly. We’re good at currying contacts and we may have lots Here, as on so many fronts, we often buy what we need. of pals, but by falling short on Aristotle’s third and most The affluent commonly hire confidants in the form of talk important category of friendship, we’ve left a hole in our lives. therapists, with whom they may maintain enduring (if remu- Now that family life is in turmoil, reinvigorating our notion nerated) relationships conducted on a first-name basis. The of friendship—to mean something more than mere number of household pets has exploded throughout the familiarity—could help fill some of the void left by disinte- Western world, suggesting that not just dogs but cats, rats, grating household arrangements and social connections and parakeets are often people’s best friends. John Cacioppo, frayed by the stubborn individualism of our times. a University of Chicago psychologist who studies loneliness, Friendship is uniquely suited to fill this void because, says he’s convinced that more Americans are lonely—not unlike matrimony or parenthood, it’s available to everyone, because we have fewer social contacts, but because the ones offering concord and even intimacy without aspiring to be all- we have are more harried and less meaningful. consuming. Friends do things for us that hardly anybody else Developing meaningful friendships—having the kind can, yet ask nothing more than friendship in return (though of people in your life who were once known as “intimates”— this can be a steep price if we take friendship as seriously as takes time, but too many of us are locked in what social critic we should). The genius of friendship rests firmly on its lim- Barbara Ehrenreich has called “the cult of conspicuous busy- itations, which are better understood as boundaries. Think ness,” from which we seem to derive status and a certain per- of it as the moderate passion—constrained, yet also critical. verse comfort even as it alienates us from one another. If friendship, as hardheaded Lord Byron would have it, Throw in two careers and some kids, and something’s got to

24 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Friendship give. The poet Kenneth Koch, whose friends included the Friendship has also suffered from the remorseless eroti- brilliant but childless John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara, laid cization of human relations that was bequeathed to us by out the problem in verse: Sigmund Freud. The culture stands particularly ready to sex- ualize men’s friendships since the gay liberation movement You want a social life, with friends. mercifully swept away taboos against discussing same-sex A passionate love life and as well relationships. In 2005 The New York Times laid claim to To work hard every day. What’s true coining the term “man date” in a story—under a woman’s Is of these three you may have two. byline—about the anxiety two straight men supposedly experience if they brave a restaurant or museum together If time is a problem, so is space. Although Americans have and run the risk that people will think they are gay. The “bro- been relocating less often lately, perhaps as a result of the mance” theme, once strictly a collegiate sport among schol- recession, we still move around quite a bit—for work, sun- ars scouring the letters of passionate 19th-century friends shine, retirement, or to be near family—and this process of for signs of physical intimacy, has since made its way into uprooting dissolves friendships and discourages those that popular culture. The pathetic state of male friendship—and haven’t yet formed. Few of us would turn down a tempting the general suspicion that men who seek close friends might new job in a far-off city to stay near friends, possibly for the be looking for something more—was captured in last year’s sensible reason that those friends might move away six film I Love You, Man, in which a guy decides to get married, months later anyway. realizes he has no one to be his best man, and must embark Divorce also takes its toll; most of us over the age of 30 on a series of “man dates” to find one. are familiar with the social consequences that ripple outward The irony is that straight men could learn a thing or two from a split-up, as foursomes for dinner or bridge are from their gay brethren, as Andrew Sullivan implied in his destroyed and friends may find themselves having to pick insightful book on the AIDS crisis, Love Undetectable: Notes sides. Marital dissolution usually costs each spouse some pre- on Friendship, Sex, and Survival (1998). Often estranged cious connections, including in-laws who might once have from their natural families and barred from forming legally been important friends. acknowledged new ones of their own, gay men, Sullivan observed, learned to rely not on the kindness of strangers but the loyalty of friends: “Insofar as friendship was an incal- ur longstanding reverence for self-sufficiency culable strength of homosexuals during the calamity of hasn’t helped matters. Ralph Waldo Emerson AIDS, it merely showed, I think, how great a loss is our cul- O gave us a sharp shove down this road with his ture’s general underestimation of this central human virtue.” famous essay “Self-Reliance,” and Cole Porter lyricized the We make this mistake in part because we’ve allowed our uniquely American claustrophobia that danced off the wildly inflated view of matrimony to subsume much of the tongues of a parade of popular crooners: “Let me be by territory once occupied by friendship. Your BFF nowadays— myself in the evenin’ breeze/And listen to the murmur of the at least until the divorce—is supposed to be your spouse, a cottonwood trees/Send me off forever but I ask you plausible idea in this age of assortative mating, except that please/Don’t fence me in.” Frontier-oriented American spouses and friends fill different needs, and cultivating mythology is studded with exemplars of the lone hero, from some close extramarital friendships might even take some Daniel Boone to Amelia Earhart, to say nothing of the pro- of the pressure off at home. Yet the married men I know tagonists of Hollywood westerns such as High Noon (1952). seem overwhelmingly dependent on their wives for emo- Male buddy films date back to Laurel and Hardy, but their tional connection, even as their wives take pleasure in profusion in the past three decades—including box-office friends to whom they don’t happen to be wed. The Beatles’ franchises ranging from Beverly Hills Cop to Harold & immortal lonely heart Eleanor Rigby and novelist Anita Kumar—is a strong social contra-indicator, like the lavish Brookner’s socially isolated heroines notwithstanding, the outfits and interiors of movies made during the Great fact is that all the women I know are better at friendships— Depression. If something desirable is missing in life, people spend more time on them, take more pleasure in them, and like to see it on the screen. value them more highly—than any of the straight men.

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 25 Friendship

Forgive me, guys, but we are lousy at this, and while it may join with them against their enemies. It doesn’t seem much seem to us that our casual approach is perfectly normal, in of a stretch to conclude that a talent for making friends fact it’s odd. Among people whose lives are more like those would bestow an evolutionary advantage by corralling oth- of our ancestors, for example, friendship is taken far more ers into the project of promoting and protecting one’s kids— seriously. In some cultures, close friends pledge themselves and thereby ensuring the survival of one’s genes. to one another in bonding rituals that involve the spilling of If we evolved to make friends, we also evolved to tell blood. The Bangwa people in Cameroon traditionally con- them things. Humans have an irrepressible need to sidered friendship so important that many families assigned divulge, and often friends can tell one another what a best friend to a newborn right along with a spouse. they can’t tell anyone else, a function that has come in especially handy since the Protestant Reformation put so many beyond the “FRIENDS DO NOT LIVE in harmony,” reach of the confessional. Less grandly, trading gos- Henry David Thoreau said, “but in melody.” sip is probably one of the main reasons people evolved into such friend There was a time when platonic friendship was exalted— makers, since information (and reputation) have always if not idealized—in the West, perhaps in part because of reli- been valuable—even in the evolutionary environment. gious paranoia about sex. The myth of Damon and Pythias Alliances and inside dope are two of the ways people and the biblical story of David and Jonathan resonated derive power from friendships, which is why tyrannies across the centuries, and in the Middle Ages knights bound are sometimes so hostile to them. Private affiliations of themselves in ceremonies to comrades in arms. Cicero, all kinds are a countervailing force against the great Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir Francis Bacon, Michel de weight of government, but Aristotle reminds us that Montaigne, William Wordsworth—the list of Western lumi- friendship also maintains the state. Friendships, after all, naries who have waxed rhapsodic over friendship is long entail mutual regard, respect for others, a certain amount enough to fill anthologies from both Norton and Oxford. of agreeableness, and a willingness to rise above the ties In the 19th century, friendship was the subject of pane- of kinship in order to knit society into a web of trust and gyrics by the likes of Emerson, who wrote that “the moment reciprocation—qualities more likely, in a state, to pro- we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed: duce Denmark than Iraq. there is no winter and no night: all tragedies, all ennuies van- Living in a society of friends has many advantages. ish.” His buddy Henry David Thoreau, lamenting that to most Friendship can moderate our behavior (unless, like the tel- people a friend is simply someone who is not an enemy, evision mobster Tony Soprano, you happen to choose declared, perhaps wishfully, “Friends do not live in harmony, immoderate friends). Friends help us establish and main- merely, as some say, but in melody.” Mary Wollstonecraft tain norms and can tell us if we’re running off the rails might have spoken for the lot when she noted that while eros when others don’t notice, won’t break the news, or lack the is transient, “the most holy bond of society is friendship.” necessary credibility. Both our relatives and our friends, the psychologist Howard Rachlin writes, “are essential mir- rors of the patterns of our behavior over long periods— grain of salt is in order: Friendship, like baseball, mirrors of our souls. They are the magic ‘mirrors on the wall’ always seems to send intellectuals off the deep who can tell us whether this drink, this cigarette, this ice- A end. Yet there is more biological justification for cream sundae, this line of cocaine, is more likely to be part our predecessors’ paeans to friendship than for our modern- of a new future or an old past.” day tepidity. Friendship exists in all the world’s cultures, likely Indeed, the influence of friends and associates is pro- as a result of natural selection. People have always needed found. Social scientists Christakis and Fowler, working with allies to help out in times of trouble, raise their status, and data from the multidecade Framingham Heart Study, found

26 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Friendship

Today’s pell-mell pace leaves little chance to while away the hours with friends. But there’s no substitute for sittin’ a spell and making small talk. that if you become obese, the odds increase by 71 percent standing. This special way of knowing one another was that your same-sex friend will do likewise—a bigger impact once exalted as “sympathy,” and Adam Smith described than was measured among siblings. On the other hand, it as “changing places in fancy.” As Caleb Crain made when you become happy, a friend living within a mile has plain in his excellent book American Sympathy: Men, a 25 percent greater chance of becoming happy as well—and Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation (2001), the even a friend of a friend has a 10 percent greater chance. 18th and 19th centuries were the heyday of sympathy, Encouragingly for those who know a sourpuss or two, mis- when the fervor of friends was evident in their letters as ery was not comparably contagious. well as their comportment. Sympathy persisted in pop- Friendship can even prolong our lives. For loneliness, the ular discourse and was studied as a scientific fact under experts tell us, has to do more with the quality of our rela- various guises until, in the 19th century, Charles Darwin tionships than the quantity. And we now know that loneli- came along to replace cooperation with competition in ness is associated with all sorts of problems, including the intellectual armament of the day. depression, high blood pressure and cholesterol, Alzheimer’s Sympathy’s long-ago advocates were onto something disease, poor diet, drug and alcohol abuse, bulimia, and sui- when they reckoned friendship one of life’s highest cide. Lonely people have a harder time concentrating, are pleasures, and they felt themselves freer than we do to more likely to divorce, and get into more conflicts with revel in it. It’s time for us to ease up on friending, rethink neighbors and coworkers. our downgrade of ex-lovers to “just” friends, and resist But of course friends are not vitamins, to be taken in moving far away from everyone we know merely because daily doses in hopes of cheating the Grim Reaper. The it rains less elsewhere. In Asimov’s vision, Solaria was a real reason to prize our friends is that they help us lead lonely planet that humans settled with the help of robots. good and satisfying lives, enriched by mutual under- People weren’t made to live there. ■

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 27 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The Irish in Paris

For centuries, the passionate and sometimes persecuted Irish have felt a peculiar sympathy with Europe’s self-anointed capital of sophistication.

BY MAX BYRD

Both inside and outside France, surely the gray ocean surf breaks off to his left, symbolic per- most representative Frenchman of modern times is haps of his grim state of mind after his fall from Charles de Gaulle, World War II hero and general, power. founding father, and first president of the Fifth What most people will not remember is that the Republic. With his magnificent Gallic horn of a nose, beach was near Heron Cove in West Cork, County protruding like a great scalene triangle from beneath Kerry, in the Republic of Ireland. And what almost his brown kepi, he is a symbolic figure as recogniza- nobody will remember is that, when asked, de Gaulle ble as the Eiffel Tower, and almost as tall and inflex- explained to a few straggling members of the press ible. His very surname means “of Gaul,” and it links that he had come to Ireland in order to be near the his identity firmly to the core national identity, that cradle of his ancestors. De Gaulle himself was divided original semimythic Gaul of antiquity that Julius in partes duas: That most representative and identi- Caesar so neatly divided in partes tres. fiable of modern Frenchmen was part Irish. It may come as a surprise, then, to recall that when de Gaulle was finally forced, partly by his own Gallic stubbornness, to leave the presidency in April art Irish! Franco-Hibernian! It is a notably 1969, he did not simply retreat from Paris to his unsettling fact—as if Sir Winston Spencer family home in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises, in the P Churchill had revealed that he was really Ital- heart of the Haut-Marne countryside. Most French ian. But the lineage is not in doubt. De Gaulle’s mater- people of a certain age will recall the very dramatic nal great-grandmother bore the not-quite-Gallic name photographs snapped a few weeks later, among the of Marie Angélique McCartan and was herself the last official ones ever taken of de Gaulle. They are in descendant of one Patrick McCartan, who fled from the customary black and white of newspaper photo- Ireland to France in 1645, in self-imposed exile. graphs of that era, and they show him rigid and stiff This McCartan was one of many Irish rebels of the backed as ever, hatless, dressed in a suit and dark mid-17th century who found their lands confiscated by overcoat, walking with a cane along a beach. A bleak the occupying English and who instinctively took refuge in France, the eternal enemy of perfidious Max Byrd, a contributing editor of The Wilson Quarterly, is president of Albion. In a second wave of exiles, after the victory of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and author of several novels, most recently Shooting the Sun (2003). William of Orange in 1690, Patrick McCartan’s son

34 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 After leaving the French presidency in 1969, Charles de Gaulle realized a lifelong ambition when he visited the land of his mother’s ances- tors, the McCartans. Photographers captured him walking near Heron Cove in County Kerry, Ireland.

John would join the famous Wild Geese of Ireland Quarter of Paris. And there he welcomed six young (Oies Sauvages) who came to France, formed the Irish Irishmen as students in what he rather grandly Brigade of the French Army, and settled more or less declared was the “Collège de Montaigu” in the Uni- permanently into French life, though always with one versity of Paris (the earliest “official” Irish outpost I murderous eye fixed on the conquerors across the know of in Paris). Like the McCartans, Lee and his six Channel. young men had fled their ancestral island because of De Gaulle’s family history, however, belongs to a English oppression, in their case a succession of bru- much greater pageant of immigration and split tal antipopery measures known as the Penal Laws, national identity. The Irish had been coming to which had effectively shut down Catholic seminaries France—to Paris in particular—well before 1645. And all over Ireland. The Irish church, defying the English, not all of the immigrants were soldiers. As is so often had sent priests like Father Lee all over the Continent the case in European transplantations, there was a to train new priests who could return, openly or not, religious dimension. to Ireland. There were similar enterprises in Lisbon, In 1578, well in advance of the Wild Geese, Father Prague, and Rome. Yet for whatever mysterious rea- John Lee, a priest from Waterford, Ireland, settled in sons of affinity and social chemistry, those other insti- a tiny building on the rue Saint-Thomas in the Latin tutions failed to take deep root or else simply did not

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 35 The Irish in Paris flourish. But the Irish in Paris were quite another does not easily penetrate into Irish heads.” story. Yet argumentative and stubborn as they might be, The Collège de Montaigu prospered so well that by during the latter 18th century these Irish priests and 1677 a series of moves brought it, now as the Collège des their students seemed everywhere, deeply woven into Irlandais, to a spacious new setting, still in the Latin Parisian life. When the Bastille fell, there was an Irish Quarter, on a pleasant, gently sloping street that would prisoner in it, a Dubliner who had served in the Irish eventually become the rue des Irlandais. From here, the Brigade. The priest who ministered to its inmates, Irish priests and seminarians fanned out into Paris life for 40 livres a month, was one Thomas MacMahon. And when the black day came, Louis XVI was given his last Communion THE IRISH IN PARIS maintained a by a cleric from the Irish College, Father Henry certain recognizable, even stereotypical, Edgeworth, who then accompanied the doomed national identity. king to the place de Grève and stood a few feet behind him on the plat- like ducks on the Seine. They bought more and more form, praying as the guillotine fell. Dr. Guillotin him- property and rose to prestigious professorial chairs in the self is thought to have taught briefly at the Irish Sorbonne. With a cheerful disregard of the Sixth Com- College. mandment, they educated a great many young soldiers before they entered the Irish Brigade. When the Revo- lution came, the college’s buildings were briefly confis- he question of who is French and who is not cated (a familiar Irish fate) and turned into a school for originated in a little known pre-Revolutionary French boys—Napoleon’s brother Jerome studied there T law known as the droit d’aubaine, which can for a time. In 1790 students from the Irish College played be translated roughly as the “law of windfall or good a Christmas game of soccer on the Champs de Mars, luck.” It grew out of the absolutist nature of the French using, with remarkably poor judgment, the new Altar of monarchy in the Old Regime, and it simply stated the Fatherland as a goal. When a scoring kick destroyed that if a resident foreigner died on French soil, his the Altar, angry French spectators would have lynched money and property belonged thenceforth to the king. them, had not General Lafayette himself arrived with (Confiscation was not exclusively an English appetite.) troops from the National Guard and a young orator The way around this was to become a naturalized cit- named Patrick McKenna calmed the mob with an izen, but the process was long and expensive; of the inspired paean to Ireland’s quest for Liberté. tens of thousands of foreigners in France, only about Through it all, the Irish in Paris maintained a cer- 50 a year were naturalized before 1789. tain recognizable, even stereotypical, national identity. The Revolution would eventually repeal the droit The 18th-century political philosopher Baron de Mon- d’aubaine—not for nothing was the term “citizen” so tesquieu dryly observed that the Irish students were so resonant in those tumultuous years—but even earlier, poor that they came to Paris bringing “nothing with beginning in 1684, the droit had been waived by royal them to meet the bare necessities of life, except a for- decree for Irish priests and soldiers, because all of midable talent for argument.” At the end of the cen- them were presumed to be Jacobites (supporters of tury, in an otherwise bureaucratic report on a recal- James II and his descendants, longtime Catholic pre- citrant Irish-French soldier, the Revolutionary tenders to the English throne). Throughout the 18th Committee of Public Safety paused to remark, with century, Irish merchants, the third great class of very English-like exasperation, that “republicanism refugee immigrants, were also drawn to Paris in

36 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 The Irish in Paris

by Richard Hayes, which contains several hundred short biographies of Irish men and women who settled in and around the capital in the late 18th and early 19th cen- turies. (Outside Paris, their greatest con- centration may have been in the wine country of Bordeaux.) In military matters, a thick and entertaining volume by the same writer, rather suggestively titled Irish Swordsmen of France, recounts the lives of six notable Irish generals who fought in the Grande Armée during the Napoleonic wars. In politics, there is the famous Irish revolutionary Daniel O’Connell—“The Liberator”—who came to France as a schoolboy. O’Connell had a wide puritan streak in his makeup and was one of the rare Irishmen who did not take to the free and easy morals of Paris (“a proud but filthy city,” he called it). He left it for good on the same day that Louis XVI was guil- lotined, but his blazing passion had already made such an impression that many years later the great 19th-century chronicler of Parisian life Henri Balzac remarked, “I would like to have met three men only in this century: Napoleon, An Irish cleric,HenryEdgeworth,prayed with doomed Louis XVI before his execution in 1793. Cuvier, and O’Connell.” (O’Connell was the subject of a biography by Charles de impressive numbers, especially in banking and the Gaulle’s grandmother, this time on his father’s side.) wine trade. They too were given waivers from the Equally distinguished is the career of Patrice droit d’aubaine, not to mention numerous other con- MacMahon, whose grandfather fled to France from cessions and benefits prompted by the reflexive finan- Limerick in 1691 for the usual reasons. He would cial support of the crown for all things anti-English. reach the rank of general in the Crimean War—and By the end of the century Paris had become, if not pre- enter both French history and French literature with cisely a little Dublin, the de facto place of asylum for his immortal reply to the commander at Sebastopol Irish patriots of every kind, one anchor of a great who advised him to retreat: “J’y suis. J’y reste.” (“Here political and intellectual bridge that united two very I am. Here I stay.”) For a later victory, in Italy, different countries against a common enemy. MacMahon was named Duke of Magenta. And in 1873 he moved into the Hotel de Matignon on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, as president of France. rom this point on, it is astonishing how often He would hold the office for the next six years. Today, Irish names begin to appear in the history of you can stroll from the Arc de Triomphe up the broad F Paris. On my desk sits a densely printed book and elegant avenue MacMahon, stop in a pub, and called Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France, raise a glass of Hennessy cognac (Richard Hennessy,

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 37 The Irish in Paris royal patent 1765) in his honor. (who might also have remarked, “J’y suis. J’y reste”). Not only generals and politicians have represented More memorable still are the three great modern the Irish in Paris over the past two centuries. Long Anglo-Irish writers who, though astonishingly dif- before the American “Lost Generation” of Ernest ferent from one another, each sought out Paris at an Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s, early age and made it their home. The first, Oscar Irish bohemians and artists cleared a Parisian space Wilde, followed a classic trajectory and came to Paris for themselves. The great-grandmother of such shortly after leaving Oxford—“For Irishmen,” remarks bohemians, one might say—were she not the subject Wilde’s biographer Richard Ellmann, “Oxford is to of one of the most erotic paintings in all of French the mind what Paris is to the body”—and there Wilde art—was a spectacular royal courtesan named Marie- was to live, on and off, for the rest of his life. He Louise O’Murphy, commonly known as La Petite spent his honeymoon in the Hotel Wagram in a room Morphil. Born in 1737, she was the fifth daughter of overlooking the Tuileries Gardens. In sad and ironic an Irish cobbler in Rouen. At the age of 14 or 15 she symmetry, he returned to Paris for good after his became a dancer in the Opéra in Paris, where scandalous affair with Lord Douglas and died in Casanova spotted her and introduced her to the another hotel, the Alsace, in 1900, at the age of 46. He painter François Boucher. Boucher thereupon lies buried in the cemetery Père Lachaise. painted her lying on her stomach, legs spread wide in The allure of Paris for Wilde—and for James Joyce invitation, ripe as an apple. Casanova is said to have and Samuel Beckett afterward—was not only its sen- left the painting, as a calling card, in a place where suality. Their instinctual Irish distrust of England Louis XV would happen upon it. He did, and for two was never far below the surface. To them, Paris years La Petite Morphil held a special place in the was the most civilized possible place of exile, one king’s favor, until she spoiled things by trying to dis- that—unlike certain other cities—properly valued art place Louis’ official mistress and one of the great and artists and gave them both freedom and toler- sexual generals of all time, Madame de Pompadour ance. Or to put it another way, when else have three such splendid writers felt such repulsion from their natural literary magnet? Paris was not London— Paris was the very opposite of London. “He came to Paris to stay a week,” Ell- mann writes of Joyce, “and remained for 20 years.” “I am not English,” Wilde liked to say. “I am Irish, which is quite another thing.” Beyond these writers’ heavy-lidded, frowning dis- trust of the English nation lies something else: their deeply conflicted attitude toward the English lan- guage, which was at once Soon after young Irish beauty Marie-Louise O’Murphy posed for this provocative portrait by the painter their glorious inheritance, Francois Boucher, she came to King Louis XV’s attention and he took her as his mistress. burden, and spur. One of

38 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 The Irish in Paris the indisputable masters of our tongue, Wilde nonetheless insisted that there were only two languages in the world worth learning, French and Greek. Like Beckett, he wrote almost as often in French as English. And he once described himself with a complex irony that both Beckett and Joyce would have understood: “Français de sympathie, je suis Irlandais de race, et les Anglais m’ont condamné à parler le langage de Shakespeare.” (“French by sympathy, I am Irish by race, and the English have condemned me to speak the language of Shakespeare.”)

he Irish are still in Paris, a boisterous, prosperous, fully T accepted presence. There may be between 10,000 and 15,000 perma- nent residents, according to the Irish Embassy. The casual tourist is struck by their voices on the streets and Samuel Beckett, at work at the Odeón Theater in Paris in 1966, often wrote in French, by the number of Irish pubs scattered perhaps agreeing with fellow Irishman Oscar Wilde that English was a burden. throughout the city. Father Lee’s ancient college on the rue des Irlandais sits just a few Quite possibly, however, I am looking from the blocks southeast of the Pantheon and serves now as wrong end of the telescope. Paris, incomparable Paris, the Irish Cultural Center, with a busy “multimedia makes its siren call not only to the Irish. One of its center,” a chapel, and a large dormitory for students. earliest visitors from the New World was that most A reader who runs his eye down the pages of the representative and symbolic of the Founding Fathers, Paris equivalent of the social register will still pause as completely American as de Gaulle was French. in surprise at names such as O’Gorman and Mac- Thomas Jefferson came to Paris in 1784 and left it, Carthy. (My own French teacher on an early visit was reluctantly enough, in 1789 to take up his post as a native Parisian named Alice Mahoney.) George Washington’s first secretary of state (reluctant Why this should be remains a mystery, to me at in part, perhaps, because of his affair with the artist least. Beyond religion and a certain Celtic admix- Maria Cosway—said to be Irish-Italian!—whom he ture, do the Irish and French share something else? had met at the Paris grain market in 1786). As a The same sensual and tragic view of life? Does the buffer against the wilderness, Jefferson carried much Irish gift for language—no small part of de Gaulle’s of the City of Light home with him—some 86 great inheritance—fit them especially well for the pas- crates of wine, mirrors, armchairs, curtains, even sionate and lyric power of French at its best? Or is it wallpaper, so that afterward, in Virginia, Paris glowed perhaps simply no great surprise that, with the help in his mind. “I do love this people with all my heart,” of a common enemy, the two most talkative and argu- he wrote a friend in 1785. French by sympathy as mentative races in Europe should find each other so much as anyone could be, he might have been speak- compatible? ing on behalf of four centuries of the Irish in Paris. ■

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 39 Time Traveling with the WQ

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Questions? Contact the Editor, Steven Lagerfeld, at [email protected] Checks and credit cards accepted. Make or (202) 691-4019. Send your tax-deductible contribution to: checks payable to The Wilson Quarterly. If using a credit card (Visa, MasterCard, The Editor, The Wilson Quarterly or American Express), please indicate 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. name on card, account number, and Washington, DC 20004–3027 expiration date. Fax: (202) 691-4036. Inside Israel David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel’s founding father, once said that in order to be a realist in Israel, one “must believe in miracles.” The miracles have come—military vic- tories, economic success, scientific achievement— but after years of conflict and growing international isolation, the belief is being put to the test as Israelis contemplate their future.

Galina Vromen on her life in Yoram Peri on the impasse in an Arab town ...... ,p. 42 politics ...... p. 56

Walter Reich on the despair of Dan Senor and Saul Singer on

Israeli Jews ...... p. 48 the start-up culture ...... p. 62

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 41 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Israel Through Other Eyes

In an Arab town, an Israeli Jew finds friendship—and its limits.

