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January 24, 2011 49145 $3.95 KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON’s Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism

Operation Rewind $3.95 04 THE EDITORS

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KNOWLEDGE VIRTUE EXCELLENCE toc_QXP-1127940144.qxp 1/5/2011 1:50 PM Page 1 Contents

JANUARY 24, 2011 | VOLUME LXIII, NO. 1 | www.nationalreview.com

ON THE COVER Page 14 Ramesh Ponnuru on 2012 Operation Rewind p. 18 While we like a good party now and BOOKS, ARTS again, the fact that House Republicans & MANNERS held no official gala to celebrate their accession to the majority in the 47 TWO QUARTS LOW Glenn Harlan Reynolds reviews new Congress reflects both a Gray Lady Down: What the becoming modesty and the Decline and Fall of the New York accurate understanding that it Times Means for America, by William McGowan. is time to get to work. The Editors 48 AGENTS OF INFLUENCE Claire Berlinski reviews The Arab COVER: R.H. PRODUCTIONS/GETTY Lobby: The Invisible Alliance that Undermines America’s ARTICLES Interests in the Middle East, by Mitchell Bard. 18 ADVANTAGE: OBAMA by Ramesh Ponnuru Evicting the president in 2012 will not be easy. 51 TOP DOWN Helen Rittelmeyer reviews Pathology 20 BUDGET WAR by James C. Capretta of the Elites: How the Arrogant Strategy and tactics for the new House majority. Classes Plan to Run Your Life, by Michael Knox Beran.

21 WHAT THE WHIGS KNEW by Richard Lowry 52 PRESENT AT THE CREATION Our economy and culture would benefit from its remembrance. Ryan T. Anderson reviews Origins: How the Nine Months Before 24 RETURNS THE GULAG by David Pryce-Jones Birth Shape the Rest of Our The Khodorkovsky trial exposes the ugly truth of Putin’s Russia. Lives, by Annie Murphy Paul.

54 FILM: OUT OF THE PAST 26 CHILDHOOD, INTERRUPTED by Matthew Shaffer Ross Douthat reviews The King’s In memoriam. Speech and True Grit.

55 THE STRAGGLER: FEATURES SHOVEL READY John Derbyshire fills a hole. 30 SOCIALISM IS BACK by Kevin D. Williamson And it’s in your face. SECTIONS

37 MASTER OF THE SENATE by Robert Costa 2 Letters to the Editor Mitch McConnell gets the job done. 4 The Week 46 The Long View ...... Rob Long 42 ENDANGERED? SPECIOUS by Travis Kavulla 49 Poetry ...... Sarah Ruden Of the ‘northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf’ and similar absurdities. 56 Athwart ...... James Lileks

NATIONAl REvIEw (ISSN: 0028-0038) is published bi-weekly, except for the first issue in January, by NATIONAl REvIEw, Inc., at 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. © National Review, Inc., 2011. Address all editorial mail, manuscripts, letters to the editor, etc., to Editorial Dept., NATIONAl REvIEw, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. Address all subscription mail orders, changes of address, undeliverable copies, etc., to NATIONAl REvIEw, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015; phone, 386-246-0118, Monday–Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. Eastern time. Adjustment requests should be accompanied by a current mailing label or facsimile. Direct classified advertising inquiries to: Classifieds Dept., NATIONAl REvIEw, 215 lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 or call 212-679- 7330. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to NATIONAl REvIEw, Circulation Dept., P. O. Box 433015, Palm Coast, Fla. 32143-3015. Printed in the U.S.A. RATES: $59.00 a year (24 issues). Add $21.50 for Canada and other foreign subscriptions, per year. (All payments in U.S. currency.) The editors cannot be responsible for unsolicited manuscripts or artwork unless return postage or, better, a stamped self-addressed envelope is enclosed. Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. letters--ready_QXP-1127940387.qxp 1/5/2011 1:50 PM Page 2 Letters

JANUARY 24 ISSUE; PRINTED JANUARY 6 Defeats that Weren’t EDITOR Richard Lowry I would like to thank Mackubin Thomas Owens and James S. Robbins—the for- Senior Editors mer for reviewing This Time We Win (“The Tet Myth,” December 20) and the Richard Brookhiser / Jay Nordlinger latter for writing it. When certain of my friends discuss the Vietnam War, two Ramesh Ponnuru / David Pryce-Jones Managing Editor Jason Lee Steorts items that are always brought up are the Tet Offensive and the siege of Khe Sanh. Literary Editor Michael Potemra To hear these liberals tell it, both battles were major American defeats. But in Executive Editor Christopher McEvoy National Correspondent John J. Miller the case of Tet, the people didn’t rise up for the Communists, and when it was Political Reporter Robert Costa Art Director Luba Kolomytseva over, the Viet Cong had been so badly reduced that they never posed a serious Deputy Managing Editors threat for the remainder of America’s involvement in Vietnam; the Viet Cong Fred Schwarz / Kevin D. Williamson Associate Editors and North Vietnamese Army managed to hold no territory for longer than a Helen Rittelmeyer / Robert VerBruggen couple of weeks. In the case of Khe Sanh, when two under-strength Marine Research Director Katherine Connell Research Manager Dorothy McCartney battalions hold—and then, with the help of the Navy and Air Force, break—two Executive Secretary Frances Bronson North Vietnamese divisions, it is not a defeat but a victory. What turned these Assistant to the Editor Christeleny Frangos victories into “defeats” was the bleating of media pundits who had no combat Contributing Editors Robert H. Bork / John Derbyshire experience themselves. Ross Douthat / Rod Dreher / David Frum Roman Genn / Jim Geraghty / Jonah Goldberg In the movie Heartbreak Ridge, Gunnery Sgt. Tom Highway summed up the Florence King / Lawrence Kudlow / Mark R. Levin situation very well when he observed that we may have lost the Vietnam War, Yuval Levin / Rob Long / Jim Manzi Andrew C. McCarthy / Kate O’Beirne but we won all of the battles. America lost Vietnam because it lacked a military David B. Rivkin Jr. objective and had no political will to win, not because it was defeated by the NATIONALREVIEWONLINE enemy’s military force. I worry a similar process may unfold in Afghanistan Editor-at-Large Kathryn Jean Lopez Managing Editor Edward John Craig today, and fear for our soldiers there. Deputy Managing Editor Duncan Currie News Editor Daniel Foster Editorial Associates Roy Jaruk Brian Stewart / Katrina Trinko Web Developer Nathan Goulding Patterson, N.Y. Technical Services Russell Jenkins

EDITORS- AT- LARGE Incoming Linda Bridges / John O’Sullivan Contributors Kevin D. Williamson’s “Welcome to the Machine” is an updated and way cool Hadley Arkes / Baloo / Tom Bethell James Bowman / Priscilla L. Buckley version of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson. If a December 31 edition Eliot A. Cohen / Brian Crozier of NR could be wrapped around a rock and tossed through the window of every Dinesh D’Souza / M. Stanton Evans Chester E. Finn Jr. / Neal B. Freeman regulator’s office, the broken-window fallacy might be refuted. James Gardner / David Gelernter George Gilder / Jeffrey Hart Kevin A. Hassett / Charles R. Kesler Robert Olds David Klinghoffer / Anthony Lejeune St. Augustine, Fla. D. Keith Mano / Michael Novak Alan Reynolds / William A. Rusher Tracy Lee Simmons / Terry Teachout Taki Theodoracopulos / Vin Weber KeVIN D. WIllIAMSON ReplIeS: Aim for their heads. Chief Financial Officer James X. Kilbridge Accounting Manager Galina Veygman Accountant Zofia Baraniak Lincolnomics Treasurer Rose Flynn DeMaio Business Services I have just read with great pleasure Allen C. Alex Batey / Amy Tyler Circulation Director Erik Zenhausern Guelzo’s article “Mr. lincoln’s economics pri - Circulation Manager Jason Ng ATIONAl WORLD WIDE WEB www.nationalreview.com mer” in the December 20 issue of N MAIN NUMBER 212-679-7330 ReVIeW. What wonderful insight Mr. Guezlo SUBSCRIPTION INQUIRIES 386-246-0118 WASHINGTON OFFICE 202-543-9226 brings about our 16th president’s free-market ADVERTISING SALES 212-679-7330 beliefs. I have long considered this aspect of Executive Publisher Scott F. Budd Advertising Director Jim Fowler Honest Abe’s career neglected. Congratulations Advertising Manager Kevin Longstreet to Mr. Guelzo on a job well done. ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Paul Olivett

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n At least she can console herself that she’s still the first female House minority leader.

n President Obama had a good December in the lame-duck ses- sion of the 111th Congress, signing a 9/11 first-responders bill, a new START treaty, and a repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military. The first-responders bill, despite its name, is a slab of New York City pork allowing first respon- ders, Manhattanites, and their trial lawyers to file claims for 20 more years. The START treaty had serious advocates (Henry Kissinger); its critics argued, plausibly, that in the vain hope of making nice with an increasingly post-post-Soviet Russia, it puts us on a path that will limit our missile-defense capabilities. DADT repeal heedlessly burdened a military engaged in two wars. Obama’s successes remind conservatives and Repub - licans that even a weakened president is still the big dog in American politics. Not as big as he was, though. Obama extend- ed the Bush tax cuts in a deal with the congressional GOP that reflected its new clout, and Congress failed to enact DREAM (the amnesty program for young illegal immigrants) and a grotesque $1 trillion omnibus spending bill slapped together by Harry Reid. And starting now, Reid’s majority shrinks, John Boehner takes the speaker’s chair—and Obama’s leash shortens.

n Congress’s repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” removes one of the grounds for a great divorce in American life: the sundering of military service and elite education. In the late Sixties and electoral votes) could prove decisive. Yet the long-term picture Seventies, ROTC was kicked off Ivy League and other high- is more complicated. About three-quarters of the last decade’s end campuses because of student protests against the draft and population growth was the result of immigration. In time, these the Vietnam War. Since 1993, the Ivies could point to DADT as newcomers could tip Arizona, Florida, and Nevada into the ongoing justification for the ban. ROTC students at ROTC-less Democratic column. For now, at least, one fact is indisputable: schools are treated as aliens, obliged to do their training at People who vote with their feet prefer to live in Republican less-bigoted campuses nearby. Gay rights is a fig leaf; the Ivies jurisdictions. didn’t like ROTC because of misplaced snobbery (ROTC courses were not as rigorous as, say, cultural studies) and sheer n Because state and local governments have neither the guts to pacifism. The separation is mean-spirited, parochial, and an say no to their rapacious employees nor the testicular fortitude affront to the example of Lt. George H. W. Bush (Yale ’48), to tax their constituents to make good on their promises to the Lt. John F. Kennedy (Harvard ’40), and Gen. Alexander union goons, they face a pension crisis. A big one: They are Hamilton (King’s College, now Columbia—never graduated more than $3 trillion short, with the states of Illinois and because he quit to join an artillery company). May it end soon. California on the verge of crisis, and large cities, including Pittsburgh and San Diego, teetering on insolvency. Rep. Devin n As the 2010 census counted more than 308 million people in Nunes, a California Republican, already detects the stirrings of the United States, it also showed them shifting away from a government-employee-pension bailout, and has introduced Democratic bastions in the Northeast and toward Republican legislation that will force state legislatures and city halls to strongholds in the South and West. States that voted for John clean up their acts and disclose their real liabilities. More McCain in 2008 will gain six seats in Congress as well as six important, the bill prohibits the federal government from bail- electoral votes in presidential elections. This bodes well for the ing out insolvent pension funds. That is critical: Questions of near-term prospects of the GOP. Republican strength in the local responsibility aside, transferring those liabilities from the states may squeeze more than a six-seat bonus out of redistrict- states and cities to the national balance sheet would very likely ing. And if the 2012 election is close, the increase of Texas (four speed up the deterioration of our already limping federal

