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October 3, 2011 49145 $4.99

JAMES LILEKS on ‘the Perry Approach’

thethe eNDeND ofof thethe futurefuture

P E T E R T H I E L

PLUS: TIMOTHY B. LEE: Patent Absurdity ALLISON SCHRAGER: In Defense of Financial Innovation ROB LONG: A Farewell to Steve Jobs

$4.99 40

0 74820 08155 6 www.nationalreview.com base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 9/12/2011 2:50 PM Page 2 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 9/12/2011 2:50 PM Page 3 toc_QXP-1127940144.qxp 9/14/2011 2:10 PM Page 2 Contents

OCTOBER 3, 2011 | VOLUME LXIII, NO. 18 | www.nationalreview.com

COVER STORY Page 28 Ramesh Ponnuru on Social Security Swift Blind p. 18 Horseman? BOOKS, ARTS There is no law that the & MANNERS

exceptional rise of the West 40 THE MISSING MAN must continue. So we could do Matthew Continetti reviews Keeping worse than to inquire into the the Republic: Saving America by Trusting Americans, widely held opinion that America by Mitch Daniels. is on the wrong track, to wonder 42 BLESS THE BEASTS whether Progress is not doing Claire Berlinski reviews The Bond: as well as advertised, and Our Kinship with Animals, perhaps to take exceptional Our Call to Defend Them, by Wayne Pacelle. measures to arrest and reverse any decline. 47 A LONG RED SUNSET Harvey Klehr reviews American Dreamers: How the Left COVER: K.J. HISTORICAL/CORBIS Changed a Nation, by Michael Kazin. ARTICLES 49 BUSH RECONSIDERED 18 SOCIAL SECURITY ALERT by Ramesh Ponnuru Quin Hillyer reviews The Man in Perry and Romney debate a program in need of reform. the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the 20 DEAD LETTER by Robert VerBruggen George W. Bush Era, Tough unions, weak management doom USPS. by Timothy S. Goeglein.

24 CRIME, PUNISHMENT, AND REHABILITATION by Mitch Pearlstein 50 FILM: GOING VIRAL When they’ve done the time, expunge the crime. Ross Douthat reviews Contagion.

26 THE RIGHT KIND OF TYRANT by Rob Long 51 THE STRAGGLER: What Steve Jobs gave the world. CATALOG SHOPPER John Derbyshire gears up.

NR INNOVATION SPECIAL SECTIONS 28 SWIFT BLIND HORSEMAN? by Peter Thiel Look, listen—proceed. 4 Letters to the Editor 8 The Week PATENTLY ABSURD by Timothy B. Lee 32 37 The Bent Pin ...... Florence King Copyright law can meet the needs of software developers. 38 The Long View ...... Rob Long 39 Athwart James Lileks 34 INNOVATIONS AND LIMITATIONS by Allison Schrager ...... 41 Poetry Jennifer Reeser Where financial innovation went wrong, and how to set it right...... 52 Happy Warrior ...... Mark Steyn

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Someone’s Going to Lose This Race—Don’t Let It be You!

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The Ron Paul Movement Rides On OCTOBER 3 ISSUE; PRINTED SEPTEMBER 15 It is not surprising that with the polls ranking him third nationally, Ron Paul atIoNal evIew EDITOR would finally make the cover of N R (“Ron Paul’s last Crusade,” Richard Lowry September 19). It is also not surprising, sadly, that although the accompanying Senior Editors story is sometimes humorous, it is generally negative toward Paul. Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger Kevin D. williamson has many things to say about the 2012 Republican Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts presidential candidate, and he does not hesitate to lampoon everyone—Paul, his Literary Editor Michael Potemra senator son, the campaign staff, and, of course, Paul’s army of enthusiastic sup- Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy National Correspondent John J. Miller porters. But perhaps williamson’s truest sentence can be found in the first para- Political Reporter Robert Costa Art Director Luba Kolomytseva graph. williamson writes of Paul: “He is, for better and for worse, a man of Deputy Managing Editors ideas—maybe the last true man of ideas in american politics.” Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson Associate Editors But what are those ideas? williamson notes of Paul, “He wants to talk about Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen fiat money, the american empire, the Fed.” williamson then portrays those who Research Director Katherine Connell Executive Secretary Frances Bronson support Paul’s ideas in an unflattering light, to say the least. Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos It is a well-established trick of the left to attempt to marginalize opposition Contributing Editors Robert H. Bork / Shannen Coffin / John Derbyshire by focusing on the eccentric rather than centric. For example, last summer, Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum many liberal pundits were far more concerned with the theology of Michele Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin Bachmann’s church than with explaining why she is popular with many in the Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi grassroots. liberals are even prone to imply that her theology is really what Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne David B. Rivkin Jr. attracts people to Bachmann.

NATIONALREVIEWONLINE In his repeated attempts to portray Paul and his campaign as beyond the pale, Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez williamson takes aim at Paul’s Iowa campaign chairman, Drew Ivers, noting Managing Editor Edward John Craig News Editor Daniel Foster that Mr. Ivers also worked for Pat Robertson in 1988, in 1996 and Editorial Associates 2000, and some third-party candidates. But williamson conveniently fails to Brian Bolduc / Charles C. W. Cooke Brian Stewart / Katrina Trinko mention that Ivers was also a county chairman in Iowa for Ronald Reagan’s Web Developer Gareth du Plooy Technical Services Russell Jenkins presidential campaigns in 1976 and 1980. obviously, Reagan rose to power aided and abetted by “fringe” and “extreme” elements in the Republican party. EDITORS- AT- LARGE this type of marginalization is what the left does best. this is not to say that Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Contributors eccentricities or actual fringe behavior should be ignored, whether on the left or Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell on the right. But it is to say that any genuine bottom-up grassroots movement— James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier like the tea Party or the Ron Paul movement—is going to be filled with every- Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans day people, some of whom might not say the right things or present the right Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman James Gardner / David Gelernter temperament for many in the political class. George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart whereas williamson chose to put a negative “fringe” spin on the person even Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune he admits is the “last true man of ideas in american politics,” the current issue D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / Tracy Lee Simmons of Time actually examines how those ideas Terry Teachout / Taki Theodoracopulos are impacting the 2012 presidential elec- Vin Weber tion. In a story titled “the Prophet,” Time Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman reports: Accountant Zofia Baraniak Business Services Alex Batey / Elena Reut / Amy Tyler In the four years since [Paul’s last presidential run], the Circulation Manager Jason Ng world has changed in mostly grim ways that seem to WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 affirm Paul’s worldview. His vision of an eroding SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 Constitution and a washington–wall Street cabal WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 helped spark the tea Party movement. Conservatives ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd who once sneered at his foreign policy as being “iso- Advertising Director Jim Fowler lationist” have grown weary of war. His call for a more Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett accountable and transparent Federal Reserve has morphed from quaint obsession to mainstream Re - PUBLISHER Jack Fowler publican talking point in Congress and on the cam- paign trail. CHAIRMANEMERITUS Thomas L. Rhodes

FOUNDER Time also notes of Paul: “as prophet, he is still William F. Buckley Jr. defining the GoP race.” For some, that Paul’s

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Letters, cont’d

brand of conservatism now shapes specific issue. For reasons typically associated; I object to Ron Paul be - the Right is bothersome. Former NR having more to do with establishment cause he discredits the ideas with contributor David Frum expressed attachments than principles, a GOP which he is associated, and most of such concerns when Rand Paul won nominee Paul or even a President them are good ideas. the Kentucky Republican primary Paul is some conservatives’ worst Having good ideas is not enough; last May: “Rand Paul’s victory in nightmare—and many now fear that Ron Paul lacks judgment. For exam- the Kentucky Republican primary is Paul’s movement and what it repre- ple, he is correct that the monetary obviously a depressing event for sents are here to stay. policy of the United States is defec- those who support strong national A common dismissal of Paul is to tive and inflationary. Unfortunately, defense and rational conservative note the congressman’s strong youth he also believes that the Federal Re - politics. . . . How is it that the GOP support; many old-guard Republicans serve is a kind of wicked cabal and has lost its antibodies against a can- complain about the constant presence therefore focuses his energies on didate like Rand Paul?” of those passionate but pesky “Ron dissolving it, the result of which Senator Paul is now considered by Paul kids.” In his recent blog post “I would be to put monetary policy in the grassroots to be one of the most Have Seen the Future and It Is Ron the hands of Congress, an even worse conservative senators, in league with Paul,” The New Republic’s Jonathan outcome. If Mr. Paul has thought Jim DeMint and freshman Mike Chait cites recent poll data showing through the consequences of that, Lee. Similarly, Congressman Paul is greater support for Paul than for any there is very little evidence of it in his increasingly considered to be a lead- other presidential candidate among book End the Fed. In a similar way, ing conservative figure, something young Republicans. he is so blinkered by his antediluvian reflected by his strong poll numbers Paul’s young supporters stand to commitment to the gold standard that and the dominance of his ideas in this have a major impact on the future of he fails to account for the fact that a election. the Republican party. Youth might not government that can manipulate other Which leads us to the underlying turn out in droves at the ballot box, but commodities’ prices also can mani - but primary question: What is conser- their activism has long helped steer pulate the price of gold, particularly if vatism, and who gets to define it? both major parties and particularly the it happens to be the world’s largest In 2008, NR and many others on the conservative movement—recall the holder of it by several orders of mag- right picked Mitt Romney as the con- Republican National Convention of nitude. He is correct, in my view, that servative alternative to John McCain. 1960, in which the young turned out our military is too widely deployed In 2012, few on the right who en - to support Barry Goldwater, a candi- and too lightly called out; he is wrong dorsed Romney are comfortable even date of the insurgent anti-establish- that the United States is an “em - calling him “conservative” anymore. ment Right. Of Goldwater’s youthful pire”—strange empire, that pays trib- Has conservatism changed, or have supporters, NATIONAL RevIeW wrote: ute to its conquered foes rather than the acceptable parameters of that “They are going to be around for a extracting it!—or that the malefactors term? What many on the right today long time to come, which is some- in Tehran and elsewhere can be trust- lazily like to call Ron Paul’s “leftist” thing the Republican leadership should ed to mind their own business if we foreign-policy views are similar to the take note of.” mind ours. generally non-interventionist foreign- This gives us a sense of what Paul’s And if Mr. Hunter wishes to associ- policy views of early NR giants Rus - impact on American conservatism ate Mr. Paul with Ronald Reagan, he sell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, and Richard and the Republican party means now ought first to consult with Mr. Paul, Weaver. Did NR secretly use to be lib- and could continue to mean in the fu - who famously expressed his desire to eral—or is Paul simply unearthing an ture. even Williamson admits, “The “totally disassociate” himself from older Right? At the end of his life, Ron Paul movement goes on.” And the Reagan administration and its William F. Buckley Jr. said that the to the extent that some on the right policies, a fact reported in my article, Iraq War was a “failure.” In 2005, realize this but don’t like it, we can and a fact that, like every other fact in Buckley said of the Bush Doctrine, expect them to marginalize Ron Paul the piece, stands unchallenged by “It’s not at all conservative. It’s any- every chance they get. Mr. Hunter, Mr. Paul, or his acolytes. thing but conservative.” Was the founder of NR a “leftist,” Jack Hunter or has there always been a place on Official Ron Paul 2012 campaign the right for conservatives who share blogger; assisted Sen. Rand Paul Letters may be Paul’s foreign-policy views? And is with The Tea Party Goes to that “place” expanding? Washington sub mitted by e-mail to Though most are reluctant to admit [email protected]. it, the growing pushback on the right KevIN D. WILLIAMSON RePLIeS: I do against Paul is more about his ex - not object to Ron Paul because I wish panding influence than about any to discredit the ideas with which he is

6 | www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 3 , 2 0 1 1 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 4/26/2011 11:00 AM Page 1 week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/14/2011 2:14 PM Page 8 The Week

n Bad news for the Democrats: It turns out some of those people who cling bitterly to their religion are Orthodox Jews in Queens.

n The great strength of the conservative is to prepare for the worst; the great temptation is to expect it. There was worry, ahead of time, that the 9/11 commemorations in Shanksville, Wash - ington, Virginia, and New York might be too austere—no clergy, no firemen: the naked public square incarnate. In the event those worries blew away in the early-autumn breezes. At the climactic ceremony at Ground Zero, President Obama read Psalm 46 (“Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed”). Former president George W. Bush read Abraham Lincoln’s letter to the bereaved Mrs. Bixby (“the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom”). If the musical program was not perfect, it included “The Star Spangled Banner,” and the pipers of the Bravest and the Finest skirling “The Minstrel Boy.” Thy songs were made for the pure and free / They shall never sound in slavery.

n Is President Obama going through a Carter-like meltdown? Republicans won two special elections for House seats: one in New York, where Anthony Weiner (D.) had to resign in disgrace, specialize in airliners and iPhones, while the Chinese specialize in and one in Nevada, where Dean Heller (R.) was elevated to the shoes and plastic toys. The Chinese regime is to be faulted for Senate after John Ensign (R.) had to resign in disgrace. Opposition many things—mass murder, torture, and repression spring to to same-sex marriage, support for Israel, the tenacity of the mind—but the policies that are undercutting American competi- Republican candidate, the charmlessness of the Democrat, and the tiveness ori ginate mostly in Washington, not Beijing. declining popularity of President Obama yielded the New York result. The large margin of victory in Nevada, in a district that had n Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor running for the Re - been moving to the Democrats, offers further evidence that publican presidential nomination, debuted a tax plan that elimi- Obama is dragging his party down. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, nates almost every tax deduction and credit and lowers the rates. the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was re- He won plaudits from the Wall Street Journal, and the general duced to saying of the New York race, for a seat last held by thrust of his plan indeed deserves praise. But with housing markets Republicans in 1923, “It’s a very difficult district for Democrats.” weak, is this really the right time to end the mortgage-interest There seem to be an increasing number of those these days. deduction? And the child tax credit, which Huntsman would elim- inate, is no more a distortionary tax break than are the low taxes on n In search of an activist supplement to the traditional conserva- capital he favors. The credit partly offsets the double taxation of tive economic prescription of low taxes, light regulation, and the parents contained in our entitlement system, to which they con- rule of law, Mitt Romney is campaigning against China and tribute through both payroll taxes and the raising of children. Any promises on his first day in office to begin the process of imposing flat tax that aims to raise roughly the same amount of revenue as economic sanctions on Beijing. China, Mr. Romney argues, is an the present system is likely to raise taxes on the middle class. By impenitent currency manipulator, seeking to privilege its exporters opting for a version of the flat tax that ends the child credit, at the expense of its global competitors. This is undeniably true— Huntsman ensures that the burden will be borne disproportion - of China, of Japan, of Europe, and, to a lesser degree, of the United ately by middle-class parents, who are also known as the Repub- States, where Ben Bernanke’s currency manipulation is oriented lican base. Huntsman has not found the solution to the problems more toward raising spending at home than toward bolstering in our tax code, or to his low poll numbers. exports. That manipulation is called “monetary policy,” and China, being a police state whose currency is not freely traded on the n Robert P. George, the Princeton constitutional scholar, surprised foreign-exchange markets, is an unusually robust practitioner of the presidential candidates at a debate by asking them whether they that and other dark arts. But the effects of China’s currency manip- believed, first, that the Fourteenth Amendment gives the elected ulation are mixed, with the costs overstated: U.S. consumers ben- branches of the federal government the power to protect unborn efit from low prices, while U.S. exporters do not compete that life, and second, that those branches should exercise that power

ROMAN GENN much with Chinese firms in overseas markets, since Americans despite the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling. Governor

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THE WEEK Romney balked, expressing fear of a “constitutional crisis.” This had it right: For Congress and the president to accept the infallibil- fear is overblown. When the Supreme Court declared partial-birth ity of the Supreme Court would be the real constitutional crisis. abortion a constitutional right, Congress defied it by passing a fed- eral ban. The Court, wiser for the replacement of Sandra Day n Another GOP presidential candidates’ debate a couple of days O’Connor by Samuel Alito, reconsidered its earlier decision. later was moderated by Brian Williams of NBC and John Harris of (There was a face-saving pretense that the new ban was actually Politico. Well, most of it was. Halfway through the scheduled time, compatible with that earlier decision, but everyone understood the Williams introduced Jose Diaz-Balart from the Spanish-language game.) Abraham Lincoln, as Professor George’s question noted, TV network Telemundo. Mr. Diaz-Balart proceeded to ask the can- They Live Among Us

OR quite a long time now theNew York Timescrowd— is all I’m going for. Just a couple of years ago, a very nice and F you know of whom I speak—has talked about red- smart fellow at the Times wrote a book called The Death of state America as if it were another country, one that, inConservatism that, as its name suggests, argued that the jig cultural terms, is much farther away than London or Paris, was up for the Right. Now poor Mr. Tanenhaus is like one of never mind L.A. or Seattle. The shorthand to make this pointthose Roman poets getting news that the Goths have set up usually includes mention of Pauline Kael’s endlessly quot- shop in Marcianopolis. I mean, it was one thing when one of ed—and misquoted—1972 line that she can’t believe any- the barbarians captured Senator Kennedy’s seat, since for one voted for Nixon because she didn’t know anyone many New Yorkers, Massachusetts remains something of a who voted for Nixon (the actual quote is less damning, provincial backwater. But this is looking like a trend. They’re but you get the point). But the trend is much older than in the city limits! And—oh, dear Lord—they’re . . . Jews! that. Back in the 1920s, The Nation ran a regular series, As one wag on Twitter put it, if this continues, the Repub - “These United States,” where the sophisticates would mocklican party is in danger of becoming a regional rump party— the inhabitants of the American interior. in the Northeast. That renowned equine posterior Sinclair Yes, yes, one can over-read all of this. Lewis remarked of his native Minnesota: It certainly doesn’t spell the end of the “Scandinavians Americanize only too Democratic party or the “Death of Liber - quickly!” alism” or anything of the sort. Of course, Minnesota was a reliably liber- But what it should do is deal a significant al state back then. But in recent decades, blow to “endism,” or the tendency to take geographic snobbery had melded with po - a given moment and draw an infinitely litical snobbery. Manhattan liberals still look straight line into the future. In 2008, the air down on flyover country, but they also con- was thick with bloviation about the unstop- NY-9 victor, Bob Turner sider Republican voters as a class to be the pable liberal realignment. Young people sort of people who use their sleeves as napkins as they eat were now permanently in the Democratic camp. Hispanics their lunch on the back of a turnip truck. were forever lost to the GOP. Conservatism was dead. “Their Well, there’s good news for Maureen Dowd and others coalition no longer works in the changing demography of who are eager to disparage those whackadoo wahoos the day, and is dangerously old; their Southern strategy . . . inhabiting the hinterlands but find the trek out to quote- has become a relic of the past; their tech and media tools unquote America so exhausting. The hinterlands are getting have not kept up with the times; their ideas have become closer. spent and discredited. . . . They are an aging and frayed New York’s 9th congressional district, the most Jewish bunch, living off the fumes of a day and politics gone district in America, just turned into a mini–red state. It’s a by,” proclaimed Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg 20-minute drive to Forest Hills from the Times’s midtown in 2008. This wasn’t analysis, it was wishful thinking on offices. Just tell your car service where you’re going, he’ll steroids. know where it is. Heck, your driver probably lives nearby. The NY-9 election is just one data point among a large NY-9 has been in the hands of Democrats since the 1920s. number of data points. Does it signal the long-anticipated It’s sufficiently liberal to have sent Geraldine Ferraro, Chuck rightward shift of American Jews? Does it foretell the doom Schumer, and, most recently, Anthony Weiner to Congress, of the Obama administration? Yes! No! Maybe! We’ll just and to have given Al Gore 67 percent of the vote. Barack have to wait and see, because if a Republican can win in GETTY / Obama got 55 percent. Forest Hills, anything is possible. Now, I’m not trying to gloat excessively here. Sufficiency —JONAH GOLDBERG SPENCER PLATT

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didates questions about policy, and about nothing else. Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. Similar We don’t doubt that Mr. Diaz-Balart (American-born, to Cuban par- agreements have been signed this past year with Mexico, Nica - ents) is a thoroughly professional journalist and a credit to his net- ragua, and Guatemala. “I’m very proud of this,” the lady said. The work, but ... why was this particular person brought in to help purpose of these agreements is to protect the labor rights of moderate this particular topic? Do Spanish-speakers now “own” “migrants” from the represented nations. What, including illegals? immigration policy? If so, why? Did Messrs. Williams and Harris Definitely: “No matter how you got here or how long you plan to not feel competent to deal with immigration issues? Are the nation’s stay, you have certain rights.” Does Madam Secretary have any- policy discussions now to be allotted by ethnic interest, with His- thing to say about, you know, American workers? Why yes: Just panics owning immigration, blacks owning poverty, Muslims own- two days later she was talking up her government-issued SUV, a ing religious accommodations, and so on? Are the rest of us to be Chevy Equinox, government purchase of which is meant to “send permitted no opinion? Who gets to own agriculture—the Amish? a signal that we are for supporting our American workers, [and] American-made products.” Turns out the Equinox is made in n John Bolton flirted with the idea of running for president, then Canada. How we miss the quiet competence of Elaine Chao. decided against it. The good news is that he will be available to write for publications such as this one. And the bad news? He n Solyndra, a manufacturer of solar panels, is bankrupt, which is would have added both spice and heft to the Republican primaries. inconvenient for the Obama administration, which extended half a If the Republican nominee happens to win in November 2012, he billion dollars’ worth of loan guarantees to the firm as part of the or she could do worse than to have Bolton as secretary of state, president’s stimulus effort. The inconvenience extends to the 1,100 much worse. Solyndra employees who have just lost their jobs and to the U.S. taxpayers who may be on the hook for the bankrupt firm’s loans. n Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa Jr., warming up a Labor Day The project was indeed “shovel ready,” as the president likes to put crowd for President Obama, urged unions to “take these son-of- it; unhappily, in this case, the shovel belongs to the gravedigger. a-bitches [i.e., Republicans] out” in 2012. There has been alto- Perhaps the gravestone could read: “Another project funded by the gether too much fretting about the ordinary combative rhetoric of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” American politics—“target,” “crosshairs,” etc., etc. But literary critics since Aristotle have pointed out that rhetoric is shaded by n The Obama administration sued to stop AT&T from merging the character of the speaker. When a Teamster and a Hoffa says with T-Mobile, fearing diminished competition and thus higher he wants to take you out, better ask where you are going first prices in the wireless industry. The administration’s analysis of the (hint: not the Meadowlands). market suggests that the industry is already too concentrated— which suggests that the analysis is wrong. There is an enormous n The Obama administration had been contemplating intrusive amount of innovation and investment in this sector, which is not new rules on ozone emissions but suddenly reversed itself. The what we should see if the analysis were right. The best thing the news came as a surprise to the president’s environmentalist bud- government can do to ensure the health of the industry is to let dies—and, more significant, to the EPA, which was not involved phone companies lease spectrum from broadcasters, and then get in the decision-making process and whose chief administrator was out of the way. informed of the decision less than 24 hours before it was an- nounced. That the Obama administration, which fancies itself a n The Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery post-ideological, technocratic outfit guided by experts and “the County, Md., has set a new record in wasteful government spend- science,” did not bother to consult with the experts at the agency ing by putting up twelve homeless people in a brand-new apart- in charge of the regulation suggests that the White House is run- ment building—at a cost of $4 million for one year. The ning scared from its own policies and their deplorable economic Wash­ington­Examiner reports that the “permanent supportive consequences. This is an excellent thing. housing” facility, located in Bethesda, Md., will offer six studio and six one-bedroom apartments, as well as a gym, a computer room, n New details continue to trickle out regarding Operation Fast and an “outdoor enclosed courtyard.” You might ask who would and Furious, the sting operation in which the Bureau of Alcohol, pay for such a thing, but you already knew the answer to that: you. Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives allowed Mexican drug cartels Yes, the project received $1 million in stimulus money, as well as to buy thousands of firearms at American gun shops—and then let over $900,000 from the county’s housing department and $2.1 mil- the guns and their new owners “walk.” It recently came to light that lion in state tax credits. That amounts to an average cost of about Fast and Furious guns were tied to at least two crime scenes in the $333,000 per person—which is more than the nationwide median U.S. The congressional committee investigating the program is price of a new single-family home ($221,800). At the risk of having limited success, and President Obama and Attorney Gener - sounding heartless, we might propose that it would be cheaper for al Eric Holder still maintain that they knew nothing about the oper- the commission to buy each person a new house. We might also ation. If indeed they didn’t, why didn’t they? This is one of many suggest it would have behooved the commission not to place questions the government has yet to answer about this confusing, twelve recovering addicts in a building across from a liquor store. dangerous program. n The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, unable to n The week preceding Labor Day is designated National Labor reach a contract agreement with the EGT Terminal at the Port of Rights Week. It naturally fell to Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to Longview near Seattle, has resorted to mayhem. The facility in kick off the festivities. She did so by signing “partnership” agree- question is still a union shop, but it has transferred its business to a ments with ambassadors from a group of Latin American nations: different union. In response, the longshoremen’s union dispatched