BY GALINA VROMEN

Some Jews think I’m brave. Some think I’m thought and we enjoy life in the town and are in no rush stupid. I am an Israeli Jew who lives in an Arab Israeli town to leave. because I want to get to know the 20 percent of my com- I have grown fond of my tiny herb garden—the one our patriots who are Arabs and learn their language. No one friend Sayid helped me plant when my husband and I first thinks this is normal. There must be another motive. arrived so I could make herbal tea. I love the view from our Maybe I am married to an Arab? Maybe I want to make a windows of the ruins of the Crusader fortress on the high- political statement? Maybe my work brings me here? The est of the town’s seven hills, the smell of coffee in the air that answer on all counts is “no.” Just curiosity? How crazy! greets me when I hang my laundry off my porch, the tolling Once Israeli Jews get over the shock, they almost always of the church bells that mingles on Sunday mornings with ask: “How do people treat you? Are you accepted?” The the muezzins’ calls from the mosques. I love harvesting assumption is that I am shunned at best, attacked at worst. olives in autumn with the family that has adopted us. Nothing could be further from the truth. It no longer strikes me as exotic when a pickup truck For almost two years I have lived with my husband, equipped with a megaphone winds its way through the nar- also an Israeli-born Jew, in the northern Israeli town row streets to announce a wedding. Funerals are also known as Shfaram in Hebrew and Shafa ’Amr in Arabic, announced by megaphone. Among the first words I learned population 40,000—60 percent Muslims, 26 percent in Arabic were the ones for “wedding” and “funeral,” in Arab Christians, 14 percent Druze, and a smattering of order to decipher whether the invitations, issued to one and Bedouin. To the best of my knowledge, we are the only all, were to share a joy or a sorrow. Most of the weddings Jews. Located about 15 miles inland from the port city take place outdoors in the summer, and I have come to of Haifa, Shafa ’Amr is in the hilly Galilee region that has expect summer months filled with fireworks bursting in the been part of the State of Israel since its creation in 1948. air in celebration. I no longer jump at the sound of sub- We hadn’t planned to stay this long. We came for just a machinegun fire, tut-tut-tutting at the slightest excuse for year, prompted by my husband’s research on sulha, a tra- joy among the Druze. (Followers of a secretive faith that ditional Arab mediation process, and our desire to learn separated from Islam in the 11th century, the Druze are the Arabic. But it is a harder language to learn than we only Arabs who are conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces. This gives them access to army weapons, whose use Galina Vromen, a former international news correspondent, directs a preschool reading and Jewish values program in northern Israel. to celebrate weddings and holidays is, of course, a patent

42 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Shafa ’Amr is also called “Little Rome” because of its seven hills, the tallest of them capped by a fortress built on the ruins of a Crusader castle. violation of military regulations.) acceptable for women in the Druze part of town where I My biggest predicament in the first few months was live: I take business trips unescorted by relatives; I rarely that I could not venture out my door to dump my trash into cook, in a community where women take pride in provid- the garbage bin without being invited for a friendly coffee ing delicious and abundant food constantly; I have only one I usually had no time to enjoy. Most of my neighbors have (grown) child; I expect my husband to wash floors and do given up on me and assume I am unfriendly, when actu- the laundry, chores thought of exclusively as women’s work. ally I am just busy directing a Hebrew-language parent- Above all, I have come to appreciate how enveloping, child reading program—a job that keeps me wedded to my comforting, and binding extended-family ties are among computer for most of the day or away visiting nearby Jew- my Arab friends, and to be grateful for their willingness to ish towns. However unintentionally, I am sure I have allow my husband and me into their orbit. Throughout insulted many of my neighbors in Shafa ’Amr with my their lives they spend evening after evening together, sitting reluctance to interrupt my day for hours of socializing. amiably on rooftop patios in the summer, watching the But I have been treated with unremitting warmth and moon rise over their twinkling town, and clustering indoors respect, even though my behavior is freer than what is during the winter, talking and drinking endless cups of tea

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 43 Inside Israel and coffee as the flames lap the olive-wood logs in their These stores don’t carry our music,” Bediya said simply. stoves. They consider my life pitiably unentwined in the Nonsense, I thought to myself. But she was right. Not only lives of others, devoid of substance and interest because I was there nothing by Awad (other than a recording she had live far from my son, my parents, and my brother. done with an Israeli Jewish artist), there were no Arabic I suspect that it is this sense of family—its love, its power, recordings to be had at all, despite the fact that the mall was its all-encompassing cushioning against the world—that frequented by many Arabs from surrounding towns. helps them contend with Israeli society, that often hostile, Watching the news with my Arab friends, many of sometimes-compelling, always-conflicting world in which whom tune in daily to Israeli state television news in they find themselves. Unlike Palestinians in the West Bank Hebrew, has become an experience in altered perception. and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in the Six-Day War Even the weather report can be annoying. For example, the of 1967, the Arabs of Shafa ’Amr and other areas inside weatherman may say, “We’re expecting rain tomorrow. But Israel’s pre-1967 borders—about 1.2 million people in all— it will be over before the holiday on Tuesday.” That rainy are Israeli citizens with full voting rights. But though they tomorrow is actually a Muslim/Druze holiday, which goes may study with Jews at universities, work with them in totally unacknowledged. Only the Jewish holiday later in the week exists on Israeli televi- sion. It bothers me suddenly that the weatherman—and LIVING IN AN ARAB TOWN has hence his listeners—does not know or does not acknowl- meant acquiring bifocal vision that is edge that a substantial por- tion of the population will often uncomfortable. care if it rains tomorrow and their feasts are ruined. Then there was the offices and hospitals, service their cars, tend their gardens, report last year that Israel’s transport minister, Israel Katz, and clean their homes, they rarely socialize with Jews. had decided to gradually remove Arabic from road signs Moreover, Arabs in Israel have a strong sense of being throughout Israel, despite the fact that Arabic is one of the second-class citizens, a perception that is supported by the country’s official languages. This riles my neighbors. What meagerness of the national resources dedicated to Arab is to be gained by such a policy? What will be its effect other schools and municipal infrastructure compared with those than further disenfranchisement? Election after election, devoted to the Jewish sector. Arabs are underrepresented Arab voting rates go down—53 percent of Arab citizens went in the civil service and in universities; they cannot get the to the polls in the 2009 elections compared with 65 percent security clearances needed for jobs in Israel’s large industrial overall in the country, down dramatically from Arab voting security sector. I feel inadequate to speak about what Israel rates of about 80 percent some 50 years ago. (Most give their looks like through their eyes. I only know that living in an votes to three small Arab parties, but about a third vote for Arab town has meant acquiring a bifocal vision that is often mainstream Israeli parties.) uncomfortable. Above all, there is the feeling that a whole Katz’s attitude is reflective of sentiment across a great world exists that is simply ignored by the majority culture. swath of the Jewish population. In a 2008 poll by the Washington-based Center Against Racism, 75 percent of Israeli Jewish respondents said they would not agree to live remember walking around a big shopping mall in a in a building with Arab residents, about 40 percent believed Jewish town 10 minutes from Shafa ’Amr. I was shop- that Arabs should be stripped of the right to vote, and more I ping there one day with my neighbor Bediya, and than 50 percent agreed that Israel should encourage the wanted to go into the record store to buy a CD by Mira emigration of its Arab citizens. In a 2007 study by Haifa Uni- Awad, an Israeli Arab singer. The shop is part of Israel’s versity sociologist Sami Smooha, 60 percent of surveyed largest record-store chain. “You won’t find Mira Awad here. Arab citizens of Israel expressed concern about a possible

44 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Inside Israel

Weddings and funerals loom large in the intense communal life of Shafa ’Amr’s Druze community, with its close-knit and deeply rooted families. mass expulsion, 76 percent considered Zionism to be racist, was featured on television recently, I happened not to be in and 41 percent did not believe the Holocaust happened. Shafa ’Amr, and I was relieved not to watch the report with Israeli Arabs’ alienation is palpable on Israeli Indepen- my neighbors. The issue of land in tiny Israel is fraught with dence Day, which fell on April 19 this year. There were very tension. “Judaizing” parts of Israel, such as the Galilee, few Israeli flags hanging in Shafa ’Amr, except on the post where I live, has been the goal of most Israeli govern- office and other official buildings. It’s not that the residents ments. Jewish suburban communities, with their rows of don’t like flags. There were lots of them—Brazilian, Italian, single-family homes and peaked red-tile roofs, have been Argentine, varying according to each person’s affinity for soc- deliberately placed between Arab towns, characterized by cer teams contending in the World Cup. On Memorial Day, much more haphazard buildings and flat roofs that make when Israel’s war dead are honored, most people in Shafa it possible for sons to build homes on the roofs of their par- ’Amr do not stand still during the minute-long wail of ents’ houses. While dozens of new Jewish communities memorial sirens that is heard throughout the country. have mushroomed in the region over the past few decades, Unlike in Jewish towns, the traffic in Shafa ’Amr continues there are no new Arab townships—only the ever more as normal. The same is true on Holocaust Memorial Day, sprawling existing ones. It is asserted in this particular news when there are the same memorial sirens and the same item that Jewish farmers are selling land to Arab buyers. responses. It saddens me, dismays me, but I cannot say that Whether they are local citizens or foreigners is not made I don’t understand. clear, but the tone of the piece conveys that it is shameful When an item about Arabs buying land in the Galilee for Jews to sell land to Arabs. My Arab neighbors get the

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 45 Inside Israel

Yet another glass of tea brings the author (left) together with her Arab friend and neighbor Bediya. But some topics remain hard to discuss. message. How are they supposed to feel? They are not going that most Israeli Arabs would rather reside in Israel than to up and leave, of that I am certain. Not only do family ties anywhere else—and most would not leave to move to a root them here, but those family relations are deeply con- Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. This place nected to land and hometown. The fact that I have lived in is theirs, for better and for worse. Lots of things make them half a dozen places is cause for amazement, not admiration. angry about Israel but some things make them grateful. Why would anyone go so far away from home? I remember the evening I invited Bediya to go see the Israeli antiwar film Waltz With Bashir in the nearby Jew- ish town of Tivon. As we waited for the movie to begin, she ne day I got into a discussion with my neighbors looked around the hall and murmured, “I bet I am the only about Iran. What would they do if it used nuclear non-Jew here.” O weapons against Israel? The answers were “Probably,” I answered. I hadn’t thought about it before. unanimous. They would stay right where they were, as When we walked out of the movie, which depicts they and their families did when Hezbollah attacked the psychic costs of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, northern Israel from Lebanon in 2006, when Saddam her first comment was, “There isn’t another country in Hussein sent his Scud missiles in 1990, in every Arab- the Middle East that would allow a movie like this to Israeli war since 1948, and through all the ordeals dating be made about it.” back to the time when the Ottomans ruled the region. The evening highlighted the reality of an educated They are here, they are staying. The responses of our Arab wishing to embrace the advantages of the West friends in Shafa ’Amr are consistent with polls showing while remaining essentially marginalized. Arabs can go to

46 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Inside Israel such movies, but by and large they don’t. The majority cul- outraged when I first wanted to take driving lessons ture is not theirs; they remain outsiders in a country now all drive,” she laughs. where they have lived for generations. Bediya is no less outraged by honor killings than I For Arab women who want to embrace Western free- am. “People say one has to understand why the men do doms, the situation is particularly complex. It can even be it. I say there are some things one should never under- dangerous. A few months after we arrived in Shafa ’Amr, stand because to say it’s understandable is to allow it to a young Arab woman in a nearby town became yet another continue.” victim of honor killing when her father and brother set fire A natural leader, she is often invited by Jewish groups to her car while she was in it. There are at least half a dozen to speak about the status of Arab women. She does it, but such killings reported each year in Israel, and probably uncomfortably. She revels in the freedom of living in a many more that go unreported. In this case, as in most oth- Western democratic country, but she also recognizes ers, the cause of the young woman’s dishonor was that she that living in Israel carries with it the gnawing sense that had gone out with a young man not of her family’s choos- she will always remain on the margins of society by ing. The murderous father and brother turned them- virtue of not being Jewish. She will never be just herself selves in to the police and acknowledged responsibility. for the Jewish majority. She will always be representa- The incident came up in conversation one evening at a cel- tive of something—of how far Arabs have come, of how ebration of the birth of a baby. far Arab women can go, of the possibility that Jews and I asked those in the room what they thought of the Arabs can be friends. incident. I am not so naive as to think that by living in an Arab “The father had no choice but to act as he did,” ven- town, by getting to know my Arab compatriots, I am tured one elderly friend. helping to resolve the tensions Israel faces. Knowing and He was of the older generation. Just old-fashioned, understanding one another is good, certainly better I assumed. So I turned to his nephew, who is in his than ignorance. But it does not, in and of itself, create a twenties. “Do you think so too?” I asked him. common vision of the future. At heart, I remain a Zion- “Of course,” he answered, without hesitation. “The ist. I believe in the desirability of a Jewish state, of there father had no choice.” being one place in the world where Jewish culture pre- “Why?” I asked. “Why did he have to do it?” vails. I also believe in democracy as the best form of gov- “Well, it’s like when you have a weed around your ernment. This entails not only majority rule but—no less olive tree. You have to pull it out, you have to get rid of important—a country of all its citizens and the protec- it. Or it can eventually destroy the tree.” tion of the civic and cultural rights of minorities. I favor I turned to the young man’s sister, also in her twen- greater acknowledgment of the multicultural nature of ties, who had gone to school with the dead woman. “Do Israel, of its Arab minority, of its foreign workers, of the you agree?” I asked. ethnic diversity of its Jewish population, which hails “That girl was always trouble,” she answered. from every corner of the world. But what if the minor- I sipped my drink to hide my dismay. I was sitting ity becomes the majority someday, and Bediya’s culture among people I consider friends. Two little girls, sisters prevails? For me, the whole purpose of the Jewish enter- of the newborn, played at our feet. I worry for these girls; prise would be negated. I wonder how they will navigate between the freedom of When Bediya and I discuss this, as we occasionally the modern world and family expectations. do, we inevitably arrive at an impasse. We find our- selves staring at each other, knowing that the futures we dream of are not the same. They probably never will be. y friend Bediya lives with that tension every Bediya pours water from the kettle, peels an orange and day. She is a feminist, holds a master’s degree divides it in two. We return to talk of children, hus- M in public administration, and works full bands, work, and the latest episodes of our favorite time. She fought with the men in her family for 20 years Turkish soap opera, and sip tea flavored with the herbs to win the right to learn to drive. “The women who were I have brought from my garden. ■

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 47 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The Despair of Zion

Any effort to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians must reckon with the fact that bitter experience has taught many Israelis to doubt that their foes want a lasting concord.

BY WALTER REICH

Meeting a friend in a coffee shop in an old don’t talk about it, or use every coping mechanism Jerusalem neighborhood, once the home of Jews who they can to set it aside and live a normal life. Yet it’s had escaped Germany before the Holocaust, I asked a feeling that, at some level and to some degree, per- him what he wanted most in life. One of the giants of meates all things in much of the population, and that Israel’s academic and intellectual life, my friend has has frequently emerged in the many conversations challenged some of the central tenets of his country’s I’ve had in recent years with Israelis. national narrative but is deeply committed to the neces- American officials in past administrations have sity and justice of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. tried—sometimes, as one of them put it recently, reli- With no hesitation, but with obvious despair, he giously, and often blindly and self-deceptively—to answered, “I want my children to emigrate.” broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. But the Just then his daughter happened to stop by with failure of each effort has deepened Israeli despair. her husband, greeting her father with a warm hello The Obama administration, too, seems intent on before hurrying off. He shrugged, and said, “She brokering such a peace treaty. For the administration to doesn’t want to go. What can I do?” have any chance to succeed, it will not only have to show My friend’s despair is shared, in one way or Israelis that it understands their despair but convince another, by many of the Israelis with whom I’ve spo- them that the kind of treaty it wants Israel to accept will ken. It’s a despair based largely on what they believe be worth the cost because it will result in a real peace— is a realistic assessment of Israel’s situation in the one that will actually last, that’s less threatening than the world and of the ultimate intentions of many, and situation they’re now in, and that will truly and finally probably most, Palestinians. end the conflict with the Palestinians. Few Israelis still To be sure, lots of Israelis don’t share this despair, fantasize that some day Palestinians will accept them with any warmth as neighbors; but they want to live—

Walter Reich, a psychiatrist, is the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor and to be, at least, left alone. of International Affairs, Ethics, and Human Behavior at George Washing- Certainly, there’s much in their country’s experi- ton University. He is also a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ence that provokes in Israelis pride rather than

48 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 A family member grieves at the funeral service for eight Jewish yeshiva students killed in a 2008 attack by a Palestinian gunman. despair. After all, following two millennia of forced for religious and literary purposes. They’ve created dispersions, during which they prayed three times a a modern country and a democratic society in a vast day to return to Zion, and during which some Jews zone of despotic rule. Jews who were once utterly persisted in living there, they’ve finally returned, so defenseless in foreign lands and repeatedly that today half the Jews in the world—a population massacred—most recently in the greatest massacre much diminished by the Holocaust—live in the place of all, the Holocaust—can now defend themselves. from which their forebears were exiled. And, despite its small population—some 7.5 million, And they’ve accomplished a lot there. They’ve about 80 percent of them Jews—Israel has become revived a language—Hebrew—for everyday use that, a dynamo of scientific and cultural innovation. throughout their years in exile, was used primarily Yet the challenges that face Israel are immense—

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 49 Inside Israel and growing. Increasingly, Israelis are convinced The Palestinians will never accept the existence of that no concessions they make to the Palestinians Israel, and systematically teach their children that will ever be enough—that each concession will be fol- they must never do so, either. lowed by another demand, that each new demand It’s this belief, probably more than any other, that that isn’t conceded will be a pretext for more vio- causes Israeli despair. lence, and that each response to that violence will Israelis have grown accustomed to being pillo- provoke international condemnations of Israel for ried in the most crude and violent terms in Palestin- using disproportionate force, no matter what fore- ian mosques. And they’ve grown accustomed to warnings are given and what precautions are taken media controlled by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that regularly undermine the readiness to accept Israel alongside INCREASINGLY, ISRAELIS are a future Palestinian state—that glorify suicide convinced that no concessions they make to bombers, quote Muham- mad as saying that Jews the Palestinians will ever be enough. must be killed, accuse Israelis of poisoning and spreading AIDS among to prevent civilian casualties. Israelis watch as efforts Palestinians, deny that the Holocaust happened, are made around the world to demonize, isolate, claim that Jews never had a history in the land and and delegitimize their country. They’re stunned espe- that there was never any Temple in Jerusalem, and cially by the successful strategy, employed by Pales- insist that Jews should leave the area and go back to tinians and their allies, of having Israel labeled an their “original” homelands—Europe and Ethiopia. “apartheid state.” They feel beset by what they see as Israelis might feel reassured that peace is possible biased media campaigns and human rights organi- if it were promoted in the Palestinian Authority’s zations that focus obsessively on Israel even as they education system; even if the current Palestinian ignore massive violations elsewhere. They feel generation isn’t ready to accept the Jewish state, increasingly and unfairly under attack by, among maybe a future one will. But they know that Pales- others, a Europe with a growing Muslim popula- tinian students study maps in their textbooks on tion, the United Nations, the political Left on uni- which Israel doesn’t exist and watch television pro- versity campuses and elsewhere, and even some Jews grams aimed at young people that identify cities in around the world, including some in Israel, who find Israel as being part of Palestine. themselves embarrassed that the Jewish state has Moreover, the other Palestinian territory—Gaza— used military force. is governed by a group, Hamas, that is forthright in declaring that it will fight until Israel is gone, and that promotes this ideology in every way it can in its own o be successful, those who want to broker an media and education system. Even if the Palestinian Israeli-Palestinian peace—one that lasts more Authority were to foster the ideal of coexistence T than a few weeks or months—will have to be among its students, what about the students in Gaza? able to glimpse the world through Israeli eyes. They’ll have to understand the beliefs and fears that are the Palestinians will always demand more concessions sources of much Israeli despair—and take them into until there is no Israel. account no less than they take into account the This is a conclusion many Israelis have reached as sources of Palestinian despair. Ten of these beliefs and a result of many years of failed peacemaking. fears seem particularly salient: After the Oslo Peace Accords, signed in 1993 on

50 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Inside Israel the White House lawn, the Israeli consensus, fragile but determined, and led by Yitzhak Rabin, was that peace would be painful, would require massive con- cessions involving land and the control of Jerusalem, and would require the removal of most settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. But for most Israelis, these concessions were worth the achievement of a real and lasting peace. After years of Israeli buses being blown up, after the refusal by Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to accept a peace in which nearly all of the West Bank and Gaza would become a Palestinian state, and after Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, refused concessions that were even more gener- ous, many Israelis concluded that no concession would ever be enough. Always there was an insistence that the Palestinian refugees—in- cluding the millions of chil- dren, grandchildren, and other descendants of the original refugees from the 1948 fighting—would be able to “return” to the homes of the actual refugees in what Throughout the Arab world, there is no Israel on maps used to instruct the young, only Palestine. became Israel. For most Israelis this is a strategy aimed at ending the Jewish Israelis have concluded that this new form of state, and is the poison pill of Israeli-Palestinian warfare has undercut the effectiveness of the military diplomacy. strength on which they long relied. They know they have a powerful army—the Israel Defense Forces, or Palestinians attack Israel from behind civilian human IDF—that faces, in the cases of the Palestinians and shields, but any response by Israel, however careful, Hezbollah in Lebanon, adversaries that lack tanks or that harms those civilians is condemned, while the planes. But Israelis have discovered that their mili- tactic itself, which is a crime of war, is ignored. tary superiority is blunted, even useless, when their

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 51 Inside Israel adversaries are willing to use the very people whose They know that, in the last century, the spasm of cause they claim to champion as shields behind murder aimed at annihilating all Jews in Europe which to fire rockets. That’s what happened during and anywhere else they could be found was carried Israel’s three-week incursion into Gaza in the winter out on the basis of a rightist ideology. So they’re of 2008–09, which it launched after being bom- amazed that so much antagonism toward Israel is barded by thousands of rockets. And that’s what expressed by intellectuals on the political left. happened during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, the They don’t understand why they’re attacked for even Palestinians’ ally on Israel’s northern border, which minor confrontations with Palestinians or for hid its rockets in schools, mosques, and hospitals, so erecting checkpoints to deter suicide bombers, that Israel couldn’t target the rockets without also while far more extensive human rights violations destroying those schools, mosques, and hospitals— are glossed over. Ignored, for example, is the gross and killing civilians. Like the United States and violation of the most basic human rights, to the other countries fighting in the Middle East, Israel point of enslavement, of the half of the population of doesn’t know how to fight such a war. And when it Saudi Arabia made up of women, or the banning of tries, it’s accused of war crimes. Israelis worry that worship there that isn’t Muslim. Ignored, too, are the the military they built to defend their country can’t populations that lack basic freedoms—in Syria, say, do it without bringing upon Israel international or Iran, or Sudan, or Somalia, as well as the victims condemnation. in Chechnya, Tibet, and Kurdistan. Moreover, some of the greatest human rights vio- Increasingly, the military war against Israel, in which lators in the world—most recently Libya—sit on the Israel can defend itself, is being replaced by a public UN Human Rights Council, whose condemnations, relations war, in which Israel invariably loses. Israelis note, are relentlessly focused on Israel. Per- As frustrating as it is for Israelis to fight an enemy manent bodies in the UN, several with large staffs, that uses its own population as human shields, it’s have been established solely to advocate on behalf of even more frustrating to fight an enemy that designs Palestinians, such as the Special Committee to Inves- every encounter to turn into a public relations dis- tigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights aster for Israel. In May, when Israel tried to stop the of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Free Gaza flotilla—which included militant Islamist Occupied Territories, and the Committee on the activists ready for a fight—it fell into a trap. If it Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian allowed the blockade of Gaza to be breached, then People, and the Division for Palestinian Rights. Hamas might get more rockets to shoot at Israel. But Israelis find the worldwide anti-Israel campaigns if it tried to stop the ships, it would risk a con- by other groups isolating and frightening. Critics frontation that would further damage its reputa- have tried to persuade academic and professional tion. It risked that confrontation, was met with vio- organizations to sever ties with Israeli groups. In lence, ended up killing activists, and created an Britain, the University and College Union, an edu- anti-Israel furor in the world news media. Now, cators’ organization, passed a boycott resolution last more such flotillas—and more PR-aimed provo- year only to be warned by lawyers that such a boycott cations—are surely coming. would be illegal. Others have campaigned to get uni- versities and churches to remove companies that do The worldwide campaign to delegitimize Israel is business with Israel from their endowment portfo- selective and hypocritical, but is finding increasing lios. On a few occasions, Israeli scientists have even support. been denied visas to countries that were hosting The growth of anti-Israel sentiment around the professional conclaves. In June, Spain’s Federation of world has left Israelis feeling increasingly isolated. Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals, and Bisexuals banned Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and Israel from participating in its gay pride parade in a great number of Israelis see themselves as liberals. Madrid—even though Israel is one of the few coun-

52 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Inside Israel tries in the Middle East in which homosexuality is conflict aims at a “two-state solution”—an Israel protected, while homosexuals elsewhere in the behind its pre-1967 borders alongside a Palestinian region face execution. state in what is now the West Bank and, if Hamas can somehow be converted or defeated, Gaza. But, The most vicious canard of all—that Israel is a Nazi Israelis ask, why would any sane person, Israeli or state—is, with increasing frequency, hurled against otherwise, believe that, two weeks or two months the Jewish state. after a Palestinian state were to come into being—a Fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in the state that would abut the length of Israel’s narrow West Bank in 2002 provoked a chorus of accusations by waist as well as Jerusalem—rockets wouldn’t be fly- Europeans that the Israelis were doing to the Palestini- ing over its border and blowing up in every Israeli ans exactly what Nazi Germany did to the Jews. “What city and airport? is happening,” the late Por- tuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago said, “is a crime that may be com- ISRAELIS FIND THE worldwide pared to Auschwitz.” Later, during the fight- anti–Israel campaigns by other groups ing in Gaza in the winter of 2008–09, demonstrators isolating and frightening. carried signs with slogans such as “Israel: The Fourth Reich” and “Stop the Nazi Genocide in Gaza.” Hugo And why not? Even if Hamas were to retain con- Chávez, the Venezuelan president, said, “The Holocaust, trol of Gaza and refuse to participate in a treaty with that is what is happening right now in Gaza.” And a Israel, meaning that the Palestinian state would con- Norwegian foreign diplomat wrote, “The grandchildren sist only of what is now the West Bank, and even if that of Holocaust survivors from World War II are doing to state’s leaders wanted peace at least as long as it would the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by Nazi take to establish their country, wouldn’t there also Germany.” be, in that state, Hamas members and others who For many Israelis, who are Holocaust survivors or didn’t want peace, who had never wanted it, and who their descendants, such accusations provoke horror would use it as a springboard for launching attacks so and shock. Either these allies of the Palestinians as to achieve the ultimate objective of eliminating have a profound misunderstanding of what the Holo- Israel? Wasn’t that Yasir Arafat’s goal even before the caust was or are hurling the most vicious canard Six-Day War? Isn’t that Hamas’s goal now? And if they can against the Jewish state. Some Israelis are the leaders of the Palestinian state who didn’t want convinced that, by accusing Israelis of being Nazis, war got in the way, wouldn’t they be ignored—or Europeans are trying to free their continent from the killed? burden of its history. After all, if Jews in Israel are no The Israelis who have this nightmare cite a small different from Nazi murderers, then the continent’s experiment to buttress their fear—Israel’s withdrawal history can be seen as normal. For some Israelis, in from Gaza in 2005. This action was followed by a fact, this European phenomenon represents anti- coup in which Hamas brutally killed members of its Semitism’s return. Palestinian rival, Fatah, took over Gaza, and contin- ually lobbed rockets into Israel. Even if there is a two-state solution, what will happen In this nightmare of rockets bombarding Israel the day after tomorrow? from the Palestinian state, that state’s Hezbollah allies This question keeps many Israelis awake at night. in Lebanon launch their own war of rockets against The main peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian Israel. In 2008, Hezbollah’s rockets had enough range

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 53 Inside Israel to target Israel’s north. Now that Hezbollah’s store of probability of such an attack significant, especially if rockets has been vastly upgraded and expanded, it can Palestinians and Hezbollah are firing rockets into Israel, target nearly all Israeli cities. and Israel is responding. With tens of thousands of rockets and missiles flying out of the Palestinian state and Lebanon—and, in this The idea is spreading that U.S. support for Israel nightmare, from Gaza as well—it might be impossible for is the root cause of America’s problems in the Israelis to live anywhere other than in bomb shelters, and Middle East. the devastation would be immense. But if Israel were to In the years after 9/11, the most common American respond by attacking the sources of those rockets in the explanation for Islamic terrorism was poverty. Even newly declared Palestine, this time they would be attack- after numerous studies proved that this wasn’t true, this reason continues to be cited by politicians and academics. ISRAELIS’ CHOICE IS between the Now, Israelis fear, their country’s conflict with the physical destruction wrought by war and Palestinians is becoming the simple—and false— the moral destruction wrought by dominat- explanation for America’s unpopularity in the Mid- ing a people that would destroy them. dle East. When they heard President Barack Obama remark at an April press ing not a territory or a faction but a sovereign member of conference that regional conflicts such as that in the the UN, one that would call on—and instantly receive— Middle East end up “costing us significantly in terms of the support not only of its fellow Muslim states but also the both blood and treasure,” they assumed from the context world at large, including most of Europe. And since the that he was referring to America’s support for Israel. In same tactic that was used in Gaza and Lebanon would no the view of these Israelis, no one who understands rad- doubt be used in Palestine—rockets fired from hospitals, ical Islam imagines that America would cease being its schools, and mosques—any retaliation would provoke target even if the United States were to cut off all ties with multiple critical reports, from UN bodies as well as human Israel—indeed, even if Israel were to disappear. rights groups, of war crimes that would make the excori- As some Israelis see it, the naive notion that their ations of Israel in the Goldstone Commission report, country is a root cause of the problems the United States which was issued after the fighting in Gaza, sound, by com- is experiencing in the Middle East has been adopted by parison, like allegations of traffic violations. a large number of Americans—and America might, as a result, abandon the Jewish state. Meanwhile, Iran is readying its nuclear warheads. This is, for Israelis, the most frightening scenario of Not pursuing a two-state solution leaves only a one- all. They have no doubt—and intelligence services state solution—an alternative that is profoundly anti- around the world tend to confirm—that Iran will have Zionist. one or more usable nuclear weapons within a couple of If a two-state solution is seen by most Israelis as years. Reportedly, Iran already has enough nuclear mate- existentially dangerous and possibly unattainable, then rial to enable it, once the material is purified, to make two all that’s left is maintenance of the status quo. And weapons. Israelis take seriously the Iranian argument Israelis understand that an endless status quo could that it’s worth being damaged by an Israeli counter- result in a one-state solution—a state in which they strike if, in the process, the Zionist entity, as well as all would be politically dominant but demographically a or most of its Jews, are destroyed. They consider the minority. The Zionist dream of a democracy of Jews in

54 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Inside Israel

A rocket streaks toward Israel from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in January 2009,amid an Israeli incursion designed to end the steady rain of attacks. the land of their people’s birth would be destroyed. The Which makes it necessary that the Obama adminis- vast majority of Israelis I know don’t want to have power tration address my friend’s despair if it hopes to broker a over the lives of Palestinians. But deeper than their real and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. empathy with the Palestinians is their desperate hope to And which leads me, as his friend—and as someone survive. What Israelis see before them is a choice whose murdered family in Europe probably would have between the physical destruction wrought by war and remained alive had Israel existed seven decades ago—to the moral destruction wrought by forever dominating a my own state of Zionist despair. people that, if allowed, would destroy them. For these The United States’ attempts at making peace in Israelis, it’s a choiceless choice. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have failed for many reasons. If the Obama administration really wants to * * * broker a treaty—one that has any chance of yielding a lasting peace—then it will have to understand Israel’s Which makes it easy to understand why my Zionist nightmares even as it recognizes Palestinian yearn- friend, who believes in the justice of a Jewish state, wants ings, and find ways of addressing them. And it had bet- his children to emigrate. ter do so soon. ■

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 55 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Israel at 62

Israelis are increasingly unhappy with a political system that seems to deliver nothing but strife and division.