ROMAN GENN new electoral votes) or the decrease of New York (two fewer finances, to potentially catastrophic effect. Paul Ryan and

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THE WEEK Darrell Issa already are on board, and their Republican Palin’s salubrious skepticism of government intrusion into pri- colleagues would do well to make passing Nunes’s Public vate dietary affairs than by the busybody campaigns reflecting, Employee Pension Transparency Act a first-order priority in as Palin put it, “some politician’s—or politician’s wife’s—pri- the new Congress. orities.” We are more interested in seeing Americans do some- thing about big government than in seeing government do n President Obama says his “attitudes” toward same-sex mar- something about big Americans. riage are “evolving.” To say that he is telegraphing a flip-flop is to understate the cynicism of the gesture. The truth is that the n Star quarterback Michael Vick served 19 months in prison president’s opposition to same-sex marriage has never been for running a dog-fighting ring and brutally killing the losers. anything more than rhetorical. He openly supported same-sex Since his release he has played two seasons for the Philadelphia marriage when he was appealing to left-wingers at the start of Eagles, showing his old prowess, and done volunteer work for his political career. While claiming to be opposed to it in sub- the Humane Society. A sad crime; a penalty paid. President sequent years, he has also opposed doing anything to stop it. Obama inserted himself into the story when, in the course of a Thus when California’s supreme court read same-sex marriage conversation with Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie, he commended into the state constitution, he opposed a ballot initiative to take him for hiring Vick. “It’s never a level playing field for prison- it out. He opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, which protects ers when they get out of jail,” Obama said. As ethnic politics, states from having to recognize same-sex marriages contracted Obama’s call was needless—black people surely remember elsewhere. His administration, in the course of supposedly that he is black. As a social lesson, it was pointless. Vick is a defending that law in court, has abandoned arguments that young specialist who became a wealthy man, and who will re - courts had previously used to uphold it—and a federal judge main one—not the typical released prisoner. He can put his life cited its weak showing as a reason for striking down the law. So back together without cheerleading from the White House. what the president is really saying is that he will stop even pre- tending to oppose same-sex marriage the moment the polls n On Labor Day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew indicate it is safe to do so. Nobody who has been paying atten- Cuomo published an op-ed in the New York Daily News that, tion needed the hint. though making many rhetorical genuflections, said what had once been sayable only by New York’s conservative think n Arlen Specter used his last speech in the Senate to decry the tanks: “Public employees unions must make sacrifices.” And “sophisticated cannibalism” now allegedly rampant in the Cuomo has kept up the pleasant surprises post–blowout elec- Republican party he abandoned. In particular he condemned tion. “The words ‘government in Albany’ have become a Republicans who supported primary candidacies against in - national punchline,” he acknowledged at his January 1 inaugu- cumbents. Nobody other than an incumbent can possibly ration, a symbolically terse one. “This state has no future if it is believe that as a matter of principle it is wrong to support such going to be the tax capital of the nation.” He then gave himself challengers. Did Ed Schultz, the MSNBC host who lauded a 5 percent pay cut and requested a one-year government- Specter’s speech in a later interview, raise a peep when Ned employee pay freeze. Maybe only Andrew Cuomo—a creature Lamont challenged Joe Lieberman from the left? But then of the Albany Democratic-machine/public-sector-union com- Specter may not quite grasp what a principle is. plex—can solve the bloated-government crisis that his father’s governorship, seminal in the creation of the union-kickback system that has enabled Democratic ascendance in Albany, wrought. We hope Cuomo II will keep his harsh word—but hope rarely triumphs over experience.

n New York City got 20 inches of snow after Christmas, made worse by high winds and drifting—and still worse by a tardy cleanup that left New Yorkers, especially in the outer bor- oughs, marooned and furious. The blizzard of ’10 hurt Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s reputation for managerial competence, his great strength (he has no others). New Yorkers put up with his unpleasant personality and increasingly annoying hobby- n Sarah Palin’s bracing contempt for Washington’s official horses—bike lanes, trans-fat bans—because he ran the ordi- pieties has brought her into conflict with First Lunchlady nary operations of the city well. No more. They may conclude Michelle Obama, Surrogate Mother and Scold-in-Chief, over that he spends too much time on national politics to do his job. our nation’s chubby children. Palin, preparing s’mores during (Time to relabel No Labels “No Plowing”?) The blizzard also NEWSCOM an episode of her reality-television show (which is an odd thing crystallized public anger at public-sector unions. A city coun- / ZUMA

to write about a potential presidential candidate), joked that the cilman, Dan Halloran (R., Queens), claimed that sanitation : gooey treat was “in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the men told him there had been a de facto work slowdown “to other day we should not have dessert.” That brought down the make the mayor pay” for recent layoffs. These were trivial: AP OBAMA wrath of all Washington’s holy, who complained that Mrs. 400 firings and 100 demotions out of a workforce of 6,300. / Obama had not literally condemned dessert and that Palin What will the public-sector unions do when real cuts have PAT SULLIVAN

insufficiently appreciates the gravity of the obesity epidemic. to be made, as surely they will (and soon)? Pray for global :

But the health of the body politic probably is better served by warming. PALIN

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THE WEEK n The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a ruling that Roman crosses (and other religious symbols, including Stars privately erected crosses on Utah highways bearing the names of David), do not by any means constitute an endorsement of of deceased police officers violate the establishment clause of faith; they simply recognize it, and mark the fallen. the First Amendment. The Denver court found that juxtaposing crosses and the insignia of the highway patrol creates “the n We’ve been beating the hell out of the Taliban in and around impermissible effect of conveying to the reasonable observer its traditional stronghold of Kandahar. A mid-level Taliban the message that the state prefers or otherwise endorses a commander quoted by the New York Times complained that certain religion.” This fails the very “reasonable man” test on “the government has the upper hand now.” The conventional which the appeals court relies. At Arlington National Cemetery, wisdom about the war hasn’t yet caught up with this military

Ivy Chase

T is the time of year when high-school seniors zip for a private institution it is $171,026. The higher tuition at uncountable college applications across the country. top schools brings diminishing returns. I Many yearn to be accepted in top private colleges and While annual ROI is a useful measure of bang for the universities such as Harvard or Williams and fear that buck, one caveat is in order. Even though the rates of they might get stuck at a lowly “state school.” return are lower for private schools, they are compound- This bias is age-old, and was perhaps most succinctly ing off of an investment that is larger, so the actual cash described by Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that “in large haul associated with a private college education can be states public education will always be mediocre, for the higher. For example, a person with an MIT degree can same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually expect to earn about $1.7 million more than a high- bad.” school graduate over the next 30 years, while a graduate But are public universities in the U.S. really that bad? of the Georgia Institute of Technology will see a return of A new study by the website Payscale.com analyzed a $1.1 million more over the same period. massive data set representing millions of observations Neither number is chump change, and the relatively and estimated the rate of return on investment in higher high returns for the public universities mark them as first- education for people who attended a wide array of U.S. rate investments. The University of Virginia and Williams colleges and universities. College, for example, provide almost exactly the same Payscale has a large database of wage and salary 30-year income. data, allowing it to compare the pay of workers who So if you are anxious this application season, relax. In attended, say, the University of Florida with that of a con- most cases, the impact of ending up at a state school trol group of high-school graduates and then estimate rather than a “first choice” will be small indeed. what the typical student gets out of her investment in col- lege. The calculations are done for a very large sample of —KEVIN A. HASSETT U.S. institutions of higher learning, so one can compare the annualized return on investment (ROI) for public and Top Ten Public and Private Colleges by private universities. Annual Return on Investment The results, which are summarized in the nearby chart, are startling. The public institutions trounce the private Annual 30-Year Average Return on Return on Cost ones in terms of the percentage return on investment. Investment Investment With the exception of Brigham Young University, which is 14% $180,000 $1,600,000 $160,000 somewhat unrepresentative because it receives much 12% $1,400,000 support from the Mormon Church, the top 16 rates of $140,000 $1,200,000 10% return were all posted by public institutions. $120,000 To see how much this turns conventional wisdom on $1,000,000 8% $100,000 its head, consider that the 15th-place institution is the $800,000 University of Delaware, the 16th is the University of 6% $80,000 $600,000 $60,000 California at San Diego, and the 17th and 18th places are 4% $400,000 held by Caltech and MIT. $40,000 2% All told, the average annual ROI for the top ten public $20,000 $200,000

institutions is 13.4 percent. The average annual ROI for 0% $0 $0

the top ten private institutions is 12.3 percent. Public Private The chart also provides a clue about why the public institutions are such good buys. The average total cost NOTE: AVERAGE-COST DATA ARE AS OF 2009; 30-YEAR RETURN ON INVESTMENT IS IN 2010 DOLLARS for a bachelor’s degree from a public institution is $83,695; SOURCE: PAYSCALE.COM

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THE WEEK progress—a phenomenon that General Petraeus must consider n International pressure is mounting to create a state of standard operating procedure by now. The corruption and unre- Palestine. Palestinian leaders are laying down numerous pre- liability of Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the double- conditions, and one of them is that their state must be racially dealing and instability of our ally Pakistan remain, of course, pure. Hamas spokesmen in Gaza quite straightforwardly enormous problems. They aren’t susceptible to any easy solu- propose to achieve this through genocide. Speaking as leader tion, but we can at least minimize the hedging of Karzai and the of the movement’s military wing, Muhammad Deif informs Pakistanis if we convince them that we intend to stay until we Israelis that they have “no right to even an inch” of land but are finish the job. It helps that the administration has walked back “on the path to extinction.” For another Hamas leader, Ahmed its self-defeating July 2011 deadline for the beginning of with- al-Jaabari, Israelis face only the choice of “death or exile.” The drawal; it doesn’t help that Vice President Biden says the new future state will consist of the West Bank alone, however, as deadline of 2014 will bring the withdrawal of all U.S. troops Mahmoud Abbas, its titular president, wages undeclared war come “hell or high water.” Biden has an infallible instinct for against Hamas and cannot even return to his house in Gaza. saying whatever is most foolish or damaging. Regardless, But he shares their racism. In the event that there is a Pales - events on the ground show that the futility of this war has been tinian state, he emphasized at a press conference, “we won’t greatly exaggerated. agree to the presence of one Israeli in it.” The Germans had a word for that. n Iraq managed to form a multiethnic coalition government, and its security has continued to improve even as U.S. troop n Morgan Tsvangirai is the prime minister of Zimbabwe and levels have declined to 50,000. This is all to the good. But the leader of the democratic opposition: the opposition to the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the Wall Street Journal he president and strongman, Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai is one of has no interest in negotiating a new status-of-forces agreement the bravest men in Africa, or anywhere. As the Zimbabwe Mail with the United States and wants all of our troops out by the put it, “Tsvangirai has survived several attempts on his life, end of the year, when the current agreement expires. Such a had his wife killed in an ‘accident’ and was a hunted man for U.S. exit would signal to the region our lack of staying power, years. Only the unwaiving attention of the world’s powers kept which is one reason that Iran will pull all available political him alive.” He will need such attention now. In a conversation levers within Iraq to try to make it happen. If Iraq is more with American and European diplomats, he said that he sup- Brave democrats are in jeopardy in Zimbabwe while Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, accepts applause and largesse as a freedom fighter.