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GIBSON GUITAR CORP. THE WEEK THE inTrenton, thestate capital. Asthe and all incidents must be logged with an anti-bullying bureaucracy employ an anti-bullying specialist to carryauthorities, outinvestigationan these launched. mustbeinvestigations, schoolsAll must child B “Fatso,” and should child B report this outrage to the school or perceivedorcharacteristic” shouldperson. childSocallaA of natural cyclesaffect globaltemperatures. meaning of the phrase “the right to strike”? and death threats. Perhaps some assaults labor bossesprior misunderstandfollowed that the order restraining federal a under incredibly, went so far as to take hostages. The uniondestroyed alreadyproperty, wasthreatened police,disrupted operations, and, terminal,attackedthewhichmilitianumbering armed500, an thatis reasonably perceived as being motivated bullying thus: “any gesture, any written, verbal orThe physical law is act extraordinarily comprehensive. Itregime, definesthanks tothe a law signedoffense by Gov. of Chris Christie in January. students of New Jersey find themselves under a new anti-bullying delay the process of understanding how human activity and activity human how understanding of process the delay merely will scientists muzzling and debate, and inquiry ous greatimportance to the world, can be resolved only with vigor- theirresults. Anyscientific withquestion, such particularly one an thro pogenic global warming have never hesitated to interpret climate-change debate”—even though scientists who believe in the of arena political highly “the avoid to and them” interpret not but clearly results the present “to researchers the warned publication,however, BeforeCERN’sdirector estimate). they how much of an effect it has (nearly half ofwith all observedthe number warming, of sunspots, promote thedetailingdata happensthis howformation(solar cosmic rays, whichvary of clouds) and experimentalwithpaperphysics-research published a institute, prestigious theEuropean scientistsCERN, fromofgroup a ly with warming and cooling on earth is hardly new. But just recent- n n protect isfeathers now protecting featherbedding. regulatemilliners’ imports ofbird feathers. lawSoadesigned to law that DOJ has invoked, the Lacey Act, was enacted inthe 1900lawistoprotect to woodworking Thejobs American inIndia.” pieces of veneer, about half as thick, timetercan thickbe cannotexported. beexported under TheIndian intentlaw; only finished of 2 1 Returningto their desks for the fall semester, the public-school Thenotion that solar fluctuations might have something todo htyou would almostthat suspect Fender was a big Democratic donor. The stated explanation was that they were seiz seiz were - they that was explanation stated The donor. n bn utrpartsthat had ebonybeen importedguitar illegally; ing the company denies any it irregularity has been says buying and hy irpe te opn’ bsns s severely so business company’s the disrupted they nNsvlefrtescn iei esta w years, two than less in timesecond theNashville forin n unfinishedfingerboardcen- athanmoreblanks arethat Whenfederal agents raided the Gibson guitar factory from the same source for 17 years. If the parts were mis- disclaimsanyknowledge ofit.Still, given thestate of labeled,DepartmenttheasJustice ofalleges, Gibson mitted in support of the search warrant “maintains that h wrds adod oet, e asHolder’s per forests,haps hardwood world’s the Accordingtheto Raiders can be forgiven their excess of zeal: Anything to save the environment,theexactly.right?Well, savenot to | .nationalre .com o c w. e i ev r l a n o i t a n w. w w NewYork Times NewYork Post , an affidavitan, sub- .. .by any actual observed,the ... this law as a mark against Governor Christie. measure “doesn’t just outlaw childhood, it criminalizes it.” Count stay there. fight. There are now 171 inmates in thethisPentagon prison.said that 61 former MaybeGitmo theyinmates hadshould rejoined the backto Afghanistan,where herejoined the fight. Two years ago, trol:Guantanamoheldat untilBay2007. releasedwasThen he affiliate of the al-Qaeda network.” He had once been theyinshot U.S.dead Sabar con- LalMelma, described NATOby “keyaas scaledcompoundthewallsaof Jalalabad, in Afghanistan. Soon incarnation as a libertarian proves lasting. aren’ttheoretical. CaliforniansBrown’sthat shouldhopelatest thestate.” Intheland ofthebanned Happy Meal, such concerns uing and seemingly inexorable transfer valueof of authoritywearing a ski helmet,”from parents he’s “concerned to baffled about“appreciate[s]legislaturea hewhileplained that to the the contin- Democraticexgovernor - resorts.The California ski of slopes the helmetsonwearrequired haveminorswouldto that bill a deserves a law,” he wrote in earlyOakland, Septemberand he continues of of histo mayor evolve. law-and-order decision“Not to every candidate tohuman presidential populistveto problem to formations over the past four decades, from Governor Moonbeam make its own profits and below average intainment, its culturalthis particular value.industry isabove average inits ability questionto of whether taxpayers should ever subsidize artshowever, or enter- deservingis governmentof largesse: Leaving aside the (pronereveltotheviolentin andantisocial). Onethingnot,is it ofthem good (profitable and creative), some ofthem unfortunate deals to lure jobs. The video-gameand, industryinaddition, governments is a lotoften ofgive gamethings—some companies softwarespecial developers, entertainment companies,cantake advantage and of onlinea variety retailers,of tax perks: Theycan claim to be bankruptcy of Greece.” The EuropeansRoesler,has broken will thetaboo beandspoken luckypublicly ifof“anorderly itbondholders’ is only concerns,that: andGermany’s economy salaries,minister, thesebutemergency measuresPhilipp havedonelittlequell to nationalproperty taxpercentand7 a cutingovernment workers’ cutsand tax increases. Inearly September, Athenshalfofimposed 2011 is anew22 percent larger than in 2010, even castersafter spending at 98 percent in theGreece, nextthe possibility five years.ofwhich isnow placed Greece’s byeconomic Brussels fore-sovereignBerlinpreparinginandare deficita default for by in the first blood and treasure, we are preparing simply to quit.includingIranians,pleased.the Disgraceful.bemust yearsand theAfterall Iraq’sfuture,forcompeting still force malign Everytensions. goodbyetocounterterrorism and keeping lida on Arab–Kurdish protectingitself,althoughdoubtful. isthateven Wewouldkiss timesthat.Panetta’s rumpforce would goodbeforlittle except the senior U.S. commander on the ground,only aboutwho 3,000 wantstroops inroughly Iraq after this fiveyear. He’s contradicting n n n n n On Friday night, September 2, at 11 o’clock, American soldiers Whilepooh-poohing the prospect in public, financial authorities A Californiagovernor JerryBrown hasundergone manytrans - SecretaryDefenseof LeonPanetta recommendingis keeping NewYork Times exposérevealed that video-game companies R E B O T C O 3 , 1 1 0 2 week_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/14/2011 2:14 PM Page 13

On a recent bond issue, Italy found itself forced to pay the highest released, concludes that Israel acted within its legal rights. No apol- interest rates it ever has, as investors recognized the symptoms of la ogy is necessary or forthcoming. An enraged Erdogan expelled the maladie grecque. If Greece is forced to leave the eurozone, Italy Israeli ambassador and canceled all military agreements. He threat- almost certainly will be frog-marched out, too, sparking a financial ens to send warships into the eastern Mediterranean and prevent crisis in France, where the banks are heavily exposed to Italian debt. Israel from developing its newly discovered deposits of natural gas Spain’s finances are teetering as well. All these events and possibili- in that area. It’s an astonishing display of enmity from the erstwhile ties have the thrifty Germans, the Uncle Moneybags of Europe, won- friend of the Jewish state. dering what’s in it for them. Which is an excellent question. n Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has n A grim night of violence in Cairo almost had explosive reper- been in Cuba, trying to see Alan Gross. The Cuban authorities have cussions throughout the Middle East. Mobilized by the extremist not let him. Gross is the American aid worker who has been held Muslim Brothers, thousands of demonstrators marched to the prisoner by the Castros since December 2009. He is their pawn, a Israeli embassy to protest about a recent clash: Palestinian terror- tool for the extraction of (further) concessions from the Obama ists from Gaza had killed eight Israelis, and, in an exchange of fire, administration. Richardson, in a burst of candor, referred to him as Israeli troops had mistakenly shot five Egyptian border guards. “an American hostage.” The administration should make it clear to Here was the pretext to manipulate anti-Israeli sentiment that the the Cuban dictatorship that there are consequences to what it has Muslim Brothers believe will bring them success in elections due done to Gross. If America is seen to be a pitiful, helpless giant, it at the end of the year. Armed with iron bars and sledgehammers, will be bad for Americans wherever they roam. protesters broke into parts of the embassy. Six armed Israeli secu- rity guards were preparing to do and die. Egyptian police stood n It famously took Richard Nixon to go to China. Now, perhaps, it aside. Desperate telephone calls between Washington, Tel Aviv, has taken John Cleese to go to London. The British comic, who has and the generals of the Egyptian military council coordinated a res- lived in the United States for more than two decades, recently la - cue. Egyptian commandos took control. An Israeli military aircraft ment ed that “London is no longer an English city,” suggesting that, arrived and immediately flew out the Israeli ambassador, the secu- while diversity was a generally positive thing, “when the parent rity guards, and some 80 members of the staff with their families. culture kind of dissipates, you’re left thinking, ‘Well, what’s going It doesn’t bear thinking about the consequences had any of the on?’” Cleese is a noted liberal, and has made a series of party polit- Israeli diplomatic mission either been killed or else been obliged to ical broadcasts for the Liberal Democrats over the years. For a man defend themselves by using their weapons. The Israelis had the of the Left to make such a statement is notable, and provided clear misfortune to be caught up in the crucial test of strength that will opportunity and cover for a discussion about London’s cultural determine whether the future of Egypt belongs to the Muslim Brothers or to the generals of the military council. In Crisp, comfortable white 100% cotton pinpoint oxford Cairo, the Arab Spring has left power dress shirts in Regular, Big & Tall or Trim Fit at a waiting to be picked up in the streets. SPECIAL n The rift between Turkey and Israel is INTRODUCTORY PRICE... serious and growing. The two countries had been allies, with military and de- fense agreements, and $3.5 billion in $19.95 overall trade last year. There are no real Reg. $49.50 - $54.50 grounds for hostility, but Prime Min- ister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has fabri- Plus, FREE monogramming! cated them. In power for a decade, he is (a $9.75 value) experimenting with an Islamist foreign

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THE WEEK atomization. As usual, however, his comments were met with lions of people worldwide. Miss Day is still with us, aged 87. She immediate condemnation: Multiculturalism has not gone too far, has just released an album of songs with the title My Heart. In the and London’s diversity should be “celebrated,” came the immedi- United Kingdom the album has already entered the Top Ten, mak- ate retort. Who said this, missing the golden opportunity with ing her the oldest artist ever to attain that distinction with an album which he had been provided? None other than a spokesman for featuring new material. (Some of the songs are from studio record- London mayor . Monty Python’s “Upper Class Twit ings not previously issued.) We offer our heartfelt congratulations of the Year” competition was obviously held 40 years too early. to this great American lady—and lifelong Republican!—and hope that we shall continue to be blessed with her presence for many, many more years. n The world first heard that Thomas Jefferson had fathered a family by his slave Sally Hemings in 1802, thanks to a dis- n The situation calls out for a modern-day Emily Post: What do gruntled former associate, James Callender. Over the cen- you call a half-sibling who was conceived through artificial in - turies the story generated laughs (Jefferson, wrote the poet semination with the same donor as you? Sister-in-sperm? Baster- Thomas Moore, “dream[ed] of freedom in his bondsmaid’s brother? The question has more than linguistic interest, since, arms”) and some earnest work, notably by Fawn Brodie and according to a recent news report, one industrious donor has sired Annette Gordon-Reed, though most historians rejected it. more than 150 children. That’s an extreme case of turning your Then in 1998 a DNA study showed a Jefferson-family chro- hobby into a job, but less-heroic sperm vendors can still have scores mosome in the genes of descendants of two of Hemings’s of children, most of whom usually live in a single region. Children children, and the old tale became the new orthodoxy. Case of the same donor (sometimes known only by a number) form closed? Not yet. Thirteen scholars—including several famil- online communities and organize gatherings; a father of 70 keeps iar to NR readers: Charles Kesler, Harvey Mansfield, Forrest track of his multifarious offspring with a spreadsheet. What will the McDonald—examined the evidence in 2001, and again more notion of family mean to these children? And how can we make recently. The Jefferson-Hemings Contro - sense of the donor’s , having supplied a common inheritance versy (ed. by Robert F. Turner, Carolina to so many children, yet legally excluded from any responsibility Academic Press) summarizes their con- for them? It all goes to show what happens when you turn the sacred clusions, which are not unanimous: One and mysterious processes of life into a matter of commerce. Limit - scholar, Paul Rahe, still finds Jefferson ing sperm donors to, say, ten children, might be a sensible reform. guilty as charged. The rest, however, suspect Jefferson has gotten a bum’s rush. nFor centuries, ships transported goods in small units, which were Case closed now? Not yet. But this is how loaded and unloaded by laborers. But in the 1950s, an engineer history, and historians, are supposed to named Keith Tantlinger invented a way to ship cargo in more effi- work. cient units: the modern metal shipping container. The innovation allowed hundreds of containers and tens of thousands of tons of cargo to be stacked on one ship, and the goods to be moved from nA certain Mr. Obama Onyango was arrested on August 24 outside ship to rail to truck almost without manual labor. Tantlinger’s a fried-chicken shop in Framingham, Mass. He had narrowly avoid- invention changed the world. First, it encouraged one of the most ed colliding with a patrol car, and when breathalyzed, he registered important waves of globalization: As the cost of shipping goods twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system. On further investigation around the world dropped dramatically, ordinary consumers Mr. Onyango was found to be in the U.S. illegally, having overstayed gained access to international goods while American industries had a student visa, then ignored a 1992 deportation order. But wait: to face new competition from abroad. Second, there was no longer What’s that name there? Yes, this is another twig on our president’s a need for nearly as many longshoremen and stevedores to unload colorful family tree. Mr. Onyango—referred to as “Uncle Omar” in the cargo. The container marginalized their unions, which were the president’s autobiography—is in fact the brother of Barack infamously portrayed in On the Waterfront and represented the Obama’s aunt , who was discovered living in worst of organized labor, known for corruption, intimidation, and public housing shortly before the 2008 election, having her- violence. Tantlinger’s invention evinces the dramatic progress and self ignored a deportation order in 2004. A pliant judge granted destruction that technological and commercial innovation encour- Aunt Zeituni legal-resident status in 2010. The same grace will ages. A revolutionary engineer, dead at 92. R.I.P. undoubtedly be extended to Uncle Omar: He has already been released from custody. House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith voiced the general indignation: “Why should citizens PUBLIC POLICY and legal immigrants be threatened by drunk-driving illegal immi- Unstimulating, Again grants when the administration can deport them?” Why? Because we are now a nation not of laws but of men: That’s why. F $900 billion in fiscal stimulus did not deliver us from high unemployment, perhaps another $450 billion will do the trick: nTo the older cohort of our readers, the name Doris Day can evoke I That was the theory underlying President Obama’s speech. The nothing but pleasant nostalgia. Her careers as singer and movie same as before, but less impressive—which, come to think of it, GETTY / actress spanned the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and a little more at isn’t a bad summary of this stage of his presidency. both ends. During those decades her lovely voice, pretty face and Obama’s familiar hectoring tone, condescension, and pose of figure, and considerable acting skills endeared her to her country- post-partisanship should not be allowed to obscure the fact that

HULTON ARCHIVE men and made her an icon of American womanhood to tens of mil- every so often he mentioned a good idea. A simultaneous reduction

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THE WEEK in corporate tax rates and corporate tax breaks was one. extending unsaid. Are we to conclude that more teachers is always better? Or the payroll-tax cut enacted last year was another. enacting trade that unemployment among teachers—which is lower than the na - agreements would count as a third if the main obstacle to their tional average—is a particular tragedy? If so, why? Because the enactment were not Obama himself and his congressional allies. teachers’ unions are reliable foot soldiers of the Democratic party? If President Obama were not so inflexibly liberal, there would be In one of the more ringing passages of , Obama said, much more he could do to promote job growth. He claimed, for “The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us example, that his existing regulatory policy already balances eco- here—the people who hired us to work for them—they don’t have nomic goals with safety and environmental protection. On this point the luxury of waiting 14 months.” No, they don’t. But we suppose he was quite strident, pretending, for example, that re pub licans had they are going to have to. proposed to eliminate most regulations on the books. The fact is that the number of regulations, their cost, and the size of the workforce CAMPAIGN 2012 at regulatory agencies have all increased substantially under this president, and that regulatory activism shows no signs of abating. A The Republicans’ moratorium on new regulation until unemployment returns to a Social Security Choice tolerable level would have cost the president no permanent ideo- logical ground, but he was unwilling to propose it. Ick Perry has drawn a lot of criticism, not least from Mitt The rest of the speech was dismal. Obama wants a larger tax romney, for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” but credit for companies that hire people who have been unemployed R the fact is that it bears more than a passing resemblance to for six months or longer, which seems like an incentive for com- one. In both cases earlier participants can get their money back panies to fire some of their employees, replace them with eligibles, only if new participants join; in both cases no wealth is actually cre- and pocket the credit. (It’s also an incentive for people not to take ated; in both cases the earlier participants get a better return than job offers if they are close to the six-month mark, in order to get a the later ones; and in both cases the system is unsustainable. But of piece of the subsidy in the form of the higher wages employers course there are also differences. Ponzi schemes are run to make would offer them.) In the deficit-reduction portion of the speech, their originators a profit. The federal government is running Social the president returned to his familiar theme that the rich need to pay Security at a loss that is set to increase. their fair share. We have no objection to asking those with high And Social Security, unlike a Ponzi scheme, can be reformed to incomes to give up subsidies—but where was the president’s call be made sustainable. Slow the growth of benefits sufficiently, for for changing entitlement programs to achieve that goal? Instead he example, and the program’s fiscal gap will disappear. Its disin - seeks to raise taxes on capital income, which can hardly help the centive effect on saving, and on delaying retirement, would also country’s long-term growth. diminish. But neither Perry nor romney has offered any specific “This isn’t political grandstanding. . . . This is simple math,” said proposals on Social Security in the course of the presidential cam- Obama, a few sentences after denouncing “tax loopholes for oil paign, and both of them run the risk of setting back the cause of companies.” Actually, what simple math tells us is that these loop- reform. holes are an infinitesimal part of the deficit, and that their elimina- In Perry’s case, the risk comes from the combination of rhetori- tion has nothing to do with creating jobs. The attentive reader can cal maximalism with policy vagueness. He says that the program determine what this reference was doing in the president’s speech. is unconstitutional, a failure, and a lie. These claims would seem to Obama concluded with a college-freshman stab at political phi- imply that the program should be abolished. He has mused about losophy: We need to do things together that we cannot do on our the idea, and his spokesmen for a time refused to rule it out. Under own, and therefore we need big government. This discussion grew criticism he clarified that he does not intend to abolish the program, especially senseless whenever it touched on education. Assuming and indeed would maintain benefits for current retirees and those that government must construct and maintain schools, for example, about to retire. How would he do this? He does not say. And his why should it be a federal responsibility? “While they’re add - ability to persuade the public to accept reform, notwithstanding its ing teachers in places like South korea, we’re laying them off in aversion to risk, has been compromised. Any reform he presents as droves.” What relevance the first datum had to the second was left president will be greeted by Democrats as a covert attempt to destroy the highly popular program, and his previous words will give their attacks credibility. romney correctly notes that the public, while aware that Social Security’s financing is unsound, remains extremely attached to the program. “Our nominee has to be someone who isn’t committed to abolishing Social Security, but who is committed to saving Social Security,” he says. But is he that man? He has expressed openness to raising the eligibility age, imposing a means test on the program, and instituting voluntary personal accounts. But unless he unveils his own plan, the effect of his attacks on Perry will be to strength- en the political taboo against candid and realistic discussion of the program’s flaws. romney has a choice to make: He can run as a NEWSCOM / realistic reformer, or he can say “Me, too” to Democratic criticisms SIPA / of conservatives. KT - As it stands, the feud between Perry and romney is accomplish -

SIPA USA ing nothing for anyone outside the White House.