BY YORAM PERI

Independence Day in Israel is always cles per capita, and Israeli companies are the number-one marked by a news media outpouring of reviews of the year. foreign presence on America’s technology-dominated It is a reliably upbeat affair replete with heartening economic NASDAQ stock exchange. Thank the Israelis for USB plugs statistics and the good deeds of upstanding citizens. The and countless other indispensable pieces of modern tech- 62nd anniversary of Israel’s founding this past April was in nology. Even their cows are winners, outproducing Amer- many ways no different. Certainly there was much to cele- ican and European animals by wide margins. brate. Compared with previous years, this one was relatively Yet for all this, Independence Day in Israel was tinged quiet. Only two Israeli civilians (and one foreign worker) by a deep sense of unease. While the newspaper supple- were killed by terrorists, and, thanks to Israel’s incursion— ments maintained their upbeat tradition, darker stories amid international condemnation—into the Gaza Strip lit- dominated the news. Banner headlines proclaimed yet tle more than a year earlier, residents in nearby communi- another political scandal, this time involving former prime ties were no longer forced to sleep in shelters to avoid the minister Ehud Olmert and a former mayor of Jerusalem, as steady rain of rockets once launched by Hamas militants. well as more than a dozen government officials and leading The northern Galilee was teeming with tourists, the cafés members of Israel’s business community. The bribery and cinemas were packed with customers, and many estab- scandal—involving allegations that hundreds of thousands lishments no longer bothered to employ security guards to of dollars changed hands in connection with a real estate check entering patrons. project in the 1990s—is the largest in Israeli history, and it The economy has been growing briskly for years; Israel came on the heels of other revelations that have caught up barely lost a step in the global financial crisis, handily out- a foreign minister, a former treasury minister, and even a for- performing the United States and Europe. On a pound-per- mer president. This new wave of corruption was for skep- pound basis, Israel is hard to match as a center of innova- tical Israelis an additional illustration that something fun- tion and creativity, as the current bestseller about the damental is wrong with the entire political system. country, Start-Up Nation, well illustrates. (See the article by Ultimately, though, the unease has deeper roots. This the book’s authors, Dan Senor and Saul Singer, on p. 62.) year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Theodor Israel ranks third in the world in the output of scientific arti- Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement. Herzl embraced the idea that the Jews’ assimilation into European Yoram Peri is the Abraham S. and Jack Kay Chair in Israel Studies and societies would bring an end to anti-Semitism until the director of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland. A political adviser to the late prime minister Dreyfus affair in late-19th-century France persuaded him Yitzhak Rabin and former editor in chief of Israel’s daily newspaper Davar, that threats to Jews’ security would end only if they estab- he is the author most recently of Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy (2006). lished their own state. Yet 62 years after the birth of Israel,

56 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Palestinians mark Israel’s founding, or what they call “the catastrophe”(al Nakba), with demonstrations. Israelis celebrate with picnics and barbecues. threats still abound. Since the collapse of the Oslo peace that, during the second intifada, a wave of suicide bombers process at the Camp David summit in 2000, more than a attacking cafés and buses in the heart of Jerusalem and Tel thousand Israelis and thousands of Palestinians have been Aviv led Israelis to the chilling conclusion that peace was killed. Anti-Semitism is on the rise worldwide, in some unattainable, or at least very far away. “There is no one to talk cases as a result of Israel’s own policies, such as Operation to,” they said—no effective leadership on the Arab side will- Cast Lead, the Gaza incursion in the winter of 2008–09 that ing or able to discuss peace seriously. stopped the Hamas rocket attacks, and the bungled com- That gloomy conclusion has been reinforced by Hezbol- mando attack on Gaza-bound Turkish supply ships this past lah’s launching of thousands of missiles and rockets from May. Rather than provide security for Jews, it appears that Lebanon into Israel’s northern towns and by the rocket Israel has occasionally produced the opposite result. attacks of the Gaza-based Hamas, suppressed for the time And now the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran looms. being, against the country’s southern communities. Both What appears to the United States to be a strategic problem, groups are backed by Iranian president Mahmoud observes Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, is an exis- Ahmadinejad, who does not hide his intention “to wipe the tential threat for Israelis, many of whom acutely remember Zionist entity off the map.” huddling in sealed rooms with gas masks pulled over their Disappointment with the peace process, existential anx- heads when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq launched missile strikes ieties, and a sense of uncertainty about the future have at Israel during the first Gulf War in 1991. Nine years after wrought major changes in Israel’s political life. After the fail-

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 57 Inside Israel ure of Camp David and the outbreak of the second intifada, to its seemingly perpetual enemy. Last year, many of them the left-of-center political parties began a sharp decline. The voted for the radical-right party of Avigdor Lieberman, presence of the once powerful Labor Party was reduced to Israel Is Our Home. More than half of the 15 seats this party only 13 of the Knesset’s 120 seats in the 2009 elections, and won were the products of the Russian-speaking commu- that of the Meretz Party, to Labor’s left, to just three. Liberal nity’s votes. and left-wing non-parliamentary movements such as Peace Add to these immigrants the ever-growing ranks of Now are virtually silent, and civil and human rights activists Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose birthrate is commonly face accusations of treason. almost three times that of their more secular-minded com- The nationalist-religious right wing has enjoyed a ren- patriots. Once mostly in the moderate camp, they have aissance. The parties in this camp hold a majority in the become the avant-garde of the settlers’ movement and the Knesset, their think tanks (such as the Shalem Center in leading force in the occupied territories, believing that “the Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Land of Israel” is a divine gift bestowed on the Jewish peo- dictate the public discourse, their worldview prevails in the ple and that the Jews are forbidden to transfer any part of mass media, and their spokespersons dominate cyberspace. it to others. The other major group on the right consists of Jews with origins in Morocco and ISRAEL’S LEFT-OF-CENTER political Middle Eastern countries outside Israel, many of parties have shrunk, and its civil and human whom are followers of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the absolute rights activists are often accused of treason. leader of the Shas party. It too has moved to the right as many of its constituents, This Weltanschauung is based on distrust of non-Jews, a encouraged by government subsidies, have moved to set- conviction that “the entire world is against us,” and a deep tlements in the West Bank. belief that only power will determine the outcome of the Finally, there are the nearly one million young people, Israeli-Arab conflict. Since the elections last year, more the so-called millennials, who voted for the first or second attempts have been made to limit the rights of Israeli Arabs time in 2009. Their political socialization occurred during and even to expel them from Israel, restrict the operations the first decade of the century, when the peace process col- of civil rights organizations, limit freedom of expression, and lapsed and with it the belief that peace is possible at all. At curtail judicial review by the Supreme Court. Jewish set- the same time, they came of age without any memory of tlements in the West Bank have been steadily thickening. Israel inside its pre-1967 borders and find it difficult to con- ceive of returning to them. They tend to believe, with Moshe Ya’alon, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces sraeli politics are also being reshaped by new demo- (IDF) who is now a superhawkish member of the govern- graphic realities. Perhaps a million immigrants from ment’s inner cabinet, that “peace will only come in the next Ithe former Soviet Union arrived during the 1990s, and generation.” Ya’alon says, “We are a society at war. Our they have tended to adopt a nationalist view of the world. sword must remain unsheathed.” From their native land they have brought the attitudes of Even more serious than the move to the right is the wide- homo sovieticus and translated them into an Israeli context: spread disengagement from politics among the young. This hatred of the other (i.e., Arabs), insensitivity to human sort of alienation is not unique to Israel, but it is qualitatively rights, and a preference for strong leaders over the com- different there, where the disaffected see a system that is not plexities of parliamentary democracy. They don’t under- merely flawed but has failed to deliver the goods for the last stand how a state that can be crossed in half an hour by car 43 years—a real end to the Six-Day War and a resolution of would be willing even to talk about relinquishing territories the Arab-Israeli conflict. Disaffected Israelis see politicians

58 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Inside Israel who serve their own interests first, then those of narrow a government on its own, and it is the rare government that interest groups. Politics to them “has become something lasts more than two years. essentially negative and revolting,” says political scientist Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s con- Tamar Hermann of the Israeli Democracy Institute in servative Likud Party won only 27 of the 120 Knesset seats, Jerusalem. “What is left is to flee from public affairs to their finishing second to the more centrist Kadima, which won private gardens.” 28. The government Netanyahu formed is a coalition of six The disenchantment is partly a byproduct of the struc- parties, including some, such as Labor and Shas, that have ture of Israel’s electoral system—a political scientist’s dream, diametrically opposed views on the central issue of how to but one that has tied Israel in knots for decades. Under resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict. Other coalition members Israel’s proportional voting scheme, voters do not cast bal- are chiefly interested in advancing their parochial interests. lots for a specific local representative but for a national For example, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism, political party. (Voters have little role in selecting the parties’ with five seats, is bent on strengthening its independent reli- candidates: Some parties hold primaries, in which turnout gious schools and safeguarding privileges, such as the is generally light, while others, such as Shas and Israel Is Our exemption of religious students from mandatory military Home, have the leader simply choose the parliamentary list service. In such a coalition, sectarian interests often trump himself.) Parties are awarded seats in the Knesset accord- national needs, the coalition partners compete on a daily ing to the proportion of votes they receive in the national basis, and the prime minister is reduced to the role of a bal- tally. Even the tiniest group can hope to win seats by going ancer, whose main task is merely to preserve the coalition. it alone, with the result that more than two dozen parties Netanyahu, who previously served as prime minister compete in any given election. About half succeed. No party from 1996 to ’99, has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure in the country’s history has ever won enough seats to form the stability of his government. The price is significant. His

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) with a leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, one of six parties in the government he struggles to lead.

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 59 Inside Israel

Disowned even by many Israeli nationalist and settler organizations, the Hilltop Youth movement has taken advantage of Israel’s weak and divided government.Members erect illegal outposts in the West Bank that they hope will become permanent,and often clash with Palestinians and Israeli police. administration has 30 full and deputy ministers, more than strong public support for the idea of dividing Israel into 20 any in the country’s history, and many of them lack specific or 30 districts, which would each elect several members. In portfolios. While a quarter of the Knesset’s members now this way, citizens would know who their representatives were enjoy the power and perks of office, it is difficult to adminis- and the legislators would be directly accountable to the ter such a government efficiently or lead it effectively. voters. So far, however, the Knesset has been noticeably During the 1990s, similar frustrations spurred a reform unenthusiastic about the idea, for the obvious reason that drive that was blunted by the parties’ unwillingness to relin- it would limit members’ freedom of action. quish any power. The result was a complex, unworkable sys- After decades in which Israeli politicians were tem, with the Knesset elected as before but the prime min- national heroes and role models for the young, the nation ister chosen by the people in direct elections. (Netanyahu, faces a severe leadership drought. Amid the prevailing who had supported reform, was the victor.) The result was atmosphere of futility and disgust, many Israelis do not the polar opposite of what was intended: Larger parties even recognize their elected officials. The average Israeli were reduced in size while the number of small parties mother would have nightmares if one of her children increased, making the governing coalition even more unsta- declared a desire to pursue politics as a vocation. Polit- ble. No wonder that in 2001 the Knesset voted to restore the ical parties across the spectrum have turned to celebri- former system. Since then, there has been little interest in dis- ties to bear the party standard at the polls—some with cussing electoral changes advocated by academics and substantive agendas, such as Labor’s Shelly Yachimovich, reformers. a radio commentator, but many others who are simply A more modest reform may still be possible. There is attractive media personalities with no political back-

60 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Inside Israel ground or agenda whatsoever. The Americanization of Still, the never-ending conflict has exacted a high price. Israeli politics in the 1990s, which introduced political It absorbs Israel’s material and mental resources. Anxiety consultants and the media circus, has been followed by and testiness increasingly permeate Israeli society, and the its Italianization. How long will it be before Israeli politi- kind of aggressiveness once seen on the country’s notorious cians follow the example of Prime Minister Silvio Berlus- roadways is now visible everywhere in daily life, including coni by choosing beauty queens for their party lists? on the floor of the Knesset, where members’ tongues are The leadership vacuum has also drawn retired mil- sharp and even injurious to a degree that makes America’s itary officers into politics. In the past, popular com- polarized atmosphere seem tame. manders such as Moshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon entered The social solidarity that was a hallmark of Israel the political arena after winning wars; now it is almost through its formative years is sadly diminished today. All a routine career path. Three of Netanyahu’s Likud cab- Israelis were shocked in 1995 when a right-wing assassin inet ministers are former generals, and many more infuriated by the Oslo agreement killed Rabin, but the retired officers have appeared on party lists or currently hoped-for sobering effect in the wake of Rabin’s death serve in high civilian posts. Critics link this influx with never came. Historian Emmanuel Sivan of the Hebrew what they see as Israel’s increasing militarization and University of Jerusalem has compared contemporary right-wing direction, but this is a simplistic view. Some Israel to France during the Algerian War of 1954–62. of Israel’s greatest peacemakers have been generals— France’s bloody occupation of its rebellious colony, Sivan Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a former chief of staff of says, bred social and political schisms within France that the IDF, signed the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan and its political system simply could not contain. The solution the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords with the Palestinians—and was not just to change the system, as Charles de Gaulle did today’s generals are a politically diverse lot. Yet the crit- when he became prime minister in 1958, but to eliminate ics are correct to point out that the vision of many of the key source of division: the occupation. It is a lesson these former officers tends to be too narrow. Left to Israel must heed. them, security matters become not just the most impor- tant issue but the sole issue, and they often see Israel’s international relations mainly through a military prism. erein lies Israel’s Catch-22: In order to reform The uproar over Israel’s interception of relief ships bound the political system, the three major parties for Gaza is only the most recent illustration of the fact H (Likud, Kadima, and Labor) will need to join that scoring tactical victories can be counterproductive forces. Yet before they can do that, they must come to an when the struggle is essentially about securing interna- agreement on how to resolve the conflict with the Pales- tional political legitimacy. tinians. But the nature of the political system makes such What remains remarkable is that Israel, despite its consensus very difficult to achieve. Most Israelis still travails and the fact that it has never known a single day believe the nation will muddle through, while others of peace, enduring a full-scale military confrontation in believe new leadership will emerge and break the grid- every decade of its existence, has not lost its democratic lock. An increasing number, however, argue, as former nature and ethos. Its public life remains lively, teeming foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami does, that only a with activist organizations and civic groups. There is friendly outside power, namely the United States, can freedom of speech, and the news media are strong and assist Israel by pushing it to resolve the conflict. biting. An independent, aggressive judiciary has over- If the last decade of the 20th century was one of opti- ruled Knesset legislation it judged anti-democratic and mism about the prospects for peace, the first decade of the has protected the rights of minorities—for example, by current century was one of disillusionment and despair, both ruling in favor of Palestinian farmers who objected to the of achieving peace and of reforming Israel’s ailing political positioning of the security fence between Israel and the system. Will the Israel of the new decade be a repeat of the West Bank because it cut them off from their land. These past dark decade, or of the hopeful one that preceded it? The are noteworthy achievements in a society engaged in a answer to this question depends to a large extent on the res- seemingly intractable war. olution of this Catch-22. ■

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 61 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

What Next for the Start-Up Nation?

Adversity, like necessity, is often the mother of invention.

BY DAN SENOR AND SAUL SINGER

A glance at the headlines gives little speech from one language to another in real time, dur- cause for optimism about Israel’s future. Growing ten- ing a conversation. Or when doctors perform surgery sions between Washington and Jerusalem, a rising noninvasively using focused ultrasound (a technique nuclear threat from Iran, and an intensifying campaign being developed by an Israeli company called InSightec). to isolate Israel internationally seem to bode ill for the Just as those who invented the Internet did not antici- Jewish state. Some warn that Israel is facing its tough- pate how it would come to be used, we cannot know how est constellation of threats ever. Yet we believe that Israel a generation born into a society shaped by social net- is poised to play a central role in world affairs, not as a working technologies will use them and change their flashpoint for conflict but as a global innovation leader. world. Geopolitical analysts and economists are used to What we do know is that the decades ahead will put taking snapshots of a world moving at a certain pace, but a premium on the ability of nations to shape and cope that pace is changing. Radio took 38 years to acquire 50 with rapid technological change. The United States is at million users. Television took only 13 years to reach the the forefront of this wave of change, since it not only has same milestone, the Internet four years, and the iPod the world’s largest economy but is also home to indus- three years. But even these rapid rates of adoption have try leaders such as Google, Apple, and Intel. Every tech- been dwarfed by Facebook and the iPhone. Within a nology center compares itself to Silicon Valley, and every stretch of nine months, Facebook added 200 million tech-oriented university takes its own measure alongside users; it now has a larger “population” than any country the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the same except India and China. In the same amount of time, one time, however, America’s sheer size and complexity pose billion iPhone applications were downloaded. the dilemma facing almost every large successful com- We have no clue what the world will be like when cell pany: how to remain as lean, flexible, and innovative as phones are not only ubiquitous but can translate human a start-up. Small countries, like small companies, have an edge Dan Senor is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, on this front, and Israel has made the most of its advan- and Saul Singer is a columnist for The Jerusalem Post. They are coauthors of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle (2009). tages. Consider the case of an Israeli company called Bet-

62 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 No marching in lockstep for these Israeli soldiers,patrolling the Negevin 1959. Adversityhas bred a national emphasis on improvisation and teamwork. ter Place. Company founder Shai Agassi, born and raised was much more obvious. Even without any break- in Israel, is a graduate of Israel’s MIT, the Technion. In throughs, electric cars had already become cheaper than 2001, he sold his company, TopTier Software, to German gasoline-powered ones, but this development had been business software giant SAP, and, even though he was obscured by the fact that buyers are forced to purchase the only non-German among SAP’s top executives, he the “fuel” (in the form of a battery that costs roughly was soon in the running to become CEO. A few years ago, $10,000) at the same time they buy an electric car. he was one of a handful of “young global leaders” tapped Agassi’s key innovation was to design a system based on by the Davos World Economic Forum to present ideas fully electric cars with swappable batteries. If electric cars for how to make the world a better place by 2020. had batteries that could be easily separated from the Agassi decided to meet the Davos challenge by devis- vehicles, then the battery could be treated like fuel and ing a way for a single country to dramatically reduce its paid for over the life of the car. Better Place would con- dependence on oil, on the theory that if one country tinue to own the batteries and would sell its customers could do it, the whole world could. After looking into var- mileage plans, much as cell phone providers charge cus- ious exotic technologies, he realized that the answer tomers for a certain number of minutes per month.

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 63 Inside Israel

Build cars with swappable batteries and a network of Likewise, on the company level, Israeli start-ups, like swap stations, and suddenly the vehicles would be their counterparts in Silicon Valley, often overhaul their cheaper to buy and run than conventional cars, while the business models unceremoniously and in full stride. swap stations would give them the unlimited range they Israel has developed an unusual specialty: an ability currently lack. not only to cope with but to leverage all sorts of In 2007, Agassi left SAP and founded the com- adversity—a lack of local and regional markets, a scarcity pany now known as Better Place to pursue this idea. of physical resources, and a barrage of boycotts and The scheme has been met with much skepticism, but attacks. Israel’s success can be seen not only in the fact at the same time major corporate players are making that it has the highest number of start-ups per capita in large bets on it, including Renault-Nissan, which is the world. Even more significantly, in 2008 Israel building cars with the requisite technology. It is pro- attracted 2.5 times more venture capital per capita than jected that by late 2011 the infrastructure will be in the United States and 30 times more than Europe. place, and the Israeli public will start buying electric Israelis, ironically, often show little appreciation of Renaults and driving them throughout the country. their adaptive capacity. Many ask wistfully, “Where’s our Nokia?”—a shorthand critique of the national propensity to start and sell ISRAEL HAS DEVELOPED a knack for companies at a frenetic pace rather than build one of the most challenging elements of the large, long-lived ones. What they do not fully real- global technology ecosystem: start-ups. ize is that people from countries as varied as Brazil, Finland, China, Almost simultaneously with Israel, Denmark will South Korea, and Singapore have been coming to Israel build and adopt the same system, and Better Place to look for answers to a question of their own: “Where has already established an Australian presence, with are our start-ups?” plans to begin putting infrastructure in place next It turns out that Israel, in becoming a start-up spe- year. If the model works, Israel will be the first coun- cialist, has somewhat inadvertently developed a partic- try to begin the mass replacement of cars powered by ular knack for one of the most challenging and essential internal combustion. Paving the way for bigger coun- elements of the global technology ecosystem. Technol- tries, it will be the innovator and the pilot program at ogy start-ups do not have much in the way of revenue, the same time. employees, or customers; what they represent is con- The same nimbleness and adaptability extend into centrated innovation. This formative stage is harder other realms of Israeli existence. On the governmental than it looks, partly because it is romanticized as a few and economic levels, Israel has shown an ability to pivot people tinkering in a garage, but also because the essence quickly and dramatically. The Six-Day War of 1967, the of innovation is often misconceived. 1976 hostage rescue at Entebbe, the 1981 attack on Iraq’s A search for “innovation” on Google Images pro- Osirak reactor, the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, and the duces a deluge of light bulbs. This is because we tend to 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza may be viewed think that innovation is about brilliant ideas. Our study with varying degrees of approval in hindsight, but all of the Israeli model, however, indicates that ideas are demonstrate a capacity for bold decision making. On the only the beginning of innovation, and perhaps not the economic front, faced in 1985 with the near collapse of most essential part. Judging by the number of patents the economy under the burden of hyperinflation, Israel per capita, Israel leads the world in the design of med- introduced a dramatic stabilization plan that paved the ical devices, but countries such as South Korea and Fin- transition from a quasi-socialist to a market economy. land are ahead in other patent categories. If other coun-

64 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Inside Israel tries have achieved greater patent density, why does In more direct terms, determination comes from an Israel, for its size, have more start-ups? experience that is unusually long, intensive, and widely Evidently, patents—a fair quantification of the “light shared in Israel: military service. Service in the Israel bulb” part of innovation—are not the whole story. We Defense Forces (IDF) is mandatory for virtually all non- found that Israel has two other essential characteristics: Arab Israeli citizens. The military tries to teach a lot of mission orientation and an entrepreneurial culture. different skills and values, but above all is the mission. A sober analysis of success rates would lead almost There always is one, and it must always be accomplished, no rational person to launch a start-up. It takes a regardless of the resources available. Indeed, military tremendous amount of determination and willingness training, whether in the U.S. Marines or the IDF, often to risk failure to transform a great idea into a viable attempts to simulate the challenges of the battlefield by company. In Israel, such characteristics originate from throwing missions with varying constraints at soldiers, many sources. It is significant that Israel is not just a forcing them to improvise and innovate. country with many start-ups but is itself a start-up. The It is often assumed that the most important con- Zionist idea was at least as improbable as many of the nection between the military and high-tech industry business plans that today’s entrepreneurs are seeking occurs when military innovations are given civilian to launch. Many of those entrepreneurs say they see applications. But the connection is broader and themselves as doing the 21st-century equivalent of deeper than that. The military contribution to the what their grandparents did—if not draining the tech scene is cultural as much as or more than it is swamps and greening the desert, they are building technological. Young Israelis who achieve junior offi- companies that lead the economy and help shape a cer rank or higher are taught leadership and team- global wave of technological change. work skills in an intensive way, regardless of their

Shai Agassi is the high-profile founder and CEO of Better Place, an Israeli company with ambitious plans to make wide use of electric cars feasible.