peaceful and stable than anyone had a right to expect after it ported sanctions on Mugabe and his cronies, because they descended into sectarian bloodletting in 2006, it’s still fragile. were forcing concessions from them. He could not support the U.S. troops have been helping patrol the border with Kurdistan sanctions in public, however, because Mugabe had succeeded in the north; their absence would make Arab–Kurdish conflict in painting them as anti-Zimbabwe instead of anti-regime. more likely. The administration must do all it can to convince How do we know about this conversation? Because a U.S. Maliki to think again. diplomat memorialized it in a cable, and this was one of the thousands of such cables released by WikiLeaks. Tsvangirai n The Christmas season brought murderous attacks on will now be investigated for treason, and faces the death penal- Christians in Iraq, the Philippines, Nigeria, and Egypt. A visi- ty. The Zimbabwe Mail said, “Wikileaks may have just signed bly distressed Pope Benedict spoke publicly of “these absurd Morgan Tsvangirai’s death warrant. It will take an enormous acts of violence.” In all cases, Islamist extremists have con- effort on the part of the diplomatic corps of many nations to vinced themselves that they are restoring the caliphate, and if prevent that.” Let them make that effort, then. It seems strange, Christians will not submit, then they must be killed or driven doesn’t it? Brave democrats are in jeopardy while Julian out. The Christians of Iraq have understood the message, and Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, accepts applause and largesse some two-thirds of the community—more than half a million as a freedom fighter. people—have fled. Now it is the turn of the Christian Copts in Egypt, thought to be about 8 million strong, or 10 percent of n “Come clamb zeh kheel vid me, bebby!” Who could resist the population. On New Year’s Eve in Alexandria, the coun- such an enticement? Not any Russian citizen desirous of re - try’s largest city after Cairo, a suicide bomber self-detonated at maining at liberty, for the enticer there was Supreme-Leader-for- the end of Mass, killing 21 and wounding 97. Even before this Life Vladimir Putin. The kheel, sorry hill, in question was the outrage Copts had been regularly targeted, and churches set on Blueberry Hill made most famous by Fats Domino in his 1956 fire. In power for 30 years, President Mubarak has made sure R&B hit song of that name. Vlad was crooning the classic to a to clamp down hard on Islamists, but now he is 82 and not well. celebrity audience at a charity show in St. Petersburg on Dec. 10. He and his son are already deep in a struggle for power with The enthusiastic attendees included Goldie Hawn, Kevin the Islamists. These parishioners may be casualties of that Costner, Sharon Stone, and other American showbiz luminaries. struggle. Among Russians not present were Anna Politkovskaya, Natalia

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THE WEEK Estemirova, and the scores of other journalists and activists mur- the Christmas tree erected behind Hitler. In these photographs dered since Putin took charge. Nor was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Hitler, Goering, and others can be identified already looking Russia’s most humane and capable but least Putin-compliant gloomy—as well they might. entrepreneur, in the audience. He was in jail awaiting sentence— delivered three weeks later—on preposterous, rigged-up charges. n Several years ago, the government of Romania officially (For more on these acts of oppression, see David Pryce-Jones’s registered its first practitioner of witchcraft. The nation’s spell- article on page 24.) As Putin crooned to the worshipful celebs: casters rejoiced in their newfound recognition (something “Oll of zose vows ve made vair neveh to be.” the burgeoning local vampire population can only envy), but it was a poisoned chalice, because we all know what inevitably n The town of Trevélez, in the hills of Granada province, comes next. Sure enough, authorities have announced that southern Spain, is famous for its air-cured hams. A school- Romania will start imposing an annual tax on witches to prac- teacher in the neighboring province of Cádiz told his tice their profession. Infuriated sorceresses have reacted as students about this in a geography class, explaining that you’d expect; one told a popular website that “she plans to cast the cold, dry climate of Trevélez is ideal for the curing a spell using black pepper and yeast to create discord in the process. A Muslim student objected to hearing the word government”—something that, in Romania, is about as dif- “ham,” as his religion taught that the pig is unclean. ficult as creating government overspending is in the U.S. We The teacher said that he was simply giving an exam- join, a bit less dramatically, in the protest against this soak-the- ple. The student reported the incident to his parents, witch mentality, and caution that if Romania goes any further who called the police, who went to the school in merging medieval occult thaumaturgy with modern liberal and took a statement from the teacher. A democracy, it will soon require reflective tape on black robes, prosecution was threatened under Article sanitary inspections for eye of newt, and full-body scans 525 of the Spanish penal code, which before flying on broomsticks. makes it a crime to “offend the feel- ings of the members of a religious n The “Vows” column in the Sunday New York Times selects one confession,” but the complaint was newlywed couple per week for in-depth coverage. Readers thus dismissed. Still, the law includes learn, not just that another administrative assistant–slash‒artist no exception for, and thus encour- has married another lawyer with a social conscience, but that he ages, the hypersensitive and the pretended to enjoy bowling on their first date and she gushed deranged. about him to her girlfriends afterwards. But one recent column was a little different: The bride and groom got to know each other n We recently (“The Week,” December 31) had occasion to at school functions for their children, while married to other peo- report that shark attacks near the Egyptian resort of Sharm el- ple. True, such things happen every day, and if the newlyweds’ Sheikh were being blamed, by Egyptian experts and officials, soul-searching (“Were we brave enough?”) and rationalizations on Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. We now learn that (“We’re going to have a big, noisy, rich life, with more love and similar urban legends about Mossad siccing animals on Arabs more people in it”) are not exactly on par with Madame Bovary, are commonplace around the Middle East, frequently rising to that makes them no less sincere. Yet telling the whole world the level of being soberly reported by Arabic-language news about it in the New York Times ratifies a cultural shift from the outlets. In May 2006, the International Middle East Media old-fashioned notion of marriage as commitment to the 21st- Center, a Palestinian outlet, reported that the Israeli Army had century view of marriage as self-fulfillment. So we can’t help released herds of wild boar into Palestinian districts to ravage wondering whether, as the bride “donned a Nicole Miller strap- crops and threaten residents. In July 2008, the Palestinian less gown for a small ceremony in the presidential suite of the Authority’s official news agency, Wafa, alleged that Israel was Mandarin Oriental New York hotel” and the pair exchanged using poison-resistant rats to drive Arab families out of their vows, the “till death do us part” clause may have lacked just a homes in the Old City of Jerusalem. (How Mossad taught the bit of conviction. rats to distinguish between the district’s Arab and Jewish pop- ulations was not explained.) Boars, rats, sharks—has Mossad n Ezra Klein, Washington Post blogger, was commenting on recruited Dr. Doolittle to talk to the animals? Yet these tales MSNBC’s Daily Rundown about House GOP promises to are widely credited among Arabs—just one more reminder judge proposed laws by their fealty to the Constitution. Klein that in dealing with the Middle East, rationality should not said it was all a gimmick. The problem with “the Constitution be assumed. is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago, and what people believe it says differs n The fashion of calling Christmas the “winter solstice” began from person to person . . .” Anything one hundred years old with Hitler. He liked to hold that Christianity had weakened must seem very old to Klein, who is 26—it is almost four the human spirit, and wished that Europe had instead adopted times as old as he is! Since the Constitution was actually writ- militant Islam. His Third Reich introduced pagan festivals. ten 223 years ago, it is even older—about nine times as old as Photographs taken by Hugo Jaeger, one of his several official Klein. Who can understand such old things? “The wise man’s photographers, have just come to light showing Hitler and his eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness: and I cronies celebrating Christmas in a Munich beer cellar in 1941. myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all.” Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, emerges as the Norse god of war That is from Ecclesiastes (2:14)—and we won’t even tell him Odin, and a swastika replaces the customary angel at the top of how old that is.

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THE WEEK n Hugh Hefner, fugleman of the post-war sexual revolution, has become engaged at age 84. The lucky lady is former Play - POLITICS mate of the Month Crystal Harris, who is 24. “I don’t notice the Operation Rewind age difference with Hef at all,” avers the bride. Uh-huh. A summer wedding at the Playboy Mansion in los Angeles is HIle we like a good party now and again, the fact planned. The glamour of the thing was compromised somewhat that House Republicans held no official gala to cel- by concurrent revelations from ex-Playmate Izabella St. James, W ebrate their accession to the majority in the new who described the fabled Mansion as a squalid, smelly dump Congress reflects both a becoming modesty and the accurate with dog poop on the carpets, and Hefner’s deportment in the understanding that it is time to get to work. John Boehner, now activity for which he is best known as having put her in mind of speaker, acknowledged on election Night that in modern a dead fish. But let’s not be cynical at a nuptial announcement; America the president, for the most part, sets the agenda. His let’s hope that amor vincit omnia is the appropriate latin here, job—and that of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, and not Juvenal’s Tenth Satire. of their Republican colleagues—is to work with President Obama where constructive cooperation is possible, and to n Roger Milliken, a South Carolina textile magnate who begin making the case for starting on a better agenda than his died in late December, was an enthusiastic supporter of con - in 2013. servative causes, helping to establish Young Americans for Undoing Obamacare must be near the very top of that agen- Freedom and serving on the board of the Heritage Foundation, da, and House Republicans were right to announce that they among many other things. He was a leading force behind would hold a vote on repeal in their first days on the job. The the revival and eventual dominance of South Carolina’s law weakens our economy by adding to the cost of employ- Republican party, though he broke with the GOP over its sup- ment. It threatens our already-parlous fiscal condition by port for free trade (Milliken chaired the “Crafted with Pride in creating a new entitlement and only pretending to pay for it. It the USA” campaign) and supported Ross Perot for his anti- staves off real Medicare reform by relying on price controls. It NAFTA stance. He was a gifted and ethical businessman impedes upward mobility by raising effective marginal tax whose company won awards for quality control and recogni- rates on low- and middle-income workers. It promises to retard tion for its treatment of employees and environmental prac- medical innovation. And it is flatly inconsistent with the tices. During his half century of service to Wofford College, constitutional design. he led the drive to integrate the school, pledging to make up The health-care legislation is also an integrated plan that any donations lost because of the move. Here at NATIONAl cannot be fixed piecemeal or more than modestly improved. RevIeW, Milliken, a 1937 Yale graduate, is best remembered Republicans should not be intimidated by polls that appear to for providing generous and indispensable financial support; show that this or that aspect of the law is popular. Those fea- during the magazine’s shaky early years, scarcely an issue tures of the bill are inseparable from its least popular provi- was without a full-page advertisement from Deering-Milliken sions, the package as a whole remains unpopular, and there is Research Corp. Dead at 95, R.I.P. no reason to expect that to change any time soon. The ban on insurers’ taking account of sickness when offering policies and setting rates is popular in isolation, for example, but in order to work, it requires making the purchase of government- n Alfred Kahn may have been something of a radical—a approved insurance compulsory. student of Joseph Schumpeter’s, he brought a tingly jolt Senate Democrats and the president will block full repeal, of “creative destruction” to everything he touched in gov- but Republicans should not let the struggle end there. Repub - ernment—but he was guided by a deeply conservative licans should next attack Obamacare’s sources of funding. principle: “Society’s choices are always between or They could offer legislation to repeal the bill’s taxes on med- among imperfect systems.” After achieving the deregula- ical devices, for example, and make up for the lost revenue tion of airfares, which saves American consumers billions by delaying Obamacare’s subsidies. Another bill could undo of dollars a year to this day, during his time as head of the Obamacare’s cuts in Medicare Advantage and recoup the Civil Aeronautics Board in the 1970s, Kahn did some- money the same way. Still another could bar Obamacare from thing most of the big talkers in politics only give speech- funding abortions (an amendment to that effect passed by a es about: He shut the doors, overseeing the closure of the large margin in a heavily Democratic House in 2009, but did agency. His deregulatory model not make it into the final law). These bills would put support- was later applied with great suc- ers of the health-care law in a very tough spot. They would cess and even more significant also keep the controversy over Obamacare from fading. What results to telecommunica tions. opponents of the law have to fear is not that it will become Fellow economist Thomas more popular but that the public will become resigned to it— Haz lett reports that the 93- that it will come to be seen as inevitable, like death and taxes. year-old Kahn spent his last Republicans ought to keep hope (for repeal) alive. days working on a new article, On spending in general, the Republicans have to favor and then playing the piano and CORBIS repeal as well. Non-security discretionary spending increased / singing with friends after falling 24 percent over the last two years, not counting the stimulus. ill. R.I.P. The run-up in the budget of federal departments has been