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much lower since the development of Social Security, but this gain came at a cost. Martin Feldstein, the distinguished Harvard economist, has long maintained that the program markedly reduces the nation’s capital stock—and thus econom- ic growth and wages—by diminishing the incentive to save. It diminishes the incentive to work, too, by encouraging retirement in the early and mid-60s, even though lifespans have increased and hard physical labor has declined. An increasing number of studies dem - on strate that the program shrinks the aver- age American family, too, by socializing the returns to child-rearing. Parents con- tribute to the program’s future twice, first by paying payroll taxes and second by raising children; but the program recog- nizes only the first set of contributions. The program also has some baleful political effects. It makes the electorate much more dependent on the federal gov- ernment, and thus on the political class, than it otherwise would be. Social Secur - ity did not just cause the federal govern- Social Security Alert ment to outgrow the constraints of the Constitution; it also did a lot to create a Perry and Romney debate a program in need of reform citizenry unmindful of those constraints. The program’s structure was designed BY RAMESH PONNURU to spread false beliefs about it that would make it politically unassailable, and that now make it hard to reform. The purpose ICk Perry and Mitt romney consistently find that voters want to pre- of creating a payroll tax supposedly dedi- have begun a lively debate vent benefits from being cut. When poll- cated to the program was to convince about Social Security, but it’s sters have divided respondents by party Americans that they were paying into a R not the one we need. Their de - and ideology, they find that this consen - special fund and would later withdraw bate mostly concerns whether it was a sus includes strong majorities of self- what they contributed. In reality, the pro- good idea to establish the program. Perry described republicans, conservatives, gram bears only a passing resemblance to has made it abundantly clear that he and tea-party sympathizers. (Nobody, to this picture. But many liberals, from the thinks the answer is no. The program’s my knowledge, has even done polling on dawn of the program to this day, have not creation was an affront to the Consti - whether the federal government should believed that Americans would support tution. romney objects to this line of ar - withdraw from the field altogether.) the amount of redistribution the program gument. He implies that he would have Polls also consistently find that the entails if this redistribution were transpar- voted for it in the 1930s. public understands that Social Security ent. Neither of them is saying much about is in trouble. But Americans want the Finally if most pressingly there is the the actual question the country faces program to be saved, not eliminated or question of the program’s solvency. So - today: Given that we have a Social replaced. If he becomes president, or even cial Security is currently paying out more Security program and are not going to the republican presidential nominee, in benefits than it takes in. While it may abolish it or devolve it to the states (as Perry will have to have a politically real- run a surplus again if we ever see a strong Perry has daydreamt), what should we istic agenda for Social Security. But for economic recovery, within a few years the do about it? romney says he is open to any set of reforms, resistance is likely to increasing number of retirees—ten thou- various reforms, though he has not made be greater if the public thinks they are sand Boomers will quit working every any specific proposals. Perry has been motivated by a desire to undermine the day for the next 20 years—will push the even vaguer. program. program into deeper and deeper deficits romney is almost certainly right that Governor Perry is also right, however, starting just a few years from now. forthright opposition to Social Security to suggest that the program is deeply For a while, the program will pay the in principle is a losing proposition in flawed—and its flaws, as he has hinted, excess benefits out of its “trust fund”: the American politics. It remains one of the go beyond its much-discussed funding pile of IOUs it accumulated when the pro -

DARREN GYGI most popular federal programs, and polls shortfall. rates of elderly destitution are gram ran a surplus and the rest of the fed-

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eral government borrowed from it. To with wage levels throughout the econo- generate some of the needed income, repay those IOUs the federal government my. In his 2010 book Social Security: much of any plausible tax increase would will have to either raise taxes, cut other The Unfinished Work, Charles Blahous, have to fall on this medium-wage worker spending, or go even deeper into debt. who advised Pres. George W. Bush on the himself. Neither a free lunch nor a free re - When the IOUs run out, the law imposes issue and now serves as a trustee for tirement can be assumed. a sharp cut in Social Security benefits. Social Security and Medicare, noted that The unfunded liability of Social Secur - The current projections have it that the a medium-wage worker retiring in 2010 at ity—the excess of projected benefits over program will cut benefits by 23 percent the normal retirement age would receive projected revenues—is estimated at $16 starting in 2037. Under current law, then, an annual benefit of $17,700. A medium- trillion. Yet there are people familiar with the program will make federal deficits wage worker retiring at the normal retire- the projections who nonetheless regard much worse for more than two decades ment age in 2035 is expected, on the other Social Security as a second-tier problem and then sharply cut benefits. Neither part hand, to receive $24,000 annually (plus for the federal budget. The liberal version of this future is desirable, or politically whatever inflation occurs between now of the argument goes like this: Health- sustainable. and then). care inflation rather than population aging There are five reasons the program’s Of course, that future worker will also is responsible for the bulk of our future spending has been growing faster than its be putting more into the system because spending explosion, and therefore our revenues and will continue to do so. First, he will be paying taxes on a higher wage main goal should be to impose cost con- we have more retirees. Second, their re - level. So it might seem as though that ben- trols on health care rather than change tirements are lasting longer. Third, birth efit level is only fair: It replaces the same benefit formulas to account for new rates have fallen, so there are fewer work percentage of a worker’s wages when he demographic realities. The conservative years to support each year of retirement. retires tomorrow as it replaces today. But version simply notes that Medicare has Fourth, there is a cap on the taxes the pro- this is the wrong way to think about the an even larger unfunded liability: $30 tril- gram imposes on any individual. But as problem. If the retiree population grows lion. In the long run, it is primarily re- income inequality has risen, a higher pro- faster than the work force, the only way sponsible for increased spending, and portion of wages has been above the cap to maintain that replacement ratio is to Social Security is an afterthought. Both of and thus gone untaxed. increase taxes constantly—and while rais - these arguments have helped reduce the Fifth, the program’s benefit levels rise ing taxes on higher-income workers can pressure on presidents and presidential

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candidates to put Social Security reforms personal savings accounts into Social on the table. Security: allowing workers to retain pos- The liberal argument is simply mistak- session of some of their payroll taxes so Dead en. By all means we should look for in - that they could invest for their own retire- telligent ways to moderate health-care ment. This proposal had two great virtues. Letter in flation. But the Congressional Budget It attempted to make all workers into Office reports that 64 percent of the in- small-scale capital owners, so that the Tough unions, weak management creased cost in Social Security, Medicare, electorate would become less entitlement- doom USPS and Medicaid between now and 2035 is a oriented. result of population aging. The conserva- And it was a mechanism to pre-fund BY ROBERT VERBRUGGEN tive argument is stronger, but it may take retirement. Politicians have long claimed too long a view. Between now and the to want to reserve excess Social Security T’S not news that the United States early 2030s, Social Security is expected to revenues to pay for future benefits rather Postal Service is going bankrupt, but remain larger than Medicare, and over the than use them to pay for other operations the reality of the situation has finally next 15 years its growth will put more of the federal government. This was the I started to sink in. strain on the budget than Medicare’s. point of Al Gore’s much-mocked “Social reported in early September that the agen- Fix Social Security now, and you still Security lockbox.” The accounts would cy cannot afford a $5.5 billion pension- have time to solve the larger but longer- have been several million lockboxes. If fund payment that’s due this month. run problem of Medicare spending. Fix the federal government had used the At the core of the problem are the hor- Medicare now, and the country still Social Security surpluses of the last two rific contracts that USPS has negotiated moves into very rocky fiscal territory in decades to launch personal accounts, the with its employees’ unions. As the Times the next two decades. federal government would not have been reported: Fixing either program is of course po - able to tap these funds and might have had litically difficult, or else it would have to go on a diet. If that had happened, the Decades of contractual promises made to happened already. But fixing Social accounts would have been a net increase unionized workers, including no-layoff Secur ity is conceptually easy: Raise the in national savings. clauses, are increasing the post office’s eligibility age and moderate the growth of But we aren’t running surpluses any- costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with benefits. Let the medium-wage worker more. Starting the accounts means mov- 53 percent at United Parcel Service and who retires in 2035 receive the same ben- ing some federal expenses from the future 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest pri- efit level, adjusted for inflation, that the into the present budget. A worker who vate competitors. Postal workers also medium-wage worker who retired in participates in the accounts agrees to get a receive more generous health benefits 2010 receives. We could change the ben- smaller payment from the traditional pro- than most other federal employees. efit formula so that benefits for the lowest gram in the future in order to put money earners continue to rise even when adjust- into the account now. The feds, in return, Unions are a hard thing for any compa- ed for inflation. pay less later but have to allow funds to ny to deal with—firms ranging from Delta Jed Graham, a writer for Investor’s flow into the accounts now. In a time of to Hyatt to Boeing have struggled with Business Daily, proposes an additional massive deficits and debt—with both set organized labor over the last several years tweak in his book A Well-Tailored Safety to rise—that trade-off is not going to look alone. American labor law deserves some Net: Make sure that benefits for the oldest attractive. And the accounts are now less share of the blame. But employers aren’t of the old are higher than benefits for likely to yield an actual increase in nation- completely helpless—which leaves us the newly retired. This goal too is easy to al savings: We are probably not going to looking for other explanations for USPS’s achieve in theory. Reform initial benefit cut more spending than we have to cut willingness to cave to the unions’ de - levels as discussed, so that they rise with in order to fund the accounts. Even if a mands. Chief among them: The company inflation. But then give every beneficiary Republican presidential candidate runs on faces little competition, has no profit mo - an increase every year of retirement that a platform including personal accounts, tive, and has an implicit promise of a more than keeps up with inflation. then, he will probably have to quietly bailout from the federal government. Paring back the growth of benefits shelve them if he wins. The current situation is self-evidently would make the program solvent while It is just barely possible to imagine the ridiculous. Since the advent of e-mail, reducing its effects on the length of work- next president’s moderating the growth USPS’s business has been in steep decline. ing life, the savings rate, the incentives of of Social Security’s benefits so as to Between 2007 and 2010—long after the voters, and the size of families. (On this make them affordable. It is a matter of Internet revolution took hold—mail vol- last point, however, there is no good some urgency that this scenario happen. ume fell 20 percent, and the agency lost alternative to instituting a large child tax Governor Romney and Governor Perry $20 billion. Overwhelmingly, the mail that credit that compensates parents for their should do what they can to make it more remains is junk, and even Netflix, USPS’s contribution to the program.) Raising likely—and refrain from doing anything biggest corporate customer, is delivering taxes would, on the other hand, make the to make it less likely. If they are not more of its movies digitally. program’s negative side effects, such as going to advance credible reform pro- You wouldn’t guess any of that from its discouragement of work, worse. posals, perhaps it would be best if they the contracts USPS has signed with its For the last 15 years or so, most con - refrained from talking about the issue unions—the National Postal Mail Hand - servatives have also sought to introduce altogether. lers Union, the National Association of

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Letter Carriers, the American Postal little competition. In fact, it has a federally enterprises ever were, it seems highly Work ers Union, and the National Rural guaranteed monopoly on the delivery of unlikely that the federal government will Letter Carriers’ Association—in recent letters; it’s actually illegal to send a letter let the Postal Service go under. even Re - years. All four contain “no layoff or reduc- that’s not “urgent” via UPS or Fedex. publicans seem hesitant to suggest that tion in force” clauses that prevent payrolls Where as most companies lose ground in course of action. from falling along with USPS’s business. the marketplace if they let their unions run Right now, Congress has only a few In May of this year, as the agency was star- wild (see: GM), the Postal Service has options aside from a bailout. one would ing into the face of bankruptcy, USPS nothing to fear. be to allow USPS to stop pre-funding its reached an agreement with the American And further, as an “independent agency” retirement benefits—which is basically Postal Workers Union that would “safe- of the federal government, as opposed to just borrowing from the agency’s not-so- guard jobs, protect retirement and health- a private company, USPS has no reason bright future; it’s true that other agencies care benefits, and provide a 3.5 percent whatsoever to turn a profit—in fact, it’s don’t have this onerous requirement, but wage increase over the life of the con- virtually forbidden to. Thus, its negotiators any retirement benefits that aren’t funded tract,” according to the union’s president. have no reason to play hardball when they while an employee is working will have to (He called this a “win-win.”) sit down with organized labor. be funded while the employee is retired. All told, as of 2009 the average postal For much of its history, USPS was Another is to take measures to cut worker received $79,000 in wages and re quired to set rates that were revenue- costs—the postmaster general has sug- benefits, as compared with $59,000 for the neutral. Thanks to a 2006 law, it has a gested ending Saturday delivery, closing average worker in the private sector as a little more leeway now: For service cate - lots of post offices, and breaking the whole. As Robert Carbaugh and Thomas gor ies in which it competes with other agency’s contractual obligation not to lay Tenerelli wrote in a recent Cato Journal providers, it can set its own prices. off union workers. These would be a good article, “Although these data are not ad - However, non-competitive services—for start, though the prospect of a government justed for factors such as worker skill and which USPS must charge the old revenue- that breaks its own agencies’ contracts is working conditions, they suggest that the neutral rates, plus inflation—account for frightening, however laughable the con- Postal Service unions have done well for about 88 percent of USPS’s revenue. tracts in question are. Rep. Darrell Issa their members.” one might think that even in the ab - (R., Calif.) has suggested requiring older It’s tempting to blame this entirely on sence of a profit motive, USPS would workers to retire instead, a less heavy- the unions and the laws that enable their have an incentive to preserve its very exis- handed alternative. He estimates that such behavior. USPS workers gained the right tence. However, companies with strong a measure could remove 200,000 workers to collectively bargain with the Postal ties to the federal government seem to from the payroll. Reorganization Act of 1970. For the most have an implicit bailout guarantee—think In the long term, however, the best solu- part, the law put USPS’s labor relations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Con sid - tion to this problem is to end USPS en - under the National Labor Relations Act, ering that mail delivery is far more popu- tirely. Congress should sell USPS to the the legislation that governs union activity lar than those two government-sponsored highest bidder and eliminate its monopoly at most private companies. As I argued in on letter delivery. Ideally, the buyer would these pages last month (“National Labor start with a clean slate: Unions would have Relations Bias,” NATIoNAL RevIeW, Aug. to win elections if they wanted to continue 1), the NLRA gives unions too much representing employees, and they would power, including the “right” to represent face an opponent that actually had some- workers who don’t support them. In addi- thing to lose. tion, while postal employees cannot strike, In early America, the mail was the only an arbitrator may impose a contract when way to communicate over long distances, negotiations break down. Ludicrously, and most likely, private companies wouldn’t arbitrators are not required to consider have served all of the nation’s rural areas. USPS’s financial situation when deciding In fact, the Constitution itself authorized which provisions to include. (though it did not require) Congress to set even so, it’s not as if employers have up post offices and post roads for the pur- no role in the bargaining process. In fact, pose of facilitating mail delivery. in the private sector, when competition Today, by contrast, affordable Internet is intense and wage increases could put access is available to just about every- a company out of business, unions tend one—and we can expect Americans who not to make much progress at all. And prefer daily letter deliveries to pay for that yet USPS contracts for the last ten service themselves, in the free market, years—contracts no profit-seeking com- through either existing delivery compa- pany would have signed—have been nies or a reconstituted and fully private made without arbitration. (To be fair, talks USPS. As it currently exists, the Postal with the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Service has outlived its usefulness, and Association broke down late last year and taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for its are going to arbitration.) steady stream of deficits and poor deci- A reason for this is that USPS faces very sions.

2 2 | www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 3 , 2 0 1 1 United for life ad revised sept 13_Layout 1 9/13/2011 5:28 PM Page 1

November 2, 2011 = Washington, DC = The Newseum

Dr. Charmaine Yoest, Brent Bozell III President and CEO Guest Speaker Americans United for Life invites you to join us as we celebrate our 40th Anniversary with a Gala Dinner Wednesday, November 2, 2011 Honorary Co-Chairs: House Majority Leader ERIC CANTOR (VA) Senator JEFF SESSIONS (AL) Governor RICK PERRY (TX)

Americans United for Life is the country’s oldest national pro-life organization, founded in August 1971 by a prominent group of pro-life leaders, including L. Brent Bozell, Jr. of National Review, whose son, Brent Bozell III, will be speaking at the gala. For the past 40 years, AUL has been defending human life through vigorous legislative, judicial, and educational efforts, on both the state and national level. AUL is boldly working toward our vision of a nation in which everyone is welcomed in life and protected in law.

“AUL has . . . been making progress—persistently, year by year, in the courts and legislatures . . . AUL is a thoughtful, strategic leader.” —the late Congressman Henry J. Hyde (former AUL board member)

For more information on how you can attend this exciting event, please contact Stacie Rumenap at [email protected] or 202-262-2063. Information may also be found online at www.gala.aul.org. 3col_QXP-1127940387.qxp 9/13/2011 9:56 PM Page 24

percent of American men could expect to  go to prison at some time in their lives. Crime, l Across the country, studies consis-     tently show that more than 40 percent of Punishment, low-income men who father a child out We have remained profoundly of wedlock have already been in jail or influential for over five decades. prison by the time their first son or Why? Because of the greatness and daughter is born. of our founder? Because of the l one in four black men born between 1975 and 1979 had experienced impris- talent of our exceptional writers? Rehabilitation onment by 2009. The comparable ratio Because of our determination to When they’ve done the time, for white men was one in 19. The chance articulate conservative principles expunge the crime of having been imprisoned for black men and expose liberal platitudes? in this cohort who had not graduated BY MITCH PEARLSTEIN from high school was two in three. ‘Yes’ to all. But also true is this: l As of 2000, about 25 percent of black Our historic influence is due in eoPle on the right tend to be men between the ages of 22 and 30 were enthusiastic about yoking men married. Among incarcerated black men, large part to the many good and women in marriage and the marriage rate was less than half of subscribers and friends who P about locking bad guys up in that, 11 percent. have generously and freely prison. To what extent, however, does the Statistics such as these powerfully contributed to National Review latter practice undermine the former? raise the question of whether the United annually to support and sustain Research verifies common sense by States locks up too many people. This our operations, and to those showing that married men are less likely issue has become more salient over the thoughtful few who have than single men to break the law. Getting last three decades as prison populations remembered National Review in married is thus a good way for a man to have exploded, in large part because of help himself avoid getting locked up. But ever-increasing numbers of drug con - their wills, estates, and trusts. what about single men who have already victions, along with a trend toward stiff been charged with committing crimes? mandatory sentences for crimes in gen - Please consider this: When you They are less attractive marriage partners, eral, including life or very long terms for are gone, will National Review not just because they may be incarcerated, a third felony conviction (“three strikes, . . . remain? If not, then who will but because rap sheets are not conducive you’re out”). over the last third of a fight for those principles that you to good-paying, family-supporting jobs. century, the U.S. incarceration rate has wished dearly to bequeath to By not marrying, they lose a major source grown about fivefold, from approxi- of support in straightening out their lives. mately 100 to approximately 500 prison- your country, your family, and How can they es cape this trap? ers for every 100,000 people. future generations? Before suggesting a few ideas—which But it’s hard to accept claims that the will be short of far-reaching, given the vast American judicial system is too quick to Can you trust National Review? size of the problem—let’s look at some put people away, given that nearly every Yes. Please so when planning discouraging numbers. (Unless other wise time someone is arrested for some hein - your estate. Keep us standing stipulated, references to “prison” and ous crime, his rap sheet is found to be athwart history, yelling Stop. “incarceration” are to state and federal pages long, yet he was still on the street. penitentiaries, not local jails.) More than 90 percent of inmates in state l The incarceration rate in the United prisons are either violent offenders or By remembering National Review States is approximately seven times the convicted recidivists. This is no small in your will, estate, or trust, you average for Western europe, and is ap - matter: A significant reason that crime will leave a legacy of continued proached elsewhere only by a few tiny rates have decreased, often dramatically, support for those conservative states and some former Soviet republics. over the last two decades is that a lot of causes and beliefs that will be as l At year end 2009, there were more potential murderers, robbers, and rapists vital to future generations as they than 1.6 million inmates in federal and have been behind bars. are to ours. Please contact: state prisons. During the twelve-month Incarceration aside, though, an in - period ending June 30, 2009, 12.8 million escapable conclusion is that far too many inmates had been admitted to local jails. Americans, for whatever reasons, com- Jim Kilbridge l As of the early 2000s, more than 11 mit far too much crime. How does mar- National Review riage help reduce this problem? or to 215 Lexington Avenue Mr. Pearlstein is the founder and president of Center look at things another way, how does the New York, NY 10016 of the American Experiment, in Minneapolis. His absence of marriage increase it? Here’s 212-679-7330 ext. 2826 new book, From Family Collapse to America’s an illustrative example. Decline, has just been published by Rowman & As recounted by demographer linda J. Littlefield. Waite and journalist Maggie Gallagher in

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their invaluable 2000 book The Case for The terms “collateral sanctions” and duration. When compared with all the Marriage (still the best research roundup “collateral consequences” are used to other problems former inmates face in on the subject), a study of 500 chronic describe the legal and extralegal (which trying to turn their lives around, laws and juvenile delinquents, aimed at determin- is to say, much broader and more in - rules prohibiting them from filling cer- ing why some young men abandoned sidious) blockages to employment and tain specific jobs are usually not the main criminal behavior while others continued other benefits for ex-offenders. Collateral obstacle. Most of these will have little or it into their early 30s, found that a good sanctions include any legal penalty, dis- no impact on ex-cons’ lives. In Ohio, for marriage made more than a little dif - ability, or disadvantage imposed auto- example, people convicted of a felony, ference. The men in the study who im - matically upon conviction: for example, or who have pleaded guilty to a misde- proved their ways were very similar to ineligibility for various jobs, such as meanor, are forever prohibited from serv- those who did not in terms of measurable school-bus driver or property manager ing as a police chief or even a constable. childhood characteristics such as poverty for an apartment building. Collateral con- And no one in Ohio can be an auctioneer rates and IQs. They also had been rated as sequences encompass the full range of or apprentice auctioneer for ten years if equally “difficult” and “aggressive” and bad things and debilitating restrictions— convicted of a felony or any other crime had been arrested as teenagers about as official or unofficial, codified or not— involving fraud. More over, there are often. Nevertheless, over time, “those that regularly confront people after they’ve many proper and essential restrictions who entered a good marriage sharply served their sentences. In the words of across the country when it comes to reduced their criminal activity”—by lawyer Margaret Colgate Love, who both felons’ working anywhere near children about two-thirds—compared with men practices in and writes about this area, and other vulnerable people. who did not establish good marriages collateral consequences include not only All that said, some states have collater- or did not marry at all. the specific sanctions mandated by the al sanctions that are more the product of Not at all unrelatedly, the U.S. Justice judicial system, but also the “degradation overkill than of necessity. For example, Department reported in the mid-1990s of social status often called the ‘stigma of Ohio disqualifies anyone with a “second that single and divorced women were four conviction.’” conviction . . . arising from two or more to five times as likely as married women These are huge issues, increasingly separate incidents” from ever getting a With public-safety considerations always paramount, what steps should we take to reduce the destructiveness of past incarceration? More specifically, how can we remove obstacles to ex-offenders’ getting and keeping decent jobs?

to be crime victims (although widowed com pounded by rapid growth in the commercial driver’s license. And there women were the least likely to be victim- number of companies providing poten - are many other examples from around the ized). Single and divorced women were tial employers with instantaneous online country, often pertaining to marijuana three times as likely as married women to access to everything in a person’s criminal convictions. be the victims of aggravated assault, and record. Also increasingly accessible is Consider the implications of wide- almost ten times as likely to be raped. every scrap of incorrect information that spread Internet availability of criminal The evidence, writes Gallagher, is “over- may live on in the file of a man or woman records. I don’t suggest restricting public whelming that being unmarried puts wo- who is straining to play by the rules. access to criminal records, because the men at special risk for domestic abuse,” “While it has never been easy for a for- problem here is not access itself but per- since a large body of research shows that mer convict to secure a full-time job,” manence. I have little faith that any law marriage is a much less dangerous ar - reporter Mike Meyers wrote sev eral years mandating the removal of certain records rangement than cohabitation. ago in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “the from public scrutiny, in order to protect With public-safety considerations al- rise of the electronic background check the privacy and good name of individuals ways paramount, what steps should we and fear of lawsuits among potential em - who deserve to be so protected, can with- take to reduce the destructiveness of past ployers are creating ever-higher barriers to stand the onslaught of high technology. incarceration? More specifically, outside work for those leaving prison.” In 2004 An ex-offender’s name can be removed of conventional reentry programs and the Wall Street Journal reported that about from the official government register, but faith-based programs such as Prison 80 percent of big U.S. companies were it would be very hard to scrub it from Fellowship (in which I have greater albeit doing criminal-background checks. And if all records and caches of data on the still limited confidence), how can we 80 percent of big employers were doing Internet. remove obstacles to ex-offenders’ getting checks back then, it’s hard not to believe It’s unfair for people to carry around and keeping decent jobs? Let me suggest the proportion is bigger now. arrest records for the rest of their lives several modest ideas, preceded by a brief In response to all this, here are three when they’ve never been guilty of any- word about a worsening impediment that suggestions: thing beyond failing to pay parking tick- reduces the employment pros pects for Review collateral sanctions with an ets. And it is especially unfair if they were people with records. eye to safely reducing their number and found innocent of whatever they were