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 65 Inside Israel direct exposure to technology. They learn that com- position Israel particularly well to thrive in the pleting missions often requires improvisation, inno- decades ahead? As the pace of change accelerates, the vation, and sacrifice. This happens in the armed premium on nimbleness and innovation rises. forces of some other countries, notably the United States, but in those cases a much smaller portion of society goes through the military, so the cultural t is an open question how long it will take before impact on those societies is much slighter. India, China, and other countries are able to produce It is hard to exaggerate the importance of such skills Iclusters of start-ups as Silicon Valley and Israel do. and values in a business environment, particularly in one The Asian emphasis on producing sheer quantities of as demanding as a start-up. In the United States, Fortune engineers in order to pursue incremental improvements reports, major companies such as Home Depot and to existing technologies, rather than on entrepreneur- Merck have begun to recruit former junior officers with ship and creating new industries, may mean that the U.S.- combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan as man- Israeli comparative advantage will remain for some time. agers. As Jennifer Seidner, a senior recruiting manager Even if new countries join the innovation club, there at Wal-Mart, put it, “The thinking was that we could should be plenty of room at the top. bring in world-class leadership talent that was already The silver lining in the array of threats facing Israel trained and ready to go.” While corporate America is right now is that coping with adversity is a big part of what slowly coming around to an appreciation of the con- has forced Israelis to be innovative. The connection nection between military and business leadership, in between creative energy and adversity has been so strong Israel it is a truism. that when we write or speak about the Israeli start-up phe- Another reason Israel has more start-ups is that it nomenon, we are often asked the perverse question, “What is a country of immigrants, and newcomers tend to be happens if there is peace?” enterprising people. More than half the companies in The answer is that peace, which could advance sig- Silicon Valley were started by immigrants, as Richard nificantly once the rickety jihadist regime in Tehran T. Herman and Robert L. Smith note in Immigrant, implodes, would be a boon to Israel. Mountains of Inc. (2009). In Israel, almost everyone is an immi- defense spending could be shifted to more productive grant, or their parents or grandparents were. The purposes, and Israel would have access to a regional country remains a melting pot of languages and market for the first time. The toughest challenge for cultures. Israel’s start-up culture would be finding a way to infuse The intermingling of cultures spurs creativity, young people with a sense of mission-orientation and and the immigrant mindset accepts and appreciates improvisatory skills in a civilian framework. We do not risk taking. In a Time essay, “In Defense of Failure,” know how that challenge would be met, but we suspect published earlier this year, economics writer Megan that the key would lie in the second half of the term “mil- McArdle pointed out that more than two-thirds of itary service.” Other forms of service could provide the Americans report that they have considered starting crucial third experience—between studying and their own business, while in Europe only 40 percent working—that forges the spirit and maturity that dis- do so. “America allows its citizens room to fail—and tinguish start-up culture. if they don’t succeed, to try, try again,” she wrote. A start-up culture is not easy to develop or maintain. Israel has a similar appreciation of failure, and the There are no guarantees that Israel—or Silicon Valley— start-up culture to show for it. Like other countries, will maintain its edge. But the evidence from the two Israel is rich in human capital. But it is these added major economic downturns of the past decade, during elements—determination and willingness to take which Israel increased or maintained its share of global risks—that have led many of Israel’s talented people venture-capital flows, bodes well for the Jewish state. to found start-ups than to seek careers in established Whether operating in a climate of greater adversity or less, companies. Israel could well become an even more influential global Why, though, does this penchant for start-ups technology player in the years to come. ■

66 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 IN ESSENCE reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad

67 Economics, Labor & Business // 69 Politics & Government // 71 Foreign Policy & Defense // 73 Society // 76 Press & Media // 77 Religion & Philosophy // 80 Science & Technology // 83 Arts & Letters // 86 Other Nations

ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS their individual interests to the ben- efit of all—the opposite of the old mercantile economies, which served the needs of a few producers. In this In Defense of sense, Smith’s free-market ideal is inherently democratic, and has a Capitalism profound moral purpose. Prosperity, in Smith’s philosophy, isn’t just an tects of two rising threats to capital- incidental convenience, but a “pre- THE SOURCE: “Recovering the Case for Capitalism” by Yuval Levin, in National ism: the decades-old cozy relation- condition for a decent society,” Levin Affairs, Spring 2010. ship between Washington and big writes. A free market could put a finance and a welfare state ex- comfortable life within the reach of The past two years have not panded far beyond its core purpose most, thus fostering more generous been easy ones for capitalism. First, of helping the needy, Levin writes. A behavior and “sympathy” among a crisis that seemed “almost de- case in point: Social Security bene- neighbors. “If our own misery signed to confirm the worst” about fits, once meant only to prevent pinches us very severely,” Smith free enterprise shook the global poverty in old age, now flow in vast wrote, “we have no leisure to attend economy. Then Washington’s efforts quantities to relatively affluent to that of our neighbor.” to prop up banks erased long- Americans. The debts racked up by Capitalism is often criticized for standing boundaries between the the welfare state today mean that being unjust to the poor, pushing public and private sectors. By last citizens tomorrow will have less inequality to an intolerable level. summer, the federal government freedom to use their own earnings Levin allows that markets inevitably essentially owned the nation’s as they see fit. produce inequality, but unless you largest bank, insurance company, Government encroachments believe that “an equality of condi- and automaker, and was creating upon the free market are “expres- tions is the essence of justice,” it just winners and losers in massive busi- sions of a long-standing techno- doesn’t make sense to dismantle an ness deals on a seemingly ad hoc cratic distaste on the left for the economic system that has provided basis. Capitalism is under attack, market economy, and especially for more material progress for the poor “not by socialist ideologues but by the democratic character of capital- (and the rich too, of course) than misguided technocrats,” the ruling ism.” To understand this “demo- any other in human history. class of experts who think they can cratic character,” Levin turns to A more serious criticism, outsmart the collective wisdom of capitalism’s foremost explicator, according to Levin, is that capital- the market, argues Yuval Levin, edi- Adam Smith (1723–90). Smith ism “empties social life of any tor of National Affairs. understood the free market as a sys- higher meaning.” Our society is The technocrats are the archi- tem shaped by consumers pursuing not one characterized by restraint

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but rather by excess. Smith be- ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS far underwater has suggested that lieved that a free market could the key factor was simply bad instill certain virtues—prudence, Debt Karma luck: oil price shocks, recessions restraint, industry, and frugality— in industrial countries, weak by making those virtues profitable. THE SOURCE: “Political Institutions and commodity prices, high interest But Levin says that Smith “un- Foreign Debt in the Developing World” by rates. But in his study of 78 devel- Thomas Oatley, in International Studies derstated—and perhaps underes- Quarterly, March 2010. oping countries from 1976 to timated—the challenges of sus- 1998, Oatley sees little evidence taining moral norms amid econ- Poor countries and enor- that such factors have significant omic dynamism.” Capitalism mous foreign debt go hand in long-term effects. Political insti- cannot provide sufficient moral hand—that is, except for the one- tutions, he finds, provide a much authority on its own. Instead, we third of all developing countries better explanation. Over a 20- must rely on “deeper wells”: fam- that regularly borrow from year period, an average autocracy ily, religion, and tradition. abroad and haven’t wound up would rack up twice as much debt Levin’s prescription: The gov- with a serious debt problem. as a percentage of GDP as an ernment must take an aggressively What enables these all-stars to average democracy. pro-market approach, not to be con- escape owing huge sums to What accounts for the varia- fused with its current pro-business foreign creditors? Democracy, tion? Autocracies, perhaps be- disposition, in which technocrats aid theorizes Thomas Oatley, a cause of doubts about their long- favored firms and sectors. Ultimate- professor of international politi- term survival, borrow recklessly ly, the fight over capitalism is a cal economy at the University of and spend unwisely, often waste- struggle over democracy. Techno- North Carolina, Chapel Hill. fully. Their economies stagnate, crats claiming authority based on The 40 most heavily indebted leaving little tax base from which science and expertise are bent on developing countries entered the to draw revenue to pay back the overturning the democracy of the 1990s owing an average of 220 debt. One such country, Zambia, marketplace. If they have their way, percent of their gross domestic increased its foreign indebtedness they’ll undo our prosperity and the product (GDP). Research into as a percentage of GDP by an society built upon it. why some countries ended up so average of nine points per year

“I guess everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole.” EXCERPT But enigmatic also because Keynes himself was never with us. From his vast writings, a few ideas were quickly distilled into analytical tools and policy Keynes’s Club prescriptions that became known as “Keynesianism.” This produced some stark differences between “Keynes is back.” It is a familiar cliché, but also an Keynes’s ideas and those that bore his name. Once, enigma. Enigmatic, first, because [John Maynard] after a wartime meeting with American economists, Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th Keynes observed, “I was the only non-Keynesian in century, never really left. Like it or not, we live in a the room.” macroeconomic world elucidated by Keynes and those who followed in his footsteps. Even Robert Lucas, who —JONATHAN KIRSHNER, author of Appeasing won a Nobel Prize for his criticisms of conventional Bankers: Financial Caution on the Road to War, Keynesianism, said in response to the financial crisis: in Boston Review (May–June 2010)

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from 1975 to 1991, when it hit 210 are able to service their loans. a hostile global economy over percent. Democratic Botswana, for exam- which they have little influence,” Democratic regimes, by con- ple, saw its foreign debt burden he writes, and political reform trast, tend to invest their bor- fall by 1.6 percentage points per can help push societies toward rowed money, which over time year from 1975 to 1991. better policies. But those who ensures a more stable, growing Oatley says that the results of promulgate widespread debt for- economy, and, as a result, debt his study provide some basis for giveness should be wary: Their shrinks as a percentage of GDP. optimism. Countries “are not policies may help autocracies With reasonable tax rates, they driven ever deeper into poverty by most.

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT lion a year on unregulated herbal medicines, despite total ignor- ance about their effectiveness, correct dosage, and side effects.” The Tea Party’s Short Sip Lilla writes, “Americans are and have always been credulous skep- the self. They are apocalyptic pes- tics. They question the authority THE SOURCE:“The Tea Party Jacobins” by Mark Lilla, in The New York Review of simists about public life and child- of priests, then talk to the dead; Books, May 27, 2010. like optimists swaddled in self- they second-guess their cardiolo- esteem when it comes to their own gists, then seek out quacks in the Populist movements of powers.” jungle. Like people in every soci- days past aimed to seize political These attitudes drive the large ety, they do this in moments of power and use it for the benefit of numbers of Americans who crisis when things seem hopeless. “the people.” Not so with today’s choose to homeschool their chil- They also, unlike people in other Tea Party, observes Columbia Uni- dren, who refuse to get vaccin- societies, do it on the general versity humanities professor Mark ated, and who spend “over $4 bil- principle that expertise and Lilla. It seeks to neutralize, not use, political power. It has only one thing to say: “I want to be left alone.” Such “radical individualism” is not new to the American scene. It was the driving force behind both the 1960s-era shift to the left on social issues (sexual liberation, divorce, casual drug use) and the ’80s-era move to the right on eco- nomic issues (individual initiative, free markets, deregulation). Today’s Tea Partiers, “the new Jacobins,” as Lilla calls them, are characterized by two classic Amer- ican traits: “blanket distrust of institutions and an astonishing— Most populist movements demand government action. Not so with today’s Tea Party. Its supporters and unwarranted—confidence in have one simple message: Leave us alone.Above,an April rallyin Boston,home of the original Tea Party.

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authority are inherently suspect.” majoritarian tack, defending Lilla suspects that the Tea Party About 90 percent of individual rights against what will peter out after a few symbolic one court called the “hasty and America’s state judges victories, because it has “no con- ill-advised zeal” of the voting are chosen in elections. structive political agenda. . . . [It] public. In 1856, for example, a only exists to express defiance New York court struck down a against a phantom threat behind a ban on liquor sales as an real economic and political crisis.” islatures at a time when states infringement of individual rights. But though it may not last, its lib- were spending heavily on canals, Shugerman says there is a ertarian, anti-government under- roads, and other “internal im- straight intellectual line from pinnings are here to stay. provements.” Populists were this decision to broader U.S. already clamoring to subject Supreme Court decisions that POLITICS & GOVERNMENT judges to the people’s will, accord- sharply restricted government ing to Jed Handelsman Shuger- efforts to regulate business Judges for Sale man, a professor at Harvard Law before the New Deal, such as School, but now they were joined Lochner v. New York (1905). THE SOURCE: “Economic Crisis and the by moderates and conservatives, What motivated the counter- Rise of Judicial Elections and Judicial who wanted to make judges inde- majoritarians? Chiefly, Shuger- Review” by Jed Handelsman Shugerman, in Harvard Law Review, March 2010. pendent of the legislatures in man believes, they wanted to fend order to “embolden [them] and off “legislative encroachment” on It’s one of the ugliest legitimize judicial review by con- their domain and carve out a dis- warts on the U.S. body politic: necting them to ‘the people.’” New tinct role for the judiciary. He About 90 percent of America’s York led the way in 1846, when a likens the state constitutional state judges are chosen in elec- state constitutional convention conventions of 1844–53 to the tions. Inevitably, some of them approved a switch from appointed wave of democratic revolutions wander into the political swamps. to elected judgeships. (Only Mis- that swept Europe in 1848. One One successful candidate for the sissippi elected its state judges at heartening lesson of that era, in West Virginia Supreme Court in the time.) By 1853 most of the Shugerman’s view, is that badly the 1990s accepted $3 million in other states—19 in all—had needed judicial reform can occur contributions from a corporate followed New York’s example. with surprising speed. executive seeking to overturn a The reformers got at least one multimillion-dollar verdict. of the results they wanted: POLITICS & GOVERNMENT Elected magistrates also tend to “Elected judges in the 1850s be reluctant to enforce principles struck down many more state Political Generals that antagonize the voting public. laws than had their appointed The irony is that when it swept predecessors,” Shugerman writes. THE SOURCE: “The Role of the Military in the nation in the 19th century, the The shift toward elected judges Presidential Politics” by Steve Corbett and Michael J. Davidson, in Parameters, Winter movement to make state judge- was “a turning point in establish- 2009–10. ships elected positions was seen ing a more widespread practice as a way to create a more inde- and acceptance of judicial review The American military has pendent judiciary. in America.” a proud and long-standing The movement gained strength In other respects, however, tradition of political neutrality, but after the Panics of 1837 and 1839 things did not go as the reform- in recent presidential elections a sent many heavily indebted state ers had intended. Far from de- “disturbing trend” has emerged: governments reeling and exposed fending “the people,” the judges Retired generals have taken to the often corrupt ways of state leg- took an increasingly counter- endorsing candidates, write retired

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Army officers Steve Corbett and shed event,” marking the start of an four-star general represents the Michael J. Davidson. If this contin- era of increased military involve- institution that produced him and ues, the military risks “legitimizing ment in politics. by definition should remain apoliti- the spread of partisan politics Since then, the deterioration of cal.” In contrast, others argue that within the active-duty force.” the military’s political neutrality has once they leave active duty, officers The culture of a politically neu- only continued. President Ronald should be free to participate in poli- tral military took hold in the years Reagan actively courted military vot- tics like any other citizen. following Reconstruction. After the ers in the 1980s. The Clinton admin- Corbett and Davidson would like presidential election of 1880, no istration politicized the senior officer to see this problem fixed, but all professional military officer was selection process. Today, officers reg- approaches are fraught with diffi- nominated for the presidency until ularly vote, and usually for Republi- culty. Expanding restraints on 1952. By custom, most officers did cans. Endorsements by retired offi- active-duty members to retired offi- not even vote. General George C. cers, once considered bad form, are cers in an attempt to quiet political Marshall epitomized the ethos of run of the mill (two prominent speech would run up against the the era—he never voted, avoided all examples: Tommy Franks’s backing protections of the First Amendment. political participation, and upon of George W. Bush in 2004 and For now, they say, the best that can becoming secretary of state in 1947, Colin Powell’s of Barack Obama in be done is for the military itself to try foreswore ever running for office. 2008). to create a consensus that endorse- He discouraged General Dwight D. The authors say that within the ments by retired officers are out of Eisenhower from pursuing the military today there is no consensus bounds. Anyone who achieved flag presidency, but, of course, Eisen- on the propriety of such endorse- rank would be sensitive to a stronger hower did not heed his advice. ments. They quote one retired institutional taboo against getting Eisenhower’s election was “a water- Army colonel as saying, “A retired involved in politics.

FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE national crime. Moreover, Rus- sia’s help will be crucial in negoti- ations with Iran and North Kor- Reaching Out to ea; Moscow also has considerable sway with Beijing. the Russians Europe could reach out to Russia through a variety of other argues Charles A. Kupchan, a pro- means, such as a treaty between THE SOURCE: “NATO’s Final Frontier” by Charles A. Kupchan, in Foreign Affairs, fessor of international affairs at NATO and the Russian-led May–June 2010. Georgetown University. Collective Security Treaty Organi- Since the end of the Cold War, zation, but NATO’s formidable Lord Hastings Ismay, the NATO has embraced the coun- size (28 member-states) and its first secretary-general of the North tries of Central and Eastern Eur- military strength mean that other Atlantic Treaty Organization, ope but has “treated Russia as an international collaborations are reportedly once said that the orga- outsider.” The West needs to be “merely strategic sideshows”— nization’s purpose was “to keep the sure it has Russia squarely on its what matters is whether a coun- Russians out, the Americans in, side, Kupchan asserts, partic- try is a NATO insider or outsider. and the Germans down.” But times ularly as it attempts to tackle A complicating factor is that have changed. Today, NATO is global concerns such as terrorism, protecting the allied European- making a strategic mistake by not nuclear proliferation, climate Atlantic countries from external integrating Russia into the alliance, change, cybersecurity, and inter- threats such as terrorism is only

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one element of NATO’s purpose. the outreach could quickly come to Could it really be so simple? The other is blunting internal an end. Of course, even if NATO Beckley says that the problem with rivalries, and in this regard a seat does invite Russia to join, Moscow the material resources theory is that for Russia at the NATO table may reject its offer due to the con- it doesn’t account for economic might not prove quite as advanta- straints entailed by membership. development and its bedfellows— geous. Some newer NATO mem- But let any absence be on Russia’s technology, infrastructure, and bers, particularly former Soviet head, Kupchan argues, and not the human capital. An undeveloped satellites in Eastern and Central result of the Atlantic democracies’ nation can pour all the money it Europe, feel that letting Russia failure “to demonstrate the vision wants into its military, but without join the club is a bit like letting or the will to embrace Russia in a the right tools and educated leaders, the fox into the henhouse. pan-European order.” it’s no match for a rich country’s “Admittedly,” Kupchan writes, force. (America’s loss in Vietnam is inviting Russia into NATO FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE the most obvious counterexample; “strikes a dissonant chord due to Beckley suggests it is the exception the alliance’s Cold War mission, Measuring that proves the rule.) Russia’s backsliding on demo- Democracy, Western culture, cratic reform, and its heavy- Military Might and other intangibles serve as good handed approach to its ‘near proxies for economic development, abroad.’ ” In the past, the alliance THE SOURCE: “Economic Development but Beckley finds that when he has stipulated that new entrants and Military Effectiveness” by Michael Beck- holds gross domestic product per ley, in The Journal of Strategic Studies, be democratic, have market Feb. 2010. capita constant, those other meas- economies, treat minorities fairly, ures fail to explain variations in mil- and be committed to peaceful It’s the million-dollar itary power. Democracy actually conflict resolution—none of question of international relations seems to substantially weaken which exactly describes Russia. scholarship: Why are some states nations on the whole. It just so hap- But, as Kupchan points out, stronger than others? The prevail- pens that democracy has gone hand NATO has made exceptions in the ing theory says that military power in hand with economic develop- past (Portugal, for example, was is the direct result of material ment, which has masked the nega- an original signatory in 1949 but resources—size of the defense tive effects of democracy on military did not become a democracy until budget, number of soldiers, or power. That relationship may not 1974), and strategic concerns cer- stockpiles of materiel. But in last forever, and in the next century, tainly warrant making one for empirical studies, material economic (and therefore military) Russia now. resources are no better than a coin powerhouses may rise that are any- In February, Russia identified toss at predicting victory in battle. thing but democratic. the expansion of NATO as a Other theories have sprung up to Beckley says that having a tool primary external threat. The compensate: Perhaps “nonmaterial” for accurately predicting a victor alliance is contemplating extend- factors such as democratic institu- could help forestall “foolish” incur- ing membership to Georgia and tions, Western culture, or good sions. “Wars,” he writes, “are fought Ukraine, a move that could civil-military relations are the keys over a variety of issues, but most provoke a crisis with Moscow. One to military power. Try again, says share a fundamental cause: false way to avoid such a situation: Columbia University political scien- optimism.” When both states think Admit Russia first. tist Michael Beckley: In 381 battles they can win, they’ll take up arms. It’s not as though NATO’s over- fought since 1900, the single best Perhaps if they have a hard measure tures to Russia would be irrever- measure for predicting which side of their chances of success, weaker sible. If Russia tried to splinter the emerged victorious was a country’s countries won’t be so quick to sound alliance or block decision making, income per capita. the trumpets.

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FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE half of gross domestic product. All five already suffer from inter- The Risks of Oil If the United States and nal tensions and border conflicts. the rest of the devel- Some oil-producing states Independence oped world no longer could try to make up for lost in-

THE SOURCE: “The Security Costs of needed foreign oil, what come by trafficking in narcotics Energy Independence” by Gregory D. Miller, would become of oil- and arms, with massive implica- in The Washington Quarterly, April 2010. exporting countries? tions for global security if coun- America must wean itself tries with ties to groups such as from foreign oil—that’s the com- Al Qaeda and Hezbollah got mon wisdom on both sides of the involved. In Venezuela, Miller political aisle. Entanglement with of the oil powers are unstable, says, many poor people may try to Middle Eastern oil kingdoms is a and may spiral into crisis if make some money by trading in “source of strategic vulnerability,” revenues from oil disappear. drugs, even if the government and policymakers have spent As the only current nuclear stays clean. “lives and treasure” defending state with a significant oil sector None of this is to suggest that America’s access to foreign (eight to 20 percent of its econ- the United States ought to remain reserves. But here’s a thought omy), Russia is one potential hooked on oil for the sake of experiment: If the United States trouble spot. “Neither the United stability. Instead, it should encour- and the rest of the developed States nor Russia’s neighbors can age oil-exporting countries to world no longer needed foreign afford the risk of a nuclear Russia diversify by promoting greater for- oil, what would become of oil- suffering economic instability,” eign direct investment in non-oil exporting countries? Gregory D. Miller writes. And, of course, oil- industries. The United States isn’t Miller, a political scientist at the rich Iran is likely to join the going to reduce its consumption of University of Oklahoma, says it nuclear club soon. For five coun- foreign oil overnight. Policymakers would not be a pretty picture, nor tries—Angola, Iraq, Kuwait, should use their time wisely, and would the ramifications for the Libya, and Saudi Arabia—oil ex- make sure the process is smooth United States be pleasant. Many ports make up more than one- both here and abroad.

SOCIETY Harlem Children’s Zone, Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. and doctoral candidate Will Dob- bie say that a successful strategy Closing the for closing the gap may be at hand. Achievement Gap The Harlem Children’s Zone is a 97-block area in Manhattan 13-year-old. That is only one boasting a supercharged web of THE SOURCE: “Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Close the Achievement Gap? Evi- manifestation of the racial city- and foundation-backed com- dence From a Social Experiment in Harlem” achievement gap, one of the munity services “designed to by Will Dobbie and Roland G. Fryer Jr., in The NBER Digest, March 2010. deepest and most intractable ensure the social environment American social problems. Un- outside of school is positive and The average African-Amer- veiling the results of the first supportive for children from birth ican 17-year-old today reads at empirical test of school perform- to college graduation.” Estab- the level of the typical white ance in the highly publicized lished in 1997, it offers upwards

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of 20 programs serving more health care; nutritious meals; and than 8,000 youths and 5,000 Promise Academy has support for parents. The authors adults, including Promise Acad- an extended school day say it’s possible that student emy, a group of public charter achievement gets an extra boost and year, with coordi- schools with approximately 1,300 from the community services nated afterschool tutor- students. Harlem Children’s Zone offers Anecdotal evidence in recent ing and weekend reme- beyond Promise Academy. years has provided cause for dial classes. Of course, such intensive optimism. And now initial data are efforts come at a cost, but to Dob- in: The average Promise Academy bie and Fryer the $19,272 per stu- sixth grader arrives at the school tutoring and weekend remedial dent price tag looks quite reason- outperforming just 20 percent of classes. The authors estimate that able. Though higher than the white New York City public school students who perform below median expenditure per student students in the same grade in math. grade level spend twice as many among school districts in New After three years, the academy’s stu- hours in school as traditional York State ($16,171), it’s far below dents outperform 45 percent of New York City public school stu- what top-notch districts lay out. white students. In other words, they dents. Those who are at or above It’s an investment that will pay off achieve near parity. And when their grade level spend 50 percent in the years to come. math scores are adjusted for factors more time in the classroom. such as gender and eligibility for the Promise Academy also goes to SOCIETY school lunch program, the black stu- incredible lengths to recruit and dents outperform their white peers retain top-quality teachers, and it Toward a Post- in the city. (Reading scores ticked up spares them many administrative but not as dramatically.) tasks so they can spend more Prison Society What makes the difference? To time with their pupils. In addi- begin with, Promise Academy has tion, its schools provide a host of THE SOURCE: “The Outpatient Prison” by Mark A. R. Kleiman, in The American an extended school day and year, supplementary services, such as Interest, March–April 2010. with coordinated afterschool free medical, dental, and mental The United States has a re- markable total of 1.7 million crimi- nals behind bars, but that’s nothing EXCERPT compared with the number who are on probation (4.3 million) and parole (700,000). More people go The Food Network to jail each year for violating such “community supervision” than for Daily life is full of anonymous encounters: the Internet, the airport, the committing fresh crimes—and the subway, the supermarket. Crowds to jostle, forms to fill out. E-mails greet same group also accounts for a you with mass-produced individuality. Dining out is the antidote: the host, large share of the new crimes. the waiter, the chef with his pat on your shoulder, the season’s first acorn In 2005, Steven Alm, a judge on squash grown by farmers closer than your commute. You sit down to din- the Hawaiian island of Oahu, con- ner and you have joined a community, a gastronomic Facebook. cluded that there must be a better way. Tired of hearing probation —PHYLLIS RICHMAN, a former Washington Post revocation cases only after the restaurant critic, in Gastronomica (Winter 2010) offenders had repeatedly failed to show up for meetings and drug

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victs’ behavior could be the founda- tion for a national revolution, Kleiman argues. Pilot projects based on the Alm model have already been launched. Two keys to success in going national are to keep the focus on the worst cases and ensure the “swiftness and certainty of...sanc- tions.” The types of monitoring could be expanded. For $5 per day, an offender on probation could be equipped with an “anklet” contain- ing a Global Positioning System monitor. Software could compare his location to that of any reported crime; officers could monitor his movements, including appearance at work and adherence to curfews. Probation violations would result in swift punishment. Such a system holds the potential to reduce new arrests among probationers and parolees by 75 percent, Kleiman Judge Steven Alm promised probation violators in Hawaii something rare: certain punishment. believes. They were arrested far less frequently than those who received vague warnings. Ultimately, we could begin emptying the prisons, reserving tests without suffering any conse- ing to Kleiman, is that its severity them for violent and repeat quences, he demanded that officers is not nearly as important as its offenders. Says Kleiman: “If we act on the first violation. But the “swiftness and certainty.” can make this work—a big ‘if’—we caseload is too big for that to be Knowing this, Alm picked 35 of ought to be able to cut the crime feasible. In fact, the entire U.S. the worst probation violators rate and the incarceration rate in “community corrections” system is (mostly methamphetamine users) half” after a 10-year effort. swamped, writes Mark A. R. and gave them a clear warning: Kleiman, a professor of public pol- Miss your next drug tests and meet- SOCIETY icy at UCLA. As a result, not only ings with probation officers, and do criminals on parole or proba- you’re going to jail. It worked. After Anger Under tion get away with a lot, but, be- a year, Alm’s group had half as cause of the lax supervision, they many arrests as average (i.e., less Siege get no clear signals about what troublesome) offenders, and “a THE SOURCE: “Anger Management, constitutes going too far—so third as many probation revoca- American-Style: A Work in Progress” by inevitably that’s what many do, tions and prison terms for new Peter N. Stearns, in The Hedgehog Review, Spring 2010. winding up in courtrooms such as offenses.” And they didn’t soak up Alm’s. Yet one of the most impor- any more precious courtroom time In the 19th century, anger tant things we know about using than their better-behaved peers. was a minor but indispensable punishment as a deterrent, accord- Alm’s success in changing con- attribute of the ideal American

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man. He could hold his temper class, and trendy “fair fighting” Stearns believes that the empha- like a gentleman during petty dis- handbooks counseled frustrated sis on suppressing anger can “cre- putes “but [was] implacable spouses to scream their displeas- ate real confusion about one’s when legitimately roused,” writes ure into an empty closet, rather own authentic emotions,” make Peter N. Stearns, a historian at than at each other. A United Auto one more susceptible to distress George Mason University. Workers pamphlet from the when encountering anger, and By the 1920s, though, corpor- 1940s admonished union activists diminish the public’s willingness ate capitalists had linked anger that a “lost temper means a lost to protest wrongs. with inefficiency, and the emotion argument.” Some groups, whether corpo- lost its luster. Anger was found to Studies show that today Amer- rate executives, high school bas- lead to labor disruptions, frazzled icans are more likely to want to ketball coaches, or right-wing coworkers, and weakened sales in conceal their anger than the Chi- pundits, ignore or reject the the service and retail industries. nese, heirs of Confucius, the great “pressure to keep the fires of emo- A spate of anger restrictions was master of self-control. Even so, tion banked,” Stearns says, and imposed on the country’s work- American cultural critics con- may easily intimidate—even ers. The preference for restraint tinue to diagnose anger as the control—the mild-mannered. A soon extended to social inter- country’s “leading emotional more nuanced approach to anger actions of all kinds. Boxing fell problem.” While he does not control might teach the “uses as out of favor among the middle decry the virtues of cheerfulness, well as abuses of anger.”