spectacular: Since 2007, the Department of labor is up WALLY MCNAMEE

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THE WEEK 340 percent, the Department of Commerce 158 percent, the over time will put them in the position of defending an unac- Depart ment of Energy 90 percent, the Department of Agri- ceptable and unpopular status quo. culture 68 percent, and so on. House Republicans are commit- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac represent unfinished business. ted to taking this portion of the federal government back to They were significant contributors to the financial crisis but 2008 levels. It is only a $500 billion slice of a $4 trillion bud- have not undergone serious reform. Republicans ought to put get, but cutting that slice by 20 percent will be a significant, them on a path to privatization or elimination—and should nay unprecedented, accomplishment. Every inertial force in consult extensively with Peter Wallison, an American Enter - Washington will resist this effort, not least the United States prise Institute scholar who sounded the alarm about the Senate. government-sponsored enterprises early and has developed Conservatives will have two points of leverage in the spring, several options for moving to a market-based system of hous- but should be careful to use them with care. The debt ceiling ing finance. One promising idea is to shrink the companies’ must be raised—since there is no chance that the deficit is presence in the market by gradually reducing the size of mort- going to be brought down to zero in short order—and a new gages they are allowed to buy. They could then eventually be spending bill must be passed to keep the government from dismantled without disrupting the housing market. Studies shutting down. It will be tempting to use these must-have have shown that Fannie and Freddie have done little to reduce pieces of legislation to bend the federal budget to conserva- mortgage rates or increase homeownership, and claims that tives’ will in one fell swoop. But one lesson from Newt they are necessary to stabilize the market are at this point a sick Gingrich’s battles with President Clinton in the mid-1990s joke. Who needs them? Not a reformist, free-market-minded is that whichever side seems most eager to risk default or a House majority. shutdown will lose. Limited-government conservatism only The new chairman of the House Oversight and Gov- recently recovered from that earlier defeat. But getting nothing ernment Reform Committee, Darrell Issa, is making Fannie in return for passing these bills would also be a mistake. Our and Freddie one of his first targets for hearings, appropriate- preference would be to couple them with caps on discretionary ly. All signs are that he will be extremely energetic on all spending that last several years. fronts, giving the administration a strong dose of the account- If nothing else, the new Congress will stop Obama’s legislative agenda cold, and that in itself is a wondrous change from the last two years of arrogant and overweening liberalism.

The long-term driver of our debt crisis is not discretionary ability it has not gotten from the legislative branch over the spending but entitlements. One of the most heartening devel- last two years. As long as he does not get diverted into opments of the midterm elections was the success of several obsessing over minute scandals, as congressional Repub - candidates who campaigned on entitlement reform, including licans did too often in the 1990s, Issa’s work will be welcome new senators Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul. In and important. the House the reformers are led by new Budget Committee Speaking of scandal, Republicans must have zero tolerance chairman Paul Ryan. Unfortunately these reformers are still for it in their own ranks. Every new majority comes in pledg- in a minority of Republican congressmen, most of whom do ing purity. Then human nature intervenes. It is always easy not understand the issues nearly as well—an ignorance they to find an excuse for giving your own side a pass—personal share with the public. If President Obama proposes real reform relationships and political considerations crowd out ethics and of Medicare and Social Security, Republicans should by all standards. The last Republican majority slid down this path means work with him. They should not, however, hand the until it became a watchword for corruption. The Tea Party Democrats an opportunity to demagogue without the prospect movement is partly a reaction against that self-serving politics, of actually enacting reform. If President Obama refuses to lead and Republicans had best not forget it. on the old-age entitlements, Republicans should concentrate We should not end on an admonitory note, though. Instead, on getting the discretionary portions of the budget, and perhaps pause to consider that even before they arrived in Washington, Medicaid, under control. the new Republicans had effectively ended most earmarks, Tax reform probably also requires presidential leadership— forced President Obama to accept an extension of all the Bush but Republicans can move the cause forward by advancing tax cuts, and dealt Senate appropriators a stunning setback by proposals to make the tax code less hostile to economic growth defeating a $1.1 trillion omnibus bill in the lame-duck session. and middle-class families. Capping the deduction for state and If nothing else, the new Congress will stop Obama’s legislative local taxes, pruning back the mortgage-interest deduction, and agenda cold, and that in itself is a wondrous change from broadening the top tax bracket to include more people should the last two years of arrogant and overweening liberalism. all be on the table, and any proceeds should go toward cutting Operation Rewind can’t truly succeed without a Republican taxes on investment and expanding the child tax credit. president in 2013. If congressional Republicans help set the Republicans should not allow their message on taxes to consist table for one, they will have done their part in inaugurating wholly of the permanent extension of the Bush tax rates, which a historic era of conservative reform.

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want the Democrats to have a free hand. Voters did not have to believe that Re - publicans were ready to govern to want them as a check on liberalism. That’s why it did not matter that voters had a nega - tive impression of Republicans. In 2012, though, Republicans will have to per suade Americans that they want Republican gov ernance, and at a time when unpleas- ant memories of the last bout of Repub - lican governance will still be pretty fresh in voters’ minds. In 2009 and 2010, liberalism was on the march. Passage of the stimulus and a sweeping health-care law, along with the threatened passage of cap-and-trade, card check, and other liberal priorities, pro- voked a reaction at the polls among con- Advantage: Obama servatives and independent voters. But the 2010 election ended the march. A large Evicting the president in 2012 will not be easy Republican majority in the house guar - antees that major new liberal legislation BY RAMESH PONNURU will not pass in the next two years. Con - servatives will have less reason to vote, and independents less reason to vote he overhyped political story of Obama has to be considered likely to join Republican. The intensity of the opposi- the moment is President Obama’s the winners. tion to the growth of government can be supposed comeback. That story Republicans don’t want to hear this. expected to drop. T notes that just weeks after his They tend to think of the Democratic Republican strategist Ralph Reed draws midterm “shellacking” he won congres- blowouts of 2006 and 2008 as aberrations a parallel to the last time a Democratic sional approval for a deal on taxes, the caused by President Bush’s unconserva - president sought reelection with a Repub - New START treaty, and a bill to let gays tism, the financial crisis, and the Iraq War. lican house. “If the economy rebounds and lesbians serve openly in the military. They see the 2010 election as a return to and it looks like Republicans will pick up But these victories do not have much bear- normality in a center-right country. The the Senate, it will get tougher at the presi- ing on whether Obama will be reelected in Census report at the end of 2010, which dential level. That hurt us with Clinton in 2012. Liberals are happier with Obama confirmed that Republican-leaning states 1996. It was harder to make the case he now that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is history, are growing and will gain electoral votes, had to be stopped because in a sense he but they were always going to be with reinforced this view. Many Democrats had already been stopped.” him in 2012. There may not be a voter in implicitly adhere to a mirror-image theory A Republican house, and the prospect America who is going to cast his ballot on of recent elections according to which the of a unified Republican government in the basis of New START. And the tax deal 2006 and 2008 results reflected long-term 2013, will meanwhile increase the intensi- does not fundamentally change the terms demographic changes that favor them ty of opposition to cutting government. of the next presidential election’s eco- while the 2010 election was an aberration even at the height of public concern about nomic debate. caused by a bad economy. big government in 2010, voters remained None of this is to say that Republicans Split the difference: 2006 and 2008 strongly opposed to cuts in Medicare and can rest easy. Quite the contrary: The flaw were unusually Democratic years and Social Security. If Republican budget- in the comeback story is that President 2010 an unusually Republican one. We writers propose such cuts—or propose Obama has never had very far to come don’t know what kind of year 2012 will anything that Democrats and the media back. his job-approval numbers are in, be, because we don’t know, among other can characterize that way—they will be in and have never dipped below, the mid-40s. things, how the economy will look to vot- great political peril. Republican voters are That’s not terrible, especially when you ers in the middle of the year and whether older than average. But timid budget cuts consider the high unemployment rate the world will seem more or less threat - may dispirit the tea partiers. If they are so and the unpopularity of the stimulus and ening. But the educated guesses we can timid that Obama agrees to most of them, health-care bills. We should also keep in make suggest that winning the presidential he will seem even less problematic to the mind the extraordinary power of sitting race in 2012 is going to be a lot harder for voters who recoiled from his 2009–10 presidents to set the agenda, frame issues, Republicans than winning the state and agenda. and take credit for achievements. In - local races in 2010 was. In 2010 Republicans could win without cumbents have run in ten of the presiden- In 2010, Republicans needed to per- having much to say about how to revive tial elections since World War II and won suade the public that it did not want con- wage growth, what Obamacare should

seven of them. At this point, President tinued liberal governance—that it did not be replaced with, or whether reforms are ROMAN GENN