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arrested for. Yes, there are procedures for tence, we coerce, we incarcerate, we sealing or expunging such information, counsel, we give probation and parole, but it always takes time and often takes and we treat—not infrequently with suc- The Right money to do so, and by the time all the cess—but we never forgive.” bureaucratic hurdles have been jumped, How, exactly, to forgive—safely? Kind of serious damage can already have been Drawing on a model penal code draft- done, since documentation of the arrest ed by the American Law Institute a half may be forever recorded in cyberspace. century ago, Love, in a 2003 article, Tyrant By serious damage, I mean unfairly being offered a route worthy of consideration: What Steve Jobs gave the world denied jobs, housing, and other opportu- reintegrating offenders into society “not nities and benefits. Viewing the issue in by trying to conceal the fact of convic- BY ROB LONG terms of race, we should remember that tion, but by advertising the evidence of many of the large number of black men rehabilitation.” She and the model code He business world is famous for arrested every year get picked up because proposed doing this in a two-tiered pro - its difficult bosses, to put it as they were simply in the wrong place at cess. First, the original sentencing court mildly as possible. There are the wrong time; when that happens, the T screamers and throwers and “may issue an order relieving all legal injustice should not afflict them for the disabilities after an offender has satisfied silent-treatment types—all kinds and rest of their lives. his sentence.” This would remove statu- shapes of cruelty. If you go to the right bars One possible remedy would be for tory bars to employment, housing, and around the downtown area of any major police to make greater use of citations, the like. Second, after a further period of city and get a stool close to a group of which don’t necessarily wind up on the “law-abiding conduct” (the model code young-looking people in suits, you can In ter net, instead of actual arrests. This suggested five years), the sentencing hear some pretty alarming stories about idea, which was proposed several years court “may issue an order ‘vacating’ the their bosses. The American economy, it ago by the Minneapolis-based Council on convictions.” In practical terms, this sometimes seems, is run by demanding Crime and Justice, would help a signifi- means setting the convictions aside. and irrational psychopaths assisted by cant number of people avoid life-scarring What might such an approach accom- terrified fauns. records. “The police,” the council urged, plish that others would not? It’s hard, though, when you reach a “should use the citation pro cess for low- The proposed scheme, Love argues, certain age, not to instinctively side with level offenses . . . unless an arrest is justi- gives the offender an incentive to pursue the psychopaths. fiable because the offender presents an rehabilitation and satisfies the need for a Steve Jobs, the two-time impresario articulable threat to public safety.” ritual of reconciliation. In relying pri - behind the astonishing success of Apple Investigate the safest possible ways of marily on the sentencing judge, it pro- Computer, has a reputation for being— helping former offenders cleanse their vides a more reliable and accessible well, I won’t use the “P” word, so we’ll names. The traditional ways of helping pro cess than pardons or other executive have to settle for “demanding.” He’s a individuals who have completed their acts, and a more meaningful one than demanding boss, from all accounts. sentences to get on with their lives have automatic statutory provisions. In con- A friend of mine who spent some time been legal and administrative devices, trast with expungement, it does not sac- in Cupertino—and that’s how the cool such as pardons and the expunging of rifice the legitimate concerns of law kids refer to Apple HQ: “Cupertino,” records. The aforementioned Margaret en forcement or undermine respect for which is where it’s based, deep in Silicon Colgate Love, whose practice concen- the value of truth in our legal system. Valley—has shared lots of stories about trates on pardons and relief from colla - Would such a system, which essential- Jobs’s famous temper, his obsessive per- teral consequences, has admitted that ly became law in Illinois in 2010, help fectionism, his willingness to shelve any expunging records requires a willingness some people move on with their lives in project or product (or employee) that to “rewrite history,” something that is good ways? It would seem so. Would the doesn’t meet his high standards. “hard to square with a legal system found- reform likewise increase the likelihood of “In a meeting with Steve, you have to be ed on the search for truth.” Also, to the some ex-offenders’ marrying? It would prepared for his questions,” my friend told degree that it hides an individual’s crimi- seem so again, if only in fairly small me, adding darkly, “all of his possible nal record, “it tends to devalue legitimate numbers. Yet, stepping back and survey- questions, from how long a product will public-safety concerns.” Nonetheless, she ing the larger nexus of crime and mar- take to build to how it might be shipped to writes, granting a clean slate is an in - riage, it’s impossible not to recognize whether it should come in blue. When he dispensable part of fair treatment for how far beyond sad the whole problem is, asks a question, you have to be prepared.” reformed criminals—essential to justice starting with millions of young men, Or? and to reducing recidivism. disproportionately of color, whose lives My friend shook his head, deep into an While Love fails adequately to appre- are crippled from a very young age be - Angry-Steve Flashback. “It’s not good.” ciate the public’s fear of growing crime in cause of criminal behavior. What a ruin The stories of Steve’s temper are passed the 1970s and 1980s, which led govern- for themselves, their families, and our around Silicon Valley like business cards. ments at all levels to come down harder nation—and what an opportunity for cre- Steve tossing a chair when a prototype on criminals, she puts her finger on the ative policies that can reinforce family- wasn’t thin enough. Steve firing an engi- central question when she quotes the oriented goals even as they serve the neer in an elevator when the engineer told legal scholar Aidan R. Gough: “We sen- interests of justice. him about the battery life of a new iPhone.

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Steve scrapping an entire product line because it wasn’t perfect, and had no hope of becoming perfect. Steve demanding more features. Steve insisting on better syncing. Steve shouting for thinner. Steve screaming for lighter. Steve terrifying his employees, his vendors, his business part- ners. Steve, engaged in furious e-mail exchanges with journalists, bloggers, and random customers who happened to e-mail him at the right moment, when he was taking a break from making his em- ployees sweat and from engineering even higher standards. And somehow, in the midst of all of this shouting and demanding and firing and Steve Jobs insisting, Steve starts a movie studio, Pixar, and produces some of the most last- their machines. They’re tireless mission- better, no one is more irritated by this ing and powerful animated movies ever aries of the Church of Steve: how much than I am. But given the tiniest opening, made, like the Toy Story trilogy and the better Macs are than Windows-based I’ll bore you senseless with my devotion to magnificent Up. com puters, how much faster and less sus- my Phone, my Pad, my Air, my Book. I’ll He didn’t accomplish any of this by ceptible to viruses, how much better look- ignore your glazing eyes, your watch- being an understanding boss. ing, how much cooler, which is what it checking, your backing away, and I’ll just When a young engineer absentminded- really comes down to. In movies and on keep going: The machines are better de - ly left a working prototype of the unre- television, when characters sit down signed and better made, have better soft- leased newest iPhone at a Silicon Valley to work on a computer—and even when ware, and are easier to use. The MacBook bar, it was big news in the tech world. One one is just there, in the background—it’s Pro has revolutionized all media. The iPad industry blog managed to get its hands almost always a Mac. In the painfully is saving the newspaper business. The on the unit, prompting Steve to call in the fashionable coffee shop around the corner iPhone has liberated the world. cops. Friends of the engineer said they from my house in Venice Beach, the hip- Well, not the whole world. Not Cuper - expected him to be plucked off the street sters all tap their fingers onto some kind of tino. Although that might change. Steve one day and disappear into an unmarked Apple product. Some will be typing on a Jobs, the Tyrant of Cupertino, announced van. They were only half-joking. MacBook Air; some will be poking out that he is stepping down as Apple’s CEO. It’s hard to keep that in mind, when you text messages on an iPhone; some will be A long battle with a form of pancreatic pass through the gleaming high style of editing music or video on a MacBook Pro; cancer has made it impossible for him to your local Apple store, with the beehive of some will be flipping the pages on an operate at the level of intensity that he’s purposeful, slightly scruffy young people eBook on the iPad; and some will manage, famous for. His successor, Tim Cook, has milling around in T-shirts. The Apple somehow, to be doing three of these things assured customers and shareholders that Store is such a friendly place. That’s a big at the same time. Steve’s relentless perfectionism is embed- part of the Apple brand—ease of use, sleek And if there’s a Dell user in the pack ded deep into the corporate culture. Apple, design, shiny screens. When the company somewhere, you’ll spot it instantly, like he insists, will remain Apple. introduced its revolutionary Macintosh someone wearing a tuxedo with brown But when you start using weasel words computer in the early 1980s, the product shoes. like “corporate culture,” you’re already tip- photo showed the squat, mini-looking unit When I say “hipsters,” of course, I’m ping your hand. When Cupertino quaked with a smiley face on its screen. “Hi,” the speaking very broadly. I’m writing this under Tyrant Steve, no one needed to worry computer was saying, thus giving birth to essay on a MacBook Pro, which syncs about the culture of the place. The culture one of the most successful consumer automatically to my Dropbox storage file was simple to understand: fear and un - brands ever. in the cloud, so if I choose to finish proof- forgiving standards. It wasn’t an easy place Apple computers are nice. They say reading it at the local coffee shop I can to work, but that was part of the appeal: “Hi.” Your grim, beige Unix-based termi- do it easily, either on my impossibly slen - Apple’s engineers and designers didn’t love nal at work, or your heavy black Dell at der MacBook Air, or my shiny Verizon- coming to work despite Steve’s insane tem- home, don’t say “Hi.” They say “ILLE- enabled iPad. When my editor calls, per and unpredictable rants, they loved GAL MODE IN KERNEL 1009A5 RE - wondering where the piece is, his name coming to work because of those things. START” or whatever. will flash up on my iPhone, which will Because they knew Steve was trying to do Apple computers are also irritatingly allow me to ignore it and get back to the great things, trying to revolutionize an smug, if that’s possible. Well, not the com- important stuff, like making a new iTunes entire market, trying to put incredible tech- NEWSCOM / puters themselves—although the early playlist and scooting farther away from nology into a beautiful package and into Mac that said “Hi” did seem, somehow, the person using the HP. the hands of ordinary people. pleased with itself—but the users. Lord In other words, I am one of those irritat- And that’s impossible to do without

KIMBERLY WHITE help us! Mac users won’t shut up about ing Apple fanatics. If it makes you feel any being “demanding.”

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NR Innovation Special

Swift Blind Horseman? Look, listen—proceed

BY PETER THIEL

When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature rectness in media and academia to the sordid worlds of reality say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, television and popular enter tainment—would gather far more and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard force. Liberals often assert that science and technology remain a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart essentially healthy; conservatives sometimes counter that of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denar- these are false utopias; but the two sides of the culture wars ius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.” (Revelation 6:5–6) silently agree that the accelerating development and applica- tion of the natural sciences continues apace. I. Yet during the Great Recession, which began in 2008 and odeRn Western civilization stands on the twin has no end in sight, these great expectations have been sup- plinths of science and technology. Taken together, plemented by a desperate necessity. We need high-paying jobs these two interrelated domains reassure us that to avoid thinking about how to compete with China and India M the 19th-century story of never-ending progress for low-paying jobs. We need rapid growth to meet the wish- remains intact. Without them, the arguments that we are under- ful expectations of our retirement plans and our runaway wel- going cultural decay—ranging from the collapse of art and fare states. We need science and technology to dig us out of literature after 1945 to the soft totalitarianism of political cor- our deep economic and financial hole, even though most of us cannot separate science from superstition or technology from Mr. Thiel, the founding CEO of PayPal, is an American entrepreneur and venture magic. In our hearts and minds, we know that desperate opti- capitalist. As an undergraduate he founded the Stanford Review, a mism will not save us. Progress is neither automatic nor conservative/libertarian newspaper at . mechanistic; it is rare. Indeed, the unique history of the West

proves the exception to the rule that most human beings DARREN GYGI

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through the millennia have existed in a naturally brutal, trical energy too cheap to meter” had long since been defeated unchanging, and impoverished state. But there is no law that by environmentalism and nuclear-proliferation concerns. One the exceptional rise of the West must continue. So we could do cannot in good conscience encourage an undergraduate in worse than to inquire into the widely held opinion that 2011 to study nuclear engineering as a career. “Clean tech” has America is on the wrong track (and has been for some time), become a euphemism for “energy too expensive to afford,” and to wonder whether Progress is not doing as well as advertised, in Silicon Valley it has also become an increasingly toxic term and perhaps to take exceptional measures to arrest and reverse for near-certain ways to lose money. Without dramatic break- any decline. throughs, the alternative to more-expensive oil may turn out to The state of true science is the key to knowing whether be not cleaner and much-more-expensive wind, algae, or solar, something is truly rotten in the United States. But any such but rather less-expensive and dirtier coal. assessment encounters an immediate and almost insuperable Warren Buffett massively capitalized on both of these trends challenge. Who can speak about the true health of the ever- with his $44 billion investment, most made in late 2009, in expanding universe of human knowledge, given how complex, BNSF Railway—making it the largest non-financial company esoteric, and specialized the many scientific and technological in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. Under stand ably, the fields have become? When any given field takes half a lifetime Oracle of Omaha proclaimed “an all-in wager on the econom- of study to master, who can compare and contrast and proper- ic future of the United States” and downplayed any doubts he ly weight the rate of progress in nanotechnology and crypto - might have harbored. For present purposes, it suffices to note graphy and superstring theory and 610 other disciplines? that 40 percent of railroad freight involves the transport of Indeed, how do we even know whether the so-called scientists coal, and that railroads will do especially well if the travel and are not just lawmakers and politicians in disguise, as some energy consumption patterns of the 21st century involve a conservatives suspect in fields as disparate as climate change, regression to the past. The official explanation for the slowdown in travel centers on the high cost of fuel, which points to the much larger failure in energy innovation.

evolutionary biology, and embryonic-stem-cell research, and In the past decade, the unresolved energy challenges of the as I have come to suspect in almost all fields? For now, let us 1970s have broadened into a more general commodity shock, acknowledge this measurement problem—I will return to it which has been greater in magnitude than the price spikes of later—but not let it stop our inquiry into modernity before it the two world wars and has undone the price improvements of has even begun. the previous century. In the case of agriculture, at least, tech- nological famine may lead to real old-fashioned famine. The fading of the true Green Revolution—which increased grain II. yields by 126 percent from 1950 to 1980, but has improved When tracked against the admittedly lofty hopes of the 1950s them by only 47 percent in the years since, barely keeping pace and 1960s, technological progress has fallen short in many with global population growth—has encouraged another, more domains. Consider the most literal instance of non-acceleration: highly publicized “green revolution” of a more political and We are no longer moving faster. The centuries-long accelera- less certain character. We may embellish the 2011 Arab Spring tion of travel speeds—from ever-faster sailing ships in the 16th as the hopeful by-product of the information age, but we through 18th centuries, to the advent of ever-faster railroads in should not downplay the primary role of runaway food prices the 19th century, and ever-faster cars and airplanes in the 20th and of the many desperate people who became more hungry century—reversed with the decommissioning of the Concorde than scared. in 2003, to say nothing of the nightmarish delays caused by While innovation in medicine and biotechnology has not strikingly low-tech post-9/11 airport-security systems. Today’s stalled completely, here too signs of slowed progress and advocates of space jets, lu nar vacations, and the manned reduced expectations abound. In 1970, Congress promised vic- exploration of the solar system appear to hail from another tory over cancer in six years’ time; four decades later, we may planet. A faded 1964 Pop­u­lar­Science cover story—“Who’ll be 41 years closer, but victory remains elusive and appears Fly You at 2,000 m.p.h.?”—barely recalls the dreams of a much farther away. Today’s politicians would find it much bygone age. harder to persuade a more skeptical public to start a compara- The official explanation for the slowdown in travel centers bly serious war on Alzheimer’s disease—even though nearly on the high cost of fuel, which points to the much larger fail- a third of America’s 85-year-olds suffer from some form of ure in energy innovation. Real oil prices today exceed those of dementia. The cruder measure of U.S. life expectancy contin- the Carter catastrophe of 1979–80. Nixon’s 1974 call for full ues to rise, but with some deceleration, from 67.1 years for energy independence by 1980 has given way to Obama’s 2011 men in 1970 to 71.8 years in 1990 to 75.6 years in 2010. call for one-third oil independence by 2020. Even before Looking forward, we see far fewer blockbuster drugs in the Fukushima, the nuclear industry and its 1954 promise of “elec- pipeline—perhaps because of the intransigence of the FDA,

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NR Innovation Special perhaps because of the fecklessness of today’s biological sci- existent, then perhaps so has scientific and technological entists, and perhaps because of the incredible complexity of progress. Therefore, to the extent that economic growth is human biology. In the next three years, the large pharmaceu - ea si er to quantify than scientific or technological progress, tical companies will lose approximately one-third of their cur- economic numbers will contain indirect but important clues to rent revenue stream as patents expire, so, in a perverse yet our larger investigation. understandable response, they have begun the wholesale liqui- The single most important economic development in recent dation of the research departments that have borne so little fruit times has been the broad stagnation of real wages and incomes in the last decade and a half. since 1973, the year when oil prices quadrupled. To a first approximation, the progress in computers and the failure in energy appear to have roughly canceled each other out. Like III. Alice in the Red Queen’s race, we (and our computers) have By default, computers have become the single great hope for been forced to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. the technological future. The speedup in information technol- Taken at face value, the economic numbers suggest that the ogy contrasts dramatically with the slowdown everywhere notion of breathtaking and across-the-board progress is far else. Moore’s Law, which predicted a doubling of the number from the mark. If one believes the economic data, then one of transistors that can be packed onto a computer chip every 18 must reject the optimism of the scientific establishment. In- to 24 months, has remained broadly true for much longer than deed, if one shares the widely held view that the U.S. govern- anyone (including Moore) would have imagined back in 1965. ment may have understated the true rate of inflation—perhaps We have moved without rest from mainframes to home com- by ignoring the runaway inflation in government itself, notably puters to the Internet. Cellphones in 2011 contain more com- in education and health care (where much higher spending has puting power than the entire Apollo space program in 1969. yielded no improvement in the former and only modest im - From the perspective of Palo Alto, a return to the party year provement in the latter)—then one may be inclined to take of 1999 appears almost within reach. All that glitters seems to gold prices seriously and conclude that real incomes have be golden. Thousands of new Internet startups launch each fared even worse than the official data indicate. Like Alice in the Red Queen’s race, we (and our computers) have been forced to run faster and faster to stay in the same place.

year, and valuations of Web 2.0 businesses have surged; and This dismal and straightforward conclusion tends to be not entirely without reason, as maybe two to six per year of obscured by a range of secondary issues, which are important these newly minted ventures will break into the billion-dollar- but do not really change the larger point about trends since plus valuation zone within five years of their founding. In tan- 1973: dem with this new life for the new economy, Google has led a ● Mean incomes outperformed median incomes (inflation- parallel move towards a near-doubling of wages for the most adjusted in both cases), and there was a trend towards greater talented computer engineers, all in just the last three years. inequality. Median incomes rose by only 10 percent. Mean Beyond the dollars, one must look no farther than The Social incomes rose by 29 percent, which works out to a glacial pace Network to see the ways in which Face book and its 750 million of only about 0.7 percent per year—much slower than in the users have captured the new zeitgeist. preceding four decades. The economic decoupling of computers from everything ● Non-wage benefits, mostly health care, increased by about else leads to more questions than answers, and barely hints at $2,600 per worker, for an additional 0.2 percent per year since the strange future where today’s trends simply continue. 1973. So if the U.S. government has underestimated inflation Would supercomputers become powerful engines for the mi ra - by only 0.9 percentage points per year, then mean wages and c u lous creation of wholly new forms of economic value, or benefits have been completely stagnant. would they simply become powerful weapons for reshuffling ● Corporate profits increased from 9 percent to 12 percent of existing structures—for Nature, red in tooth and claw? More GDP—again, a significant but easily exaggerated shift. simply, how does one measure the difference between prog ress ● Women were hired in the 1980s and men were fired in the and mere change? How much is there of each? 2000s. ● College graduates did better, and high-school graduates did worse. But both became worse off in the years after 2000, IV. especially when one includes the rapidly escalating costs of Let us now try to tackle this very thorny measurement problem college. from a very different angle. If meaningful scientific and tech- ● The era of globalization improved living standards by nological progress occurs, then we reasonably would expect making labor and goods cheaper, but also hurt living standards greater economic prosperity (though this may be offset by through increased competition for limited resources. Free- other factors). And also in reverse: If economic gains, as mea- trade advocates tend to think that the first effect dominates the sured by certain key indicators, have been limited or non - second.

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● Economic progress may lag behind scientific and techno- either, because a major reason for the bubble in real estate logical achievement, but 38 years seems like an awfully long turned out to be the same as the reason for the bubble in tech- time. nology: a mistaken but nearly universal background assump- The economic future looked very different in the 1960s. In tion about easy progress. Without fundamental gains in his 1967 bestseller The American Challenge, Jean-Jacques productivity (presumably driven by technology), real-estate Servan-Schreiber argued that accelerating technological prog - values could not go up forever. Leverage is not a substitute for ress would widen the gap between the United States and the scientific progress. rest of the world, and that by 2000, “the post-industrial soci- eties will be, in this order: the United States, Japan, Can a da, Sweden. That is all.” According to Servan-Schreiber, the dif- VI. ference between the United States and the rest of Europe The technology slowdown threatens not just our financial mar- would grow from a difference of degree into a difference of kets, but the entire modern political order, which is predicated kind, comparable to the difference between Europe and Egypt on easy and relentless growth. The give-and-take of Western or Nigeria. As a result of this steady divergence, Americans democracies depends on the idea that we can craft political would face less pressure to compete: solutions that enable most people to win most of the time. But in a world without growth, we can expect a loser for every win- In 30 years America will be a post-industrial society. . . . There ner. Many will suspect that the winners are involved in some will be only four work days a week of seven hours per day. The sort of racket, so we can expect an increasingly nasty edge to year will be comprised of 39 work weeks and 13 weeks of our politics. We may be witnessing the beginnings of such a vacation. With weekends and holidays this makes 147 work days a year and 218 free days a year. All this within a single zero-sum system in politics in the U.S. and Western Europe, as generation. the risks shift from winning less to losing more, and as our leaders desperately cast about for macroeconomic solutions to We need to resist the temptation to dismiss Servan- problems that have not been primarily about economics for a Schreiber’s space-age optimism so that we can better under- long time. ‘I will gladly pay you a dollar on Tuesday for a hamburger today’ works only if a dollar gets earned by Tuesday.

stand how the consensus he represented could have been so The most common name for a misplaced emphasis on terribly wrong—and how, instead, for many Americans, the macroeconomic policy is “Keynesianism.” Despite his bril- Fourth Commandment (“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep liance, John Maynard Keynes was always a bit of a fraud, and it holy”) has been effectively forgotten. there is always a bit of clever trickery in massive fiscal stimu- lus and the related printing of paper money. But we must acknowledge that this fraud strangely seemed to work for V. many decades. (The great scientific and technological tailwind Like technology, credit also makes claims on the future. “I will of the 20th century powered many economically delusional gladly pay you a dollar on Tuesday for a hamburger to day” ideas.) Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s, inno- works only if a dollar gets earned by Tuesday. A credit crisis vation expanded new and emerging fields as divergent as happens when earnings disappoint and the present does not radio, movies, aeronautics, household appliances, polymer live up to past expectations of the future. chemistry, and secondary oil recovery. In spite of their many The current crisis of housing and financial leverage contains mistakes, the New Dealers pushed technological innovation many hidden links to broader questions concerning long-term very hard. progress in science and technology. On one hand, the lack of The New Deal deficits, however misguided, were easily easy progress makes leverage more dangerous, because when repaid by the growth of subsequent decades. During the Great something goes wrong, macroeconomic growth cannot offer a Recession of the 2010s, by contrast, our policy leaders nar- salve; time will not cure liquidity or solvency problems in a rowly debate fiscal and monetary questions with much greater world where little grows or improves with time. On the other erudition, but have adopted a cargo-cult mentality with respect hand, the lack of easy progress also makes leverage far more to the question of future innovation. As the years pass and the tempting, as unleveraged real returns fall below the expecta- cargo fails to arrive, we eventually may doubt whe ther it will tions of pension funds and other investors. ever return. The age of monetary bubbles naturally ends in real This analysis suggests an explanation for the strange way austerity. the technology bubble of the 1990s gave rise to the real-estate On the political right, we are seeing a quiet shift from the bubble of the 2000s. After betting heavily on technology optimism of Jack Kemp to the pessimism of Ron Paul, from growth that did not materialize, investors tried to achieve the supply-side economics to the Tea Party, and from the idea that needed double-digit returns through massive leverage in we can combine tax cuts with more spending to the idea that seemingly safe real-estate investments. This did not work money is either hard or fake. A mischievous person might even