PRESS & MEDIA from a survey of 1,001 Philadelphi- ans in the weeks following the 2007 mayoral race, Shaker found that on matters of local concern, men and Localized Pain women, blacks and whites, all tended to have roughly equivalent works tends to trace back to pub- levels of knowledge. THE SOURCE: “Citizens’ Local Political Knowledge and the Role of Media Access” by lished papers, Shaker writes. A It’s not just local newspapers Lee Shaker, in Journalism & Mass Com- shuttered local paper could silence that are threatened by the changing munication Quarterly, Winter 2009. much of that chatter. Already, sev- media environment. Shaker writes Hand-wringing abounds eral major local newspapers have that the “near-infinite array of over the future of newspapers. With shut down completely (e.g., The media choices” forces local tele- advertising revenues shrinking, how Rocky Mountain News in Denver) vision news “into constant and will they manage to stay in business? or moved to an online-only busi- direct competition with better- Who will fill their role of reporting on ness model (e.g., The Seattle Post- funded, more polished options,” political affairs? Lee Shaker, a Intelligencer). including, of course, the bounty of researcher in Princeton University’s The people who follow local news non-news entertainment available. Department of Politics, cautions that tend to have a slightly different In 1993, more than three-quarters the issues are different for national demographic profile than those who of survey respondents reported reg- and local news—and the outlook for are knowledgeable about national ularly watching local television local coverage is particularly bleak. affairs. While both groups tend to be news, but in 2008 just over half Many citizens get their local more educated, older, and wealthier did. Among Philadelphia residents, news from friends and neighbors, than the average citizen, national- those with cable television (more not from newspapers directly, but news aficionados are also dispropor- than three-quarters of respondents) the news circulated in social net- tionately male and white. Using data tended to know less about local pol-

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nality on its way to Chapter 11, as the two people who EXCERPT bought Pontiac Azteks can attest. Readers are fleeing newspapers. What are news- papers offering to lure them back? Out-of-register Without a Paddle color photographs have replaced blurry black-and- white pics. More working women and black people No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than appear in comic strips. (Although comparisons to Walt daily print journalism. You can still buy a buggy whip, which Kelly’s Pogo and Al Capp’s L’il Abner show, if anything, is more than can be said for a copy of The Rocky Mountain a decline in the social relevance of the funny pages, News, Cincinnati Post, or Seattle Post-Intelligencer. One Marmaduke always excepted.) Various versions of “Dr. would think that a business in such dire condition would Gridlock” have been instituted so that when you get to be—for desperation’s sake—wildly innovative. But work and open your morning paper you can see why newspapers exhibit a fossilization of form and content that’s you didn’t get to work. been preserved in sedimentary rock since the early 1970s when the “Women’s Pages” were converted to the “Leisure —P. J. O’ROURKE, author of, most recently, Driving Like Section.” General Motors itself showed more inventive origi- Crazy, in The Weekly Standard (June 7, 2010)

itics than those without such not have the same negative effect news media outlets is simply staying access, presumably because of cable on viewers’ knowledge about na- alive. But even if they manage to sur- TV’s many alluring alternatives to tional political issues. vive, Shaker warns, it’s possible no local news broadcasts. Cable did The first order of business for local one will pay them much attention.

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY is just a bunch of bunk,” said Jack, a Southern Baptist minister of 15 years. Three of the five pastors felt stuck in a purgatory of sorts: They wanted Atheists Anonymous to leave the church, but felt they lacked options. “If I had an alterna- five “closeted” nonbelieving ministers tive, a comfortable paying job, some- THE SOURCE: “Preachers Who Are Not Believers” by Daniel C. Dennett and Linda to better understand this “invisible thing I was interested in doing, and LaScola, in Evolutionary Psychology, phenomenon.” The pastors, all a move that wouldn’t destroy my March 2010. Protestant men (Dennett and family, that’s where I’d go,” said Generations of question- LaScola couldn’t identify any nonbe- Adam, a Church of Christ minister ing churchgoers have struggled to lieving Catholic or Orthodox priests), with a very religious wife and chil- accept the teachings of Christianity, as expressed skepticism about a host of dren. He regularly chided himself, have, inevitably, some clergy. The fundamental Christian teachings, “Just stick with what you’re doing; it stakes are certainly higher for the lat- including the virgin birth of Jesus, pays good. . . . You’re doing good in ter. What does it mean to be a nonbe- the existence of heaven and hell, and your community; you’re respected. lieving pastor? the status of the Bible as the inerrant But it’s just gnawing away inside.” Daniel C. Dennett, a philosophy word of God. Some admitted that Most of the pastors had no sense professor at Tufts University, and their religious stance might be best of their impending change of heart social worker Linda LaScola dis- described as atheist. “The whole when they entered religious life. creetly identified and interviewed grand scheme of Christianity, for me, Their first stirrings of doubt

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RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY opposite. Without state support of any particular faith, religions “You can’t go through Relax at competed and innovated and, seminary and come out over time, Americans grew more believing in God!” joked Your Peril observant. During the Revolu- one pastor. tion, less than one-fifth of Ameri- THE SOURCE: “The Prophet Motive” by John Lamont, in First Things, April 2010. cans claimed church member- ship. By the mid-19th century, For the Catholic Church one-third did so. Today, more occurred when they encountered to stay relevant in the 21st century, than half are church members, arguments against the truthfulness it needs to stop accommodating and approximately 40 percent of Christianity in seminary. (“You modern life and revive a more attend church once a week (a can’t go through seminary and come fundamentalist, demanding ap- number that has remained fairly out believing in God!” joked one pas- proach, proclaims University of constant since at least the 1930s). tor.) Some, though, had entertained Notre Dame Australia philosophy The American example contra- skepticism from a much earlier professor John Lamont. Take a les- dicts Max Weber and Émile point. Rick, a contented minister in son from history: If you don’t want Durkheim’s secularization thesis, the liberal United Church of Christ to go the way of the dodo, make which holds that as societies who attended seminary in part to your religion more extreme. industrialize and advance techno- avoid the Vietnam War–era draft, Over time, churches through- logically, populations abandon never had to formally embrace out Europe became too secure in religion—if you know how to irri- conventional Christian doctrine. their cozy relationship with the gate, you don’t pray for rain. For those tormented by doubt, state in their home countries. Competition among faiths the meaningfulness of the profession Operating more or less as monop- does not explain all. There are was a solace. “I can be with some- olies, they did little to compete plenty of examples of societies body and genuinely have empathy for new believers, with state-supported with them, and concern and love and lapsed into religions and a high and help them get through a difficult bland, unaffecting degree of religiosity, situation,” Jack acknowledged. Wes, routines. The out- from the Byzantine a Methodist pastor who felt comfort- come is well Empire to present- able continuing to serve his parish known: Modern day Saudi Arabia. even with his doubts, spoke of how Europe is quite But although de- much he valued the opportunity to secular. manding religions encourage progressive values in the America’s can exist without Methodist Church. story is the competition, when The men rarely, if ever, discussed faiths must vie for their lack of conviction with others, followers, the more even though some believed that extreme ones will many fellow ministers experienced benefit: Potential similar deficits of faith. “We all find adherents are at- ourselves committed to little white tracted to religions lies,” write Dennett and LaScola. that have greater “But these pastors—and who knows “costs” (such as how many others—are caught in a intense worship or larger web of diplomatic, tactical, high moral stan- and, finally, ethical concealment.” A church that asks little of the faithful may get exactly that. dards) because the

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future rewards are perceived to published Nine Lives: In Search Especially among the rising be proportionately greater. of the Sacred in Modern India. middle class, pilgrimages are Further, Lamont observes, “there But the extinction of tree sprites extremely popular, and an is no sociological theory or socio- and snake gods does not mean appetite for new and elaborate logical evidence to support the that India is going the way of rituals has created a shortfall of claim that religions can preserve Europe and becoming more secu- qualified priests. Aside from the or increase their influence while lar. Rather, religion is becoming overtly Hindu nationalism lowering their standards and sub- uniform, politicized, and, often, purveyed by the Bharatiya Janata mitting to the society around fundamentalist—a menace to the Party, religion has infiltrated the them.” pluralism and tolerance that have state—firmly secular for years In contemporary America, long characterized the country’s after its birth—in subtle ways. “mainstream Protestant churches religious life. Political campaigns for all parties that make few demands of their Hinduism—a religion with no feature mass pujas (prayers) and members are declining, and more founder and no single founding public yagnas (fire sacrifices), demanding evangelical or Pente- text—is by its nature diffuse and and state funding for yagnas, costal churches are growing,” multifaceted. As Dalrymple yoga camps, temple tourism, Lamont says. He contends that points out, individual deities ashrams, and training schools for the Catholic Church today is los- were long believed to “regulate Hindu priests has increased ing members because the changes the ebb and flow of daily life,” dramatically. following the Second Vatican right down to the needs of village In the eyes of India’s urban Council have erased many of the livestock and the sweetness of middle class, Hinduism’s provin- distinctions between Catholics well water. It was colonial schol- cial incarnations are nothing and non-Catholics, including ars who “organized the disparate, more than the superstitions of “rules and distinctive dress for overlapping multiplicity of non- peasants. This intolerance ex- clergy,” and traditional liturgy. Abrahamic religious practices, tends to other religions—most Moreover, the church has allowed cults, myths, festivals, and rival notably, Islam, the faith of some for and legitimized dissent from deities that they encountered 150 million Indians. As in neigh- its moral teachings. According to across South Asia into a new boring Pakistan and elsewhere in Lamont, Catholicism could not world religion that they dubbed South Asia, the mystical version have taken steps better calculated ‘Hinduism.’ ” of Islam, Sufism, is under attack, to ensure a diminished presence. DVDs, television channels, “as the cults of local Sufi saints— and the bustle of modern life— the warp and woof of popular RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY who has time to listen to five Islam in India for centuries—lose nights’ worth of a medieval epic ground to a more standardized, Modern Gods poem when the highlights are middle-class, and textual form of available on CD?—are “destroy- Islam, imported from the Gulf THE SOURCE: “Rush Hour for the Gods” ing the local and varied flavors of and propagated by the Wahhabis, by William Dalrymple, in The National Interest, May–June 2010. Hinduism.” Local gods and god- Deobandis, and Tablighis in their desses are giving way to “the madrassas.” Modernization bodes change national hyper-masculine hero Though Dalrymple holds for country dwellers. In India, deities, especially Lord Krishna out hope that the tradition of even the provincial Hindu gods and Lord Rama,” and a national syncretic mysticism will remain are not immune to the forces of brand of Hinduism is being culti- alive in India, he concedes that standardization and commercial- vated by what one scholar de- in mosques and temples around ization, observes travel writer scribes as “the emerging state- the country, “identities are William Dalrymple, who just temple-corporate complex.” hardening.”

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY word for twin) has no autonomy; Ishiguro controls it remotely from his computer. When Ishiguro speaks, the android reproduces his speech. It I, Geminoid blinks, twitches, and appears to breathe. It can even attend meetings accepted in these roles, robots may for him on campus (though it can’t get THE SOURCE: “The Man Who Made a have to behave less like machines and to the meetings on its own, and the Copy of Himself” by Erico Guizzo, in IEEE Spectrum, April 2010. more like us.” university won’t pay Ishiguro for his Osaka University engineer geminoid’s time). Unlike the human Subtly but surely, robots Hiroshi Ishiguro has been a pioneer Ishiguro, however, it doesn’t smoke. are making their way into our every- in the humanization of robots. Early Robots may one day be indistin- day lives. By some estimates, 8.5 mil- in his career, he built one robot that guishable from humans, but as Ishig- lion service robots are already in use “looked like a trash can with arms” uro’s creation shows, the “uncanny val- worldwide, doing a wide range of and another that “resembled an over- ley” (as one robotocist put it) between life and lifelike remains. The technol- ogy blog Gizmodo included Ishiguro’s Frankenstein in its list of “10 Creepy Machines From Robot Hell.” None- theless, as the technology improves and people spend more time with androids, the machines may lose their unnerving edge. Ishiguro has found that at first people seem uneasy around his geminoid, but they quickly warm to it. Pet owners are parti- cularly adept at reading its nonverbal cues. “Humankind is always trying to replace human abilities with ma- chines. That’s our history,” Ishiguro Hiroshi Ishiguro (left) with his “geminoid,”a robot he designed to look exactly like him. Ishiguro says. “I’m doing the same thing. Noth- thought that a more human-looking machine might be easier for people to interact with. ing special.” tasks such as performing surgery, grown insect.” People did not react SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY milking cows, and handling meat. well to these creations, Guizzo re- They don’t resemble the friendly char- ports; they couldn’t relate to them. Cassava Rising acters promised by science fiction, To better understand the role such as C-3PO from Star Wars and appearance plays in communication, THE SOURCE: “Breeding Cassava” by Nagib Nassar and Rodomiro Ortiz, in Scien- Rosie the Robot Maid from The Ishiguro, who is 46, built an android tific American, May 2010. Jetsons. But in a not-too-distant to look exactly like himself. His future, that may change. Robots will “mechanical doppelgänger” is made of To many Americans, cassava serve up our daily java at Starbucks silicone rubber, pneumatic actuators, root is a stranger in the produce and assist people with physical ther- powerful electronics, and hair from aisle. But for 800 million people apy. “But,” writes Erico Guizzo, associ- his own head. The “geminoid” around the world, the starchy tuber ate editor of IEEE Spectrum, “to be (derived from geminus, the Latin (also called manioc, tapioca, and

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yuca) is the main staple of their recently reported that a new and dam- als online. (Subscribing to Nature diets. Globally, it accounts for more aging virus is destroying crops around costs a library upwards of $3,000 a calories consumed than any crop Lake Victoria, and may soon spread year—not exactly chump change.) If besides rice and wheat. Unfortu- across Africa. Scientists will need to such journals were to switch to an nately for those who subsist on it, develop a resistant variety and distrib- authors-pay model, the price per it’s not particularly nutritious, con- ute it quickly, or widespread food paper would need to be incredibly taining little protein, vitamins, or shortages will be on the horizon. high. The editors of Nature say that minerals. A new and improved cas- research agencies would have to be sava could go a long way toward SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY willing to make more funding avail- alleviating malnutrition in the able to their scientists in order to help developing world, and that’s just Publish and defray the fees. what University of Brasília geneti- The Internet is not the only source cists Nagib Nassar and Rodomiro Perish? of pressure on science publishers.

Ortiz have set out to create. THE SOURCE: “Open Sesame” by the edi- Washington is insisting that research Cassava originated in Brazil, but tors of Nature and “U.S. Seeks to Make Sci- in the 16th century Portuguese ence Free for All” by Declan Butler, in Nature, April 9, 2010. A handful of online sailors brought it to Africa, which today produces more than half the In the 1990s, the advent of science journals offer world’s supply. From there it spread the Internet sparked calls for science free content by charg- across tropical Asia as far as Indone- journals to provide their content on- ing their authors hefty sia. It can be fried, boiled, turned into line for free. How to raise the revenue fees for publication. flour, even consumed raw. In some needed to produce the journals? parts of Africa and Asia, people eat Charge the authors! funded by federal dollars be made the plant’s leaves as well. Yet despite The “authors-pay” model—no public, particularly in fields with great its widespread reach and versatility, mincing words here—has proven suc- public interest such as biomedicine. A the lowly cassava has never attracted cessful for a handful of publications. 2007 law requires researchers at the much attention from scientists. Aver- When the nonprofit Public Library of National Institutes of Health to make age yearly yields are low, leaving Science (PLoS) launched in 2003, it all papers available in the agency’s plenty of room for improvement. aimed to charge authors just $1,500 PubMed Central repository within Along with their colleagues, Nas- per paper, but the fee for its top jour- 12 months of publication. A bill intro- sar and Ortiz are cross-breeding the nals has risen to $2,900, which is duced in the Senate by Joseph Lieber- common, domesticated plant with its often covered by grants or university man (I-Conn.) and John Cornyn wild relatives in the hopes of creating funds. The organization’s finances are (R-Texas) would create a comparable hybrids that are more nutritious, highly dependent on the papers pub- requirement for all research backed by hardier, and more drought resistant. lished in its online journal PLoS ONE, federal agencies with research budgets Wild varieties of cassava are rich in which reviews articles for technical greater than $100 million. It’s also essential amino acids, iron, zinc, and, soundness but does not make judg- possible that the White House will importantly, beta carotene, which ments about their importance. As a issue a similar executive order. helps ward off eye diseases, a major result of its light editorial touch, PLoS If PubMed Central is any indi- problem in countries with high mal- ONE has low costs and can get by cation, such policies would have a nutrition rates. One new variety of charging authors $1,350 per paper. large impact. Reporter Declan Butler cassava has 50 times as much beta Print journals such as Science and writes that the archive now holds carotene as the common plant. Nature rely on subscription fees to nearly two million articles. On an Despite such advances, the authors support the hefty costs of their edito- average weekday, some 420,000 visi- and other cassava researchers have rial content, which includes reviews, tors download a total of 750,000 their hands full: The New York Times sidebars, and supplementary materi- articles.

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY or “erotically uninhibited.” If they tute. At the peak of his renown, were thought of at all, it was by Lilly received upwards of half a Off the Dolphin fishermen who saw them as a nui- million dollars a year in grant sance. But in May 1958, Lilly pre- money. Deep End sented a paper before the Ameri- In 1961 he published Man and can Psychiatric Association in Dolphin, which included THE SOURCE: “A Mind in the Water” by D. which he made “dramatic claims “headline-ready” claims about the Graham Burnett, in Orion, May–June 2010. for the intelligence and linguistic future of human-dolphin interac- With less than five miles abilities” of bottle-nosed dol- tions alongside passages of “star- between them, San Diego’s Sea- phins. Despite “small and entirely tling weirdness . . . buttressed by World and the Bayside campus of anecdotal evidence,” newspapers pseudo-technical appendices on the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare on both coasts ran with the story. neuroanatomy and illegible sono- Systems Center (SPAWAR) pres- In short order, Lilly received a graphs of [dolphin] phonation.” ent sharply contrasting pictures string of prestigious federal A photo spread in Life magazine of Tursiops truncatus, better research awards with which he followed, and Lilly’s fame grew. known as the bottle-nosed built a dedicated dolphin labora- America swooned with full- dolphin. At SeaWorld, visitors tory on St. Thomas in the U.S. fledged dolphin fever with the can feed little fish to this Virgin Islands and founded the 1963 release of the movie Flipper. “mainstay of aquatic ecotourism, Communications Research Insti- Dolphin mania reached across beloved water-park per- the Atlantic as well: former, smiling incarna- British anthropologist tion of soulful holism . . . Gregory Bateson a cetacean version of our EXCERPT theorized in a letter to better selves.” Just down Lilly that because the road at SPAWAR, dolphins lacked hands the Navy manages a pod Einstein Absolved and were therefore of about 75 dolphins unable to manipulate trained to perform mili- According to a recently discovered diary kept by the material world, they tary functions. But as a female friend of Albert Einstein, late in life the hadn’t developed the different as these two physicist felt deep disappointment at his personal same petty concerns as dolphin personas may mistakes. His theories pointed to an expanding humans. Bateson seem, they both trace universe, but Einstein himself refused to believe it; to continued, “If I am their roots back to one keep the universe static in his model, he concocted right, and they are man, John Cunningham the cosmological constant, a force that counteracts mainly sophisticated Lilly, “the spiritual gravity. Later, when expansion was definitely proven about the intricacies of grandfather of both the by Edwin Hubble, Einstein renounced this constant interpersonal relation- new age dolphin and its as “my biggest blunder.” And yet, notes physicist ships, then of course military alter ego,” Igor Klebanov, since 2000 the cosmological constant (after training analysis) writes D. Graham has bounced back—as dark energy. “It’s an they will be ideal Burnett, a historian at incredible reversal of fortune, Einstein’s big failure, psychotherapists for us.” Princeton University. and it now accounts for 70 percent of the energy The Navy too got In the 1950s, before density in the universe.” on board with dolphin Lilly’s work found its enthusiasm, establishing way to the limelight, no —W. BARKSDALE MAYNARD, an architectural research programs to one thought of dolphins historian, in Princeton Alumni Weekly (April 7, 2010) train the smiley as intelligent, peaceful, swimmers to work as

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undersea messengers. A Navy suggesting that a breakthrough in until his death in 2001. Lilly may promotional film depicted re- human-dolphin communication have lost his credibility, but searchers using a “Human- could be used as a model in future dolphins have held their own. Sci- Dolphin Translator,” which encounters with aliens. entists now consider them the sec- shifted human voices into higher Spending more and more time ond-smartest creature on the registers better suited to dolphin in a flotation tank high on LSD try- planet, after humans. hearing. Burnett smirks, “The ing to commune with dolphins, Today, the site of Lilly’s Navy scientists ultimately decided Lilly soon fell out of favor in scien- research station is slated to to try speaking to them in Hawai- tific circles. He defiantly released become “64 villas, 36 condos, 4 ian, on the grounds that this lan- his dolphins back into the wild, bungalows, swimming pool, ten- guage seemed likely to be closest claiming they had finished “repro- nis court,” and a variety of other to their own.” gramming” him. He then set off for facilities. It will be called Lilly also approached NASA, the West Coast, where he resided “Dolphin Cove.”

ARTS & LETTERS from the formal language of the Bible. Another great 19th-century styl- ist, Abraham Lincoln, understood Chapter and Verse how using deliberately archaic flour- ishes such as “four score and seven against savage nature but ulti- years ago” could not just heighten THE SOURCE: “American Literary Style and the Presence of the King James Bible” by mately acknowledges his unbreak- oratory but lend what Alter calls “a Robert Alter, in New England Review, able connection to the sea: “Then strong note of biblical authority.” Vol. 30, No. 4 (2009–10). hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose Although only one phrase in the eternal tossings the wild fowl finds Gettysburg Address is a direct quo- That the 1611 King James his only rest. Born of earth, yet tation from the King James Bible— Bible once exerted a profound influ- suckled by the sea; though hill and “shall not perish from the earth”—its ence on American literature is as valley mothered me, ye billows are inclusion lends Lincoln’s American inarguable as observing, along with my foster-brothers.” Though English reach and resonance. In his Robert Alter, that there has been a Melville marshals other influences second inaugural address, Lincoln “general erosion of a sense of literary (there is more than a touch of King speaks of how strange it may seem language.” He suggests no causal Lear in the passage’s sensibility, for “that any men should dare to ask a connection, simply noting that seri- instance), his rhythm and syntax— just God’s assistance in wringing ous literature and a literary voice “born of earth, yet suckled by the their bread from the sweat of other once honed by letter writing have sea,” “ye billows”—are borrowed men’s faces, but let us judge not, that given way to novels that are “flat and we may be not judged.” Linking a banal” and “the high-speed shortcut reference to slavery to a modified language of e-mail and text mes- A diminishing sense of quotation of Luke 6:37 (from the saging.” Alter writes that we are los- literary style, poet Beatitudes) that occurs just after ing “one of the keen pleasures in the Robert Alter writes, is Jesus’ injunction to “love your reading experience.” depriving us of “one of enemies” underscores for Alter how Consider one of the more exhila- the keen pleasures in much the moral authority of the rating passages from Herman Mel- the reading experience.” 1865 Lincoln speech was made pos- ville’s Moby-Dick (1851), in which sible by the language of the Bible. “At the doomed Captain Ahab rails a cultural moment when the biblical

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text . . . was a constant presence in and others are missing the “deep which range from bacteria that have American life, the idioms and pleasure” of the “play of style in fic- been genetically engineered to glow diction and syntax incised in collec- tion,” and the fine mental connec- in bright colors to a torn leaf repaired tive memory through the King tions and discriminations it affords. with grafted-on human scab cells. James translation became a Many artists who 10 or 20 years ago wellspring of eloquence.” ARTS & LETTERS were tinkering with silicon and Alter, who teaches Hebrew and circuits are today playing with cells comparative literature at the Univer- The Art of Life and DNA. sity of California, Berkeley, identifies Many bioartists present their work William Faulkner as the last major THE SOURCE: “The Art Is Alive” by Emily as a critique of what they see as the Voigt, in Isotope, Fall-Winter 2009. American writer to be strongly influ- recklessness of modern science. Oron enced by the King James Version, A dinner party in Paris. Catts, the man behind Disembodied though more thematically than lin- Frog on the menu. It sounds pretty Cuisine, directs SymbioticA, an “artis- guistically. In such novels as Absa- straightforward until the catch: In tic laboratory” at the University of lom, Absalom! (1936) and The attendance is the frog himself, still Western Australia, where participants Sound and the Fury (1929), Faulk- alive. The meal being served—coin- can attend “workshops on how to ner’s biblical allusions not only pro- sized frog steaks—is tissue cloned build a home lab for no more than the vide signposts to the morality of key from the guest of honor. It’s not the cost of a laptop” and receive instruc- characters in fictional Yoknapataw- future; it’s a piece of performance art tion in DNA extraction, genetic engi- pha County but also add allegorical titled Disembodied Cuisine. Welcome neering, and selective breeding. Catts weight to his contemporary dramas. to the weird world of bioart. gives voice to the question raised by Has appreciation of the literary “The idea of manipulating life in bioart: “Should [artists] be allowed to style of writers such as Faulkner or the name of aesthetics is nothing work with life?” But to him, the ques- Melville vanished forever? Alter new,” says Emily Voigt, a writer based tion is just as relevant for science as it laments that “teachers of literature in New York City, but recently, art in is for art; in his view it’s science, not and their hapless students have which biological materials are used art, that has produced “the most chal- tended to look right through style to “has been growing rapidly in popular- lenging images of the 20th century.” the purported grounding of the text ity and ambition.” Bioart is the Another bioartist Voigt profiles, in one ideology or another.” They catchall label for works of this kind, Adam Zaretsky, believes that even if

have rowed to this island, this oasis, this core of calm EXCERPT amid the chaos of my life—once I arrive at the university, check my mail, and ascend to the second floor of 185 Nassau where I’ve had an office since fall 1978—once I Public Property am “Joyce Carol Oates” in the eyes of my colleagues and my students—a shivery sort of elation enters my veins. I This “Oates”—this quasi-public self—is scarcely feel not just confidence but certainty—that I am in the visible to me, as a mirror reflection, seen up close, is right place, and this is the right time. The anxiety, the scarcely visible to the viewer. “Oates” is an island, an despair, the anger I’ve been feeling—that has so trans- oasis, to which on this agitated morning I can row, as in formed my life—immediately fades, as shadows on a wall an uncertain little skiff, with an unwieldy paddle—the way are dispelled in sunshine. is arduous not because the water is deep but because the water is shallow and weedy and the bottom of the —JOYCE CAROL OATES, author of, most recently, In skiff is endangered by rocks beneath. And yet—once I Rough Country, in The Atlantic (2010 Fiction issue)

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ARTS & LETTERS Michelangelo’s Passion

THE SOURCE: “Loving Strokes” by James Fenton, in Times Literary Supplement, April 9, 2010.