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necessary to cut the cost of higher educa- mittee chairman John Kasich pushed tion. A relatively narrow message about the through an aggressive balanced-budget growth of federal spending was sufficient Budget War plan with deep cuts in domestic spend- to carry the day. Changed circumstances ing, including in Medicare and Medi - mean it probably won’t be enough in 2012. Strategy and tactics for caid. The Republican presidential nominee the new House majority The problem was not with the sub- will have some freedom to broaden the stance of their proposal. The Clinton party message. But that nominee will also BY JAMES C. CAPRETTA administration launched a predictable have a record, and other attributes, that barrage of attacks on the budget plan, Obama can mine for attacks. In 2010, HE 2010 midterm election was arguing that devastation would follow if Republicans did better in the House elec- a decisive victory for Re pub - Gingrich got his way, but Republicans tions than in the Senate elections. Perhaps licans. From where they now were largely able to weather that politi- T sit—with a strong majority in cal storm. Democrats got the upper hand that’s because in lower-profile races the voters were picking the party that best the House and a much-improved posi- only after Republicans allowed the per- expressed their political mood, while in tion in the Senate—they can finally pro- ception to harden that they were eager statewide races with a lot of ad money vide an effective counter to the Obama to shut down the government just to get they were more attentive to the particular administration. At a minimum, their their way. As the shutdown lengthened, foibles of individual candidates. increased numbers in Congress should public pressure built for the government The presidential race will of course be put a stop to the hyper-activist period to reopen, and the Republican ranks higher-profile, and more ad-intensive, ushered in by President Obama’s inaugu- began to splinter. Eventually, Congress than any of the congressional races of ration. For that alone, many voters will was forced to give in to many of Clinton’s 2010. Republican pollster David Winston be grateful that the Republicans are back spending demands. cautions that Republicans in 2012 have in positions of power and relieved that Clinton carried the resulting momen- to “make this about issues, not person - the recent period of unchecked liberal tum to reelection later in 1996—and the alities.” Democrats, who regard the Re - dominance at both ends of Pennsylvania Republican majority lost its stomach for pub lican field as weak, will not oblige. Avenue is over. budget fights. Instead, it overcompen- Finally, there is the question of turnout. But Republicans will need to do more sated for its mistakes by avoiding any Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore points than just block the never-ending Demo - confrontation whatsoever with the pres- out that while there has long been a differ- cratic quest for more government. They ident. The result was a steady stream of ence between the presidential electorate will need to present their own agenda, spending increases, all approved by a and the midterm electorate—the latter especially in the House, and especially Republican Congress. being whiter, older, and more prosper- with respect to spending—the issue that To win this time around, Republicans ous—that difference has only recently so animated their supporters throughout need to convince voters, especially in - acquired a strongly partisan dimension. 2010. dependents, that their plan is one of The midterm electorate is demograph- Republicans will need to weigh the sensible, pragmatic stewardship of the ically more likely to vote Republican. So competing risks they now face. Voters taxpayers’ money, and that the presi - the question, as Kilgore notes, is not returned them to power, but they cannot dent and his allies in Congress instead whether Obama can get blacks and young have forgotten that Republicans con- are intent on continuing their reckless whites to vote for him in greater num- trolled Congress for a dozen years not so spending binge. They will have the bers than they voted for Democrats in long ago and participated enthusias- opportunity to begin drawing that dis- 2010. It’s how many more of them he can tically in several substantial spending tinction with the 2011 budget. The lame- count on. increases along the way. The first prior- duck 111th Congress tried to pass a In 2010, Republicans proved that they ity for the new House majority must be monstrous, bloated, earmark-laden could beat Obama so long as he was not to reestablish Republicans’ spending- omni bus appropriations measure, just on the ballot. But they can’t repeal restraint credentials. Republicans need before adjourning, to fund the govern- Obamacare, change the direction of the to show the electorate that they have ment through September. Thankfully, courts, rein in regulatory agencies, or set learned their lesson and are willing to some wavering Senate Republicans foreign policy without actually defeat- implement real cuts in spending. came to their senses and blocked the ing him. At the same time, they must go into effort at the last minute. The result is To win in 2012, Republicans need to the budget battles aware that some tac- that the government is now operating hold the states that went for McCain in tics are more dangerous politically than under a continuing resolution (CR), 2008 and pick up six Obama states: others. That shouldn’t be too hard, since which means agencies are operating at Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, many of them were in Congress the last their 2010 levels in the early months of Virginia, and either Iowa, Colorado, time their party went from the minority fiscal year 2011. The current CR expires Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, Wis con - to the majority, in 1995. At that time, in early March. sin, or Pennsylvania. That would be dif- Newt Gingrich and House Budget Com - Instead of writing their own version ficult but not impossible. Intrade.com, a of a 2,000-page omnibus spending betting market, puts the Democrats’ Mr. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy measure—a project that would surely chances of holding the White House at Center. He was an associate director of the Office of take months, not weeks—House Repub - 57 percent. Sounds about right. Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004. licans, working with their counterparts

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in the senate, should focus on extending fortable position. voters delivered a the CR (perhaps with a reduction below stinging rebuke to big-spending Dem - 2010 levels) all the way through the fis- ocrats in November: Do those who what the cal year. that would allow them to escaped in 2010 really want to carry the demonstrate their commitment to keep- big-spending label into the 2012 elec- whigs knew ing the government open, even as they tion? Republicans could very well find impose some spending discipline. a sizable number of Democrats willing Our economy and culture would obama would be hard pressed to find a and even eager to work with them on benefit from its remembrance compelling rationale to block such an a package of cuts. if that is the case, approach. But regardless of what the Republicans should welcome them— BY RICHARD LOWRY president does (by either signing or veto- indeed they should do whatever can ing a full-year CR), House Republicans be done, short of abandoning principle, va Moskowitz is a traditional, should make it clear they have no inten- to bring as many as possible on board down-the-line Democrat in al - tion of shutting down the government, their effort. the best outcome for Re - most every respect. she’s a Jew - by passing as many CRs as necessary to pub licans would be a strong bipartisan E ish New Yorker from a family of keep it running. coalition in support of a significant FDR liberals. “My grandmother would true, funding government at current spending-cut package, with opposition turn over in her grave if she knew i was levels is not significant spending re - coming only from the most entrenched being interviewed by your publication,” straint, and would not satisfy those in liberals in washington, one of whom is she told me last year. the tea Party movement who expect Barack obama. But Moskowitz is hated by one of the much more from the new House and Cutting back on domestic appropria- most important bastions of the liberal Congress. Republicans will therefore tions won’t balance the budget. that establishment in New York—the teacher’s need to assemble right away an ambi- will require more far-reaching health- union. as a member of the New York City tious and far-reaching rescissions pack- care and entitlement reforms. Later Council, she subjected the union and its age that would cut some programs and this spring, Rep. Paul Ryan will present absurd work rules to searing public hear- agencies far below their 2010 funding a budget plan to the House Budget ings. Defeated for higher office—the levels. Here, Republicans should be as Committee. inevitably, that plan will be union nuked her bid for Manhattan bor- aggressive as their numbers allow. viewed as the Republican alternative to ough president—she took her revenge by they should start with the low- the obama budget, and Ryan is likely to starting a chain of charter schools in hanging fruit: reducing the costs of the push his colleagues to be bold in what Harlem that have put the public-school federal payroll (with hiring and pay they propose. that means repealing system to shame. freezes), eliminating earmark funding, obamacare and replacing it with a re - Moskowitz combines a fiery faith in canceling any remaining funds from formed Medicare and other measures the ability of all children to learn with a the stimulus bill, and defunding public that promote cost-conscious consumers traditional—nay, downright retrograde— broadcasting. But the Republicans and a functioning marketplace. it means means of molding them into successful shouldn’t stop there. they need to ter- embracing social security reforms that students. the New York Times describes minate low-value programs and agen- promote personal savings, longer work- the educational philosophy of her Harlem cies in other parts of the government ing lives, and less reliance by high-wage success academy as “a mix of the liberal too, such as job training and education, workers on government pensions. En- Bank street College of Education ap - business subsidies through the small dorsing such reforms will carry sub - proach and the traditional Catholic school Business administration, and certain stantial political risks, but it will also model.” welfare programs with long track demonstrate that Republicans have a “Parents must sign the network’s ‘con- records of failure or mediocrity. these credible plan to bring long-term spend- tract,’ a promise to get children to class on cuts could be coupled with new, en- ing in line with available revenue, which time and in blue-and-orange uniform, forceable caps on appropriated spending is absolutely necessary to head off fiscal guarantee homework, and attend all fam- that would lock in the spending cuts calamity. and there’s never been a better ily events,” New York magazine explains. over a number of years. time to offer such ideas, since the presi- Children who defy the school’s strict rules the savings would not be trivial. Cuts dent’s own debt commission has recent- must show up for “saturday academy” of tens of billions of dollars in 2011 are ly recommended social security and together with their parents. New students entirely possible, especially given the health-care-entitlement cuts. get instruction on how to walk appropri- large run-up in spending since 2008. First things first: Decisions need to be ately in the school’s “zero noise” hallways Deep cuts in appropriations that were made about 2011 funding. that presents and how to engage in active listening— implemented this year could save tax- an opportunity for Republicans. they “legs crossed, hands folded, eyes tracking payers hundreds of billions of dollars need to get off on the right foot, and they the speaker.” over the coming decade. can do that by demonstrating their com- a nun somewhere is beaming with No doubt such a package would meet mitment to cut appropriated spending pride. Moskowitz realizes that learning stiff resistance from most Democrats, right away, even as they also recognize depends on certain virtues—engagement and certainly from President obama. that the battle they are in is a long one— and responsibility on the part of parents; But it would also put many Democrats one they will ultimately win only if the self-control and respect for rules on the from moderate districts in an uncom- public is on their side. part of children. Her schools are a con-

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veyor­belt­for­those­virtues,­inculcating ­ism,­the­Second­Great­Awakening—and run­counter­to­these­virtues­and­make­it them­in­children­and­parents­alike.­Does styled­themselves­the­defenders­of­middle- difficult­to­succeed­in­a­capitalist­society. this­make­Moskowitz­a­liberal­or­a­con- class­morality.­They­were­the­“sober,­in­- It­tends­to­create­a­society­whose­dys- servative?­Arguably­it­makes­her­a­19th- dustrious,­thriving”­people,­in­the­words function­is­a­constant­call­on­government. century­American­Whig. of­one­contemporary­observer.­Their­cul- The­opposite­of­this­vision­is­not­liber- Today,­what­we­tend­to­know­about tural­agenda­could­be­patronizing­and tarianism.­It­is­a­limited-government­con- the­Whigs­is­that­they­went­defunct,­so restrictive,­and­put­too­much­faith­in­the servatism­that­is­fully­cognizant­of­the that­“going­the­way­of­the­Whigs”­is ability­of­institutions­to­remake­human moral­basis­of­a­robust­middle-class­so­- something­to­be­assiduously­avoided. nature.­But­at­its­bottom,­Howe­writes,­the ciety­and­willing­to­support­it.­A­con­- But­the­Whigs­had­a­profound­under- agenda­featured­“self-denial,­self-help, servatism­that­wants­both­to­reduce standing­of­the­moral­underpinnings­of self-control.” dependence­on­government­and­to­foster a­capitalist­society­that­we­should­recall The­early­Abraham­Lincoln­was­a­char- social­mobility­cannot­be­indifferent­to and­revivify.­ acteristic­Whig­in­his­beliefs,­and­in­his the­cultural­health­of­the­nation,­especial- The­Whigs­are­hard­to­pin­down­in personal­story.­Abstemious,­honest,­and ly­to­the­health­of­the­institution­of­mar- terms­of­contemporary­political­taxono- devoted­to­orderliness­and­the­law,­he­was riage­that­is­the­seedbed­of­so­many­social my.­In­very­rough­shorthand,­one­might determined­to­reach­beyond­his­benighted virtues. say­that­they­supported­the­“positive upbringing­on­a­subsistence­farm.­“The In­their­book,­Creating an Opportunity liberal­state”­(affirmatively­working­to way­for­a­young­man­to­rise,”­he­main- Society,­Brookings­Institution­scholars in­crease­opportunity­and­promote­the tained,­“is­to­improve­himself­every­way Ron­Haskins­and­Isabel­Sawhill­write­of public­welfare),­while­the­Democrats he­can.”­Lincoln’s­Republicans­shed­the the­importance­of­the­basic­norms­of­grad- believed­in­the­“negative­liberal­state” elitism­and­condescension­of­Whiggery uating­from­high­school,­working­full (leaving­people­to­their­own­devices).­The and­reconciled­it­with­Jacksonian­dem­- time­(assuming­a­job­is­available),­and­not great­historian­of­the­Whigs­Daniel ocracy.­“They­argued,”­Howe­writes, having­children­out­of­wedlock.­“Families Walker­Howe­objects­to­this­schema, “that­America­ought­to­become­a­classless that­adhere­to­these­norms­or­expectations though,­because­it­makes­Whigs­sound society,­in­which­individual­initiative­and have­a­very­high­probability­of­entering too­much­like­contemporary­liberals. hard­work­received­their­just­reward­when the­middle­class,”­they­write.­“Indeed, “Most­deeply­separating­the­Whigs­from the­laborer­became­a­capitalist­in­his­own adhering­to­all­three­norms­virtually­elim- twentieth-century­liberals,”­Howe­writes right.”­Lincoln­exemplified­and­promoted inates­the­possibility­of­a­family­living in­his­1979­book­The Political Culture of this­ideal­of­social­mobility. below­the­poverty­line.” the American Whigs,­“were­their­moral The­enduring­insight­of­the­Whigs­is But­these­norms­are­eroding­among absolutism,­their­paternalism,­and­their that­a­dynamic­capitalist­society­depends what­University­of­Virginia­scholar­Brad­- concern­with­imposing­discipline.” on­character,­and­on­character-shaping ford­Wilcox­calls­the­“solid­middle”­in­his Conservatives­will­rightly­recoil­from institutions.­Today,­preserving­such­a disturbing­new­study,­“When­Marriage much­of­the­old­Whig­program:­the­subsi- society­is­not­merely­a­matter­of­limiting Disappears.”­These­are­“moderately­edu- dies­for­business,­the­protective­tariff,­the government­and­its­dampening­effect­on cated”­people­who­have­a­high-school emphasis­on­government­planning.­It’s enterprise,­but­of­fostering­individuals degree­and­perhaps­some­college,­but hard­to­imagine­a­less­congenial­senti- who­are­disciplined,­ambitious,­and not­a­four-year­degree.­They­are­58­per- ment­than­that­of­Whig­hero­Henry­Clay skilled­enough­to­rise­within­it.­The­fight cent­of­the­population,­and­increasingly during­the­Panic­of­1837­when­he­said against­excessive­government­is­only­part subject­to­the­inexorable­unwinding­of­the that­people­were­“entitled­to­the­protect- of­the­battle. American­family.­According­to­Wilcox, ing­care­of­a­paternal­government.” America­has­become­a­less­mobile 73­percent­of­the­moderately­educated The­Whigs,­though,­had­a­more­robust- society­because­so­many­people­have­lost were­in­intact­first­marriages­in­the­1970s; ly­dynamic­vision­of­capitalism­than­the touch­with­the­Whiggish­virtues,­and­even now­it’s­45­percent.­In­1982,­13­percent Democrats­of­the­time.­The­Whigs­want- more­basic­ones.­Society’s­most­impor- of­their­births­were­out­of­wedlock;­now ed­a­diversified,­modern­economy­while tant­character-forming­and­-reinforcing it’s­44­percent. the­Democrats­were­stuck­on­a­Jeffer­- institution,­marriage,­is­in­retreat­among This­is­bad­for­men,­and­bad­for­chil- sonian­vision­dominated­by­yeoman­far­- everyone­outside­college­graduates.­This dren.­ Wilcox­ notes­ that­ marriage­ en­- mers.­The­Whigs­celebrated­enterprise retreat­is­why­we­have­a­semi-permanent courages­habits­that­make­men­more and­economic­growth,­while­the­Dem­- underclass,­and­it­contributes­to­the­strug- productive—they­earn­more­than­single ocrats­tended­to­worry­about­their­unfor- gles­of­the­working­class.­The­dependence men­with­comparable­education­and­work tunate­side­effects.­And­the­Whigs­had­a on­government­of­able-bodied­adults­is histories.­As­for­children,­those­who­are­in keener­appreciation­of­what­it­took­for almost­entirely­a­cultural­phenomenon; two-parent­households­are­more­likely­“to capitalism­to­thrive.­“Whigs­correctly the­economic­stagnation­of­the­working graduate­from­high­school,­finish­college, perceived,”­Howe­writes,­“that­the­diver- class­is­partly­one. become­gainfully­employed,­and­enjoy sified­capitalistic­social­order­they­wanted The­Left­has­no­interest­in­hearing­this. a­stable­family­life­themselves.”­In­other required­a­population­that­was­literate, It­champions­what­can­be­thought­of­as words,­more­likely­to­honor­the­norms ambitious,­and­disciplined.” a­libertine­statism—an­expansive­govern- crucial­to­thriving­in­contemporary­Amer­- The­Whigs­were­aligned­with­the­reli- ment­that­is­neutral­or­hostile­toward­tra- ica.­ gious­Right­of­the­day—the­makers­of ditional­virtues.­It­offers­dependence­on This­puts­in­perspective­the­role­of that­eruption­of­evangelical­Protes­tant­- the­state­to­those­whose­disorderly­lives limiting­government.­We­could­cut­the