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NR Innovation Special ask whether “supply-side economics” really was just a sort of code word for “Keynesianism.” For now it suffices to acknowledge that lower marginal tax rates might not happen PATENTLY and would not substitute for the much-needed construction of hundreds of new nuclear reactors. Absurd VII. We have seen that even the simple question of whether a tech- Copyright law can meet the needs of nology slowdown has occurred is far from straightforward. software developers The critical question of why such a slowdown seems to have occurred is harder still, and we do not have the space to tackle it fully here. Let us end with the related question of what can BY TIMOTHY B. LEE now be done. Most narrowly, can our government restart the stalled innovation engine? n 1994, Claudio Ballard was an unemployed computer pro- The state can successfully push science; there is no sense grammer with a great idea: a system to scan paper financial denying it. The Manhattan Project and the Apollo program documents and store them on a secure server. Ballard built a remind us of this possibility. Free markets may not fund as I prototype, raised venture capital, and founded a company much basic research as needed. On the day after Hiroshima, called DataTreasury to commercialize his system. At the peak of the New York Times could with some reason pontificate about the dot-com boom, DataTreasury had an office on Long Island the superiority of centralized planning in matters scientific: with over 100 employees. “End result: An invention [the nuclear bomb] was given to the At the time, banks were still clearing checks by shipping them world in three years which it would have taken perhaps half a around the country, and Ballard knew they would save a lot of century to develop if we had to rely on prima donna research money by scanning checks and exchanging the images instead. He scientists who work alone.” thought his system would be perfect for the job. But the major But in practice, we all sense that such gloating belongs to a banks weren’t interested, choosing to work with other vendors or very different time. Most of our political leaders are not engi- implement digital check-clearing systems of their own. neers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Around 2001, DataTreasury ran out of money and had to lay off Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House most of its staff. For most startups, that would have been the end of mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get start- the story. But DataTreasury had an ace in the hole: a portfolio of ed; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am broad patents. One of them covered the concept of attaching a not aware of a single political leader in the U.S., either scanner (an “imaging subsystem for capturing the documents”) to Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending a server (a “central data processing subsystem”) via a “communi- in order to free up money for biotechnology research—or, cation network.” more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare It’s hard to see how anyone could build a digital check-clearing state in order to free up serious money for major engineering system without infringing this patent. I suggested to a company projects. Robert Moses, the great builder of new York City in spokesman that DataTreasury had effectively patented the concept the 1950s and 1960s, or Oscar niemeyer, the great architect of of digital check clearing. He disputed that characterization, but he Brasilia, belong to a past when people still had concrete ideas struggled to explain what specific techniques the patents covers. about the future. Voters today prefer Vic tori an houses. Science And he couldn’t think of any kinds of electronic check-clearing fiction has collapsed as a literary genre. Men reached the moon systems that didn’t infringe DataTreasury’s patents. in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the In 2002, DataTreasury, by then just a shell of its former self, benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the launched a patent-litigation campaign against the nation’s took over the country, and when the true cultural war over banks. Those legal battles continue to this day, and have netted Progress was lost. DataTreasury hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees Today’s aged hippies no longer understand that there is a and damages. difference between the election of a black president and the The banks turned to their friends on Capitol Hill for help. In creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement 2009, Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) proposed an amendment to that towards greater civil rights parallels general progress every- year’s patent-reform bill that limited financial institutions’ liabil - where. Because of these ideological conflations and commit- ity for infringing DataTreasury’s patents, which the amendment ments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things listed by number. The bill didn’t pass, and the banks got a lot of actually might be getting worse. I wonder whether the end- bad press for the stunt. So this year’s patent-reform bill, known as less fake cultural wars around identity politics are the main the America Invents Act, is a little more subtle. A provision insert- reason we have been able to ignore the tech slowdown for so ed by Wall Street’s senator, Chuck Schumer (D., n.Y.), singles out long. data-processing patents related to financial services for extra However that may be, after 40 years of wandering, it is not scrutiny from the patent office. easy to find a path back to the future. If there is to be a future, The banks’ response to DataTreasury is a microcosm of the we would do well to reflect about it more. The first and the hardest step is to see that we now find ourselves in a desert, and Mr. Lee is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He covers technology policy for not in an enchanted forest. the online publication Ars Technica.

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broader patent debate. The banks describe DataTreasury as a higher priority than improving the company’s products. Such a “patent troll”: a company that has no products of its own but shift is much less costly for a mature company such as Microsoft, earns a living by filing patent-infringement lawsuits. which has more money and engineers than it knows what to do The shoe does seem to fit. And DataTreasury is just one of the with, than for a rapidly growing company such as Google over hundreds of patent trolls now shaking down productive companies. the last decade. And the explosive growth of patent trolling is just one of the many Microsoft now has so many software patents that it has become problems created by our dysfunctional patent system. impossible to build a mobile-phone operating system without The America Invents Act is full of such technocratic provisions infringing some of them. Just 7 percent of consumers chose to buy that tilt the playing field toward big businesses without doing phones running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system in anything to address the system’s deeper flaws. For example, one the second quarter of 2011, compared with the 40 percent who widely discussed change would grant patents to the first party to chose Android phones. Yet manufacturers of Android phones have file for them; in the current system, the patent goes to the person to pay royalties on Microsoft’s patents—and they pass these costs who can show he arrived at the invention first, regardless of when on to consumers. he filed. Large companies would like such a system because they This represents a fundamental shift in the software industry. One can afford to hire many patent attorneys to help them file applica- of the industry’s traditional strengths has been its low barriers to tions quickly. But there’s no reason to think the change will bene- entry. Over and over again, tiny software companies such as fit the rest of the economy. Microsoft, Google, and Twitter have dislodged incumbents many DataTreasury now lists its address as being in Plano, Texas. times their size. But while a small team of brilliant engineers can That’s probably not a coincidence. Dozens of companies with build some of the world’s best software, it has no hope of keeping names like Lodsys LLC, Gemini IP LLC, Oasis Research LLC, up with big companies’ rate of patent filings. Patents threaten to and Imperium (IP) Holdings, Inc., have flocked to the patent- and turn Silicon Valley into a place where new firms must develop plaintiff-friendly court district in eastern Texas. In a recent episode large legal bureaucracies before they can challenge incumbent of This American Life, two NPR reporters tried to visit Oasis firms. Research in the eastern-Texas town of Marshall, and instead Ironically, one of the first people to recognize this problem was found corridors of empty offices adorned by the names of tech Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Software was originally ineligible for Patent trolls are just one manifestation of the patent system’s flaws.

companies. None of these companies appear to produce any useful patent protection under a pair of Supreme Court rulings from the products or services; their revenue comes entirely from suing com - 1970s, but that began to change after a third, more equivocal ruling panies that inadvertently infringe their patents. in 1981. When the Patent Office began to interpret that ruling as a Most patent trolls target large companies such as Microsoft or green light for software patents, Gates was alarmed. “If people had Apple. But more recently, smaller firms have been hit as well. understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s Lodsys has become famous in the mobile-software industry for ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would threatening dozens of small developers. As with most patent trolls, be at a complete standstill today,” Gates wrote in a 1991 internal there’s no allegation that the defendants specifically copied memo. Microsoft was still relatively small, and Gates worried that Lodsys’s technology. Rather, Lodsys patents, which are related to “some large company will patent some obvious thing,” which purchasing electronic content from mobile phones, are simply so could give the company “a 17-year right to take as much of our broad that dozens of companies have (allegedly) infringed them profits as they want.” by accident. Gates began retooling Microsoft to take full advantage of soft- Large companies like to focus on patent trolls, but they are just ware patents, but others were more idealistic. The database vendor one manifestation of the patent system’s flaws. Large companies Oracle emerged as a leader in the fight against software patents. have been stockpiling vast numbers of dubious patents themselves. “Oracle Corporation opposes the patentability of software. . . . Consider the contrast between Microsoft and Google. The United Copyright protection for computer software is sufficient to pre- States Patent and Trademark Office has granted Microsoft more serve the rights of software developers,” the company wrote in than 18,000 patents. In contrast, as of August, Google has been testimony at a Patent Office hearing in 1994. “Patent protection is granted fewer than 800 patents. Microsoft is an innovative com - excessively broad and enormously expensive.” Other leading pany, but few people would say that Microsoft has been 20 times software companies, including Borland, Autodesk, and Adobe, as innovative as Google. Rather, Microsoft had a big head start echoed Oracle’s arguments. in building the large legal bureaucracy required to file dozens of But the industry’s protests went unheeded. The Patent Office patent applications each week. approved more and more software patents. The final straw came in Building such a bureaucracy isn’t just slow and expensive; it 1998, when the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal also requires a shift in corporate culture. The time and attention Circuit decided the case of State Street Bank v. Signature Financial of a company’s most productive engineers is a scarce and valu- Group. The ruling removed all meaningful limits on patenting soft- able resource. It takes a systematic campaign of reeducation to ware and appeared to flatly contradict the Supreme Court’s prece- persuade those engineers that filling out patent paperwork is a dents, which allow software patents only in limited circumstances.

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NR Innovation Special But the Supreme Court didn’t review the decision, and has not ruled on the patentability of software since. It’s impossible to know whether Bill Gates and Oracle CEO Innovations and Larry Ellison still privately believe that patents are bad for the soft- ware industry. But the companies they led certainly aren’t oppos- ing software patents today. In a 2007 op-ed, Microsoft general Limitations counsel Brad Smith wrote that “protection for software patents and other intellectual property is essential to maintaining the incentives Where financial innovation went wrong, that encourage and underwrite technological breakthroughs.” Oracle stopped lobbying against software patents years ago and is and how to set it right currently suing Google for infringing patents related to the Java programming language. BY ALLISON SCHRAGER Yet grassroots opposition to software patents is undiminished. In August, investor Mark Cuban wrote that “every technology com- NNOvATION propels economies forward. It is why most pany I have is getting hit by patent lawsuits” and called for soft- Americans live long lives in relative comfort instead of toil- ware patents to be abolished. This view is widely held among ing on a subsistence farm. Innovation usually refers to the rank-and-file members of the software industry. The programmers I creation of a new product or a new method of production. and technologists who comment on websites like Ars Technica and But it comes at a price; it is, by nature, unpredictable. when a Slashdot are overwhelmingly opposed to software patents, as are new good comes to market, there is typically uncertainty regard- the entrepreneurs who read sites like TechCrunch and Hacker ing its true value. This may initially cause economic instability News. and dislocation. There are at least three reasons to exclude software from But if the benefits of innovation are worth the cost, is finan- patentability. First, software development is an individual, creative cial innovation different from innovation in other fields? activity, more akin to writing a novel than designing a jet engine. A Lately, a popular perception has emerged that innovation com- single programmer can inadvertently infringe dozens of software ing from Silicon valley is good and innovation from wall patents in the course of a single project. That means that virtually Street is bad. But this view fails to appreciate how intercon- every organization with more than a handful of employees, includ- nected financial innovation is with innovations in other fields, ing the Cato Institute and NATIONAL REvIEw, has an IT department and it ignores the fact that some inventions, even in finance, producing potentially infringing software. we don’t expect novel- are better than others. ists to hire patent lawyers before publishing their work; nor should when financial innovation is successful, it channels capital to we expect computer programmers or their employers to have its most productive uses. A firm gets the capital it needs at a fair patent attorneys on retainer. price. This is achieved in finance by identifying, pricing, and Second, software patents are especially prone to litigation. In managing risk. Risk is a function of uncertainty; it may mean you their influential book Patent Failure, James Bessen and Michael do not know how much an asset you buy today will be worth Meurer document a startling rise in patent-litigation costs during tomorrow. It also involves liquidity; assets you can sell easily at the 1990s. Much of the rise is attributable to software patents, any time provide more certainty and are more desirable. Fi - which are more than twice as likely to be litigated as other cate- nancial innovation should come up with new ways for investors gories of patents. who desire less risk to hedge it, and for investors who want more Finally, software patents are unnecessary because software is risk to take it on. In exchange for taking on more risk, investors already eligible for copyright protection. Not only is copyright law are rewarded with larger expected returns. simpler and less expensive than patent law, it also doesn’t have As the market for new financial products develops, the trade- patent law’s problems with inadvertent infringement. As long as offs become clearer. That compels more investors to participate programmers write their own code from scratch, they can be con- in financial markets. with more capital available, prices become fident they aren’t infringing others’ copyrights. lower and assets more liquid. That makes it easier and cheaper to Unfortunately, given the political influence of large companies start or expand a business and for governments to raise money for with substantial patent portfolios, there’s little hope of Congress’s wars, infrastructure, or social programs. reversing the legalization of software patents by the courts. The Some recent financial innovations did not achieve these best hope for reform is that the courts will correct their own goals—quite the opposite. But the success of any innovation mistake. The Supreme Court has never endorsed the lower depends on three things. The first is how good the product is to courts’ radical expansion of software patents. This means that, begin with. Some financial products are poorly conceived or in principle, the Supreme Court could eliminate most software designed. Next is the appropriate use of the product: Is the prod- patents with a stroke of a pen, simply by reiterating that its 1981 uct meant for a particular market or type of risk? And finally, ruling is still the law of the land, and that lower courts misin- the value of an innovation hinges on the competence of the terpreted it during the 1990s. person implementing it. Many of the products associated with That would be a controversial step, since it would invalidate the financial crisis failed on all these fronts. Some were created thousands of patents worth billions of dollars. It would have been with the intent of obfuscating risk rather than making it more much better if the Supreme Court had overruled the Federal transparent. Other failed products were good ideas in theory but Circuit’s disastrous State Street decision in 1998, before it could do any damage. But fixing a mistake late is better than not fix- Allison Schrager is a New York–based economist and writer. She has worked at the ing it at all. Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund.

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were misused and fed data that assumed housing prices would Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution and the Kauffman never fall. Foundation recently assessed the value of many post-war finan- But this does not mean that all recent financial innovation cial innovations. He argues that many—credit cards, money- failed or that financial innovation poses such a grave danger that market funds, mutual funds, and credit scoring—have been it must be stopped. Rather, the solution is better regulation. Like beneficial for the American economy, and not just for people who any other innovation, some new and poorly understood financial work in finance. These innovations were instrumental in expand- products have the potential to cause harm. But saying we don’t ing the average American’s access to credit and capital markets. need new financial products and should go back to the methods He also found that private equity and venture-capital markets of the 1960s is as absurd as saying we’ve cured enough disease were extremely important to the growth of the technology sector. and don’t need new medicine. Even though many useful financial innovations were not com- plex products that relied on rocket science, Litan notes, most financial derivatives, such as options, forward contracts, swaps, HILE financial innovation’s history goes back thou- and even credit-default swaps, have been beneficial to the sands of years, the post-war era is notable in several American economy by making capital cheaper and the market W ways that changed finance. The first change was tech- more liquid. nological. Computing power made it possible to solve complex Financial derivatives are the most controversial aspect of mathematical problems in an instant. The second was the emer- financial innovation, because they are less comprehensible to the gence of finance as an academic discipline. Ideas that came from average person than a straightforward stock or bond. The market academia fed the financial industry. These factors spawned new for derivatives took off in the early 1970s, when Fischer Black, ways to identify and hedge risk so that innovation became more Myron Scholes, and Robert Merton created and solved the about supplying capital to new, small firms and individuals than Black-Scholes formula, which is a tractable way to price options. about supplying it to old, large firms and governments. The pace Soon after, Texas Instruments developed a calculator that used of innovation that occurred in finance amounts to a revolution in this formula to calculate that price in seconds. Derivatives had the field. But in the wake of the financial crisis, the question has been traded for centuries before this, but they were priced using been raised: Was it good for you? Clearly it was good for people arbitrary strategies that differed from investor to investor. The in the financial industry. Many became very wealthy while wages ability to derive a common price made it possible for a vibrant for most Americans in other industries stagnated. and liquid market of derivatives to evolve. This not only made This is remarkable, because this is the very period in which international trade and investment easier, because investors could finance became more democratic. It became much easier and hedge currency and foreign-asset risk, it also changed the nature cheaper for individuals and small businesses to get capital. Cor - of corporate finance. The derivatives market provided a new set porate finance—raising funds through equity (in which the in - of tools for firms to raise the capital they needed to be globally vestor buys a piece of a company) or issuing debt (through which competitive. an investor lends money to a company and is promised a series of Some have criticized derivatives models for relying on payments)—had existed for centuries, but new ideas and technol- assumptions that are too simple and do not adequately account ogy meant it became much more important in this period. This for very bad outcomes. But since the 1970s, models like Black- made it much cheaper and easier for firms of all sizes to get capi- Scholes have proven to be quite flexible and robust under a range tal to fund their growth. According to Thomas Philippon of New of different assumptions. Using these models requires knowing York University’s Stern School of Business, starting in the 1970s, how to apply them and what assumptions to make. Using any investment opportunities shifted from large, older firms that used financial model when investing is like going on a car trip with a their own cash to young, smaller firms that raised money by issu- road atlas. The map gives you a sense of where you are going and ing debt or equity. He believes this explains most of the growth in how your destination relates to other major landmarks. But your the finance industry from the post-war period up until 2000. skill as a driver is still necessary to avoid accidents and unpre- Nonetheless, if democratization of finance was good for Amer - dictable hazards, or to travel on a new road if your atlas is out of ica, you’d expect it to help more than a handful of talented entre- date. The existence of the road atlas means more people are on preneurs. But rising income inequality does not mean America the road and not driving around aimlessly in circles. But it does did not benefit from financial innovation. The root of growing not guarantee a perfectly safe journey. income inequality in America goes much deeper than financial Economists such as Amar Bhide argue that finance should go innovations; it has more to do with disparities in education. Also, back to simple, local, bank-to-person lending, and that complex while income stagnated, increased globalization and entrepre- derivatives mainly cause harm to the economy. But it’s important neurship provided a broader range of goods to American house- to remember that while derivatives have the potential to be mis- holds at cheaper prices. This was made possible by financial used, they also often make markets safer and more transparent by innovations that made trade and international finance less risky pricing risk and allowing investors to hedge it. Securitization, the and entrepreneurship cheaper. process by which an individual’s debt (such as a mortgage or stu- Innovation is usually associated with rich, sophisticated in - dent loan) is bundled together with other people’s debt and sold vestors. But a notable aspect of recent financial innovation is how in pieces, is one example of this. Josh Lerner and Peter Tufano, much more accessible financial markets became. Investing in both of Harvard Business School, recently conducted a study to American and foreign companies became easier and safer for assess what America would have been like without post-war the average person because of the availability of mutual and financial innovation. They found that the American economy index funds. Before, few people owned stock, and if they did, benefited from simpler forms of securitization, increasing access they usually had shares in five or fewer companies. to homeownership, especially among minorities. Up until 2006,

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NR Innovation Special securitization reduced bank foreclosures, because it made home In order to foster an environment where good and socially use- lending less risky. ful innovations are discovered, regulation must take the wait-and- Whether securitization in all its forms made markets less risky see approach. Some of the best innovations were created to service is a harder question to answer. Taken to the extreme, securiti - a particular client need. Financial products that are not born from zation contributed to the housing bubble and caused the financial market demand—complex innovations for the sake of complexi- crisis. Securitization is supposed to spread small, manageable ty—are often just marketing ploys that create opacity and provide amounts of risk across many investors, making the economy little value. Regulation under the presumption of guilt would safer. It didn’t work out that way. What went wrong? It was a make the process of demand-driven innovation prohibitively slow. combination of misguided regulatory policy, incompetence, and It takes years for the FDA to approve a drug. A similar timeline greed. would undermine the competitiveness of financial firms, because clients can go elsewhere. As perilous as it may be, the only lab where new financial products can be tested is the market. ORROWINg money and then investing it can be very prof- Lerner and Tufano explain that new financial products are itable, but it is also very risky. That is why regulation adopted in stages. The early creators and buyers are often the B exists dictating the amount of liquid assets a bank must most sophisticated and competent. Then, as the product is adopt- hold to cover potential losses. This is known as a capital require- ed by others, more naïve investors participate. They take the fact ment, and the level of the requirement depends on how risky the of a product’s popularity as a substitute for adequate diligence. bank’s asset portfolio is. Less risk means a less onerous require- This tends to be the stage at which things go wrong. Trans par - ment. Large banks used securitization to lower their capital ency and accountability help get around this problem, and these requirements to take on more risk. They did this by taking secu- must be the principles of successful regulation. ritized housing assets and refashioning them into tranches of dif- ferent risk levels. The least risky tranche received a AAA rating, meaning it was considered very low-risk but still offered a high S the global economy continues to evolve, new needs return. Such a high-return and low-risk assessment depended on will emerge, requiring more innovation. It is impossible the assumption that national house prices would never fall. Banks A to predict what all these needs will be, but I can already were supposed to sell these products to investors, spreading the see a few. risk around to a safe level, but many banks kept these assets. One is how to deal with retirement. A notable feature of our According to Viral Acharya and Philipp Schnabl of the Stern time is that people live longer and retire earlier. This leaves peo- School of Business, 50 percent of AAA asset-backed securities ple with the complex financial task of funding their retirement. remained in the banking system. Keeping the AAA mortgage Up until the 1980s, employers took on this responsibility with assets meant banks did not have to hold as much capital to com- defined-benefit pension plans. The existence of large pension ply with regulations. Through more engineering, some of these funds changed wealth- and risk-management. In the last 30 years, assets could even be held off balance sheet, which lowered the the burden has been shifted to individuals, and their investment capital requirement further still. So when housing prices fell, and needs differ from those of a large institution. Everyone now must no one wanted to buy housing assets, many large banks had figure out how much he needs to save and how he should invest insufficient capital to cover their losses. for a comfortable retirement. New financial products have the According to Franklin Allen and glenn Yago’s new book, capacity to help us with these decisions (full disclosure: I am Financing the Future, much of the abuse and negligence involv- working on developing such a product). ing mortgage products was not true innovation. Often it involved Another area is the environment. Pollution, for example, complicated products with the sole intention of creating risk and occurs in part because individuals often do not pay for the nega- avoiding regulation rather than identifying and hedging existing tive externalities they impose on others. Innovation can be used risk. They stress that financial innovation is supposed to make to create a sophisticated market that forces people to pay for their risk more transparent, not obfuscate it. What happened in the impact on the environment. There is also a need to provide capi- market for mortgage assets is a prime example of something that tal for the development of new, sustainable forms of energy. They resembles innovation at its worst. But rather than vilify all finan- will require a large, up-front, fixed investment but may not be cial innovation, we should focus on the lessons we can learn. profitable for many years. It is very difficult to know in advance which products will The scope for future innovation, in any field, depends on a benefit society and which ones have the potential to blow up the paradox. On one hand, innovation becomes more difficult over economy. Simple securitization had a noble goal—to increase time, because the most obvious, simple discoveries—the wheel, home ownership—but it was impossible to foresee in the early double-entry bookkeeping—already have been made. At the days how things might go wrong. Regulation can help, but too same time, innovators today have it easier, because they stand on much regulation can also be self-defeating. In fact, when regula- the shoulders of giants and have a tremendous base of knowledge tion is too strict, it encourages regulatory arbitrage, innovation at their disposal. If we are to remain competitive, future financial for the sole purpose of skirting the rules and creating opacity. innovation must continue to evolve in response to our changing Litan asks whether finance should be regulated the same way economic environment. That may or may not mean more com- drugs are by the FDA: Should new products be required to plexity of the sort we saw in housing finance: Often the best in - demonstrate their value and safety before they’re made avail- novations are simple and do not require any mathematical able? The alternative is what we do now, letting the market complexity at all, and even the most complex products must hold decide which innovations are useful, with the government step- up to basic common sense. It is the responsibility of the innova- ping in only if there is a clear danger. tors and regulators to ensure that they do.