Art historians have long speculated whether a set of draw- ings Michelangelo Buonarroti made for his friend and patron Tommaso de’Cavalieri in 1532 reveal a not-so-secret love. In one of the drawings, “Ganymede,” an eagle’s talons grip a young man around the shins as it bears him aloft. “To many,” James Fenton writes, “this looks like buggery— buggery, to be sure, of an exceed- ingly unusual kind . . . but buggery nevertheless.” Also fueling the gos- sip are a number of passionate love sonnets the artist wrote to the young nobleman. “The artist protests a chaste love,” Fenton says, “but he does so with a passion that, for a modern sensibility, can only with difficulty be conceived as chaste.” At the Victimless Leather, a tiny jacket “grown” from mouse stem cells,“deconstruct[s] our cultural time Michelangelo presented the meaning of clothes as a second skin by materializing it and displaying it,”its creators explain. drawings, he would have been 57; Tommaso may have been as young his experiments with E. coli or other Kitchen neighborhood. Eduardo Kac, as 12, though he was more likely at bacteria cause harm or suffering, they a Brazilian artist credited with nam- least in his teens. are also “introducing important ques- ing the genre, had a piece on display During his life, Michelangelo tions into the public consciousness.” in which he translated a verse from (1475–1564) fastidiously guarded He admits, “My art is ethically the Bible into Morse code, then used access to his drawings. “ ‘Non suspect. . . . My friend sat down with the resulting dots and dashes to write mostra cosa alchuna ad alchuno,’ me and said, ‘Well, you know, you say DNA code. Which verse? Genesis his agent wrote to the Marquis of you’re critiquing it and then you’re 1:28, in which God commands that Mantua: He doesn’t show any- actually doing it.’ And I was like, ‘You man “have dominion over the fish of thing to anybody.” Rival artists might be kind of right.’” the sea, and over the fowl of the air, often sought out such sketches for The first major bioart exhibition and over every living thing that moves clues about techniques they could was held in 2000 in New York’s Hell’s upon the earth.” appropriate—indeed, 50 sketches

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were stolen from Michelangelo’s least to modern eyes, is blatantly Michelangelo “would have been workshop in 1529. The artist sensual, even improper, though it horrified” by the innuendoes about burned all drawings still in his seems clear—if the emotionally tor- his relationship with Tommaso, possession shortly before his tured texts of some of Michelangelo’s “not least by the equanimity with death. sonnets are taken as evidence—that which we say this kind of thing.” But the drawings Michelangelo the pictures don’t represent reality. Fenton, a poet and critic, presented to intimates, such as the Michelangelo is thought to have believes that the very publicness ones given to Tommaso, were very been homosexual, but he publicly of the courtship belies the possi- different from working sketches. expressed aversion to coitus, and bility that it had a physical Fully finished, these works were pre- advised others “not to indulge in it, component. Michelangelo knew sented, according to Giorgio Vasari, or at least as little as possible.” he “was acting nobly and openly, Michelangelo’s contemporary and But did Michelangelo have any not as a sodomite in a dark alley.” early biographer, to teach the young qualms about his relationship with To modern scholars, Fenton says, man how to draw. (At the least they Tommaso? The two remained life- “the experience of the desire is sparked in Tommaso a collecting long friends, even as the younger crucial to the diagnosis; whether interest: He eventually amassed an man married, had children, and we act on such desires is almost impressive body of works by Giotto, became a widower, and Tommaso irrelevant. But this kind of Donatello, Raphael, and Leonardo was with Michelangelo when he thinking was quite foreign to da Vinci.) Their content, however, at died. Fenton speculates that Michelangelo.”

OTHER NATIONS through four departments in var- ious federal ministries, and “no link in the chain really has any incentive to follow a case through.” Add to Enterprising Apparatchiks that the fact that Russian law enforcement officials are a cautious books criminalizing human traf- breed, immured in a Soviet-style THE SOURCE: “Beyond Corruption: An Assessment of Russian Law Enforcement’s ficking until December 2003. Of hierarchy that penalizes those who Fight Against Human Trafficking” by Lauren the 350 cases of human trafficking work on cases that don’t advance. A. McCarthy, in Demokratizatsiya, registered with the authorities Officials are particularly reluctant Winter 2010. through 2007, only 10 have made to apply the new human trafficking it to the courts. law, as they fear they will get International migration Those familiar with post-Soviet tripped up by its complicated provi- monitors estimate that 10,000 peo- Russia’s struggles with poverty and sions and harm their careers. ple are trafficked out of Russia for graft would likely attribute these Trafficking is a particularly diffi- sex work every year, while thou- disheartening statistics to corrup- cult and resource-intensive charge sands more—most hailing from tion. But Lauren A. McCarthy, a to pursue. One federal anti- impoverished parts of the former Ph.D. candidate in political science trafficking official told McCarthy Soviet empire—are trafficked into at the University of Wisconsin, that his unit could investigate 10 the country to toil at Russian con- Madison, contends that the cases of prostitution in the time it struction sites, textile factories, and explanation is more complicated. would take to investigate one case of agricultural concerns. As with Exhibit A: Russia’s byzantine trafficking. Like law enforcement other social problems, the Russian criminal justice system. During the personnel throughout the world, legislature has been slow to re- investigation and prosecution of “the majority of Russian law spond: There wasn’t a law on the human traffickers, a case may pass enforcement are honest and hard-

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working, trying to do their jobs human rights violations that oc- within a set of institutional con- Indonesia’s stable curred under Suharto remain straints,” McCarthy writes. Often democracy did not unpunished. A “territorial com- that involves applying articles of the mand structure,” which “distributed come cheaply: It was criminal code that require less evi- troops throughout the country” and won by compromising dence than the articles on traffick- “shadowed civilian government at ing but are more likely to result in on quality. every level,” continues to operate. conviction. Altogether, Russian law Another threat to Indonesia’s enforcement is more successful at stability in the years after Suharto jailing human traffickers than the violence; and Islamist movements. was the prospect that local and eth- low number of cases suggests. “After In just over 10 years, Aspinall holds, nic violence would spread through- adding up all the disincentives to Indonesia has “dealt effectively” with out the country. But Indonesia has work on trafficking,” McCarthy these challenges. Topping off the seen most of the conflicts sputter observes, “it is a wonder that Russ- accomplishments are a flourishing out or get resolved through peace ian law enforcement has managed news media market and freely con- deals. The decentralization of to do anything at all.” tested multiparty elections. But the power has eased tensions between young democracy’s stability did not the central government and lower- OTHER NATIONS come cheaply: It was won by com- level juridictions and has enabled “a promising on quality—accommo- blossoming of local democracy that Indonesia’s dating spoilers and giving them is rightly lauded as one of the signa- power in the political process. ture achievements of Indonesia’s Democracy Pie Before 1998, it was conventional reform.” In Aceh Province, the “site wisdom that the military would of Indonesia’s bloodiest post- THE SOURCE: “The Irony of Success” by Edward Aspinall, in Journal of have a central role in any post- Suharto separatist insurgency,” a Democracy, April 2010. Suharto government. Things have 2005 peace agreement signed in worked out quite differently, an Helsinki has rendered conditions Indonesia is alternately achievement Aspinall calls “per- “almost miraculously peaceful.” hailed as one of the great demo- haps the greatest . . . of Indonesian Aspinall says that the key to the cratic success stories or bemoaned democratization.” After the Suharto success of the agreement was allow- for its corruption and ineffective- regime’s collapse, the military’s ing the creation of local political ness. Actually, both judgments are leadership, suffering “a crisis of parties (banned elsewhere in Indo- justified, explains Edward Aspinall, political confidence,” articulated a nesia). Former guerrilla leaders a senior fellow at the Australian “new paradigm” under which it have now been elected to govern National University in Canberra. withdrew from political affairs: the province and to head subpro- A decade ago, Indonesia was an Police and military were separated, vincial districts—and they’ve “over- unlikely candidate to become a sta- active officers were no longer night transformed themselves into ble democracy. Following the allowed to occupy political posts, wealthy construction contractors” collapse of the Suharto regime in and parliamentary seats reserved who have an interest in preserving 1998, the multi-island Southeast for military officers were phased the peace. Asian nation’s early steps toward out by 2004. Though the current Finally, Islamist movements have representative government were president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoy- never attracted much support in threatened by three “potentially ono, was a senior military officer Indonesia, and consequently have powerful spoilers”: the military, during the Suharto regime, he had been forced to moderate their mes- which had amassed great political a reputation as a reformer. sages. The government has made power during the 32-year dictator- Despite the reforms, civilian “superficial” accommodations to the ship; separatist, ethnic, and religious leaders still fear the soldiers. Gross Islamists in order to maintain their

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support. For example, in 2008 an Yugoslavia during the 1990s, Ferizaj ideological campaign for hearts and anti-pornography law was passed, was a small rural outpost that had minds among Muslim nations in and in some regions local govern- grown around a train station built the Middle East and Southeast ments have imposed dress restric- during the Ottoman era. (Eight Asia.” Yet this corner of the earth is tions, curfews for women, and thousand Christian Orthodox Serbs not on the radar of most Americans. stricter Islamic education require- lived in the town. Now, one Serbian The base provides more than ments. Aspinall says such develop- resident estimates they number just 1,000 jobs, which endears it to ments “arguably point to the early eight.) The vast majority of Ferizaj’s locals, particularly given an stages of a long-term struggle to 165,000-odd inhabitants are Mus- unemployment rate close to 60 Islamize the state from within.” lim Albanians. percent. As a member of the Fer- Today Indonesia is grappling Today, the town has the “frenzied izaj city council told Kenarov, “In with second-tier reforms aimed at atmosphere of a frontier settle- Kosovo we are known as a city of improving the quality of gover- ment,” thanks to Camp Bondsteel— America. Ferizaj is more stable, we nance, which suffered because so a 955-acre facility containing 50 have a better economy than other many challengers were given “a helipads, two chapels, a Burger cities, and everyone knows this is piece of the democracy pie.” Aspin- King, and a Taco Bell, along with thanks to America.” all warns, “Poor governance is often three gyms and volleyball and bas- The warm and fuzzy feelings the midwife of authoritarian rever- ketball courts. It was created in less aren’t limited to Ferizaj. Kosovars sals, and while Indonesia has yet to than 90 days in 1999. resoundingly supported the U.S. produce its Alberto Fujimori, Thak- Kenarov explains that Camp invasion of Iraq. In the capital, sin Shinawatra, or Vladimir Putin, Bondsteel was ostensibly built to Pristina, one of the main drags is [it] is not yet out of the danger house the U.S. contingent of the called Bill Clinton Boulevard and a zone.” United Nations’ peacekeeping mis- replica of the Statue of Liberty sits sion in the region, but he thinks that atop Hotel Victory. Of a recently OTHER NATIONS the American planners had a discovered Kosovar Al Qaeda longer-term commitment in mind. fighter, the mayor of Ferizaj speaks Red, White, If the United States plays things plainly: “The whole Kosovo com- right, he says, “Kosovo could munity is ashamed of him. We shit and Balkan become the strongest card in the on him.” THE SOURCE: “Unapproachable Light” by Dimiter Kenarov, in Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2010. Picture a predominantly Muslim city where residents celebrate Thanksgiving and Old Glory flies above storefronts. Pipe dream? Not in Ferizaj, Kosovo, home of the largest American mili- tary installation in the Balkans. As Dimiter Kenarov, a doctoral student in English at the University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley, tells it, “To walk around Ferizaj is to move through a weird fantasy that never came true in the Middle East.” Vice President Joe Biden addresses troops at Camp Bondsteel, a large but little-known U.S. mili- Before the disintegration of tary outpost, complete with Burger King, in pro-American Ferizaj, Kosovo, in 2009.

88 Wilson Quarterly ■ Summer 2010 Also in this issue:

Michael Anderson CURRENT on Muriel Spark

Jay Tolson on Islamism BOOKS Rich Benjamin on reviews of new and noteworthy nonfiction fatherless black men

Megan Buskey on noise Pulse of the People Reviewed by Daniel Walker Howe Martin Walker on Germany Last year, the British production always been a “people of MADE IN AMERICA: Michael Moynihan company that made what has become the plenty,” as the great ASocial History of on 1970s paranoia popular series America: The Story of Us for the historian David Potter American Culture History Channel invited me to review the characterized them in his and Character. Erica Bleeg on script, which treats the invention of America 1954 book of that name: By Claude S. Fischer. African cuisine across 400 years. I advised against the use of eager for material posses- Univ. of Chicago Press. 511 pp. $35 the term “American national character” on the sions and lucky enough to Charles Barber on grounds that it was misleading, since all have them widely available. America’s medical Americans don’t have the same character, and The book is a sociologist’s take on Ameri- history the term elides variations in race, class, region, can social history, a distillation of Fischer’s vast religion, ethnicity, gender, and politics. In any reading. The copious notes, extensive index, Winifred Gallagher case, it was academically unfashionable. Now, and list of works cited take up as much space on yoga Claude S. Fischer’s Made in America has reha- as the text itself. But Fischer, a professor of bilitated the expression “American character,” sociology at the University of California, at least for me. Berkeley, is not overwhelmed by his ambitious Made in America deliberately provides a undertaking. He writes not only for his fellow view from Middle America. There is little academics but also for the general literate about such academically fashionable sub- public. groups as African Americans and organized One of Fischer’s major arguments is that labor, nothing about Hispanics or gays. There mainstream American culture has not is some women’s history, but it’s more about changed fundamentally in 400 years. From the pioneer spirit than the suffrage movement the settlement of Jamestown to today, Amer- or glass ceilings. The book describes a culture ica has been about seizing opportunity and of abundance that took its start from the trying to make it big. Fischer favors the term exploitation of a vast, rich continent whose “voluntarism” to describe this aspect of the previous occupants had just been (all too con- American character. It is predicated on veniently) decimated by unfamiliar diseases individualism—the assumption that each introduced by the settlers. Americans have individual is sovereign and self-directed (in

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Thomas Jefferson’s language, possessed of “inalien- merchants invariably interceded with Parliament able rights,” including “the pursuit of happiness”) to placate the colonists. rather than defined—and confined—by group Later, industrialization and related economic memberships. But individuals find that they can diversification aided the development of the Ameri- most effectively pursue happiness by voluntarily can character by providing a much wider range of associating with one another, a model that occupational choices. Nineteen out of 20 Amer- influenced not only the creation of local, state, and icans lived on farms or in villages of less than 2,500 federal governments, but also the churches of the persons when the first census was taken in 1790. Protestant majority, innumerable political and Economic opportunity beckoned from the new reform movements, social and professional cities and towns of the 19th century. Young people, societies, charities, and clubs. At length, volun- male and female, jumped at the chance to leave the tarism even redefined marriage as a companionate farm and their fathers’ control for the excitement association between equals, subject to severance by and diversity of urban life. mutual consent. The “American character” began life in colonial oward the end of his book, Fischer devotes times, confined to a minority of the population. a chapter to the American “mentality,” in Only white, male property owners over the age of T which he discusses American self-deter- 21 were accounted full citizens and responsible mination. The archetypal American, of whom Ben- agents. They alone could vote, because they alone jamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln are good were self-directed individuals capable of rendering examples, engaged in a process of deliberate self- independent judgment on public issues. All construction. Such persons set out to cultivate per- others—women, employees, servants, and slaves— sonal qualities including conscientiousness, pru- were dependents. Gradually, more and more dence, and sensibility while suppressing unworthy groups and classes have been admitted into this cir- passions such as anger. To be a “self-made” Ameri- cle of American privilege and responsibility and can in their sense meant something far more pro- have adopted its outlook and perks. One by one, found than just success in business. Outsiders such employees, women, blacks, and people between the as women and African Americans legitimated their ages of 18 and 21 have been granted civic participa- right to inclusion by engaging in the same kind of tion and allowed to function as sovereign individu- self-construction, as Margaret Fuller and Frederick als. Immigrants from other cultures have usually Douglass did in the 19th century. Modern self-help willingly assimilated into the voluntaristic Ameri- enthusiasts the likes of Dale Carnegie and Oprah can one. Winfrey are the heirs to this once-proud tradition. Fischer’s insight into American culture and Fischer says little about religious sects, although character just about demolishes the interpretation, they illustrate his point about voluntarism. Religi- popular with some historians in the 1980s and ’90s, ous pluralism has flourished in America largely that production for the market was somehow because Catholics and Jews opted into the Ameri- forced upon America’s contented subsistence farm- can culture that was originally shaped by volun- ers during the first half of the 19th century. In fact, taristic Protestantism. Religious groups that don’t we know that Americans participated extensively in fit into the mainstream do pose problems. Should global markets as early as colonial times, importing, American Muslims have the right to arrange their for example, porcelain and steel in return for Amer- daughters’ marriages? Should Christian Scientists ican timber and tobacco. Indeed, colonial Ameri- be allowed to deny their children medical care? cans protested parliamentary taxation without rep- Should young-earth fundamentalists be able to resentation by boycotting their accustomed wedge their views into the teaching of science in purchases from British merchants. So great was the public schools? American market for British imports that these Fischer quite deliberately avoids party politics in

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Marching to the American beat: A high school band parades through Butte, Montana, during the summer of 1939. his treatment of American history. He does, course these have improved over time with advances however, address the decline in voter participation in cleanliness, medicine, and public health. Another during the 20th century that is so often deplored by form of security is personal safety. Nineteenth- commentators on American society. In the 19th century American society was very violent; murders, century, as much as 80 percent of the qualified elec- riots, lynchings, duels, and the chronic brutality torate might participate in elections, whereas dur- associated with slavery, wife beating, and the corpo- ing the 20th century a 60 percent turnout came to ral punishment of children were all common. Life be the best one could hope for. Fischer interprets became safer in the 20th century, as it did elsewhere this as a reassertion of Americans’ self-seeking indi- in the West. Even the upward turn in crime that vidualism. The corrupt, boisterous local machine began in the 1960s has been reversed, and, at its politics of the late 19th century gave voters a per- worst, still did not equal the violence of the 19th cen- sonal interest in elections. The politics of today tury. (Oddly, Fischer does not address Americans’ seems remote and boring, especially in comparison current fear of terrorists.) Material abundance with the alternative excitements available from pro- helped provide another form of security: a comfort- fessional sports and the mass media. The reformers able old age. The benefits available from the New of the Progressive Era, who made American politics Deal’s Social Security program as well as private more honest and less violent, deprived it of much of insurance companies have largely substituted for the its appeal. support adult children once provided to their A continuing preoccupation of individualistic dependent elderly parents. Americans, according to Fischer, has been their Much as I admire Fischer’s achievement, he has quest for security. This sounds surprising, given his not convinced me of one of his other major threads emphasis on their eager capitalism, but he makes a of argument: that America is “exceptional,” with a persuasive case. A focus on physical health and culture like no other country’s. Acquisitiveness and longevity is one form this obsession takes, and of conspicuous consumption are by no means pecu-

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liar to the United States and its colonial precur- Having taught in both American and English sors. Indeed, when early Americans aspired to universities, I am struck by the international quality commercialism and refinement, they imported of student life and culture. To be sure, this similarity European goods and tastes. The quest for security, is no doubt the result of American popular culture’s which Fischer makes a major component of the eager embrace by young people overseas. But it distinctively American culture, seems to me com- doesn’t leave America quite as exceptional as it was mon to most human societies. And the story in the days when Alexis de Tocqueville visited and Fischer tells of people migrating away from rural recorded its ways with wonder. areas to industrializing cities in search of job Whether or not the United States is unique, opportunities, far from being peculiar to the there does seem to be an American character type, United States, is repeated today in virtually every and the belief that one can make it however one developing country. Fischer emphasizes that the will—to become rich, popular, healthy, smart— hold of religion—with the exception of Roman seems a major feature of it. The British students I Catholicism—has not declined overall in America knew laughingly described their American counter- the way it has in most Western societies. But he parts: “Americans think death is optional.” does not distinguish evangelical Protestantism, Daniel Walker Howe won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2008 for which has boomed, from the traditional denomi- What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848, nations of mainline Protestantism, which have a volume in the Oxford History of the United States. He is a professor emeritus at both the University of Oxford and the University of Califor- waned considerably. nia, Los Angeles.

Prime Mover Reviewed by Michael Anderson

Muriel Spark is the mistress described Spark’s formula: “Take a self- of mystification of postwar MURIELSPARK: enclosed community (of writers, schoolgirls, The Biography. British fiction. She is best nuns, rich people, etc.) that is full of incestu- known for The Prime of Miss By Martin Stannard. ous liaisons and fraternal intrigue; toss in a W.W. Norton. Jean Brodie, her slim 1961 627 pp. $35 bombshell (like murder, suicide, or betrayal) novel about the influence of that will ricochet dangerously around this lit- an Edinburgh teacher on her young female tle world; and add some allusions to the pupils, which made her a literary star follow- supernatural to ground these melodramatics ing its publication in The New Yorker and in an old-fashioned context of good and evil.” adaptation for stage and screen. Born to It is those allusions to the supernatural working-class Edinburgh parents in 1918, that have earned Spark critical cachet. She Spark became a jet setter, with residences in forms, with Evelyn Waugh and Graham London, New York, and Rome, before settling Greene, “a grand triumvirate of Catholic- in Tuscany, where she died in 2006. She wrote convert novelists,” in the words of her biogra- 22 novels, in which the inexplicable and fan- pher, Martin Stannard. Like Waugh and tastic are presented as commonplace, with an Greene, Spark took Catholicism as a very airy, supercilious insinuation that the truth is sometime thing. All three seem to have unknown and unknowable. The New York embraced the religion for what might be Times book critic Michiko Kakutani once called its secondary advantages, without the

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inconveniences of observance: faith without thunk it?). However, as a professor of modern belief. (Tellingly, the older writers were early literature at the University of Leicester and the and consistent supporters of Spark’s work.) As author of a highly regarded two-volume biogra- Frank Kermode, the eminent English phy of Evelyn Waugh, Stannard is too conscien- academic critic (and Spark partisan), once tious not to offer chapter and verse to undercut commented, “Mrs. Spark’s kind of religion his overstated admiration for Spark. She is pre- seems bafflingly idio- sented as madly self- syncratic.” She did centered, arrogant, a not regularly attend social-climbing snob Mass or go to confes- (Ved Mehta, a fellow sion. A remark by a New Yorker writer, character in her told Stannard, “She novel Territorial went through people Rights (1979) is em- like pieces of Kleen- blematic of her glib ex”), and emotionally snarkiness, both sty- ruthless. Stannard’s listic and theological: book is a hard sell on “I don’t know why a witch. the Catholic Church Like Graham doesn’t stick to poli- Greene, Spark pro- tics and keep its nose fessed an eccentrically out of morals.” She personal version of proclaimed herself Catholicism. Kermode “only interested in is surely correct to say God.” that she “is a theologi- The remark is rev- Muriel Spark,on the cusp of literarystardom,strikes a pose in 1960. cal rather than a reli- elatory, as is Stan- gious writer.” The nard’s observation that Jesus “had never question is what of substance her work has to appealed” to Spark. But just as he fails to follow say on matters spiritual. Her characteristic outré up on the odd phenomenon of a Christian who stylistic devices—“fun-house plots, full of rejects Christ, Stannard ignores the other trapdoors, abrupt apparitions, and smartly click- suggestive material about her life that he ing secret panels,” in the words of her admirer unearthed in a decade of research and writing. John Updike—are putatively redeemed by inti- Undertaken at Spark’s invitation and with her mations of the numinous. A typical Spark novel cooperation, the book is an oddly subversive ends rather than concludes; irresolution is hagiography. Stannard engages in endless offered as a supernatural conundrum, with the special pleading (on her sexual provocation: “As author throwing dust in the reader’s eyes and an attractive woman, she was plagued by men, calling it mystical. (The enduring popularity of particularly married men, who misread her gai- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie probably is due to ety as sexual invitation”), snide cheerleading (on Jay Presson Allen’s deft script adaptation, which Gore Vidal’s disparaging comments: “Failing junked Spark’s typically implausible Catholic powers? Mr. Vidal could think again”), and transformation—Brodie’s nemesis, the student inane glorification (“To lesser mortals the near- Sandy, winds up becoming a nun.) Contrast permanent postal strike might have presented Spark with Flannery O’Connor, whose eccentrics an obstacle. Muriel made other arrangements.” and grotesques are vehicles for profound medi- Having a friend act as courier—gosh, who’d a tations on the mysteries of her Catholic faith.

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The differences in commitment, ethical engage- For example, what role did Spark’s Jewish ment, and moral seriousness are stark. heritage play? Her adolescence, in the Edin- Spark’s religious obscurantism is as one with burgh of the 1930s, was a “period of open anti- her famously pitiless style. She observes what Semitism,” Stannard writes. “We were proba- fools mortals be with a cool un-Puckish glee. This bly the only Jewish family in that whole area,” is the source of Spark’s acclaim as a comic satirist, Spark’s brother told him. “You can feel it like but a very little of it goes a very long way, and it is you can feel the rain coming on.” Spark’s rela- chilling to read of real-life instances of her flip- tion to this heritage was, not to put too fine a pant heartlessness. Of her mentally unstable for- point on it, troubled: She repressed anti- mer husband, she recalled, “He became a border- Semitic slurs and disinherited her son over his line case, and I didn’t like what I found on either adamant embrace of Judaism. (Stannard side of the border.” In place of Greene’s famous squeamishly acknowledges that the younger “sliver of ice” in the heart of a writer, Spark substi- Spark may well be correct in his assertion that tuted a glacier. Muriel was Jewish not just on her father’s side, Spark believed that it was “the will of God as she claimed, but also on her mother’s— that she should be a Christian and a writer,” traditionally, the side through which Jewish Stannard writes. Thus were justified her earthly identity is passed on.) transgressions: the abandonment (and eventual Stannard writes that the death of Spark’s disinheritance) of her son, the rejection of father, a year after the publication of The Prime friends, the arbitrary and outrageous demands of Miss Jean Brodie, devastated her. “The on her publishers, the self-serving evasiveness. sustaining fiction of her childhood—the (“Sometimes she was unable to believe that she supportive family—had died with her father. . . . had ever said or done things that contradicted The last shadow of its unqualified love had what she wanted to appear in the authorized faded.” He also writes that for her the age of God version of her life,” Stannard writes, all too gin- the Father “was over.” She strove to become gerly.) Spark’s autobiography gives little detail “immaculate, and thus free from the world’s about her conversion—she became a Catholic in attempts to impose guilt.” It would appear that 1954—an omission Stannard, astonishingly, Spark sought divine apotheosis to elude the all- mimics. “Her pen was a key to an alternative too-human. Her desperate need for transcen- reality from which the imperfect form of her dence at any cost may well have been the source own existence could be excluded,” he writes. “In of her desperate need to validate herself as a this universe she was God, omnipotent, and, writer (hence the book-a-year productivity) and while there, she wanted not to be disturbed.” her celebrated coolly observational writing style, as well as her restlessness, pretensions to owever, truth will out, and can be divinity, frightened arrogance, and inability to found far closer to the ground. Spark make equitable human connections. But these Hwas unwittingly self-revelatory when attributes receive no consideration in this she told an interviewer in 1987 that the biography. fundamental sin was “this propensity of the “Find the lady?” Stannard writes. “A difficult human spirit for self-justification.” Stannard proposition when she was in ceaseless move- repeatedly writes of Spark’s sense of threat, her ment.” But the traveler takes herself wherever need to protect herself against “emotional black- she goes. If Martin Stannard missed Muriel mail,” her “suspicion of betrayal.” He spews bom- Spark, it was because he refused to look clearly bast about Spark’s “tortured life” (which, of at what he found. course, transforms into triumph over adversity) Michael Anderson is finishing a biography of the playwright but ignores what he himself presents. Lorraine Hansberry.