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federal government back to 18 percent of as such, provided they did what they were GDP—and should—but if marriage were told. As president, he had a proposition: to continue to break down, we’d still end Returns the They could keep their money, however up with a less dynamic and more stratified they had come by it, so long as they stayed society. we could continue with the feder- Gulag out of politics. The majority of oligarchs al government at 25 percent of GDP and have accepted the bargain and do as Putin if marriage patterns were to revert to The Khodorkovsky trial exposes the bids. whether out of arrogance or public those of the 1950s, we’d experience a ugly truth of Putin’s Russia spirit, Khodorkovsky instead began to wind fall of social capital—less poverty, fund opposition parties and candidates. more work effort, and more children pre- BY DAVID PRYCE-JONES That initiative was to end in his arrest on pared to succeed. his plane. Alas, the vitally important issue of mar- ow extraordinary, and how In Stalin’s day, the victims of the notor - riage is practically taboo in American pol- ominous, that Russia is still the ious show trials were accused of treason. itics, even among conservative politicians stage for show trials. This time, The charge of tax evasion is now the (with a few exceptions). It’s easier to talk H the victims are Mikhail Kho - means to the same end of false incrimi - exclusively about the size of government, dor kovsky and his business partner nation. In an initial show trial in 2005, because it doesn’t leave you open to Platon Lebedev. once they were both well Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were found charges of hypocrisy over your own fail- known, indeed when Khodorkovsky was guilty of fraud and tax evasion, and sen- ings, and it doesn’t risk sounding judg- chairman of the oil company Yukos he tenced to nine years in prison (later re - mental of people’s personal lives. The is said to have been the richest man in duced to eight), back-dated to 2003. At breakdown of marriage is also a deeply Russia. Then one day in 2003 armed men auctions directed by the Kremlin, the ingrained social phenomenon with no pulled him off his private plane and his assets of Yukos were sold to the Russian ready solutions. ordeal began. state’s oil company, in effect renationaliz- what government can do—and it’s Khodorkovsky’s fortune had come ing what had briefly been private property. inherently marginal—is to tell people that about through the collapse of Commu - Like generations of Russians before them, marriage is important. Robert Rector of nism. In a moment of high drama and Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were sent to the Heritage Foundation suggests a multi- hope, Boris Yeltsin succeeded in opening prison camps, the former to Krasno ka - pronged effort, mostly involving already- a new political course for the country. mensk in Siberia near the Chinese border, existing programs: telling kids in high President of post-Soviet Russia in the the latter to Yamalo-Nenets beyond the school of the disastrous consequences 1990s, he had to manage the transition Arctic Circle. Family members on a visit for their lives of having children out of from the command economy to capital- to this latter-day Gulag must endure a wedlock; running a public ad campaign— ism; and one indispensable measure was journey of 19 hours. signs on buses and the like—touting mar- the sale of state assets. Khodorkovsky was out of sight, the two prisoners were not riage as the best tool for fighting poverty; one of the emerging oligarchs with the out of mind. Putin has been preparing forcing Title X birth-control clinics, wits to take advantage of an arbitrary his future status. The Russian constitution where poor and working-class women go process of redistributing property. Yukos specifies that the president may serve only for birth control, to provide information was a company with oil concessions, and two consecutive terms of four years each, about the importance of marriage; reduc- he was able to buy it for a fraction of its and Putin was duly in office from 2000 to ing the rewards of single parenthood in value, and build it up to a nominal worth 2008. The constitution did not anticipate the welfare system. of $23 billion. that a former president might enjoy two will this move the needle on marriage? well-meaning and willing to experi- more terms so long as somebody else has we won’t know until we try. we’ve done ment, Yeltsin was nevertheless a man held the office in the interim. Putin has much more to try to change attitudes and formed by the past and the Communist let it be known that he intends to become behavior (successfully) regarding matters Party. He seems to have seen something of president again from 2012 to 2020 by that are much less momentous, from himself in Vladimir Putin, then a run-of- means of this clever dodge. All he has smoking to recycling. If only the ingredi- the-mill KGB officer who had attached had to do is make his temporary gift of the ents of middle-class morality—not just himself to the power brokers known presidency to Dmitri Medvedev, previous- marriage, but delayed gratification gener- as “the Yeltsin family.” At any rate he ly his deputy prime minister and a man not ally, including thrift—were such a public groomed Putin to be his successor and in yet seen to have taken an independent line focus. 1999 duly appointed him president, as on anything. In today’s Russia, these two Rightly understood, a socially conserv- though the office were in his personal gift. have swapped offices as easily as children ative agenda that concerns itself with the In the judgment of oleg Gordievsky, the playing musical chairs. The presidential health of our culture dovetails with a fis- KGB colonel who defected to Britain and election is due next year, by which time cally conservative agenda that concerns is now one of Putin’s most incisive critics, Khodorkovsky ought to be at liberty. Safer itself with the health of our economy; this was the “catastrophic mistake” that to have another show trial and keep the the work of both serves to preserve and has returned Russia to its bad old ways. fellow in Siberia rather than run the risk enhance opportunity in America. The Khodorkovsky and Putin were both on that he might want revenge and mobilize quality of a capitalist society depends on the make, two of a kind on their way to opposition. its human fiber. That’s what the whigs the top, potentially associates rather than So the two accused have been obliged knew. rivals. Putin had nothing against oligarchs to appear once again in a Moscow court-