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The Bent Pin BY FLORENCE KING Terminal Eloquence

HIS column was supposed to be about presidential his last words were “All is lost! Monks, monks, monks.” Was personality problems. I should have started writ- he having second thoughts, or were the bishops? ing it sooner to give myself plenty of time but I Other theologically controversial figures make a point of T was irresistibly distracted by a little book some- beating off woulda-coulda-shoulda with a club. The most body sent me called Famous Last Words. This subject has defensive last words? Charles Darwin: “I am not in the least been on my mind lately thanks to the rash of statements afraid to die.” designed to shove the aging back into the womb. First there Some last words seem flat-out unbelievable. The winner in was “40 is the new 30,” then came “50 is the new 40,” next this category is Dominique Bouhours, a French grammarian, we had “60 is the new 50,” and now they’re saying “70 is the who, it is claimed, said: “Je vais ou je vas mourir, l’un et new 60.” l’autre se dit ou se disent,” which translates: “I am about to In this as in every area of philosophical introspection, or I am going to die. Either expression is correct.” Before we American optimism is the new bull. I have reason to believe dismiss this out of hand, remember that it was a French chef that 75 is the new 90, so I put my column aside and embarked who committed suicide because the shrimp were not deliv- on an intensive course in the history of last words. ered in time for his bisque. That’s why I said “seem.” The First the bad news: You need people around you to the very French, after all, are French. end to keep your last words from being innocuous, like the I do contest Heinrich Heine’s “God will pardon me, that’s “Good morning” Calvin Coolidge said to a house painter his line of work.” It sounds too jauntily American for a before dying of a heart attack some time later while alone. German poet, unless the translator is to blame. The first law By contrast, your exit may be too crowded. Many last of last words is that they must sound like you. Tallulah words are in dispute due to the bedside presence of people not Bankhead’s “Codeine, bourbon” was pitch-perfect, as was known for listening well: Doctors, who never listen to any- Pavlova’s “Get my swan costume ready.” But it is Oscar body, especially their patients; nervous kinfolk, who listen Wilde, whose inability to sound like anyone except himself for rather than to so they can decide what will need to be soft- unfortunately extended to the witness stand, who takes first ened or deleted; and, for the dying V.I.P., one or more self- place in the last-words contest. Lying ill in a cheap French appointed spokesmen. This is how we ended up with two very hotel in the company of his few remaining friends, he ges- different versions of the death of King George V in 1936. In tured weakly and said, “Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.” one he says “How fares the dear old British Empire?” and in According to the people with him, he was trying out last the other he snarls “Goddamn you!” to the doctor giving him words, and had even ordered a bottle of expensive cham- an injection. The best way to make sure your last words are pagne so he could test “I am dying beyond my means.” It was undisputed is to commit suicide in public like Hart Crane, close, but he went with the wallpaper. who climbed on the rail of his cruise ship, shouted “Goodbye, I sensed that the time had come to put my own last words everybody!” and jumped into the sea. Another way is to have in order. I knew what I wanted to say: “The English language both a death wish and your own TV show, like croc-hunter was the love of my life; the rest were just fun and games.” Steve Irwin, who announced “They rarely swim backwards,” The question was whether modern medicine would let me whereupon the sting ray he was following suddenly swam say it. If last words are to be audible and coherent they need backwards and pierced him through the heart. to be delivered before you have any tubes up your nose or The most famous undisputed last words were spoken by down your throat. Otherwise the nurse gets the last word someone who died not just suddenly but instantly, and in when she says, “Don’t try to talk, honey.” the presence of an adoring crowd. Isadora Duncan jumped I wondered if they could put it on the plastic bracelet nimbly into the topless Bugatti, flung her long scarf behind where they put your D.O.B., your blood type, and your aller- her, and cried out to her fans, “Farewell, my friends! I go gies. Maybe if I shortened it, cut the second part, and just to glory!” As the powerful racing car shot forward, the scarf kept “The English language was the love of my life” it would wrapped around the rear wheel and snapped her neck like a fit. Or maybe if I lied and told them I have no allergies it breadstick. This is what romantics call “What a way to go!” would leave more room for— and everyone else calls “What a way to go.” What was that rattling noise? It sounded as if a truck car- Having a clergyman present at the end is no doubt spiritu- rying railroad ties was driving past my building. In fact, it ally beneficial but it can have a chastening effect on last sounded like a railroad . . . like that scene in A Letter to Three words. The speaker either uses his remaining strength on Wives where Linda Darnell lives on the other side of the some very long prayers, or else takes on the even more ex - tracks in the most literal sense, so that when the train goes hausting burden of woulda-coulda-shoulda regret. Henry through, her whole house shakes and— VIII left a cryptic example of this. His deathbed was ringed A book fell off the shelf and hit me on the head. It was an by Anglican bishops he himself had created, but supposedly earthquake. We were having an earthquake and I was going to die in it. Florence King can be reached at P.O. Box 7113, Fredericksburg, VA 22404. “Oh, s**t!”

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

Watching the Republican debate on we Koreans lost our traditional polite- the satellite. @dearleader likes @jon- ness. #laughwithmenotatme huntsman but I think @rickperry won it hands down. The minute I say that, Hey! @michelebachmann! I think ur The Twitter stream of @dearleader sulks furious. very very pretty and would love to show you the lights of Rason City. @youthcaptain, the Wondering what selvedge is, and why Know that you’re in a relationship. I need my jeans to be selvedge. Doesn’t have to be big thing. NSA fine next leader of North Answers, @jcrew? with me. Korea . . . Sometimes when @dearleader falls Is it weird that of all the characters on Girls, help me out. If a guy is powerful asleep he looks like Korean version of #entourage I really really identify with and connected, does it matter if he’s a American movie star Bette Davis near Turtle? #justbeinghonest little on the plump side? Asking for a the end. See for yourself Don’t get the appeal of @ronpaul. friend. Please RT! twitpic.com/3z1r4 Seems like a crazy old man on a park Hey! @gwynethpaltrow! I think ur very DM @saifelislamgaddafy I wish I could bench. And I have some experience very pretty and would love to show help. Be really cool to get together with those. Hint, hint @dearleader. you the lights of Rason City. Know that again. But @dearleader is insisting we Hey! @joanrivers! I think ur very very you’re in a relationship. Doesn’t have get the missiles back. Please @reply pretty and would love to show you the to be big thing. NSA fine with me. me. lights of Rason City. Know that you’re Suggested to @dearleader that maybe Wondering if @evalongoria has ever in a relationship. Doesn’t have to be he should think about making a big seen Mt. Kumgang in the moonlight. big thing. NSA fine with me. jobs speech like @barackobama. He Well, if she hasn’t, I’m inviting her! So my new thing is to be very steam- asks why, I tell him about unemploy- PLEASE RT! punk. Put on a whole outfit, walked ment #s in DPRK. Looks at me Watching the after-debate spin with into the TV room, and @dearleader strangely. #badfeelingaboutthis @dearleader. Consensus seems to be looks at me and asks if we’ve restart- Gotta say sad news from Tripoli. that @rickperry won. @dearleader ed the DPRK space program. Wishing I was back partying with the now agrees. When I say it, he ignores #cantwin @gaddafyboys #brosb4hos me. When @wolfblitzer says it, it’s true. Sigh. Does this look right to you? Do my feet look fat in these boots? Wondering if this is just a rash or twitpic.com/fr55k0 Hey! @merylstreep! I think ur very something more. Any MDs among my very pretty and would love to show Tweeps?? twitpic.com/81fgdf Please stop DMing me, @saifelislam- you the lights of Rason City. Know gaddafy. Seriously. No help here. that you’re in a relationship. Doesn’t Hey! I’m going to be live tweeting Also: @dearleader would like the cen- have to be big thing. NSA fine with this meeting of the People’s trifuges back. me. Revolutionary Agricultural Progress Council! @reply me your questions Sometimes you wear the jumpsuit, DPRK labor statistician no longer for the group. sometimes the jumpsuit wears you. answers my DMs. Wondering if Try to tell that to @dearleader and all I maybe I should have kept my mouth Hey! I’m not going to be live tweeting get is a nasty look. #fathersandsons shut re: unemployment #s. Oh well. this meeting of the People’s Revolutionary Agricultural Progress Hey! @kristenstewart! Am shooting a Thing about kimchi is, when you think Council! Was not aware that I was vio- film here in @therealkorea and would you’ve had enough, you’ve already lating security protocols. My mega love to have you in the cast! Can pay had way way too much. #kimchi- bad. you in ginkgo! DM me! breath Hey! @meredithvieira! I think ur very @youthcaptain just checked into In a meeting with some of @dear- very pretty and would love to show Quizno’s Pyongyang #foursquare leader’s advisers. Mentioned that it you the lights of Rason City. Know would be great to have our own DPRK that you’re in a relationship. Doesn’t @youthcaptain is Mayor of Quizno’s version of “Morning Joe.” Suggested have to be big thing. NSA fine with Pyongyang!! #foursquare self as “Joe.” Wonder when exactly me.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Proper Aim

Sk any employer, and you’ll hear the same work. You cannot Taser a corpse and expect it to get up and lament: We’d love to hire people, but we need dance. You cannot help the pork-slaughtering industry if the an inexplicable modification of the tax code EPA declares “squeals” to be an environmental toxin, and A exquisitely calibrated to provide a tiny incen- when the plant moves to Mexico it really doesn’t help if you tive. Well, the president has intuited their needs, and brought announce a tax break to convert the facility to an interactive forth a bill that will get the nation moving again. At first it museum about the struggles of abattoir unionists. Even if was rather vague, and we wondered whether we’d have to Matt Damon reads the narration for the multimedia exhibit. pass it in order to know what’s in it—a phrase that should be Granted, that’s one job saved or created, but it’s not really an spoken only by a doctor in reference to a stool sample—but even swap. now we have some hard-core specifics. It goes something The jobs bill may do less of what didn’t work before. It has like this: the same fallacies as the stimulus: Prosperity magically hap- pens when you take money from the kulaks and hoarders, Employer (hereafter, “enemy of the people”) shall receive, or and build high-speed trains for teachers. Sure, you may say get, or be entitled to get by way of receiving, a 0.05 percent it’s an inefficacious gout of liquefied folly sloshed over the quarterly reduction in the adjusted tax rate for fiscal 2012 stony ground of a moribund economy, but at least it’s paid according to Schedule B pursuant to the for. More or less. Sort of. It’ll cost $447 1983 amendments to Article 3, Subsection II, of the Tax Simplification Act of 1982, if billion—not $448 billion, as some had Employer shall hire a person who has been feared—and the bulk of the money will unemployed for more than, but not less come from curtailing itemized deduc- than, but equal to, in the sense of being the tions, i.e., subsidies for the rich who same as, nine months (averaged as calen- donate a chair to the college library. The drical units of 29 days each); “unemploy- seat makes a whoopie-cushion razz ment” shall be construed for purposes of when used by someone whose father this act to mean continuous sitting on the wasn’t an alum. The CBO says the char- sofa, staring blankly at the wall, wishing itable-deduction limitations wouldn’t that listening to those old Springsteen raise more than $300 billion or so, but records helped, but man, it just doesn’t. perhaps the administration is counting This shall not be construed as a replace- ment of the 1933 Fitz-Sturgeon Employ - on Warren Buffett settling with the IRS ers Credit Reduction Addition Act, or the for the make-up money. Pass this bill! 2001 revisions of the 2000 revisions of the 1993 Transparency The Rick Perry approach: That’s a half-trillion dollars y’all in Government Act (Latin-language version). Offer may be could spend personally on things you like. So let’s not do withdrawn at any time. Void where prohibited. Ask your doc- that. tor if this bill is right for you. Not to say the Perry approach is the only alternative. As we saw in the tea-party debate, Mitt Romney has a seven-part That ought to do it. Then there’s the Rick Perry approach: plan, which excites people who think PowerPoint presenta- See that tax over there, sittin’ on the fencepost? Okay, I’m tions are always too dang short. Ron Paul has a plan that con- going to shoot it with my eyes closed and it’s gonna not be sists of yelling at paper money until it turns into shiny silver there afterwards. Here, hold my beer. dimes, and so on. All the serious candidates are swinging The Perry approach has two things going for it: simplicity, axes at the status quo, not picking at gnats with tweezers. and effectiveness. When Obama ascended to the Oval This is good. The tea party has changed the terms. A can - Office, it was seen as the rise of the Smart People, the cool didate can’t say he’ll keep driving the federal locomotive and credentialed intellects who could tweak and recalibrate towards the cliff but promise he’ll ease up on the throttle and the magnificent machinery of government. Inequity: down, lean out of the right side of the engine instead of the left. Now somehow. Also sea levels. We would have a green economy; it’s full stop, decouple half the cars, and scrap subsidies to the evening news would run stories on high-school dropouts develop sails to power the train. For Davy Crockett’s sake, who now design software for wind farms or invent solar- get me some coal. Perry may not be everyone’s choice, but powered tofu extruders. he’s surely the anti-Obama. Simplicity of purpose, uncom- The Perry approach: That’s fine, but you see that car there? plicated disdain for egghead solutions, good humor with a Runs on gas. Might want to find some. I hear we got a barrel dash of mean-hombre swagger—when Perry tucks his chin or two ’round these parts. as he listens to a question, it’s like he’s crafting a response, If the Perry approach is gaining traction, it’s because the but also thinking how you’d dance if he shot at your feet— NEWSCOM / administration seems unable to realize that its ideas do not these qualities smother the professorial palaver of the admin- ZUMA / istration with scorn and impatience. Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. “Pass this bill” vs. “Get ’er done.” RICH SCHMITT

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would be a test of American character— World-famous columnists fantasize one not graded on a curve. about America’s becoming “China for The Missing The problems on this test have ap - a day.” peared in different forms. We’ve waged Daniels’s goal in writing this book is to Man war against slavery, fascism, Com - “challenge the idea that a government of mu nism, and Islamism. We’ve fought and by the people is incapable of dealing MATTHEW CONTINETTI inequality, corruption, trusts, and big with such a crisis once it has gone this far.” government. Yet the substance has As evidence that democracies can face al ways been the same: In each case, down the red menace, he offers his experi- America has defended itself against those ence making state and federal govern ment Daniels calls the “Skeptics,” who believe more efficient in Indiana and Washing - that “most human beings are not capable ton, D.C. The book contains many won- of disciplining their appetites, postpon - derful stories of penny-pinching and ing gratification for the sake of the long belt-tightening. I chuckled when Daniels term, or deciding for the common good, ordered an Indiana “efficiency crew” to and therefore cannot be trusted with the put pennies on the tires of state vehicles ultimate political control of society.” In to see whether the coins would still be each case, America has vindicated the there after one month—then got rid of the founders’ idea that human beings are cars that hadn’t moved. Keeping the Republic: Saving America by born capable of self-rule. I cheered when the Indiana legislature Trusting Americans, by Mitch Daniels What makes this book so compelling is passed an automatic state refund by (Sentinel, 252 pp., $26.95) the force with which Daniels argues that, which unspent money was returned to despite our many successes, the outcome taxpayers at the end of the fiscal year. ne of the most striking mo - remains in doubt. The challenge of Amer - If only other states followed Daniels’s ments in this excellent book ica’s massive debt and unfunded lia - example! Governors across the country, arrives on page 15, when bilities may prove too hard for this as well as congressmen and bureaucrats O Mitch Daniels notes that, in generation to solve. “For the first time in active in transportation policy, also could the early days of the American republic, my life,” Daniels writes, “I am desperate- learn a lot from his successful privatiza- currency often bore the Latin inscription ly alarmed about the condition and direc- tion of the Indiana Toll Road. Exitus in dubio est: “The outcome is in tion of the American republic”: America And yet as I read these passages I doubt.” The detail is telling for two rea- faces a new enemy, the “Red Menace,” couldn’t help feeling angry and betrayed. sons. It shows how the Founders were just as dangerous as her previous foes. For the structure, tone, and narrative of immersed in a classical culture to which The debt we’ve accumulated through Keeping the Republic is exactly that most contemporary Americans pay ab- profligacy and wishful thinking is liable which I have come to expect from books solutely no attention. And it proves that to wreak devastation around the world. written by a major politician at the start of the founding generation did not believe And generations of deficit spending a great campaign. In this sort of book, the their experiment in self-government was have already had an effect beyond eco- author devotes the first part to laying out a sure shot. nomics: They have inculcated an entitle- the mess the country is in, the second part The infant nation was threatened. For ment mentality in the citizenry. We’ve to a record of his achievements in dealing America to survive, it would have to come to believe that government “owes” with smaller messes, and the final part avoid further conflict with the domi - us things that were never the govern- to his prospective agenda for cleaning nant superpower, the British empire, not ment’s to deliver in the first place. A everything up. to mention the meddling Spanish and dependent people is an unfree people, The unwritten final sentence of such French. nor was the fear of foreign inva- and Daniels describes well the remark- books is: “And that’s why I’m running sion the only thing that worried Jefferson, able inversion that has occurred over the for president.” But Daniels’s is the excep- Madison, and Hamilton. The authors of last several decades: “The traditional tion. Because he announced last May that the Declaration of Independence and concept of public service has been stood he wouldn’t run for president, this other- Con stitution harbored grave doubts about on its head. With almost no one noticing, wise wonderful story ends in something the ability of mankind to control its pas- government workers rose from under- of an anticlimax. Keeping the Republic is sions and govern through “reflection and paid public servants to the position of a a campaign book with no candidate. choice” rather than “accident and force.” privileged elite.” Interest groups, mean- Daniels had his reasons for not run- American democracy, in their view, while, continue to attach themselves to ning: Family is more important than pol- Leviathan’s belly and seek constantly to itics, and the Daniels family was against Mr. Continetti is opinion editor of The Weekly feed the beast. Optimism about the future a presidential bid. Still, for those of us Standard and author, most recently, of The has been eclipsed in the public mind by a who remain more than a little disap - Persecution of Sarah Palin. sense of foreboding and national decline. pointed in our options for president, the

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appearance of Keeping the Republic is nothing less than a provocation: Here, IN THESE PHOTOGRAPHS, MY RIVAL between two covers, is yet another reminder that the nation’s most accom- plished governor, with experience in the . . . grips a tapered wine glass, nearly drained, private sector as well as in state and fed- Beneath a gold band and engagement gem; eral government, a man with a sharp Ham-fisted, left-hand fingers round the stem, mind, a decent character, and knowledge Forefinger lifted, fattened with the strain. of the drivers of our debt, voluntarily removed himself from contention for our The symptoms of her sloe-eyed pose are pained, highest office. Her lips pulled wide and reddened. Under them, At this writing, no candidate has fol- The edges of her V-dart collar hem lowed what one might call the “Daniels Conceal, almost, the goblet. Golden-veined Model”: calm, collected, straight-shooting, and self-deprecating analysis of the causes In theme, the lavish suite behind her speaks of and potential solutions to the gusher Of debts and delegations fit for kings, of spending coming from Washington. Troubadour orchestras, prime execution, There’s plenty of bluster, to be sure. There’s more than enough red meat. There Absolute power and official leaks. are even, if you look hard enough, policies The velvet of its jetty panels sings to improve the economic outlook, reduce Of coups d’état, Rousseau and revolution. spending, and create jobs. What the field still lacks, however, is a voice prepared to level with the country And here, in this, she wears true blue, couture about the size of the debt and the tough In polished rayon, modernist in flair decisions necessary to put America on a And line; the padded shoulders—broad and square— sustainable trajectory. Neither Paul Ryan Fall through long arms, thigh-level, too obscure nor Chris Christie answered the call. Rick Perry, to his credit, has been willing to For fair description—lowered in demure, speak provocatively about Social Secur- Meek relaxation. Glossed and dense, her hair ity and Medicare. Michele Bachmann is Falls to the bijou throat’s transcendence, bare implacable in her opposition to Obama- care. But, at any gathering of 2012 Re- Of ornament: off-parted, insecure. publican presidential candidates, there is She seems anatomy immune to force: always a missing man: someone such as Before her, ceremony and applause, the governor of Indiana. Behind and after nothing, barren space. The Republican contenders are all decent people with impressive résumés. Be gratified, but warned, Self: In due course, There’s a fair chance one of them will be These hues will clash and die, those classic jaws, the next president. And—this is to their The tongue that teased for hours a lover’s face. credit—most of them would be unwilling to accept the “social truce” Daniels pro- poses. As far back as May 2010, Daniels But even death, her ghost, won’t bring you ease. said that conservatives might have to Some cranny of the house, some corner room, declare a truce on such issues as abortion Will be conscripted as a waking tomb in order to unite the country in a fight against the red menace. As he puts it here, In which her soul is stored and made to freeze “It does not belittle at all the importance Or swell by disproportionate degrees: of the social issues to point out that, in Her wardrobe, willow china, her perfume, terms of the survival of the American Initialed stationery—each assume experiment, they do not rival the Red Menace and the related dangers we face Precedence to your flawed, impassioned flesh; from our overwhelming debt.” A mothball take on mystical allure But is this really true? There are many Where you will be the spider in a welt people—millions of them, in fact—who believe that the human toll of 30-plus Above her bookshelf, spinning out your mesh years of abortion on demand has been far In mortal coiling, cloistered and impure, more damaging to the American charac- Your webbing clogged with pastry cloth and felt. ter and polity than spending too much money on health care for seniors. At a —JENNIFER REESER