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Islam’s Political Problem Reviewed by Jay Tolson

In the annals of well- States for an ISNA-led summer program and THE FLIGHTOFTHE meaning ineptitude, Western imam training. The rationale was that Euro- INTELLECTUALS. efforts to locate and support pean Muslims, thought to be less integrated By Paul Berman. moderate Muslim voices Melville House. into their adopted countries than American deserve a place of distinc- 299 pp. $26 Muslims, would learn something valuable tion. The story begins in the THE OTHER about assimilation. All well meaning, of smoky rubble of Manhattan’s MUSLIMS: course, but comically misguided. As Johnson Twin Towers and the dawn- Moderate and notes, “ISNA was founded by people with ing awareness that Islamist Secular. extremely close ties to the European lead- zealots who styled them- Edited by Zeyno Baran. ership of the Muslim Brotherhood.” selves holy warriors were the Palgrave Macmillan. This initiative was only the beginning of 211 pp. $30 masterminds of this startling protracted efforts by U.S. officialdom to court act of mass murder. Such acts had to be a number of Brotherhood or Brotherhood- understood either as something frightfully related Islamist organizations and leaders. sick about Islam or as a radical distortion of Instant experts on political Islam from both Islam. Most reasonable people chose to see liberal and conservative Washington think them as the latter. But if Islam was being tanks advocated the idea of engaging Islam- hijacked, who within the Islamic world would ists who eschewed violence (except, in some resist? cases, violence against Israelis) and endorsed Voices of moderation were hastily sought. the democratic process, if not liberal values. Understandably, mistakes were made. Even European officials were wary of this approach, among the Muslims mustered to stand in soli- but even the CIA gave a go-ahead. darity with President George W. Bush at the 9/11 memorial service in Washington Nation- he folly of this kind of thinking is a al Cathedral were a couple whose credentials major concern of the books under as champions of moderate, mainstream Islam T review. In an essay in The Other Mus- were questionable. But if that was forgivable lims, Yunis Qandil, a Jordan-born because of haste, later missteps were less so. Palestinian and a lecturer at the Institute of Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson Contemporary Intellectual Studies in Beirut, deftly recounts one such fiasco in a recent goes to the heart of the problem: “In the long issue of Foreign Policy. In 2005, the U.S. term, the strengthening of ideological Islam State Department cosponsored a conference and the granting of official recognition to its with the Islamic Society of North America ‘moderate’ organizations against jihadism (ISNA) that brought American Muslims to create more problems for us than solutions.” Brussels to meet with 65 European Muslims. Moderate as these Muslim groups in Europe The State Department followed up by bring- and America may seem, Qandil explains, they ing European Muslims, many of whom had represent what moderate, traditional connections to the Muslim Brotherhood—the Muslims fight against in their countries of world’s oldest and arguably most influential origin: “the instrumentalization of our Islamist organization, dedicated to making religion through a totalitarian ideology.” Islam a political program—to the United While paying lip service to the values of

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Western societies—notably, the tolerance rary brand of Islam most strongly under the that allows them to operate—these Islamists influence of Islamism is a deracinated and fundamentally view such societies as the homogenized species, dubbed “globalized “archenemy of Islam.” So why, Qandil reason- Islam” by the French scholar Olivier Roy. Pos- ably asks, are European governments “still sibly more prevalent in non–majority-Muslim selecting the adherents of this particular type countries than in most Muslim-majority ones, of Islam as their privileged partners and the globalized Islam often claims the second or recognized representatives of all Muslims”? third generation within Muslim immigrant The same question applies in the case of families. These mostly youthful purists of the America. faith (some of whom call themselves Salafists, The answers are many, ranging from igno- after the first Muslim followers of the Prophet rance of political Islam to a resigned cynicism Muhammad) claim that they are the only cor- that throws up its hands and says, “Well, rect and true Muslims. Many view their own maybe these really parents as apostates or innovators who have are the lost touch with the true way. To the children The Muslim leaders who spokespersons for of Islamism, sharia (Qur’anic law) is not so are most likely to speak for most Muslims much an ethical code informing man-made all Muslims are those with a around the world.” laws as it is a set of divinely ordained rules political agenda. Such cynicism re- governing every aspect of life. flects an ignorance of This is a simplification, of course, but not a one of Islam’s great distortion. Many, if not all, of the contributors virtues: the diversity to The Other Muslims have been on the re- within the religion. The fact is that most tra- ceiving end of attacks from self-styled “true” ditional Muslims practice varieties of the faith Muslims in prominent organizations such as that are highly inflected by sectarian ISNA and the Council on American-Islamic differences (Sunni or Shia, for example), local Relations (CAIR). I personally heard a traditions and practices, and their interaction spokesperson for CAIR’s Florida branch with other religions. Indeed, the only thing describe some of these contributors, who were unifying most Muslims is adherence to their attending a conference on secular Muslims in core beliefs, the Five Pillars of Islam. Lacking Tampa, as “not real Muslims.” In certain parts a clergy in the Christian sense of the term, of the world, such words are tantamount to a Islam is truly a faith of believers. To be sure, a death sentence. Even in the West, they carry a scholarly hierarchy exists within both the sting. Sunni and Shia traditions, but scholars them- selves adhere to many schools of theological ome of the best essays in The Other jurisprudence and are generally modest about Muslims are testimonies of Muslims their authority. Swho have passed through Islamist Broadly speaking, the Muslim leaders who phases themselves. Cosh Omar, a British play- are most likely to speak for all Muslims are wright and actor of Turkish Cypriot origins, those with a political agenda: that is, the nicely details his passage from the broad- Islamists. (Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, of al- minded Sufi orientation of his father through Jazeera fame, a noted Muslim Brotherhood involvement with Hizb ut-Tahrir (an interna- leader who once praised Adolf Hitler for tional group dedicated to reinstituting the doing God’s work by putting Jews “in their caliphate) through his restoration to some- place,” epitomizes this presumptive authority thing close to his father’s faith. Omar does not to speak for all Muslims.) And the contempo- call for banning Islamist organizations. That

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would only drive them underground and pos- sibly make them more violent. Instead, he insists on letting the zealots defend their beliefs in the market- place of ideas, where their views will “be sub- ject to denunciation by the very people that are targeted.” One can only hope that Omar’s confidence is well placed. Unfortu- nately, much 20th- century history testifies to the seductive power Controversial Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan speaks at Cooper Union in New York City shortly after the of bad ideas. And Is- Obama administration lifted a six-year-old travel ban on him this spring. lamism is particularly seductive, because there is often a fine line essay he wrote for The New Republic, Berman, between a serious dedication to Muslim a journalism professor and writer in residence values and practices and a more strictly politi- at New York University, takes as his primary cal ambition to make Islam the constitutional focus the enigmatic career of the European basis of the civil-political order—between Muslim thinker Tariq Ramadan, the grandson religion and a religion-based ideology. To be of al-Banna and the son of Said Ramadan, an sure, there has always been a greater mix of active Muslim Brotherhood official who pros- religion and politics in the history of Islam elytized throughout the Middle East and and Islamic institutions than there has been, eventually settled in Geneva, where he historically, in Christendom, at least in theory. founded the Islamic Center. Athlete, scholar, In practice, Muslim theocracies rarely sur- community activist, Tariq Ramadan soon rose vived because leaders with more worldly to a prominence that outshone his father’s, interests (often generals) tended to seize the producing essays, books, and cassettes, and reins of power, even in the medieval cali- delivering endless lectures on the challenges phates. But the fantasy of the early-20th- and possibilities facing Muslims living in the century founding fathers of Islamism was to West. make their religion into a political ideology as Active in France, he crossed swords with comprehensive as the fascist and communist such critics as the young interior minister ideologies they observed, and often greatly Nicolas Sarkozy as well as a number of admired, from a distance. For the founder of leading intellectuals. (Ramadan, in a debate the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, with Sarkozy in 2003, said he opposed the Islam was, quite simply, “the answer.” practice of stoning and other forms of corpo- ral punishment in some Islamic traditions he rise and spread of Islamism figures but—in order not to foreclose discussions large in Paul Berman’s book The Flight with Muslim scholars—would only call for a T of the Intellectuals. Expanding a long moratorium on such practices rather than

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condemn them outright.) The debates Rama- Ramadan and his murkier ideas on the dan sparked often boiled down to variations grounds that, even if he is an Islamist of some on one question: Was he the ideological son of stripe, he is an authentic Muslim thinker with his father and grandfather, a smoother- a large Muslim audience, particularly in the talking version of the true-believing Islamist West. with an ultimately political agenda? Or was With an unflagging energy that has earned he only their biological descendant, and oth- him a position at Oxford University as well as erwise just a devout Muslim dedicated to seats on conciliatory committees and councils making his coreligionists fully integrated throughout Europe, Ramadan issues pro- members of Western liberal societies? nouncements of such ponderously vague yet annealing worthiness as to satisfy large he number of words that have been swaths of the globalized Islam crowd while devoted to this question is aston- reassuring leading Western liberal intellectu- T ishing. It was given added urgency in als. Those same intellectuals, Berman points 2004, when the U.S. Department of Home- out, have dealt far less generously with truly land Security revoked Ramadan’s visa just independent-minded Muslim thinkers such as before he was to take up an academic post at Ayaan Hirsi Ali, in some cases dismissing the University of Notre Dame. The press vig- them, in the manner of CAIR executives, as orously recycled unfounded charges that had inauthentic Muslims hardly worthy of the been leveled against Ramadan over more than world’s attention. How far Western intellectu- a decade. Eventually, Homeland Security als have fallen, Berman laments, even since revealed that Ramadan had given money to a that not-so-distant time when they stood blacklisted organization that provided behind Salman Rushdie in defiance of Ayatol- support to Hamas, a terrorist group. That was lah Ruholla Khomeini’s death-mandating true, but he had no idea that the organization fatwa. funneled funds to Hamas, and in any case he Don’t ban the Islamists, insist Berman and had made his contribution well before the the writers in The Other Muslims, but do organization was blacklisted. L’affaire Rama- expose their ideas for what they are— dan became a cause célèbre. But it is still hard including their elaborate borrowings from to imagine that a man whose writings and fascist, Nazi, and communist ideologies. It ideas are so astonishingly pedestrian would should not be forgotten, Berman reminds us, end up being so widely scrutinized. (“Follow- that leading Islamists of the 1930s and ’40s ing the example presented by Yusuf al-Qara- forged relationships with Third Reich dawi in his book on the problem of poverty, officials. The fierce strain of Nazi anti- we should reflect on the sources and on the Semitism infused them with a lethal hatred of reality of our societies nowadays,” he writes Jews, particularly Jewish Palestinians, that stirringly in Islam, the West, and the Chal- was truly something new in the world of lenges of Modernity.) Islam. That toxic anti-Semitism now vents For Berman, the controversy over Rama- itself with near impunity on the nation of dan is really a study in the failure of Western Israel. Make no mistake, these books argue: intellectuals. Berman rejects the view that Islamism is inimical to the spirit of compro- Ramadan is a militant Islamist who should be mise and tolerance. And without that spirit, kept out of the United States. (Ramadan’s neither true democracy nor peaceful U.S. visa has in any case been restored under coexistence among nations is possible. the Obama administration.) But he insists Jay Tolson is the news director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib- that Western intellectuals have given a pass to erty. He was editor of The Wilson Quarterly from 1989 to 1999.

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CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS make sure he was properly supervised, and made prescient, commonsense decisions, such Life Chances as sending him to military school after a minor Reviewed by Rich Benjamin brush with the law. Meanwhile, the other Wes Moore’s family made spectacularly poor Fatherhood is a touchy decisions in the face of already meager options. THE OTHER subject among black American WES MOORE: His older brother dealt drugs, survived three men. Well over half of black kids One Name and gunshot wounds, then earnestly begged Wes not grow up in a household without Two Fates. to do as he had done. Wes’s mother kept weed in a dad. No wonder black public By Wes Moore. the house, then acted shocked to discover her figures ranging from Louis Far- Spiegel & Grau. son’s drug stash. 233 pp. $25 rakhan to Bill Cosby to Presi- The incarcerated Wes Moore’s story doesn’t dent Barack Obama have exhorted black men to deliver anywhere near the high-stakes drama seen “step up” and be responsible fathers. Some liberal in gritty entertainments such as the HBO crime advocates dismiss these pleas as bootstrap sermons series The Wire or last year’s film Precious. The that blame poor blacks for systemic problems. Oth- realities of his four out-of-wedlock children, drug ers, conservative and liberal alike, counter that the dealing, and gang- three pillars that once bolstered black Americans— banging exploits make community, school, and family—are now miserably for a tale that is flat and Well over half of black kids failing at-risk black kids, not least because of the rather familiar, his biog- grow up without a dad, plague of deadbeat dads. raphy one more episode which has led many black The Other Wes Moore chronicles the parallel in the media’s narrative public figures to exhort lives of two black men from Baltimore’s hard- of black pathology. As black men to “step up” and scrabble turf. The author overcomes his finan- Obama noted in The be responsible fathers. cially challenged, fatherless childhood to become Audacity of Hope, “The a husband, Rhodes Scholar, White House fellow, images of the so-called and investment banker. The “other” Wes Moore, underclass are ubiquitous, a permanent fixture in who is two years older, emerges from a financially American popular culture.” challenged, fatherless childhood to receive a life- The author’s story, on the other hand, reads without-parole sentence for his role in a cop slay- like an original road map of the contemporary ing during a botched robbery in 2000. It’s as if striver’s path to the mandarin class. Moore is a Pudd’nhead Wilson met The Prince and the Pau- modern-day Horatio Alger whooshing through per on the streets of black America. How did these the revolving doors of military enlistment, public two men wind up in such radically different service, and global finance. The coming-of-age places? memoir that inspired him was not The Autobiog- Moore interweaves their stories in an elegant raphy of Malcolm X but Colin Powell’s My Ameri- narrative, bobbing between living rooms, can Journey. That’s no accident. Like Powell and basketball courts, alleys, lawns, stoops, and, Obama, the author is the child of an immigrant. most important, the prison visiting room where The contrast between his story and the other Wes he interviews the other Wes Moore, whose exis- Moore’s is explained in part by the different expe- tence the author discovered in a newspaper story riences of black immigrants from Africa and the about the robbery. It was not random events that Caribbean and native-born black Americans, who launched these boys on dramatically different on average have lower educational attainment, paths. Rather, it was the influence of adults. At lower incomes, and higher incarceration rates. the most vulnerable moments in his life, mem- Wes Moore is an artful storyteller, but he’s not a bers of the author’s family doubled down to particularly fine writer. His sentences are pocked

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with clichés along the lines of “that fateful day.” Par- of the silence. One broadcaster mused that the ticularly grating is his habit of giving women eyes communal silence served as a “solvent which that “twinkled,” are “scintillating,” or are “almond- destroys personalities and gives us leave to be shaped.” This is not just sloppy writing; Moore’s great and universal.” idolatry of women lets them off the hook in this tale While state-sanctioned silence was novel, the of social woe. While he often castigates men for sentiment of the broadcaster was not. Silence their personal deficiencies, he glosses over the serial has long acted as a leveler of ego. From the com- pregnancies of many black women who are not munal meditation that opens Quaker meetings equipped to raise the kids they conceive. to the lulling quiet that defines the lives of Bud- However, insights and graceful sentences dhist monks, silence is central to various punctuate the often mediocre writing. After his religious traditions. “For many people, silence is father’s death, Moore’s mother moved the family the way God speaks to us, and when we to the Bronx, where, he writes, “the idea of life’s ourselves are in silence, we are speaking the lan- impermanence underlined everything for kids my guage of the soul,” observes George Prochnik, age—it drove some of us to a paralyzing apathy, author of a previous book about Sigmund Freud stopped us from even thinking too far into the and the American psychologist James Jackson future. Others were driven to what, in retrospect, Putnam. In his fascinating new book, In Pursuit was a sort of permanent state of mourning: for of Silence, Prochnik sets out to understand the our loved ones, who always seemed at risk, and for complicated reasons for silence’s power. our own lives, which felt so fragile and vulner- Silence enriches the mental life of humans, able.” The book’s chief triumph is to capture so but, as Prochnik shows, it ensures the very matter-of-factly the permanent state of mourning survival of some in the animal kingdom. By experienced by an entire generation of black men being silent, animals avoid detection by preda- who grew up without fathers. tors, and sharpen their wits. Prochnik high-

Rich Benjamin is the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improba- lights the intriguing case of the red-eyed tree ble Journey to the Heart of White America, which earned a 2009 Edi- frog, whose embryos are capable of distin- tor’s Choice award from Booklist/The American Library Association. He is a senior fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan think tank. guishing the vibrations of a raindrop from the movement of a hungry snake. When the vibra- tions are caused by a snake, the embryos pre- Listening Tour maturely launch themselves from their jellied Reviewed by Megan Buskey clutch and attempt to survive in their underdeveloped state. The first widely ob- The inability to hear (or sense vibrations, a IN PURSUITOF served national moment of related skill) spells doom for some animals. But SILENCE: silence occurred in Britain in Listening for the biologically imposed silence of deafness, at 1919, in commemoration of the Meaning in a least in humans, often results in an acute appre- nation’s inaugural Armistice World of Noise. ciation of the remaining senses. Prochnik points Day. For two minutes, switch- By George Prochnik. out that at Gallaudet University, the premier board operators declined to Doubleday. 342 pp. $26 American institution of higher education for the connect telephone calls, subway THE UNWANTED deaf, faculty and staff cultivate Deaf Space, an cars and factory wheels ground SOUND OFEVERY- appealing philosophy of architecture that to a halt, and ordinary citizens THING WE WANT: emphasizes natural light, soft shapes, and colon- held their tongues. Within 10 ABookAbout Noise. nades and porches—“space that helps people years, the somber annual tradi- By Garret Keizer. remain in each other’s visual embrace.” PublicAffairs. tion had grown so popular that 375 pp. $27.95 If silence has so many benefits, why are head- the BBC began to air the sound splitting rock concerts popular and iPods ubiq-

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uitous? In part because loud sounds have their HISTORY pleasures. As explained by one partisan of boom cars—which sport subwoofers capable of Germany, With a producing more noise than is audible 30 feet away from a jet at takeoff—the sound he experi- Side of Quirk Reviewed by Martin Walker ences is “sensual.” Yet people also crowd their lives with noise, Prochnik incisively argues, It is not easy to be funny GERMANIA: because they are resistant to the virtues that about the Germans, and In Wayward Pursuit silence exemplifies: contemplation, attention, unusual to be affectionate of the Germans and prudence, and restraint. about them. Germania, Simon Their History. Garret Keizer, a contributing editor at Harper’s, Winder’s idiosyncratic but By Simon Winder. tackles essentially the same subject, but from the delightful book, manages to be Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 454 pp. $25 opposite end, in The Unwanted Sound of both. Winder, a British Everything We Want. Perceptions of noise vary, he publishing executive, has fed and embellished notes—Swedish and Dutch scientists have found his obsession with Germany during the requisite that people lodge fewer noise complaints about annual visits to the Frankfurt Book Fair. His wind turbines when they financially profit from book is the result of diligent reading on endless their use. Yet he points out that “noise took a quan- train journeys to small towns with half-forgotten tum leap with industrialization,” and the racket was treasures—provincial museums, lesser-known compounded with the advent of the automobile castles, and palaces of the many minor duke- and the airplane. doms that litter Germany. The volume in many places around the world is At the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony, that now objectively dangerous (one child in eight in the “wonderland of pre-1914 modern design” United States suffers from hearing loss), and Keizer founded by the melancholic grand duke Ernst argues that, saddled with poor infrastructure and Louis, Winder hits upon the key to his fewer resources, people on the social margins are fondness for Germany. It is his conviction that disproportionately affected. He acknowledges that the real Germany can be found in the stuff when compared to poverty, violence, and disease, usually absent from the history books: the noise is a minor environmental issue. But with obscure artists and the mad petty princelings, noise as his cause, he seizes the opportunity to the herbalists and ornithologists and forgot- decry America’s “loud” political discourse and ten inventors whose artifacts stuff local muse- climate change stoked by noisy factories. ums. “It is this slightly marginal Germany Both Prochnik and Keizer end their books with that has survived, while the political and his- policy prescriptions. Prochnik would like to see torical Germany has destroyed itself.” more pocket parks in cities, while Keizer thinks While Winder takes a roughly chronological that we should live closer together to reduce our approach, starting with Tacitus’ famous account support of the carbon-spewing automobile indus- of the ancient German tribes as honorable, try. These ideas aren’t off the mark, but given how brave, and loyal to their wives, he has not subjective noise is, the idea that we possess the produced anything like a conventional history of power to shape our own auditory space is strangely the country. And he ends, because of a fastidious missing. One can find internal calm in the cacoph- revulsion, with the arrival of Adolf Hitler in ony of rush hour, after all, or be plagued with racing 1933: “I can only mark my own distress by stop- thoughts in a tranquil park. A quieter life is not just ping this book here. So many of the threads that a matter of listening to our physical environments, run through modern German history—a but also to ourselves. creative irony, edginess, glee, and oddness—are Megan Buskey is assistant editor of The Wilson Quarterly. gone in a few weeks, wound up and replaced

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with a messianic infantilism.” scars; between Brahms and Buchenwald. The book’s main themes are familiar, from Winder blames the food: “Like some circling, the German obsession with Italy and Goethe’s trapped beast, German cuisine is goaded by its “land where the lemon trees bloom,” to the Ger- climate into turning out endless sausages, man sense of victimhood in the Thirty Years’ turnips, and potatoes. . . . This is a relatively War and during Napoleon’s time. Winder marks low self-esteem, ingredient-thin bit of Europe, the usual contrast between those parts of hemmed in by other cultures with access to Germany that experienced the Roman Empire serious sunlight.” One suspects it is rather more (on the whole, still Catholic) and the north and complicated than that, if only because the sup- east, which became largely Protestant. And in posedly sun-deprived Germans have installed the eyes of some Germans from the Romanized more solar panels in their country than can be Rhineland, the taint of barbarism remains; as found anywhere else on earth. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer observed, “East of Martin Walker is a Woodrow Wilson Center senior scholar. the Elbe the Asian steppes begin.” His third novel, The Dark Vineyard, was published this summer. Winder notes the oddly doomed nature of German militarism, its occasional tactical successes overwhelmed by strategic defeats, along What’s for Dinner with the power of historical accident. In the early in Africa 19th century, few would have predicted that Reviewed by Erica Bleeg remote Prussia, rather than the more powerful Austria, would become the dominant force in the The sounds that stay unification of the Reich. But after Napoleon’s with me from the years I lived STIRRING THE POT: defeat, European leaders at the Congress of in Benin are those of the sev- AHistory of African Cuisine. Vienna awarded Prussia the Ruhr Valley—blithely eral languages spoken there— unaware that the region’s coal and iron ore would and of cooking. I was a Peace By James C. McCann. Ohio Univ. Press. make it the powerhouse of the continent’s indus- Corps volunteer in the rural 213 pp. $26.95 trial revolution later in the century. savanna, where food prepara- Conventional history is not Winder’s strong tion was the domain of women, who cooked point. His distinction is a self-deprecatory, ironic over coal or wood fires. Deftly wielding a charm combined with a deep fascination with the wooden baton, my neighbor Nyaki stirred country. This fascination may have odd roots. He maize meal in a fire-licked pot. As the maize writes of exchanging notes with a German school thickened toward the consistency of polenta, pal on how they celebrated their 16th birthdays. her baton went thwump, thwump, thwump. Or Winder’s family went out for a Chinese meal; his picture two women standing on either side of a German chum celebrated by going to bed with three-foot mortar, each holding a long wooden one of his mother’s friends. pestle and taking plunges at boiled yams, At the outset, Winder suggests that pounding one after the other in a driving, two- Germany is “Britain’s weird twin.” Though he beat tempo: barum, barum, barum, barum. doesn’t elaborate on this comparison, it’s true Watching them, I’d wonder, how long have that just as English history is a blend of rustic, women been working these instruments on almost Hobbit-like charm and grasping impe- this food in this dance? rialism, so Germany is usually regarded as an In Stirring the Pot, culinary historian James extreme example of bipolar disorder, oscil- C. McCann offers a comprehensive history of lating between sentimental good Germans and the ingredients that have gone into the making ruthlessly bad ones; between jovial folk in of various African cuisines from 1500 to the lederhosen and ice-cold Teutons with saber present, and charts these foods’ global

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influence. For this huge undertaking, McCann that times are changing. Traditionally, Africans focuses on the ways trade, politics, colonialism, passed down knowledge orally; girls would and diaspora have shaped a dynamic and learn the art of cooking by observing their eld- enduring gastronomic mélange. Maize, for ers, a familial apprenticeship from one genera- example, came to Ethiopia via the Arab Red tion to another. Now, African meals—and writ- Sea trade and to West Africa from the West ten recipes for them—are proliferating around Indies in the 16th century, yet didn’t become the world. In Rome, London, and urban land- the continent’s dominant cereal crop until the scapes and college towns throughout the 20th century. Cheap and filling, maize made United States, for example, Ethiopian res- economic sense. taurants have sprouted up, though the dishes Anywhere along the maize belt, from patrons eat are often translations. The spongy Ethiopia down to South Africa and up to the flat bread injera served in the many such Ivory Coast, a traveler can find a standard dish: restaurants in and around the Adams Morgan maize flour boiled into a stiff porridge known neighborhood of Washington, D.C., “only as sadza in Zimbabwe, ugali in Kenya, and in approximates” the Ethiopian version, McCann the Bariba regions of Benin, dibu. In general, says. Vegetable dishes known as “fasting foods” an African meal consists of a starch—often for the Orthodox Christian fasts practiced in fixed in a form that holds together when eaten Africa are renamed “vegetarian” on American by hand—paired with a flavorful accompan- menus. iment. In Ghana, one may eat fufu (pounded Ethiopia provides the book’s dominant fla- yam, cassava, or plantains) with a choice of vor, taking up two of the seven chapters, while meat or vegetable sauce or with groundnut the other five look generally at trends in East, stew, whereas in the eastern maritime regions West, and South African foodways. This imbal- of Tanzania and Mozambique, the accompani- ance is explained when McCann mentions that ment is often what is called a “relish,” com- he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia in posed of fresh fish, meat, or green legumes. the mid-1970s. The book nonetheless offers a Particular dishes have become symbols of a fundamental understanding of how various rich and complicated culinary heritage that foods arrived in the cooking pots of Africa and has spread into the African diaspora. The the African diaspora, a tremendous feat. popular Jollof rice dishes of Senegal, Gambia, Erica Bleeg was a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin from 1997 to and Nigeria, for example, appear in the 1999. She teaches in the English Department at James Madison United States as jambalaya, a classic New University. Orleans cuisine that reflects the West African principle of dafa (“cook everything”): Meat, fish, vegetables, and rice are cooked together When They Were in one pot. The dish owes its lineaments to Out to Get Us African slaves. It also shows the influence of Reviewed by Michael Moynihan Canadians of French descent who were expelled from Nova Scotia by the British in The 1970s—with its STRANGE DAYS 1755 and eventually found their way to flared jeans and dodgy haircuts, INDEED: Louisiana, then a colony of France; they con- pallid disco music, absurdist The 1970s: tributed andouille sausage to the mix. Thus trends (pet rocks!), and Khome- The Golden Age of arose the name “jambalaya,” from the French inist revolution—what a miser- Paranoia. jambon for ham and à la ya-ya, a generic able, squalid decade it was. The By Francis Wheen. West African reference to rice. idealism and irrational opti- PublicAffairs. 343 pp. $26.95 McCann includes several recipes, a signal mism of the 1960s, when