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room, constrained in bullet-proof cages Moscow as persona non grata are treated around which were grouped a dozen as heroes. policemen and special forces in black Russians will say that it is the equivalent Childhood, combat fatigues and armed with auto - of a death warrant if the man in the Krem - matic weapons. With shaven heads, grey lin merely complains about some opponent Interrupted faces, drab T-shirts, and no collar or tie, the or critic. In a notorious case, Alexander two men even had the air of zeks, to bor- Litvinenko, an exile in London, was poi- In memoriam row the term for Gulag prisoners immor- soned by radioactive material traceable to talized by Solzhenitsyn. The prosecution Russian agents. On his deathbed he openly BY MATTHEW SHAFFER had trumped up yet more charges of mis- accused Putin of murdering him. Recently appropriating inconceivable billions of Viktor and Marina Kalashnikov, exiles in N August 21 I finished mov- dollars, and called for a six-year extension Germany and critics of the Kremlin, have ing in to my first apartment in of their sentence—which would have the also claimed to be victims of poisoning. New York, and stared at my merit of keeping them far away while O ceiling, and felt what I tried Anna Politkovskaya of Novaya Gazeta Putin consolidates his presidential tri- consistently exposed Russian war crimes to feel the night after graduation when, umph. The judge, a youngish apparatchik, in Chechnya, until she was gunned down in disobedient to tradition, I wouldn’t faithfully followed instructions, and Putin her apartment building in 2006. Attacks on smash my church pipe, and was too gave him a helping hand by saying at a journalists, lawyers, and troublemakers are hurried to feel in the road trips and press conference shortly before the sen- so numerous that they often go unreported. fellowships that followed—Yale and tencing, “Thieves must be behind bars.” Among prominent personalities murdered childhood were over. That night, down He has also been comparing the two in in 2009 were Sulim Yamadayev, a potential Manhattan and across the Hudson, my court to Bernard Madoff. No surprises, president of Chechnya who had fled to oldest brother, Christopher, fell over in then: The judge’s verdict was indeed that Dubai; the human-rights activists Natalia his apartment in Hoboken and died. another six years be added to the sentence. Estemirova and Stanislav Markelov; and Christmas Eve marked 29 years since “May you and your offspring be cursed!” the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. The last case my parents carried him from the hos - shouted a woman in the room, thought to is particularly sinister. He was 37, and pital to their first house, decorated by be Khodorkovsky’s mother. Out in the healthy. When he reported evidence that friends with “To Mary and David a street, riot police arrested a few protesters. a gang of officials had perpetrated a huge child is born.” Our childhood was Novaya Gazeta is a rare media outlet fraud on Western investors, he was himself Edenic (or maybe it’s the other way that Putin has not yet brought under state arrested, taken to the Butyrka prison in around and the myth universally fasci- control, and this latest show trial prompted Moscow, and in due course found dead in a nates because it retells every story of one of its journalists to look for conso - dungeon there. The guilty are neither iden- childhood lost). I was the fourth, and lation: “Still, this isn’t 1937 anymore.” tified nor brought to justice. Brute power unintended, child—but my parents re - Judicial terrorism is not leading to judicial is final. joiced in being so overburdened. My execution as in the past, it is true, but the What happened to the journalist Oleg father called us his “nice little pile of trial has confirmed that Putin is the final Kashin only a few weeks ago is typical. kids,” and we were often literally in a arbiter of ownership and title to property, He had written an article about a protest pile when our parents came home at and that law is what he decides it to be. to a planned road from Moscow to St. dusk and we ran to their knees. Our Communism in practice was nothing Petersburg that involved cutting down a childhood happiness was that every sin- but the exercise of brute power, for which forest. An oligarch crony of Putin’s is gle thing—our pillow forts and igloos Marxism-Leninism provided the requisite financing this project, and this summer and bike jumps—was done for its own ideological support. A Stalinist nostalgia Putin shut down discussion by declaring, sake. In adulthood, parties become net- hangs about today’s parades and com- “All decisions have been made.” Attack - working for Mammon, play becomes memorations, sporting events, youth ers caught Kashin in front of his apartment exercise for the body—everything be - move ments, rigged elections, and even in central Moscow and broke his jaw and comes an instrument for a nameless this show trial, but that does not amount to one of his legs, fractured his skull, and par- end which is eternally postponed and an ersatz ideology or replacement version tially tore off his fingers so that one of never enjoyed. But for us, there was of Marxism-Leninism. The greater glory them had to be amputated. no future, only imminent joy, because of Putin’s Russia rests on brute power As a precaution, Khodorkovsky’s son we thought childhood would never be alone, and it is a matter of indifference if Pavel lives in New York. In an interview interrupted. outsiders see this as crime and a menace. with London’s Sunday Telegraph just Why store for winter in endless sum- Russia invaded Georgia and occupies after the judge’s verdict of six more years, mer? some of its territory; terrorizes the Cau - he said, “My father runs a very high risk of Every day now is a new rupture. casus; does violence to former Soviet being killed,” and added, “The Litvinenko Christopher saw me born and held me republics such as Ukraine and Estonia; case is certainly on my mind.” Uproar and sends aircraft to test Western de - over this show trial is resounding around Mr. Shaffer is a William F. Buckley Fellow at the fenses in the old Cold War style. As many the world, but any hope of justice and the National Review Institute. A version of this piece Russian spies are said to be operating in rule of law in Putin’s Russia, of pardon or appeared in the Yale Daily News, after graduated the United States and Britain as in Soviet even the mitigation of brute power, is former columnists were asked to write about their days. Those exposed and sent back to wishful thinking. lives “newly beyond the gates of Yale.”

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through my first steps, so his living pres- awaiting some important arrival, but of families so late—what vanity, so differ- ence wasn’t so much a fact of the world what I can’t remember. But then Pat’s ent from my childhood. And the greatest as a quality of my universe. Every day face contorts, and Kathleen buries her city in the world is polluted as the city now his death must be relearned, his head in her arms, and I see what they that killed my brother. name moved in my mental account from see—a black and wolfishly narrow van One of the old Buckley stories passed the column of the living to that of the with opaque windows silently slouches around the NAtIONAl REvIEW office is dead. Every day the raw fact startles me, up the driveway and stops the wind. I about the letter an admiring boy sent again. turn back to my siblings, and Pat and Bill, requesting advice for growing up. I wanted them to have something Kathleen cry, but Chris just stares at the the preeminent sesquipedalian replied, to remember Christopher by, so I said van, motionless and pacific, as the sun - “Don’t.” I forward his advice to Yale something unusual in my eulogy, the set gilds his cheeks with slight regret, seniors contemplating graduation from opposite of what people usually say: and he almost smiles. And then I re - college, which, for good and bad, is ex - Christopher’s death made perfect sense. mem ber what happened and what the tended childhood. Children think they Because it would make sense that before van means, and I hug the grass and the want to grow up, but once we do we all He put our souls in our infant bodies, dream ends. want childhood back. Young couples, God gave us a choice between an or - Sleep is actually a relief from the mod- as soon as they are comfortable, begin dinary regular life, or a life of delirious ern affectations requiring that grief be babying each other again. And then they happiness in childhood and being the widely advertised for a few days and get to the business of laying aside their hero of the swim team and best looking thereafter confined to a therapist, whose own lives to make new childhoods, to be in high school and getting recruited by hourly rate, resplendent jargon, and cre- enjoyed vicariously. every college and being the coolest in the dentialed walls comfort modern man in (My adventure into adult life, I should best fraternity at Cornell and being a pro- the belief that his sorrow is managed say, has made me an observer of politics. My recurring dream is set twelve years ago, I think, because the old pine tree on the hill in the front lawn still stands, and Chris looks like he did when he captained the high-school swim team.

fessional athlete and dating girls who with the clinical expertise of a Pro- Politics is the depressing combination could be on magazine covers and then fessional—a high priest of our secular of the particular vices of childhood and becoming a top young trader on Wall age. adulthood each, the retention of neither’s Street and finding an expensive fast car Perhaps it signifies lost innocence that virtues. Avoid it.) and the perfect girl—but the trade-off is I see new shades in the New York sky- After deaths, people become less po- that if you choose this life, you fall down line. When I lived with Christopher last litical and more religious. Some attribute and die at 28. And that would make summer, I would go for runs around the our invention of heaven to weak selfish- sense, because that’s a trade that maybe reservoir in Central Park after work, as ness. there’s some truth there. (Who Christopher would make. At the wake, he would bike around the outer loops, wouldn’t be weakened by death in the half a mile of old friends waited two and I thrilled to watch the sun set, as the family?) But belief in heaven can’t be hours to comfort my family for a few buildings that hugged the park’s con- entirely selfish. We invented hell, too, seconds, and I realized that Christopher tours would go on humming with life because we would take the heat if we had won the sibling rivalry, that his pre- and bright orange light into the night— could be with family again. Religious mature death was the stamp that he was what glamour, so different from my hope—displaced in the modern world by the coolest and could never be beaten. childhood. Now, I run that same, remind- the faith in youth reclaimed in plastic My recurring dream is set twelve years ful loop and the pale reds of the sky- surgery and 30 years of well-pensioned ago, I think, because the old pine tree on scrapers are menacing and hateful, as retirement—is the hope that the world of the hill in the front lawn still stands, and they detain professionals from their commutes and “professionalism” and Chris looks like he did when he cap- taxes and networking is only an interrup- tained the high-school swim team. We tion to childhood, and that we will be four children are sitting in the front like children again and tumble and hide yard, at the base of the hill, and it’s early in the garden under the old pine tree on October, the trees are just beginning to the hill, and parents will come home blush and a brisk wind has taken some from work at dusk to find their nice little golden needles from the old pine above pile of kids still whole. and laid them round us. We’re dressed there is enough mystery still—for up, though I don’t know why, and even me, Christopher’s promising smile in though the dream has just begun I know “It’s a bet—if I don’t take this next one down, that uncanny dream—for us to hope for we’ve been laughing for a while. We’re I owe you a hundred bucks.” second childhood.

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Socialism Is Back And it’s in your face

BY KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON

OCIALIsM” is a word that has vexed thoughtful con- precisely the same words, thundering at a critic: “You don’t servatives since 2008, along with the related terms know what socialism means.” Conservatives should pay some “Marxist,” “radical,” and the whole nomenclature of careful attention to the formal meaning of socialism, because it ‘S leftish extremism. In his painstakingly documented is vital that we recognize it, understand it—and contain it. While book Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of Mr. Kurtz is right to worry about the radicalism of President American Socialism, stanley Kurtz dwells at great and profitable Obama and his lieutenants, it is not “the untold story of Amer - length on the president’s connections, and his coterie’s connec- ican socialism” that most threatens our nation, but the told story. tions, with avowedly socialist and radical organizations. Glenn It is not hidden socialism that presently undermines our institu- Beck, Jonah Goldberg, and other observers have with varying tions, weakens our economy, and fritters away both present and degrees of rigor pursued related lines of inquiry, locating affinities future prosperity, but unhidden socialism. A sharpened defini- between Obama’s clique, along with mainstream Democrats more tion of socialism, made more precise and reflecting the condi- broadly, and the sinister fringe. The Left’s response to these inves- tions of the 21st century rather than those of the 19th, is a tigations has ranged from the insane (e.g., Lewis Diuguid arguing necessary tool for understanding our current political crisis, and in the Kansas City Star that “socialist” is a codeword for “black”) what follows are some notes toward a more relevant definition to the inane, protesting that “socialist” is being used as a mere of socialism. smear word, empty of other content. The Left knows whereof it The current Random House Dictionary definition of “social- speaks, having spent half of the 20th century describing its critics ism” is serviceable but dated: “a theory or system of social orga- as “fascists,” with no regard for the meaning of that word. (Gold - nization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control berg’s deft reversal in Liberal Fascism, reconnecting contem - of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., porary progressivism with its pre-war authoritarian models, took in the community as a whole.” (Land? Clearly, this was written away that rhetorical toy and thereby produced a symphony of deli- back in ye olde days, when real estate was an asset, not a liabil- cious caterwauling from left-wing critics, one or two of whom ity.) Political entrepreneurs are no less creatures of innovation may even have read the book.) than are market entrepreneurs, and so it is necessary to take issue “Americans have no clue what socialism is,” declared the with one conjunction in this definition: It should read “ownership noted political philosopher Bill Maher during a seminar with the or control” rather than “ownership and control.” As we have seen equally cerebral Larry King. Rep. Anthony Weiner used almost in the cases of enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is entirely possible for government economic planners to inter- Mr. Williamson is a deputy managing editor of NATIONAL REVIEW and the vene deeply (and, in this familiar case, catastrophically) in the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, from which this economy while maintaining private economic forms, such as

essay is adapted, which will be published on January 10. government-chartered for-profit corporations. The government DARREN GYGI

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did not own Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which are nominally public benefits from things like public schooling, government- private, shareholder-owned corporations; but it most certainly subsidized health-care programs, and amtrak, but those things, did control them, and created them to implement an economic whether we enjoy them or not, whether we desire them or not, do policy. likewise, the identification of “the community as a not meet the technical definition of a public good. whole” with “the state” is no longer intellectually defensible, the every government undertaking engaged in the public provi- work of the public-choice economists having very thoroughly sion of non-public goods is an instance of socialism, at least at a established that governments do not reliably act on behalf of the trivial level. But most socialism of that sort probably is better communities they purport to represent. described as “welfare-statism.” as a practical matter, all modern governments engage in some public provision of non-public goods. That does not mean that every government is, in a mean- More complete definition of socialism incorporates ingful sense, socialist, or that it would make sense to describe two criteria: The first is that socialism entails the public every government that maintains a public school or a public a provision of non-public goods. The second is the use of highway as socialist. There are questions of degree, and ques- central planning to implement that policy. tions of judgment, and the answers to those questions will vary What is a public good? economists distinguish between pub- from case to case. lic and non-public goods on two grounds, features known as rivalry and excludability. Public goods, under the economic definition, are goods which are non-rivalrous in their consump- o what distinguishes a garden-variety welfare state from tion and non-excludable in their distribution. a couple of exam- a system that well and truly deserves to be identified as ples will make these distinctions clear. a rivalrous good is one S socialist? Beyond the public provision of non-public for which my consumption of one unit of the good leaves one goods, a second factor—economic central planning—is crucial to unit less for your consumption. a mango is rivalrous in con- identifying and understanding what differentiates real socialism sumption: every mango I eat is a mango you cannot eat. But from the normal mishmash of welfare-state policies typically some goods are non-rivalrous: a highway, for instance. If I drive found in Western liberal democracies and affiliated forms of down a mile of highway, that does not leave one less mile for government. you to drive down. Which is to say: Socialism is not redistribution. Socialism is The presence of The Plan is to socialism what the eucharistic sacraments are to Christians and what the Mosaic law is to the Jews.