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Republican debate in August, Michele to a pen in which it could not lie down to Bachmann got it exactly right when she sleep or even turn around; castrated with- pointed out that “you can get money Bless the out anesthetic; force-fed; maddened by wrong, but you can’t get life wrong.” To pain, fear, and sensory deprivation; and disarm unilaterally in the middle of a Beasts often inadequately stunned before slaugh- decades-old fight—a fight that has coin- ter, and therefore boiled and dismem- cided, uncoincidentally, with Republican CLAIRE BERLINSKI bered while still conscious? success at the polls—would be not only Wayne Pacelle, the president and CEO wrong but foolish. of the Humane Society, is not notably a Worse still: Such a move would deny philosophical conservative. Nor has his conservatives the opportunity to draw a record at the Humane Society been un - connection between the unmooring of impeachable; Michael Vick remains— moral principle and America’s drift away despite his apologies and Pacelle’s—as from the ideas that animated the Found- plausible a campaigner for his organiza- ing. tion as O. J. Simpson would be for the Daniels concedes, for example, that National Domestic Violence Hotline. “the breakdown of the traditional family Pacelle has been too quick to praise ani- over recent decades is a huge contributor mal shelters that are no more than killing to virtually every heartbreaking social machines. (There are better solutions: pathology we face, and to economic dif- The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, trapping, neutering, vaccinating, and ficulties.” Then is it really far-fetched to Our Call to Defend Them, by Wayne Pacelle releasing, for example.) He is not Scully’s assert that the redefinition of the family, (William Morrow, 423 pp., $26.99) equal as a prose stylist; his writing is a bit the flight from individual responsibility, schmaltzy. But many of the arguments in and the preference for immediate gratifi- OME virtues are by accidents of this book are compelling; some are new, cation over self-control may be related to history associated with utopi- and those that are not are cogently restat- government’s inability to exercise fiscal anism, hostility to private prop- ed and worth restating. restraint? S erty, anti-clericalism, and other Our instinct, he proposes, to care for And might it not be the case that the core beliefs of the Left. I can scandalize animals is as much a part of our nature as demand for entitlements will persist so a yoga instructor anywhere in the world our instinct to exploit them, and a better long as Americans believe the purpose of by declaring myself an avid admirer of part of it. If Scully locates his argument, government is to provide them stuff? Margaret Thatcher, though I challenge ultimately, in natural law and Christian Convincing voters otherwise will require you to read the yoga sutras and conclude theology, Pacelle appeals to the bond we more than charts and graphs. It will take from them that devotees must favor an instinctively feel with animals, one so a moral argument that relies on standards overregulated financial sector. ancient that to dismiss it as effete senti- of right and wrong applicable, in Lin - Concern for the welfare and dignity of mentalism is surely to take the easy way coln’s words, “to all men and all times”: animals is such an issue, associated with out. This bond may be viewed through that human beings are created equal, that nihilist leftists such as Peter Singer and many modern prisms—genetic, evolu- governments are formed to secure the local totalitarians who seek to regulate tionary—but it has been observed from rights we possess in the state of nature, pets out of existence. But one need not Aesop to Kipling. Children are born with among them the right to life, liberty, and believe that animals have been endowed a keen curiosity about animals; their hor- . . . you know the rest. with all the rights of humans to insist that ror at the thought that the animals are to be So, a social truce will not do. To the they are more than a commodity that slaughtered must be trained out of them. It contrary: Perhaps it’s time to expand the tastes good. is well known that children who torture definition of “social issues” to include The conservative case against routine animals have something very wrong with fiscal and national-security matters that indifference to animal suffering has best them: They often grow up to practice this reflect the type of society in which we been made by Matthew Scully in his 2002 enthusiasm on humans. live. This is something Daniels clearly book, Dominion. As I read it, the cat in my I am happy to accept that animals are understands, since his call for the “social lap stretched out her paw and tenderly not humans and that the life of a human is truce” hasn’t diminished his pro-life patted my cheek. “She would taste good,” more sacred than a cow’s. But it requires stance. I thought, was not a morally serious tergiversations of the mind and soul to One can hope that the governor’s deci- answer to the question, “Should I eat accept that animals are thus like plants sion to abstain from the presidential race her?” And if it was not, how could it be a and their lives no more sacred than a car- did not mark the end of his political career. serious answer to this question: Should I rot’s. We need not value animals more Certainly every Republican now running eat an animal that has been separated from than children to ask, as Bentham did, would leap at the chance to have Gov. its mother at birth; confined its whole life whether they suffer, conclude that they Mitch Daniels as his vice-presidential do, and demand of ourselves that we limit nominee. Think of how he’d crush Biden Claire Berlinski is a freelance journalist who lives in the amount of suffering we impose upon in debate. Think of all the good he could Istanbul amid a menagerie of adopted animals. She is them. do in Washington. America still needs the author of There Is No Alternative: Why As Pacelle observes, it is not normal you, Mitch. Exitus in dubio est. Margaret Thatcher Matters. in human history to see animals as com-

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modities much like plasma TVs even as agree with Pacelle: Our treatment of ani- cult, and that our principles come into we live in ever greater intimacy with them mals is a measure of our character, and to conflict, does not mean we should shrug as pets. It is perverse to share our beds mistreat an animal “is low, dishonorable, at the questions or say that they do not with cats and dogs as millions more of and an abuse of power that diminishes exist. them every year are gassed or injected man and animal alike.” All farming, not just the industrial pro- with sodium pentobarbital in animal shel- In any event, I’ve not yet noticed that duction of meat, causes harm to animals. ters—a grotesque euphemism, as is the anyone who cares for animals is dimin- Plowing and harvesting cause immense word “euthanasia,” for there is no shelter ished in his capacity to care for humans. suffering to field animals; as Barbara there, nor mercy in the killing of animals To the contrary, in fact. Surely our com- Kingsolver aptly put it, “I’ve watched who are healthy, rambunctious, and passion is not in such finite supply that we enough harvests to know that cutting a young. They die terrified, and they die must measure it out in teaspoons lest there wheat field amounts to more decapitated pointlessly: Very few are vicious, and be none left. bunnies under the combine than you most are capable of forming deep, affec- The book ranges over a horror of com- would believe.” “Cruelty-free” is a mar- tionate bonds with humans. Revulsion at monplace cruelties, from puppy mills to keting slogan, not a serious argument. Yet this is neither a left-wing sentiment nor sport hunting, but common sense sug- the fact that some animals must suffer is a new one. “Though critics try to cast the gests to me that of all these cruelties, not an argument for absolute license. We animal-protection movement as some- industrial farming is both the worst and are not obligate carnivores, and we have a thing foreign, eccentric, and subversive,” the one we least wish to think about. It is great deal of choice about how much meat Pacelle writes, “this cause has long been good, many conservatives will respond, we eat and how we treat the animals we a worthy and natural expression of the because it is efficient: The world needs eat before we slaughter them, if to slaugh- great Western moral tradition.” William cheap food. Profits are good, and wealth ter them we are determined. At least we Wilberforce, he adds, is rightly remem- is good—but most will allow that some might ask ourselves whether they were bered as a campaigner against cruelty to industries are profitable and vile. That it is permitted to run; sleep unmolested; enjoy animals. possible to make a fortune as a pornogra- the company of their own kind; experi- Pacelle’s tour d’horizon of the devel - pher does not mean it is noble. That it is ence sunlight, daytime, and nighttime; opment of our understanding of animal possible to become rich by making music and express the instincts with which they nature raises important points. The Car- that glorifies gang culture and cop-killing were endowed by their creator. We choose tesian and Skinnerian views of the animal does not mean we ought to admire those to impose the hell of factory farming upon mind are dead. Since the cognitive revo- who do so. them so that we can eat something that lution began in the 1950s, psychologists Still: It is immensely difficult to arrive tastes good and costs less. The word for have grudgingly come to accept the obvi- at a position of personal decency un- this, as Matthew Scully remarked, is glut- ous: Animals have minds. (No one with- tainted by contradictions or hypocrisy. tony; it is not a virtue. out a Ph.D. in psychology could have Animals, when left to their own devices, Although it is not precisely the argu- failed to see this in the first place.) What often die of disease or eat one another. It ment Pacelle makes, one seems to me kind of minds? We do not precisely know, is absurd—if only because ought implies implied: The more an animal has the but surely they have them. can—to suggest we must do something capacity to love us, the more shameful it Do they suffer? Of course. Do they about that. Perhaps here the principle is to mistreat it. It is partly that dogs love love? Everyone who has lived with a cat should be Arthur Hugh Clough’s: “Thou and trust us so that makes our betrayal of or a dog knows the intensity of their emo- shalt not kill; but needst not strive / them so shameful; it is morally relevant tions. Not just the cats and dogs, either; Officiously to keep alive.” that no one has ever said, “He’s loyal as a the natural world is bursting with stories Still: Many animals, my beloved cats snake.” Unlike Pacelle, I support compre- of animals who have formed loving bonds included, are obligate carnivores. I feed hensive No Kill legislation of the kind with humans—lions, tigers, elephants, all them meat—yet I have rescued and liber- promoted by Nathan Winograd, and hope the way down the phylogenetic tree to ated mice from their clutches. No reason to see it enacted in every American city. octopi. What are we to make of the sight for this, I know; just sentiment. As for factory farming, I doubt the of a monster crocodile who slobbers his As for laboratory animals, I’m willing practice can be changed until widespread way toward the edge of his pool, snorting to leave the moral gray area as a gray area moral revulsion takes hold. I encourage with satisfaction, in order to be chucked and concentrate on the obvious abuses. the stirring of conscience. To me, those under his chin by his trainer? That is a rep- Only the obtuse would endorse torturing cows and pigs in factory farms look a lot tile, after all, one whose ancestors were primates, for example, to do research that like the cats and dogs who have laid their on the planet millions of years before serves no higher purpose than to put out a heads on my chest. humans appeared. The capacity for this paper no one will ever read establishing Before you object, ask yourself: Are behavior appears to be at least latent for the 50th time that primates don’t seem you sure? Really? Are you sure you are throughout the animal kingdom. Is it right to like being tortured. I’m more willing to not twisting yourself into rhetorical knots to observe this and conclude that our accept sport hunting and medical research to justify your impulse to do anything you behavior toward animals is morally unim- on certain animals, under limited circum- please to creatures who cannot object? portant, or, as Pacelle characterizes the stances, than I am factory farming. The After all, if you come across a paper bag arguments of critics, that “animal welfare way the animals are cared for is impor- in the gutter and it seems something’s in it is ultimately a trivial matter—the product tant, as is the point of the research. That and you don’t know if it’s alive, you don’t of effete modern sensibilities?” No, I the answers to these questions are diffi- kick it, do you?

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Sailing November 12–19 on THE NATIONAL REVIEW Holland America’s luxurious MS Eurodam 2011 Post-Election Cruise Join TIM PAWLENTY, MARK STEYN, FRED THOMPSON, JOHN BOLTON, VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, James Q. Wilson, Bernard Lewis, S. E. Cupp, Andrew Klavan, Jonah Goldberg, John Yoo, Tony Blankley, John Sununu, Andrew McCarthy, Cal Thomas, James Lileks, Ralph Reed, Mona Charen, Elliott Abrams, Rich Lowry, Kevin Hassett, Jim Geraghty, Ramesh Ponnuru, Michael Walsh, Tracie Sharp, Sally Pipes, Rob Long, Charles Kesler, Jay Nordlinger, Kathryn Jean Lopez, David Pryce-Jones, Deroy Murdock, Bob Costa, Charmaine Yoest, Kevin D. Williamson, John Derbyshire, John Miller, & Roman Genn

as we visit Grand Turk, San Juan, St. Thomas, Half Moon Cay, and Ft. Lauderdale

oin us on one of the most exciting seafaring adventures you McCarthy and John Yoo, former New Hampshire governor John will ever experience: the National Review 2011 Caribbean Sununu, political guru Ralph Reed, social critic and humorist J Cruise. Featuring a cast of all-star conservative James Lileks, domestic-policy expert Sally Pipes, bestselling con- speakers, this affordable trip—prices start at only $1,899 a per- servative authors Andrew Klavan and Michael Walsh, ace econ- son—will take place November 12–19, 2011, aboard Holland omist Kevin Hassett, State Policy Network executive Tracie America Line’s MS Eurodam, the acclaimed ship of one of Sharp, Americans United for Life president Charmaine the world’s most respected cruise lines. Yoest, and, from NR, editor Rich Lowry, Liberal From politics, the presidency, and policy to eco- Fascism author Jonah Goldberg, NRO editor-at-large nomics, national security, and foreign affairs, there’s so Kathryn Jean Lopez, senior editors Jay Nordlinger and much to discuss. That’s precisely what our array of over Ramesh Ponnuru, NRO “Campaign Spot” blogger Jim three dozen leading conservative analysts, writers, and Geraghty, NRO “Exchequer” blogger Kevin D. Williamson, experts will do on the Eurodam, your floating luxury getaway for “Long View” columnist Rob Long, “The Straggler” columnist scintillating discussion of major current events and trends and John Derbyshire, national correspondent John J. Miller, political the upcoming 2012 elections. reporter Bob Costa, and artist Roman Genn. We’ve assembled a crew of exemplary speakers to make sense The “typical” NR cruise alumnus (there are thousands) has of politics and the day’s top issues. We’re happy to announce that gone on four of our voyages and knows NR trips are marked by former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and National Review riveting political shoptalk, wonderful socializing, intimate dining senior editor David Pryce-Jones have agreed to come! They’ll be with our editors and speakers, making new friends, rekindling old joining revered columnist and author Mark Steyn, former friendships, and grand cruising. That and so much more are in Senator Fred Thompson, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, store for you on the National Review 2011 Caribbean Cruise. Islam scholar Bernard Lewis, historian Victor Davis Hanson, The best reason to come is the luminaries who will be aboard. esteemed academics James Q. Wilson and Charles Kesler, for- This extraordinary gathering is one of the best-ever ensembles. eign-policy expert Elliott Abrams, columnists Tony Blankley, Cal We guarantee fascinating and informative seminar sessions. Thomas, Mona Charen, and Deroy Murdock, Fox News com- a Revel in Mark Steyn’s ruminations on everything from gag mentator S. E. Cupp, terrorism and legal experts Andrew rules to demogrphics, and his tag-teaming with Jonah Goldberg and Rob Long for a fun-filled “Night JOIN U S FOR SEVEN BALMY DAYS AND COOL C ON SERVAT IVE N IGHT S Owl” humorfest. a Listen as Tim Pawlenty and DAY/DATE PORT ARRIVE DEPART SPECIAL EVENT Fred Thompson provide their SAT/Nov. 12 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 5:00PM evening cocktail reception informed takes on presidential poli- SUN/Nov. 13 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars tics and Capitol Hill, and as John Bolton reflects on the standing of MON/Nov. 14 Grand Turk 7:00AM 3:00PM morning/afternoon seminars the USA as a world power. “Night Owl” session aSome of our primo past cruise TUE/Nov. 15 San Juan 1:00PM 11:00PM morning seminar experiences have been the informed late-night smoker interchanges between Bernard Lewis WED/Nov. 16 St. Thomas 8:00AM 5:00PM morning/afternoon seminars and Victor Davis Hanson on the evening cocktail reception struggle between Islam and the “Night Owl” session West. These academic giants, and THU/Nov. 17 AT SEA morning/afternoon seminars terrorism experts Andy McCarthy FRI/Nov. 18 Half Moon Cay 8:00AM 4:00PM afternoon seminar and John Yoo, will provide their evening cocktail reception razor-sharp insights on America’s SAT/Nov. 19 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 7:00AM Debark dealings in the Middle East and the Muslim world. 2011 caribbean 2-page spread PAWLENTY_carribian 2p+application.qxd 9/13/2011 7:03 PM Page 3

PAWLENTY & ‘P-J’ SIGN ON! PRICES START AT JUST $1899! OVER 285 CABINS RESERVED!

Superior service, gourmet cuisine, elegant accommodations, and great entertainment await you on the beautiful mS Eurodam. Prices are per-person, based on double occupancy, and include port fees, taxes, gratuities, transfers (for those booking airfare through Holland America), all meals, enter- tainment, and admittance to and participation in all NR func- tions. Per-person rates for third/fourth person (in same cabin with two full-fare guests) are: Ages 6 months to 17: $658 Ages 18 and over: $1,108 aWatch Tony Blankley, Ralph Reed, S. E. Cupp, Cal Thomas, DELUXE SUITE Magnificent luxury quarters (528 Mona Charen, Deroy Murdock, John Sununu, and Charmaine sq. ft.) features use of exclusive Neptune Lounge Yoest provide expert analyses of the the conservative movement, and personal concierge, complimentary laun- the GOP, and the day’s top issues. dry, pressing and dry-cleaning service. Large private verandah, king-size bed aEnjoy insightful commentary on American culture from (convertible to 2 twins), whirlpool Andrew Klavan, James Lileks, and Michael Walsh, and a frank bath/shower, dressing room, large sit- look at the academy from James Q. Wilson and Charles Kesler. ting area, DVD, mini-bar, and refrigerator. aPicture Elliott Abrams and David Pryce-Jones discussing for- Category SA eign relations, Kevin Hassett and NRO “Exchequer” Kevin D. DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,499 P/P Williamson tackling the economy, Sally Pipes explaining the SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 6,999 Obama administration’s latest domestic-policy machinations, SUPERIOR SUITE Grand stateroom (392 sq. while Tracie Sharp gives an informed rundown of what ideas are ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed percolating at conservative state think tanks. All that’s in store. (convertible to 2 twin beds), whirlpool aThey’ll be joined in all the elucidating and analyzing by bath/shower, large sitting area, DVD, mini- NR’s editorial heavyweights, including Rich Lowry, Jay bar, refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling windows, and much more. Nordlinger, Ramesh Ponnuru, Kathryn Lopez, Jim Geraghty, John J. Miller, John Derbyshire, Bob Costa, and Roman Genn. Category SS As for the ship: The Eurodam offers well-appointed spacious DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 3,499 P/P staterooms and countless amenities. And it’s affordable—prices SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 5,799 start as low as $1,899 a person. No matter what cabin meets your individual tastes and circumstances, you can be assured the DELUXE OUTSIDE Spacious cabin (241 sq. ft.) features private verandah, queen-size bed (convert- Eurodam and its stellar staff will offer you unsurpassed service, ible to 2 twin beds), bath with shower, sitting sumptuous cuisine, roomy accommodations, and luxury. area, mini-bar, tv, refrigerator, and floor-to- And don’t forget the fantastic itinerary: St. Thomas, Grand ceiling windows. Turk, San Juan, and Holland America’s private island, Half Moon Categories VA / VB / VC Cay (with a must-see-it-to-believe-it blue lagoon!). DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,999 P/P Our 2011 Caribbean Cruise will be remarkable—but then SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 4,399 every NR sojourn is. With a winning program of seminars (we’ll have ten), cocktail parties (three are scheduled—they’re great LARGE OCEAN VIEW Comfortable quarters (190 sq. opportunities to chat and have photos taken with your favorite ft.) features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin conservatives), late-night poolside smokers (featuring world-class beds), bathtub with shower, sitting area, tv, large H. Upmann cigars), and dining with our editors and speakers (on ocean-view windows. two nights)—it’s all something you really must experience. Category D Take the trip of a lifetime with America’s preeminent intellec- DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,399 P/P tuals, policy analysts, and political experts. You can sign up now SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,899 by filling out and and returning the applicaton form on the next page, visiting our dedicated website, www.nrcruise.com (which LARGE INSIDE Cozy but ample cabin quarters (185 sq. ft.) provides complete information about the trip), or by calling features queen-size bed (convertible to 2 twin beds), The Cruise Authority (M-F, 9AM to 5PM EST) bathtub with shower, sitting area, tv. at 1-800-707-1634. Don’t delay! We’ll see you on the Eurodam this Category J DOUBLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 1,899 P/P November! SINGLE OCCUPANCY RATE: $ 2,399 REGISTER NOW: USE THE FORM ON THE NEXT PAGE, VISIT US AT WWW.NRCRUISE.COM OR CALL 800-707-1634 FOR MORE INFORMATION. 2011 caribbean application for magazine_carribian 2p+application_jack.qxd 9/13/2011 7:04 PM Page 1

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American police state had blocked ra - class inequality (Thomas Skidmore), dicalism’s advance. Structural imped- slavery (David Walker), and women’s A Long Red iments to third parties, the nature of oppression (Fanny Wright). The two American immigration, the American most successful 19th-century radicals Sunset frontier, and America’s lack of a feudal were edward Bellamy and Henry George. past have also been mentioned. Since Bellamy’s utopian novel, Looking Back - HARVEY KLEHR the collapse of Communism and the ward, eschewed notions of class strug- conversion of many of europe’s once gle and was permeated with notions proudly militant socialists to free mar- of the Social Gospel. George, whose kets and capitalism, a few people have single-tax program put the blame for had the temerity to wonder whether America’s problems on land specula- the absence of socialism in America tors, appealed powerfully to Irish immi- marked, not its backwardness, but that grants. Large-scale industrialization and of europe. increasingly violent labor confronta- A handful of American writers have tions in the 1880s set the stage for the even taken to proclaiming socialism’s growth of the first substantial radical victory in the U.S. , parties. Radicals were weakened be - the late founder of Democratic Socialists cause of incessant fights between purists of America, proclaimed the AFL-CIO unwilling to compromise and “oppor- American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a America’s disguised socialist vanguard. tunists” willing to accept small, immedi- Nation, by Michael Kazin (Knopf, Michael Denning has claimed victory ate gains. Oddly enough, Kazin never 352 pp., $27.95) for the Left in the battle for American mentions , the leader of cultural hegemony. now comes the lat- the Socialist Labor party, whose talents ne of the hardy staples of est celebratory salute, albeit a far more helped catapult the SLP into prominence American history is the sophisticated and subtle one: Michael and then ensured that it would wallow in question of what happened Kazin’s American Dreamers. sectarian isolation because of his ideo- O to American socialism. As The book has a number of virtues. logical rigidity (he even expelled his the only industrialized nation in the Kazin, a distinguished historian, pro- own son from the party for disagreeing world in which avowedly socialist or vides an entertaining journey through with his interpretation of Marx’s theory Communist parties have never held some of the fascinating byways of of value). power or even seriously contended for Amer ican radicalism, filled with rogues, Kazin’s discussion of the Socialist power, the U.S. has been a persistent idealists, and quacks. (Many of the thorn in the grand Marxist scenario that leading radical figures, he agrees, were had the whole world progressing in - personally eccentric or dogmatic or il- evitably towards a workers’ paradise. If liberal.) His writing is fluid, avoids pro- capitalism was doomed, why were its fessional jargon, and is often witty. gravediggers in the most successful cap- Unlike many of his colleagues in histo- italist nation on earth having so much ry, with whom he shares a left-wing ori- trouble? entation, Kazin is fair to conservative It was a question that worried even critics of radicalism. Marx and engels, although they com- Most important, the book’s general forted themselves with the thought that, thesis is largely accurate. Kazin admits while slightly delayed, American social- that the Left has done far better at There is no ism would imminently spring to life. But changing the moral culture than the other choice. as the years went by and American political or economic system. When it Because, no matter socialism remained a pale shadow of its has won political battles, it has done so how much money counterparts around the world, a minor by attaching itself to some wing of the the government collects, academic industry sprang up to consider American establishment. Where it has politicians will always various explanations for “American championed individual freedom, as in find ways to spend exceptionalism.” All kinds of factors the abolitionist and feminist move- more than they have. have been trotted out, from German ments, it has succeeded in changing the sociologist Werner Sombart’s quip that country. But as individualism has tri- “on the shoals of roast beef and apple umphed, the Left’s collectivist vision of pie, all socialistic utopias founder,” to economic equality and solidarity has implausible claims that a repressive faded. even as the culture celebrates the liberated individual, unions have been Mr. Klehr is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics decimated and the political and econom- and History at Emory University and the co-author ic system has been left largely intact. of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in Many of the stories Kazin tells are America. familiar ones, about crusaders against Available at Amazon.com

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS Party of America reiterates the political od of the Nazi-Soviet pact, against fas- calls them “rebellions”—may have been problems radicals faced. Its base was cism. But anyone who allied himself immediately precipitated by acts of among midwestern Protestants, both with the Communists on any of these police brutality or anger at racism, but skilled workers and tenant farmers, and issues soon learned that their commit- they became orgies of destruction, lay- New York Jewish garment workers; it ment to such causes lasted only so long ing waste to vast stretches of American had messianic visions, but conservative as the needs of Soviet policy permitted cities whose downtowns and businesses social views. Neither its radical wing it. never recovered. The anti-war move- nor its reformist wing could surmount Kazin recognizes that what the ment got the U.S. out of Vietnam, but these internal tensions. had CPUSA did achieve was largely accom- evinced scant interest in the horrors that the most politically successful Socialist plished by deception. Why, then, does he followed in Cambodia. party in the country before , defend most of its members? Part of his Kazin is not surprised by the failure of but the party was destroyed when the ambivalence stems from the same famil- Pres. to meet the high small farmers who formed its core ial connection to the Left that frequently expectations many on the left had for his decided to march on Washington to hinders American historians trying to administration. Obama had ties to com- seize the government after the U.S. make sense of its fealty to a tyrannical munity organizers spawned by the New declared war. The Green Corn Rebellion foreign power: He admits that virtually Left, but the most important elements of (the marchers planned to subsist on corn all of his wife’s family were CPUSA the Left’s political organization had dis- en route) was quickly suppressed and members. Their Communist activity, like appeared into the Democratic party, and socialism in Oklahoma became a distant that of thousands of other decent people, the truly radical independent left-wing memory. must have contributed to a better Amer - groups have been marginalized. Left- In Milwaukee, socialists captured city ica. If their motives were noble, it must wing writers such as Noam Chomsky, hall and remained in power for decades. have been that other Communist party, Naomi Klein, and sell mil- But the largely German brewery work- the one staffed by Stalinoid drones oper- lions of books, but their hatred of their ers at the party’s core were derided by ating out of a walled-off compound own country (Chomsky), lack of an eco- other radicals as “sewer socialists” be - in lower Manhattan, that betrayed the nomic alternative (Klein), or simplistic cause of their inevitable need to focus on dream of utopia. “Manichean fable” (Zinn) have severely the mundane tasks of governing a city. Kazin’s argument for the Commu - limited their political influence. The Even the charismatic national leader of nist impact on American culture is result has been the frustrating failure of the Socialist party, Eugene Debs, was much more persuasive. Communist- the Left to realize most of its collectivist too smitten with Marxist notions of influenced artists, writers, and photogra- plans. the inevitable collapse of capitalism phers—including Woody Guthrie, Yip Having provided a thorough account to accept the idea that political reform Harburg, John Steinbeck, and Dorothea of the ’s failure to make was the best route to victory. And, Lange—created many of the iconic socialism a viable political or economic in his romanticism, Debs embraced works of Depression-era America. But force, Kazin abruptly switches gears in the Industrial Workers of the World the particular radicalism of their works his conclusion. Even though he forth- (the Wobblies), whose bloodcurdling has long since vanished from popular rightly admits that “moral capitalism” is rhetoric thrilled those who hated capital- understanding. Kazin notes the revolu- far better than “authoritarian socialism,” ism but terrified more moderate social- tionary verses excoriating capitalism in he stubbornly insists that we still need a ists. Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” but utopian vision. A campaign for incre- Another wing of the Socialist party 99 percent of Americans who hear the mental change cannot inspire people. also scorned moderation. Around the song take it for a paean to American Without a passionate socialist Left, he turn of the 20th century, a new cultural patriotism. fears, liberal change will not come easi- Left was emerging in America, centered Kazin himself was a Sixties SDS rad- ly. His problem is that far too many in Greenwich Village and championing ical who lived on an Oregon commune. figures in the political movement he modernism in the arts, sexual freedom, He denounces the Maoists and Weather - highlights in American Dreamers either and secularism. Its newspaper, The men as “minute” movements, products embraced authoritarian socialism or had Masses—which was not, Kazin notes, of a “fatal delusion” about how to no compelling answers about how to much read by the masses—scorned com - change America. Their major impact, he avoid it. The socialist economic vision promise, much preferring the Wobblies believes, was to tarnish the anti-war no longer is compelling to socialists; it is to the boring sewer socialists. movement. Again, his personal nostal- hard to understand how it will appeal to The weakest chapter of American gia may have distorted his judgment. many Americans, who for more than two Dreamers is the one dealing with the While only a small fraction of the New centuries have embraced private pro - Communist party. Kazin recognizes that Left fully embraced revolutionary vio- perty, economic liberty, and political lib- the CPUSA was a tool of the Soviet lence, a much larger faction either justi- erty. When American radicals—whether Union, defended one of the worst tyran- fied or apologized for it. And the culture they were abolitionists, feminists, or nies in human history, and included a of drugs, hatred of authority, and con- gays—have agreed to those values, they substantial number of Soviet spies. Yet tempt for “bourgeois” values that the have had an impact on American life. he maintains that its members fought on New Left popularized did far more dam- When they have started preaching col- behalf of civil rights, labor organizing, age to America than Kazin is willing to lectivism, Americans have tuned them and the jobless, and, except for the peri- admit. The urban riots of the 1960s—he out.