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throngs of teenagers declared the end of bourgeois what they had long suspected: Their govern- society, gave way to Cambodia, Watergate, Jones- ment could never be trusted. town, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Civil Wheen concedes that much 1970s paranoia rights marchers and peaceniks made way for black contained a kernel of truth. After all, it was govern- power and Black September. ment paranoia that created the Counter Intelli- In Strange Days Indeed, British journalist gence Program (COINTELPRO), an FBI-led Francis Wheen stylishly chronicles what he calls operation to spy on domestic political dissidents in the “Them decade,” when the grand conspiracy the 1960s. The program’s exposure in 1975 predict- theory was ascendant in the West, having infected ably produced a wave of counterparanoia, and, 50 the thinking of an astonishing number of clever years after its inauguration, COINTELPRO is still people—prime ministers, presidents, journalists, grist for conspiracists and paranoiacs. and movie directors—as well as the hoi polloi. Wheen sees spasms of paranoia as cyclical: When something went wrong—a leader deposed, “Historians of the paranoid style have shown that it a president shot—it was invariably blamed on the is not a constant but an episodic phenomenon machinations of government, business, and intelli- which coincides with social conflict and apprehen- gence community conspirators. It was Them. sions of doom.” Today, he catches “flickering Ordinary people saw a government agent behind glimpses of déjà vu” in, for example, Michael every rock. British prime minister Harold Wilson Moore’s conspiracy-laden 2004 was convinced that his intelligence service was documentary Fahren- fomenting a coup. Richard Nixon distrusted heit 9/11. Perhaps. But all but his closest aides. the advent of Reagan- There was something of a ism, Thatcherism, and hangover in all of this, a the “greed decade” hardly predictable backlash from provided an interregnum to the mainstreaming of mainstream conspiracy theo- political radicalism of the rizing. From Father Cough- late 1960s. Looking back lin’s 1930s sermons about on 1973, Wheen observes Jewish plots against that in Britain “it seems America to the amateur incredible that the Poirots investigating the National Theater should “suspicious” circumstances of stage an earnest three-hour Fear Itself (c. 1960), by Patrick Hughes Clinton White House counsel Trotskyist seminar, led by Vince Foster’s suicide, the no less a figure than Laurence Olivier,” that 20th century was always running a fever. supposedly portended a working-class There are plenty of quibbles too. Nixon’s revolution. presidency was an unmitigated disaster, but it is In the United States, most every conspiracy a stretch to suggest that he was a “kindred spirit” theory that involved the White House, Langley, of paranoid Chinese genocidere Mao Zedong and the entire rotten government, was given a hear- Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev. (Wheen also ing (and sometimes confirmed as fact) in misquotes Helen Gahagan Douglas, with whom Congress. Public revelation of the CIA’s involve- Nixon squared off during a 1950 run for the U.S. ment in assassination plots in the Third World, Senate, as saying that the Soviet Union was “the its role in fomenting coups across the globe, and cruelest, most barbaric autocracy in world its production of exploding cigars meant for history.” She was referring to the governments Fidel Castro were treasonous, said singer Bing that preceded the Bolshevik Revolution.) Crosby. To others, the exposés merely confirmed While his larger narrative doesn’t quite cohere,

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Wheen’s anecdotes are crisply told, often terrify- reconstruction, How New Will the Better World ing, and usually amusing—as when he describes Be? (1944), to sentimental novels including The the 1974 meeting that Britain’s most powerful civil Human Comedy (1943), William Saroyan’s tale servant, Sir William Armstrong, held with his about a California family during wartime. underlings, where, naked, he ranted that the end Books were vetted by a convoluted bureaucracy, of the world was nigh. Wheen’s dramatis personae then printed—in English and also in translation— (Israeli paranormalist Uri Geller, Ugandan dicta- and distributed overseas. Crates of books bound tor Idi Amin) often feel like comic characters for French bookstores arrived on the beaches of invented for their entertainment value. But every- Normandy along with vital troop supplies. The thing he says is true. And he’s right to suggest that process was a logistical the strange, paranoid days of the 1970s are back. nightmare, trying Because they never really went away. enough to “make even Crates of books bound Job weep,” in the words for French bookstores Michael C. Moynihan is a senior editor of Reason. of one program overseer. arrived on the beaches of The military was Normandy along with vital ARTS & LETTERS eager to get books into troop supplies. the hands of another tar- Literary Lobs get audience—the Reviewed by John Brown 379,000 German prisoners of war interned in U.S. camps—“to calm the people who read them, to win Books and propaganda, their hearts and minds, and to cleanse them of for many Americans, don’t BOOKS AS Nazi, fascist, and militaristic thinking.” Favored mesh. Books educate. Propa- WEAPONS: titles included books by anti-totalitarian German ganda lies. But there was a Propaganda, authors Thomas Mann and Erich Maria time when the United States Publishing,and the Remarque, as well as German translations of Battle for Global had no qualms about using American works such as Ernest Hemingway’s For Markets in the books as “weapons in the war Era of World War II. Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). of ideas”—in the phrase In occupied Germany and Japan, America By John B. Hench. made famous by President Cornell Univ. Press. quite literally had a captive audience, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 333 pp. $35 military governments installed in these countries Books as Weapons, John B. sought to make books available to win over the Hench, a staff member of the American Anti- population. Though these efforts were stymied by quarian Society for more than three decades, postwar shortages and a reading public too poor recounts this chapter in America’s efforts to to purchase books, Hench writes, they did intro- defeat the enemies of democracy during duce “a freer, more democratic system of publish- World War II. ing” in both Japan and West Germany, and In early 1942, the Council on Books in helped make both countries “reliable” Cold War Wartime, a nonprofit corporation established by allies. U.S. publishers, collaborated with the newly cre- The campaign to sway minds didn’t end when ated Office of War Information (OWI) to dissem- OWI shut down after the war. A short-lived organ- inate works by American authors throughout ization composed of publishing executives and Europe. This large-scale program, Hench writes, supported by the State Department failed to gain was meant to “win the hearts and minds of the traction, in part because of internal disagreements people liberated from the Axis powers.” Selected about whether its aim should be cultural diplom- titles ranged from policy treatises such as Carl acy or simply increased foreign book sales. Still, Becker’s essay on the prospects for postwar American publishers’ wartime experience with

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Resource Centers), but on a far smaller scale than during World War II or the Cold War. The printed word will doubtless survive as an instru- ment of America’s outreach to the world, but in our Internet age it is bound to play a far lesser role than it did in the 20th century.

John Brown, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer, teaches a course at Georgetown University on the history of propaganda and U.S. foreign policy and blogs at http://publicdiplomacypressandblogreview.blogspot.com/.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Doctoring History Reviewed by Charles Barber

All surgeons must de- vise a “way in” to their opera- SEEKING THE tion—choosing the entry point CURE: AHistory of and the methodology for each Medicine in complex procedure. In Seeking America. the Cure, Ira Rutkow, a surgeon By Ira Rutkow. himself, hits upon an elegant Scribner. 356 pp. $28 approach to the contentious story of American medicine. Throughout his remarkably entertaining account, Rutkow selects telling medical episodes—the tormenting of colo- An Office of War Information poster taunts Nazi book burnings nial surgeon Zabdiel Boylston by a violent mob, as it touts U.S. efforts to spread ideas with the printed word. who believed that his smallpox inoculations spread disease; President James Garfield’s death in 1881 at overseas markets—in which they hadn’t been the hands of his own surgeons, who neglected basic interested before—changed the face of publishing, antiseptic techniques in treating his gunshot much to the consternation of British booksellers wound; or doctors’ extraordinary measures in 1926 who feared worldwide American competition. to save Harry Houdini from appendicitis, which For specialists in World War II propaganda, were unsuccessful but underscored clinical Hench’s meticulously researched monograph advances—to capture the essence of medical is a gem, but his attention to arcane detail may knowledge of the day, and place it in a social limit the book’s appeal. (He goes so far as to context. provide the dimensions and the grade—“basis Several powerful themes emerge in Rutkow’s 25 x 38–31#/500 white ground wood English account. One is the persecution and general finish”—of the paper on which overseas editions calamities endured by many of the great innovators were printed.) of American medicine. Boylston was so terrified of Hench ends by asking whether books should the mob that he visited his smallpox patients under “become, once again, weapons in the war of cover of darkness and disguised in a wig. The three ideas.” In fact, the U.S. government still uses men who, in the 1840s, made the findings that led books in public diplomacy programs (for exam- each to claim he had discovered anesthesia, all ple, at overseas State Department Information went under-recognized and largely uncompen-

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sated. All three also had unhappy deaths: One took progress as well as appendicitis, “which burst onto his own life, aided by chloroform; another, beset by the medical scene in the years surrounding World despondency and paranoia, suffered a fatal stroke; War I.” And the narrative concentrates overly much the third spent his last days in a Massachusetts on the history of surgery—which is perhaps natural insane asylum. William Halsted, whom Rutkow given that Rutkow himself is a surgeon. He describes as perhaps America’s greatest surgeon, acknowledges this bias in the book’s introduction, tested cocaine on himself in the 1880s before using where he quotes Henry Bigelow, a 19th-century it as an anesthetic for his patients. He became Harvard surgeon: “Why is the amphitheater addicted and spent months in psychiatric hospi- crowded to the roof on the occasion of some great tals, before resurrecting his career—by using mor- operation, while the silent working of some drug phine to wean himself off cocaine. Reading Seek- excites little comment? Mark the hushed breath, ing the Cure is not unlike watching the television the fearful intensity of silence, when the blade series House: The great medical visionaries are pierces the tissues, and the blood wells up to the simultaneously portrayed as brilliant, eccentric, surface. Animal sense is always fascinated by the and suspect, and the narrative is told through spe- presence of animal suffering.” cific, pithy anecdotes that illuminate larger Charles Barber, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale Medical controversies. School, is the author of Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (2008). Another theme is the inexorable growth of the medical-industrial complex. Between 1940 and 1965, as expensive technologies came to dominate Up to Here American medicine and the power of the American Reviewed by Darcy Courteau Medical Association (AMA) grew, national health care expenditures multiplied tenfold. Today, health On the entire spectrum STUFF: care spending accounts for nearly a fifth of Amer- of vice, compulsive hoarding Compulsive ica’s gross domestic product. Rutkow describes the registers toward the innocuous Hoarding and the current system of “for-profit corporate-guided end. Who doesn’t have a drawer Meaning of Things. medicine,” which rewards physicians and hospitals full of faded T-shirts or old rub- By Randy O. Frost and for how much care they provide rather than how ber bands? Still, in its most Gail Steketee. Houghton clinically valuable that care is, as “an economic extreme forms the phenomenon Mifflin Harcourt. 290 pp. $27 tyranny of medical services and scientific technol- is repulsive enough that it’s a ogy.” Yet this “tyranny” was perhaps not inevitable. natural for reality TV. Last year A&E premiered Harry Truman raised the notion of national health Hoarders, which features homes pregnant with insurance in the 1948 presidential campaign and debris and agitated occupants who have been given eventually brought a bill before Congress. The the ultimatum—by landlords or health AMA spent nearly $3 million—more money than inspectors—to clean up or move out. A woman any interest group had ever mustered for a single stalls a cleanup crew for hours, demanding that lobbying effort before that time—to defeat the bill. they recover a treasured piece of broken floor tile In 1962, it opened its war chest again to defeat they’ve misplaced. Amusing. But then come the President John F. Kennedy’s more limited proposal long-suffering spouses who pick their way, Daniel to provide national health insurance for senior citi- Boone–like, through “goat paths” on the way to bed. zens. It is one of the many contributions of Seeking When the camera films a woman asking Mom if a the Cure to place recent events in the health care broken vacuum cleaner and its dander-filled debate in a historical context. companions are more important than family, the Rutkow’s otherwise graceful narrative suffers problem ticks, on our vice spectrum, a shade closer from the occasional infelicitous phrasing, as when to perdition. Buried as we are in a glut of cheap he writes that no disease encapsulated medical goods, clutter is the rule, but we draw the line at

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ankle deep. More than that, and you’ve got who the hoarder is, not the façade he or she problems. displays to the world.” The connection to objects is Well, yes and no. Obsessive-compulsive disorder so real that several hoarders have committed (OCD) specialists Randy Frost and Gail Steketee suicide after forced cleanups. Items are cherished take a philosophical approach in their engaging for the utility and possibilities they represent; and surprisingly cheerful study Stuff. Frost, a psy- Ralph will not part with a leaking bucket as long as chologist, narrates several representative cases. he can imagine alternate uses for it. An “inordinate (Steketee, a social worker, contributed to the “con- number of hoarders describe themselves as artists,” ceptual work,” but most of the fieldwork is Frost’s.) the authors observe, adding, “Maybe hoarding is The collections that brought the woman they call creativity run amok.” Irene to financial ruin and broke up her family are The modern world tends toward abstraction. ho-hum in comparison to Ralph’s house, in which Files are stored not in cabinets but in information the bathtub is so full of scavenged detritus that he “clouds.” People who once earned a living making showers at a pool at the local college. These folks things now look for work. Against this backdrop, require interventions there is a heroic element to the “de facto archivists such as the “experi- of objects others have left behind, inverted versions Hoarders’ connection to ment,” in which hoard- of materialists who crave the new.” Indeed, it is the objects is so real that some ers throw out an incon- collector of leaking buckets who knows what succor have committed suicide sequential item, then the right piece of trash could bring to a person in after forced cleanups. track their diminishing need—of a needle, a knife blade, or the unrotted emotional pain until— portion of a potato. in the best cases—each Darcy Courteau is an editorial assistant at The American subsequent purge becomes easier. The clinician’s Scholar. Her fiction and essays have appeared, most recently, in tone remains imperturbable, though the authors do New Orleans Review and Oxford American. allow themselves a dusting of deadpan humor:

Irene, encouraged to experiment with tossing a RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY newspaper, first shakes from its pages an envelope containing $100. “This wasn’t exactly the outcome Sweat Equity I’d expected,” Frost writes. Reviewed by Winifred Gallagher Between six and 15 million Americans obses- sively collect, and, contrary to popular notion, they Victorian mores still are not always elderly. Frost and Steketee report an dominated mainstream Amer- THE GREATOOM: “average age of just over 50” among their subjects, ica at the dawn of the 20th cen- The Improbable Birth of Yoga in many of whom described hoarding symptoms from tury, but an eclectic proto- America. early in life; other hoarders are in elementary counterculture stirred in more By Robert Love. school. Hoarders’ pathologies, often exacerbated by adventurous circles. Spiritual Viking. 402 pp. $27.95 past trauma, are many, and can include OCD teachers including the mystic (which drives the collecting), attention deficits that G. I. Gurdjieff, the feminist evangelist Aimee Sem- prevent organization (an item out of sight is out of ple McPherson, and the prosperity-minded mind), paralyzing perfectionism (organizational African-American minister Father Divine preached standards, set impossibly high, end up abandoned new religious ideas to big followings. Pierre altogether), and a childlike avoidance of the dis- Bernard has faded from the ranks of such well- comfort associated with discarding things. known names, but the man who popularized yoga Yet, the authors argue, there is more to the pic- in the United States, where 20 million people now ture. Hoarders’ style of consumption is different practice it, was once the much-chronicled glittering from that of status seekers: “Objects become part of sage of the Jazz Age. In The Great Oom, he’s resur-

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rected as an important cultural figure who blazed Trading his turban for tweeds, Bernard set the trail for New Age spirituality and alternative about refashioning yoga and Eastern religious ideas health regimens. for an America increasingly interested in health Bernard’s life offers a particularly colorful itera- and fitness as well as spiritual quests. With his lis- tion of the American success story, in which a lad some wife and best student Blanche DeVries, he from the heartland transcends his rustic begin- established America’s first ashram on a Hudson nings to become a charismatic guru who was also River estate in Nyack, New York, which he cleverly hailed by Fortune magazine as a “shrewd and level- called the Clarkstown Country Club. There and at headed businessman.” Born into a struggling Iowa venues in nearby Manhattan, devotees performed family in 1876, Perry Baker—he later took his step- rigorous exercises, observed a careful diet, and father’s surname and switched to the more stylish practiced inner cleanliness (by giving themselves Pierre—was sent to live with a cousin in Lincoln, enemas) to prepare for the enlightened realization Nebraska, at age 13. In that improbably cosmopoli- that “all is one.” Guests could also enjoy jazz, base- tan university town, the intellectually curious ball, circuses complete with elephants, and lots of teenager befriended a young neighbor interested in dexterous girls in scanty costumes. The chic the occult and joined him in studying with the San- ashram became a destination for celebrities the skritist and yogi Sylvais Hamati. In 1893, Hamati likes of Noel Coward, and Bernard was anointed by and his new acolyte headed to California and even- snooty Town & Country as “the Guru of Nyack.” tually settled in San Francisco. Soon, the gorgeously Now middle-aged, Bernard heeded his own turbaned and muscular Pierre Bernard was prac- advice to his closest disciples: “Live dangerously, ticing his new skills on clients suffering from “nerv- carefully.” The former social pariah became a civic ous disorders.” leader who brought a music school, an airfield, and Although the famed Hindu yogi Swami other amenities to once sleepy Nyack. By the mid- Vivekananda had established his Vedanta Society 1930s he was speaking at the Yale Club, Mae West outreach centers in California and New York by the turn of the century, Asian practices such as yoga and meditation were regarded as heretical and indecent by all but cosmopolitan elites. Moreover, Bernard’s salubrious ministrations were not always entirely spiritual. Although not particularly hand- some, the Iowan guru was a gifted athlete who exuded energy and, apparently, sex appeal. When he began to preach as well as practice his exotic arts, rumors of sinuous nautch dancers and sex rit- uals attracted the attention of police and press. In 1906, he fled San Francisco in disgrace. By 1910, Bernard had set up shop in New York City, where his seamy history seemed about to repeat itself. Headlines screamed “Arrest Hindu Seer,” and the newly dubbed “Great God Oom”—the extra “o” was a misspelling—was jailed for corrupt- ing young girls in tights. Despite dark rumors of “white slavery,” the charges were dismissed, and, backed by society beauties such as Margaret Ruth- erfurd Mills and her mother, Anne Vanderbilt, Pierre Bernard twisted America into knots when he began popu- within a few years Bernard was a celebrity. larizing yoga in the early 20th century.

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and Greta Garbo were practicing yoga, and their lives in different directions. When Adolf Cosmopolitan’s models were twisting themselves Hitler came to power in 1933, Arendt fled to into attractive asanas (yoga postures). France, then the United States. Heidegger joined The Great Depression and World War II the Nazi Party and became the rector of Freiburg brought America back down to earth, and mystical University, where he dismissed Jewish faculty. philosophies and alternative country clubs lost their Though he resigned after one year, he remained a appeal. After Bernard tried to raise money with a member of the Nazi Party and supporter of dog-racing track that later closed amid charges of National Socialism. corruption, he lost his health and fabled energy. In 1951, Arendt published The Origins of Totali- Reunited with his Iowa family and his wife, from tarianism, and quickly came to be viewed as one of whom he had become estranged, he died in 1955 at the most brilliant political philosophers of her era. the age of 78. The whiff of sulfur notwithstanding, A year earlier, during her first trip to Germany since the Great Oom had won fame and fortune and she had fled, Heidegger had visited her hotel. After- helped to prepare the way for the cultural changes ward, she wrote, in her characteristically visionary that would revolutionize American society begin- style, that it was “the confirmation of an entire life.” ning in the 1960s. Whether they resumed their sexual relationship Despite his outrageously colorful life, the cigar- remains unclear, but until her death in 1975, they smoking fitness guru remains an enigma. Like the corresponded and sometimes saw each other when fabled journalist Joseph Mitchell, who, as a cub she was in Germany. She assiduously helped trans- reporter, profiled Bernard in 1931, Robert Love set- late and promote his work in the United States. tles for his subject’s opaque self-description as a Scholars have struggled to make sense of the “curious combination of the businessman and reli- intimacy between these two titans of 20th-century gious scholar.” The Great Oom is more successful as thought. In Hannah Arendt/Martin Heidegger an East-meets-West social history than as a biogra- (1995), Elzbietta Ettinger took a critical view and phy, and helps explain how yoga became a main- accused Arendt of whitewashing Heidegger’s Nazi stream fitness activity and why a quarter of the past. Now, in Stranger From Abroad, Daniel Maier- population is comfortable with Eastern religious Katkin, a professor of criminology at Florida State beliefs such as reincarnation. University with a particular interest in crimes

Winifred Gallagher writes about human behavior. Her most recent against humanity, presents a more sympathetic book, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, was published last year. interpretation of the relationship, and explores its influence on Arendt’s philosophy. How could Arendt have resumed her friendship Meeting of the Minds with Heidegger? Maier-Katkin proposes an inter- Reviewed by Michelle Sieff esting answer, suggested by a radio address she wrote for Heidegger’s 80th birthday in 1971: Since 1982, when Elizabeth Arendt believed that Heidegger had taught her STRANGER FROM Young-Bruehl published Han- how to think. She contended that he instructed stu- ABROAD: nah Arendt: For Love of the Hannah Arendt, dents in a style of “passionate thinking,” in which World, it has been widely known Martin Heidegger, thought is pursued for its own sake, and not to that Hannah Arendt and Martin Friendship and achieve some result. In the address, she excused Heidegger had an affair. He was Forgiveness. Heidegger’s Nazism as the momentary error of an Germany’s leading philosopher By Daniel Maier-Katkin. intellectual who later recognized his mistake and of existentialism; she was a Ger- W.W. Norton. broke with the regime. 384 pp. $26.95 man Jew and one of his most But a wing of Heidegger scholars in France and promising students at the University of Marburg Germany have long contended that Heidegger’s during the 1920s. But the winds of history blew Nazism was not fleeting but rather essential to his

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philosophical endeavor. As French scholar Katkin suggests that her reconciliation with Hei- Emmanuel Faye argues in Heidegger: The degger led Arendt to develop the notion of the Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy, published “banality of evil,” a concept that downplayed the in English last year, “Heidegger devoted himself to anti-Semitic motives of Nazi perpetrators. putting philosophy at the service of legitimizing This explanation is based on a misapprehension and diffusing the very bases of Nazism and of Arendt’s “banality of evil” concept, which she first Hitlerism.” How is it that Arendt, who trenchantly introduced in an often-overlooked 1945 essay, analyzed racist thought in her own work, failed to “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility,” take seriously the racist categories in Heidegger’s years before her reconciliation with Heidegger. She philosophy, and even promoted his work? used the idea to explain the actions of thoughtless An important point of Maier-Katkin’s book is functionaries of the Nazi regime. It was not that Arendt’s reconciliation with her mentor intended to explain Heidegger, who was a thinker, a shaped her ideas on political evil. As he notes, philosopher, and ultimately a fanatical supporter of Arendt’s political consciousness was Nazi doctrines. transformed in 1943, when she learned of Maier-Katkin’s effort to link Arendt’s erotic Hitler’s gas chambers. For the rest of her life, she attachments to her work is provocative, but it ulti- struggled to understand the meaning and causes mately leads him to flawed interpretations of her of Nazi evil. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, political philosophy. This is a shame. With the she argued that the perpetrators of Nazi emergence of radical Islamist movements, which in genocide were in the grip of a mad theory of his- many ways resemble the totalitarian movements tory that required the elimination of the Jews Arendt analyzed, her ideas are as relevant and nec- from the earth. But in Eichmann in Jerusalem essary today as they were half a century ago. (1963) she held that many perpetrators, includ- ing the Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann, had Michelle Sieff is a research fellow at the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism. She is writing a book on more banal motives, such as keeping their jobs. the ideology of the modern human rights movement.

Credits: Cover, AP Photo/Oded Balilty; p. 2, Photo by Johanna Resnick Rosen; p. 9, Photo by David Hawxhurst; p. 12, © Steve Cohn/ Steve Cohn Photography, Courtesy of Santa Monica Museum of Art; p. 13 (top), Ed Ruscha, Cup of Coffee (2010), Graphite on matte board, 8 x 10 inches, Santa Monica Museum of Art, © Ed Ruscha; p. 13 (bottom), AP Photo; p. 14 (top), AP Photo/Jason DeCrow; p. 14 (bottom), Drawing by Edmund S. Valtman, 1970, Reproduced from the Collections of the Library of Congress; p. 15, Courtesy of Redux Beverages; p. 17, Copyright © The Granger Collection, New York/The Granger Collection; p. 19, Courtesy of Katherine Benton- Cohen; p. 20, Copyright © 2005–2010 Culver Pictures Inc. All rights reserved; p. 23, © Bromberger Hoover Photography/Getty Images; p. 27, Flip Chalfant/Getty Images; pp. 29, 31, © Agata Skowronek; p. 32, AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici; p. 35, © André LeFebvre/ParisMatch/SCOOP; pp. 37, © Roger-Viollet/The Image Works; p. 38, Copyright © The Bridgeman Art Library; p. 39, © Lipnitzki/Roger-Viollet/The Image Works; p. 41, © Nir Ben-Yosef, 2006; p. 43, © Anat Givon; pp. 45, 46, Doron Pely; p. 49, Photo by Brian Hendler/Getty Images; p. 51, © Cris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty Images; p. 55, AP Photo/Dan Balilty; p. 57, AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh; p. 59, © EPA/Abir Sultan; p. 60, Photo by Brian Hendler; p. 63, © David Rubinger; p. 65, © Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images; p. 69, Haley/SIPA/1005061534; p. 75, Courtesy of Hawaii’s Most Wanted Magazine; p. 78, © Henry Martin/The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.com; p. 80, © Makoto Ishida/ Mishida.com; p. 85, Courtesy of the Tissue Culture & Art Project (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr), Victimless Leather— A Prototype of Stitch-less Jacket grown in a Technoscientific “Body,” The Tissue Culture & Art (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr), Biodegradable polymer connective and bone cells, Variable dimension, 2004; p. 88, DoD photo by Spc. Darriel Swatts, U.S. Army; pp. 91, 106, Reproduced from the Collections of the Library of Congress; p. 93, © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/All rights reserved; p. 97, AP Photo/Kathy Willens; p. 104, Fear Itself, c. 1960 (gouache on paper), Patrick Hughes, © The Bridgeman Art Library; p. 109, From the Bernard Collection, The Historical Society of Rockland County, New City, New York; p. 112, © Bruce Gilden/Magnum Photos.

Summer 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 111 PORTRAIT

Sweating It Out

“To understand the crowd, one must go to Coney Island,” opined Edouard Herriot, the prime minister of France, after visiting the teeming Brooklyn shoreline in the summer of 1924. “One is carried along into the torrent with all the languages and all the races of the globe.” Eighty-six years later, the sun-scorched sands of Coney Island continue to attract New York City’s polyglot masses. Residents of local Russian, Georgian, Turkish, Dominican, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani communities crowd Coney Island’s nearly three miles of beach and amusement park. This 1977 photograph by Bruce Gilden, which was recently on display at Amador Gallery in Manhattan, captures the sweltering throng on a typical summer day.

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WILSOTHE N LEGACY SOCIETY

he Wilson Legacy Society recognizes Tthose supporters who choose to provide for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars through their estates. Planned and deferred gifts are crucial in providing a sound financial foundation for the Center’s future and may include:

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