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doing. Goeglein’s account is a convinc- careful analysis of law and empirical Bush ing and necessary reminder that, on evidence. some fronts, Bush was a superbly dedi- The author also reminds us that Bush cated and effective conservative presi- stood tall (and with great effectiveness) Reconsidered dent. Goeglein also provides a moving for missile defense and for lower taxes testament, on multiple fronts, to Bush’s and (unsuccessfully but bravely) for QUIN HILLYER essential human decency. Most of all, the reforming Social Security via a system author frequently, and with great elo- of private accounts. Finally, The Man in quence, makes an intellectual and mor - the Middle makes an effective case, too al case for full-throated conservatism little credited by conservatives, that the “with out prefix or suffix,” and outlines president’s overall results in fighting ter- an attractive vision for a conservative rorism were far more admirable than not. American “renaissance.” Goeglein doesn’t admit that the presi- Goeglein’s job as coordinator of the dent stumbled and bumbled frequently administration’s outreach to conservative- in managing the two wars half a world activist groups, combined with an earn - away; but the fact remains, as he re - est and eminently likable personality, counts, that Saddam Hussein, Mullah made him a well-regarded professional Omar, and Moammar Qaddafi all were friend for literally hundreds of right- dangerous threats before Bush’s efforts, The Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of thinking activists. It also meant that his but all were either off the scene or Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era, well-publicized fall from grace in a pla- neutered by the time Bush left office. by Timothy S. Goeglein (B&H, giarism scandal sent waves of disbelief None of this, however, gets to the 241 pp., $19.99) through the conservative-activist world. heart of why this is a valuable book. Its Goeglein forthrightly addresses his cul- best parts are not the testimonials to He late administration of pability, makes no excuses for his dis- Bush, marred as they are by beatifying George W. Bush has found its honesty—and, in an account almost impulses. Instead, the choicest reading Dr. Pangloss. In some respects, chill-inducing, tells of the president’s comes in the form of two charming T that might be a good thing. grace-filled response to the staffer’s deep accounts of Goeglein’s fortuitous friend- Pangloss, of course, was the character transgression. The Bush who emerges ships with conservative giants Russell in Candide who insisted against all con- in this vignette, told at the book’s very Kirk and William F. Buckley Jr., and in trary evidence that we live in “the best of beginning, gives the reader reason to his learned and attractive expositions of all possible worlds.” In this new memoir, excuse the grateful Goeglein’s over- the conservative intellectual tradition Bush’s longtime deputy director of pub- abundant praise for Bush’s job perfor- and its practical applications. lic liaison, Tim Goeglein, paints his mance. A soul redeemed can be forgiven In one long sentence, Goeglein achieves former boss as the best of all possible for looking through rosy lenses at a men- a summation of the cause that, while presidents. Indeed, his account of Bush tor who served as a key vehicle for that hardly original in substance, is about as sometimes borders on hagiography, as redemption. apt and concise as any we are likely to he gushes that in various ways Bush In retrospect, it is undeniable that see: compares well historically with Mar - George W. Bush was the most dedi - garet Thatcher, Winston Churchill, and cated and policy-effective social- The essential nature of 21st-century American conservatism is a view that even George Washington. He also makes conservative president this nation has the federal government is too large and the extravagant claim—ludicrous even known. Goeglein ably recounts Bush’s should be relimited; that governments for those of us who to this day defend the thoughtfully considered decision to like families should live within their decisions to wage war in Afghanistan block federal funding for any new budgets; that the market economy is the and Iraq and who credit Bush for the embryonic-stem-cell research; his road to prosperity and is consistent with famous “surge” in the latter—that Bush largely (but not entirely) realized com- human nature; that our defense budget was “one of our country’s most effective mitment to aiding, rather than discrim- must be robust in defense of our liberty; wartime presidents ever.” Goeglein mar- inating against, faith-based initiatives; that above all we need to preoccupy our- shals little evidence to bolster this extra- his embrace of the cause of traditional selves with the moral framework of our ordinary declaration. marriage; his various protections of freedom; and that we need to preserve To appreciate this book, a reader religious liberty and freedom of con- the values of Western civilization in the Greco-Roman but especially the Judeo- must move beyond this annoying over- science; his dedication (often, but not Christian traditions as the bulwark of enthusiasm and beyond numerous in - always, unyielding) to appointing orig- virtue that nurtures freedom. stances where stronger editing could inalist judges; his life-saving assistance have improved the final product. Mov - for health care in Africa; and his strong If somehow we manage to achieve all ing beyond, however, is well worth stands against abortion. The reader those ends in the American renaissance sees that the president’s stances, contra Tim Goeglein envisions, Dr. Pangloss’s Mr. Hillyer is a senior fellow at the Center for the media image of a fundamentalist assessment of the world would become a Individual Freedom and a senior editor of The yahoo in the Oval Office, grew both happy reality. Goeglein certainly makes American Spectator. from religious conviction and from the reader want to try.

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS In its most effective moments, Steven even a casual encounter with another Film Soderbergh’s star-studded thriller Con - human being. tagion captures exactly this kind of non- Contagion is more like a ripped-from- supernatural horror. The movie has the the-headlines thriller than a Stephen King Going structure of a globalization message mo - novel, so the audience senses that civi- vie like Babel or Syriana or Soderbergh’s lization probably isn’t going to collapse Viral own Traffic, with various big-name actors completely. (The disease’s infection rate, headlining intersecting stories that link established early on, clearly isn’t dire ROSS DOUTHAT bats in Hong Kong to blogs in San Fran - enough for that.) What becomes apparent cisco to public buses in Chicago. But as the story moves along, though, is that ome of the scariest material that Contagion is less sentimentalized and this movie is something more unusual as Stephen King has ever writ- more ruthlessly efficient than its predeces- well: It’s a pro-establishment thriller, in ten—scarier, in its way, than sors in the genre, and for most of its run- which not only scientists but also bureau- S anything in The Shining or ning time its only real message is this: Be crats and federal agents and even the U.S. ’Salem’s Lot or Pet Sematary—is con- Very Afraid, and stock up on Purell. military (embodied by Breaking Bad’s tained in the first hundred-odd pages of The movie opens with a coughing Bryan Cranston, as the rear admiral work- his apocalyptic magnum opus, The Stand. Gwyneth Paltrow, playing an American ing with the CDC) are the good guys, There are no ghouls or vampires in those executive en route home from a casino and instead of the usual run of sinister pages: Just the vivid and remorseless opening in Hong Kong, and taking a lay- military-industrial-complex types the account of how a deadly supervirus, once over in Chicago to reconnect with an old only villain is Law’s rogue blogger, freed from its home in a military labora- flame. Her cuckolded husband, embodied rant ing about a corporate-government by matt Damon, welcomes her back to cover-up while he profits from his own suburban minneapolis soon afterward, mis information. and a few short scenes later she’s dead: I’m of two minds about this theme. It’s Patient Zero in a pandemic that evokes always nice to see Hollywood debunk SARS and H1N1, but proves far deadlier conspiracy theories rather than going than both. all-in for the paranoid style, and there’s From Hong Kong, minneapolis, and something refreshing about a disaster Chicago, the infection ripples outward movie in which human institutions and across Asia and North America, kill - their leaders turn out to be up to the task at ing millions within weeks. Borders are hand, and the fate of the world doesn’t sealed, riots erupt, and the Internet goes end up in the hands of a teenager or a wild with conspiracy theories. In minne - crank scientist or a superhero (or some apolis, a CDC field operative (Kate Win - combination thereof). slet) tries to manage the mounting chaos, on the other hand, the cartoonish con- throwing up makeshift hospitals in ar - trast between Contagion’s blogger vil- mories and schools. In Hong Kong, a lain—the handsome Law is equipped World Health organization official with a snaggled front tooth and the last (marion Cotillard) tries to trace the infec- name Krumwiede, in case we didn’t get tion to its source. In Atlanta, the head of the point—and the heroic bureaucrats the CDC (Laurence Fishburne) tries to of the CDC and the World Health or - coordinate a national response, while one ganization eventually feels absurd in its of his scientists (Jennifer ehle) races to own right. By the time a Homeland develop a vaccine. And from his well- Security agent is telling him, “If I could trafficked Bay Area website, a sinister throw your computer in jail, I would”—a blogger (Jude Law) spreads claims of Big line that’s clearly supposed to inspire Marion Cotillard in Contagion Pharma cover-ups and persuades the suf- cheers from the audience—Contagion’s tory, swiftly joyrides its way across the fering to dose themselves with forsythia pro-establishment bias has stopped seem- continental United States, passing from instead. ing novel, and started seeming a little cop to waitress, patient to doctor, parent to Back in minnesota, Damon’s character, creepy instead. child, as the Centers for Disease Control now a widowed father, supplies the hu - “Nothing spreads like fear,” runs the and the military frantically struggle to man center around which all of this action movie’s tag line, but anyone who thinks catch up. revolves. He’s apparently immune to the that bloggers spread fear more effectively I first read The Stand on a crowded superflu, but his teenage daughter may than the mainstream media has clearly summertime beach many years ago, and not be, and in his efforts to quarantine her never turned on cable television. I can I remember looking up from the novel in the heart of a crowded, increasingly believe that global civilization might be to stare with mounting paranoia at the lawless suburb, we see what a pandemic imperiled by the cross-breeding of a pig . bathers around me, suddenly seeing them looks like on the ground level—from the virus and a bat virus deep in the forests of only as 500 disease vectors baking in the ransacked supermarkets and the emptied east Asia. I’m less persuaded that it’s

WARNER BROS sun. ATms to the rank fear that attaches to imperiled by the blogosphere.

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taken up Mount everest by Sir edmund We had taken up an oil-stove once, but The Straggler Hillary & Co. They must have used their “never again.” . . . I never saw such a ice picks to break the stuff up: as I re - thing as paraffine [sic] oil is to ooze. We member, it had the consistency of gran- kept it in the nose of the boat, and, from Catalog ite.) there, it oozed down to the rudder, im - adult Passive Sedentary Disorder pregnating the whole boat and every- Shopper (aPSD) then set in, and it has been many thing in it on its way, and it oozed over long years since I last struck camp. I the river, and saturated the scenery and spend a night in the family treehouse spoilt the atmosphere. Sometimes a now and then, weather permitting, and westerly oily wind blew, and at other enjoy a very occasional pheasant shoot, times an easterly oily wind, and some- but that’s all of it. Yet still in memory I times it blew a northerly oily wind, hear the call of the wild. and maybe a southerly oily wind; but There are purely imaginative plea- whether it came from the arctic snows, sures to be indulged, too. Could I survive or was raised in the waste of the desert alone for a time in the woods? How long sands, it came alike to us laden with the JOHN DERBYSHIRE a time? What would I need? What’s fragrance of paraffine oil. e do ever more of our available? How much does it cost? and shopping online, I am here’s the Cabela’s catalog with the Footwear is next on my interest list. told. The printed book is answers. again we are two or three design and W facing extinction, I am It’s the “Camping/Backpacking” tab technology revolutions away from the also told. The U.S. Postal Service is in that I turn to first. What advances there army-surplus stiff black-leather boots of dire straits, I am further told. Taken have been! The march of progress is my own hiking days, with triple hobnails together, these facts imply, along of most noticeable in the art of finding your hammered into the leather soles for trac- course with much else, that the big, print- way around in the wild—or more to the tion. Cabela’s offers a whole gallery of ed, mail-delivered store catalog may point, in my experience, trying to avoid footwear for the outdoorsperson: hunt- soon be at one with Nineveh and Tyre. getting lost. The key equipment used to ing boots, snake boots, logger boots, The consumer revolution launched by be a map, a map case (on the usefulness desert boots, and page upon endless page Richard Sears in 1888 will then have run scale, wet maps are down there close to of “hikers.” None of them have hobs; its course. Let us pause, therefore, to the bottom, just above chocolate tea- indeed, none have leather soles into cherish the printed shopping catalog pots), and a Silva compass. which hobs could be nailed. again, noth- while it is still with us. Maps are pretty much gone, other than ing to regret there. If, as advertised, wet The particular one I have just been some “trip planner” atlases and topo- feet have been eliminated from the cherishing is from Cabela’s, the national graphical software. Map cases are more hiker’s life, I’d rate that a civilizational chain of country-sports megastores (in thoroughly gone than that: Cabela’s cat- advance up there with the conquest of which neither NaTIoNaL RevIeW nor I alog doesn’t even have an entry for “map polio. have any financial interest). Cabela’s case.” This whole zone now belongs to activities less familiar to me—bow actually issues an assortment of special- the hand-held GPS gadget. Should a hunting, fishing, canoeing—have their interest catalogs: one for fly fishing, one malicious enemy knock out our GPS own curious gadgets, garments, and for archery, one for camping, and so on. satellites, the following few years will be gear. I did not know until browsing the The one I have on my desk is none of punctuated by periodic news stories of Cabela’s catalog that anglers need no those picayune sub-catalogs. It is the ragged backpackers with foot-long longer rely on intuition and folklore to Spring 2011 Master Catalog: a quarto- beards emerging dazed from our wilder- locate their prey: The Fisheasy 350c size hardback book of 1,364 pages, ness areas like post-war Japanese sol- portable sonar will “display fish targets weighing four and a half pounds, left diers from Philippine jungles. oddly, at higher boat speeds.” Nor need the behind by a visiting friend. What a feast though, the dear old Silva compass is modern Robin Hood depend on his for the idle browser!—at any rate, for the still cataloged. Why? “Inexpensive in - unaided vision: The Ten Point crossbow browser with an interest in the outdoors. surance for those with high-tech navi - comes equipped with a red-dot scope My own interest therein is mostly gational aids.” Much use that will be that “allows you to place the shot exact- theo retical. In my schooldays, and for a without a map . . . and of course a map ly where you want it.” few years thereafter, I hiked energeti - case. Cabela’s catalog is compelling enough cally up and down the mountains of The classic Primus stove fueled with to squeeze a dollar out of even the most Scotland and Wales, spent many a night paraffin (i.e. kerosene) is now an an - reluctant consumer. I have treated myself in tents of various sizes and degrees of tique. Today’s camp stoves are fed from to a camper’s folding cot. (“extreme water resistance, and subsisted for many nifty little gas cylinders. This is no loss at comfort in seconds! 350-lb. weight a day on canned rations, tea made from all. Considered simply as a gadget, the capacity!”) It will be handy for a quick spring water boiled over a Primus stove, Primus stove was a masterpiece of nap in my attic study. Heck, I might even and Kendal Mint Cake. (That last item design, but paraffin is an enemy of hu - take it camping; though then I’ll be need- was an early type of energy bar whose manity, as Jerome K. Jerome explained ing a bivy tent, some hiking boots, one wrapping proudly told of its having been in Three Men in a Boat: of those GPS things . . .

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Happy Warrior BY MARK STEYN Flight

T the start of the summer, I attended a graduation In the second decade of the 21st century, technological in - ceremony in Vermont, for which a bigshot speak- novation means we’re thrilled if Apple invents a device for er had been flown up from New York. “Your downloading Katy Perry that’s an eighth of an inch slimmer A world is changing so fast!” he told them, as is tra- than the previous model. So today, instead of songs for the age ditional on these occasions. of invention, we have inventions for an age of songs. I couldn’t see it myself. For one thing, no matter how fast Most of what we mean by progress in our “fast moving” our world changes, college education seems to get slower world falls into a kind of James Bond gizmo category. Things and slower, judging from the remarkably aged appearance of that half a century back were issued to 007 by Q at the start many of these Green Mountain “youth.” But in a broader of his mission are now available for $19.95 at Wal-Mart: A sense, precisely what is changing so fast? Their first car is no device no bigger than a cigarette lighter enables you to take different from my first car. Which was no different from my top-secret photographs and then communicate directly with grandfather’s first car. To be sure, they’ve dispensed with the HQ as you’re escaping through the air duct. Alas, most of us hand crank and rumble seat and installed a GPS and iPod aren’t secret agents, rappelling into the top-security Soviet dock, but essentially it runs on the same technology as a cen- facility and then skiing off the cliff and hoping the Union tury back. Which are the faster-moving times? Jack parachute opens before the pursuing The age that invents the internal-combustion Russkies’ machine-gun ski poles gun you engine? Or the age that plugs a Justin Bieber Instead of down. It would be exciting to see Anthony download into it? Weiner doing that. But instead he uses his I make a similar argument in my new book, songs for super-secret spy camera to photograph his and I find it’s the part that most annoys those the age of private parts and Tweet them to coeds. folks otherwise supportive of my thesis. After Great! What else can it do? We were told all, they point out from various corners of the invention, the toppling of Mubarak in Egypt was the planet, without the Internet they’d never have “Facebook Revolution.” It sounds so cool heard of me. Fair enough—if your measure we have when you put it like that! But the old phar - of societal progress is more efficient means of inventions aoh’s gone, and his generals are in charge, as Steyn distribution. But I can’t help feeling they have been to one degree or another since there ought to be more to it than that. for an age 1952, and the only difference is that this time Imagine that Vermont class a century ago, round they’ve reached a modus vivendi with the summer of 1911. The Model T had just of songs. the Muslim Brother hood on various issues gone into production a couple of years ear lier, from storming the Zionist embassy to female the age of manned flight had gotten off the ground. And they genital mutilation. A new Face book on old-school clitoridec- had their version of Justin Bieber downloads, too: Do you tomy: That’s cutting edge, for sure. know Lady Gaga’s smash hit “Telephone”? It was the latest In my book, I take an H. G. Wells time traveler, propel him thing for ten minutes a year or so back. But they had telephone forward from his home in 1890 to 1950, and then again from songs at the turn of the 20th century, too! “Hello, Ma Baby!” 1950 to our time. He would conclude, fairly rapidly, that the “Hello, Central, Give Me Heaven.” They had lots of songs first half of the 20th century was the “fast moving” bit. Air about other exciting new inventions, too: There were tele- travel went from Wilbur and Orville to biplanes to flying graph numbers (“There’s a Wireless Station Down in My boats to transatlantic jetliners in its first 50 years, and then for Heart”), automobile numbers (“Come Away with Me, Lu- the next 50 it just sat there, like a commuter twin-prop parked cille, in My Merry Oldsmobile”), aeroplane numbers (“Come, off Gate 27B at LaGuardia waiting for the gate agent to turn Josephine, in My Flying Machine”). There were so many up. Yet that graduation ceremony in Vermont caused me to inventions for singers to sing about, they had no time left to wonder if we’re not stuck in mid-century in a more profound sing about the novelties of their own industry, in which the sense: We have the attitudes not of the young capitalist who wax cylinder was about to be superseded by the 78-rpm builds the assembly line for the mass-production automobile phonograph record. In the years that that Vermont Class of but of the elderly titan half a century later preoccupied with 1911 had been in college, the Nickelodeon had led to a boom his memorial foundation to “effect social change world- in what we would soon call motion pictures. And yet, what wide.” Indeed, in its attitude to both foreign policy and with all the other things going on—with electrification and domestic priorities, America operates less like a nation-state the internal-combustion engine enabling man to conquer both prosecuting its interests and more like one of those non- night and distance, time and space, and other footling stuff— profit foundations funding various unwatchable offerings on these exciting showbiz novelties were generally regarded as PBS. A great nation can coast for a while on the accumulat- peripheral to progress. Instead of the be-all and end-all of it. ed inheritance of a glorious past. But, as the Wright brothers could have explained, gliding doesn’t really meet the defini- Mr. Steyn blogs at SteynOnline. (www.steynonline.com). tion of “fast moving.”

5 2 | www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 3 , 2 0 1 1 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 7/27/2010 4:09 PM Page 1 base_milliken-mar 22.qxd 9/9/2011 3:23 PM Page 1    “ Planning for highly unlikely events makes nuclear energy stronger and safer.”

Norman Tison, Senior Emergency Planner at the River Bend nuclear energy facility in .

ommunities have the right to know the safety record including graded exercises with participating organizations of nuclear energy plants. We’re proud to share it. that are overseen by the independent Nuclear Regulatory C Professionals like Norman Tison work every day to Commission. exceed stringent federal safety standards at America’s nuclear energy facilities. American energy companies are the world leaders in nuclear energy, with 104 reactors producing one-fifth of our electricity. Every U.S. nuclear energy facility has fully integrated Providing affordable electricity and ending our dependence emergency response plans that are developed with federal, on foreign energy sources simply cannot be achieved without state and local o cials and response organizations. These nuclear energy playing a significant role in a balanced plans are continuously updated and tested every two years, energy portfolio.

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