But not all non-rivalrous goods are public goods. That hypo- central planning. Under socialism, The Plan is everything. The thetical highway could be a private turnpike. That’s where the sec- presence of The Plan, and the empowerment of The PlannerS, ond criterion, excludability, comes in. excludable goods are those is to socialism what the eucharistic sacraments are to Christians for which we can limit consumption to paying parties. Those man- and what the Mosaic law is to the Jews: the fundamental expres- gos are excludable goods; if you don’t pay me, you can’t have any sion of what is good and true. When The Plan conflicts with the of my mangos. But some goods are non-excludable: for instance, desire to redistribute income or to subsidize the poor and the a big fireworks display. You could sell tickets to a fireworks dis- working class, The Plan always prevails. Indeed, even Mikhail play, but people on the periphery would still be able to see the Gorbachev, a committed socialist who believed he could reform show. Public goods are those goods which are both non-rivalrous the Soviet Union’s single-party system from within, gave up on and non-excludable. the idea of equalizing incomes when doing so interfered with the There are obvious examples of government action, such as ability of central authorities to implement The Plan; “Wage- national defense and law enforcement, that provide classical pub- leveling,” he told the Soviets’ Central Committee in a 1988 lic goods. But there also are less obvious examples, and it bears speech, “has a destructive impact not only on the economy but keeping in mind that useful public goods will vary from place to also on people’s morality, and their entire way of thinking and act- place. For instance, in new Delhi, there is a terrible problem with ing. It diminishes the prestige of conscientious, creative labor, mosquitoes. each year, hundreds of people die of dengue fever, weakens discipline, destroys interest in improving skills, and and many others are sickened by mosquito-borne diseases. So the is detrimental to the competitive spirit in work. We must say local authorities conduct mosquito-spraying campaigns at public bluntly that wage-leveling is a reflection of petty bourgeois views expense. Mosquito control is non-rivalrous (a mosquito that is which have nothing in common with Marxism-leninism or dead to you also is dead to me) and non-excludable (you cannot scientific socialism.” Such sentiments would be at home at the arrange it so that mosquitoes refrain from attacking only paying annual luncheon of any american chamber of commerce—except parties) and therefore meets the definition of a public good. But for the scientific socialism part. a public good is not synonymous with “something that is good What Gorbachev is making clear here—and what too many for the public at large.” Mosquito spraying in a place with no critics of socialism fail to understand—is that the necessary thing mosquito problem would be a “public good” that is a waste of from the socialists’ point of view is not egalitarian economic out- re sources. likewise, one might argue that there are significant comes, but state control. and that control need not be enacted

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nationwide or imposed by a single-party dictatorship of the mericAns have an instinctive understanding of the eco- chinese or soviet sort. state direction comes in many degrees and nomic contradictions of collective farming on the soviet can take many forms, from Venezuela’s nationalizations under A or maoist models. We understand why socialist enter- Hugo chávez to FDr’s cartels to richard nixon’s regime of wage prises such as Venezuela’s state-run petroleum companies are and price controls. American socialists for years have been eager destined to failure. But we fail to recognize that many of our own to use the medicare/medicaid system to impose a system of price systems—using central planning to implement the public provi- controls on pharmaceutical companies and other medical-service sion of non-public goods—are organized along precisely the providers—and the 2010 legislation we know as Obamacare same lines. The outstanding local example of this is the American today lays the groundwork for empowering them to do so. public-school system. stalin argued for “socialism in one country,” while American While Otto von Bismarck’s Prussian model of compulsory progressives argue for socialism in one industry—or, one industry universal education would eventually come to be adopted in the at a time. United states, the public provision of schooling in America far The modern experience suggests that the economist Ludwig precedes the establishment of the country itself, dating back to von mises was only partly correct when he wrote, “The socialis- the Old Deluder satan Law of colonial times. early advocates of tic state owns all material factors of production and thus directs public education believed that schooling could be used to produce it.” That was true for the authoritarian, single-party powers of better christians; later advocates believed that it could be used to his day. in our own time, the converse is a more accurate descrip- produce better human economic inputs. The Prussian approach tion of the real economic arrangement: Under socialism, the state would be explicitly presented as a component of national eco- directs the material factors of production as if it owned them. The nomic planning; students would be taught skills that would make state does not have to actually own factories, mines, or data cen- them productive workers, national examinations would be used to ters if it has the power to dictate, in minute detail, how business is channel them into suitable jobs, and the whole enterprise would conducted within them. regulation acts as a proxy for direct state be integrated into a rational plan of economic development. This ownership of the means of production. was the essence of the progressive vision for education. The even in its more dispersed modern forms, socialist central progressive thinker calvin stowes was influential in seeing the planning is fairly easy to spot, because it has an easily identifiable Prussian model adopted in the United states. He was explicit in signature: failure. socialism reliably produces economic failures arguing for state ownership of the individual, taking the military when applied nationally (the Ussr, china, india, chile, Viet - as his rhetorical model for the public schools: nam), when applied in modified forms across mixed economies (post-war Britain’s nationalized industries), and when applied to if a regard to the public safety makes it right for a government to particular sectors within largely capitalist economies (national compel the citizens to do military duty when the country is invaded, health-care programs). Pockets of socialism found within largely the same reason authorizes the government to compel them to pro- liberal countries can be evaluated—as socialism—regardless of vide for the education of their children. . . . A man has no more right to endanger the state by throwing upon it a family of ignorant and the fact that they are operating within a largely non-socialist con- vicious children, than he has to give admission to the spies of an text, just as the limited free-market activities that were permitted invading army. within soviet russia or Deng Xiaoping’s china can be evaluated as free-enterprise initiatives. socialist economic failures spring The aim of public education is, and has always been, to make from well-understood defects within the socialist form of organi- members of the public more standardized and thus better suited zation itself; those failures are not dependent upon the intelli- for incorporation into THe PLAn. it is unsurprising that socialists gence, goodwill, or moral character of those who are attempting have taken up the cause with verve. President Obama, speaking to to implement a socialist system, though often enough venal an audience of schoolchildren, described in some detail how he human failings have magnified the inherent problems of social- expects the schools to produce students who will serve the needs ism. of the state; unsurprisingly, he cast the situation in terms of his socialism’s main defect is the inability of political decision- own agenda, emphasizing health care, racial discrimination, and makers to make rational decisions without the information pro- job creation: vided by prices generated by marketplace transactions. The repression associated with socialist regimes is in most cases a What you make of your education will decide nothing less than reaction to the failure of THe PLAn. As mises’s colleague F. A. the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will Hayek argued in The Road to Serfdom, central planners frustrated determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges by their inability to mold the economic world to their will in - in the future. You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in evitably are tempted to run roughshod over the rights and interests science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AiDs, and to devel- of the individuals they purport to serve. sometimes this takes op new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the relatively innocuous form of high-handed officials in the the insights and critical-thinking skills you gain in history and social canadian public-health service denying a procedure or timely studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, access to care; sometimes it takes one of the diverse forms and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the explored with such horrific vigor by Kim Jong il. Hayek’s diag- creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build nosis, which is widely misunderstood and exaggerated, is not new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy. perfect, but he was correct that there is a path that connects the We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills, many stops on the road to serfdom. But we need not travel to exot- and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. if ic lands to experience socialism firsthand. Any American public you don’t do that—if you quit on school—you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. school will do.

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obama here is describing a right of eminent domain over the public schools are not a random or inexplicable failure. They are lives of American children, without putting it quite in those words. a classical socialist failure, with massively misallocated resources, obama may be a radical of some sort, but that speech could have an ensconced bureaucratic class, and a needlessly impoverished been given as easily by George W. bush or Mitt Romney, and its client class. assumptions would have been precisely the same: The public pro- vision of educational services is understood today, and has long been understood, as a component of national economic planning. UblIc SchoolS fail for the same reason that all socialist (Just don’t ask whether it works!) enterprises fail: lack of information. In marketplace trans- It would be difficult to find in the United States any profession P actions, prices communicate critical information about who so dedicated to socialism as that of educators, and difficult to find is producing what, who is consuming what, and what it is that pro- any argument for socialism as popular as the cause of public edu- ducers and consumers want and need. This information is always cation. When some parents objected to the broadcast of the local and contingent and is otherwise impossible to aggregate. This obama speech quoted above into all the nation’s government-run is not a new argument: Socialism’s real intellectual death-blow was schools, on the grounds that it constituted political indoctrination, dealt in 1920 by Mises based on the relatively dry and technical they were roundly mocked by the left. one diarist at the left- question of the use and nature of prices in an economy. wing website Daily Kos, noting that some of obama’s critics had As we know from the labor Theory of Value, socialists of the described his platform as a “socialist agenda,” wrote, “If your Marxian bent hold prices to be at some level objective. Some - kids are in public school, they’re already living that agenda.” To where out there, in the economic ether, is a universally true and make his point especially clear, he headlined the post, “Public just price for any given prescription drug, rent-controlled apart- Schools Are Socialist.” likewise, writing in a forum for The New ment, semester’s tuition, or credit-card fee. In part, this is an out- York Times, Emory University history professor Patrick Allitt growth of socialism’s pretense that it is a scientific system for cited public schools as evidence that “millions of Americans . . . understanding and organizing a society. If economic values are in are ardent supporters of socialism.” “It’s odd,” he wrote, “that so constant, unpredictable flux, then central planning is impossible. many critics of [the obama] administration should use ‘social- To counteract that criticism, socialism posits that economic values ism’ as a devil word.” Devil word: Perhaps he’s never heard of the are fixed and knowable. For the socialist, a product has a certain old Deluder Satan law. value, and it is a moral imperative that the worker be compen sated It would be difficult to find in the United States any profession so dedicated to socialism as that of educators.

This is a common trope on the left: “Socialism” sounds scary, at a level equal to the value of the thing produced. but we’re really talking about things like public schools and public Under the socialist understanding, prices are endogenous, an highways. Education blogger Jerry Webster, writing at About.com, aspect of the thing itself, reflecting the material, resources, time, headlined his post on nationalizing teacher-pay decisions “Give expertise, and—above all—the labor involved in its creation. but Socialism a chance.” Writing in the arts and humanities journal for Mises, and for practically all modern economists, prices are Helium, Daniel Reneau asks, “like public schools? . . . Then say, exogenous, reflecting only how people value a particular product. ‘Thank you, socialism!’” other writers on the left have similarly This may seem like an oversimplification—a product is worth argued that the popularity of the public schools suggests that only what you can sell it for—but, in practice, the radical subjec- Americans are more comfortable with socialism than they let on. tivism of Mises provides an infinitely richer and more nuanced As indeed they are. The public schools constitute one of the model of pricing—and thus of human action—than does the most popular instantiations of socialism in American life, though static Marxist model. That’s because the Mises model asks not Social Security and government-funded transportation systems no only, “What is it worth?” but, “What is it worth? To whom? At doubt rank nearly as high. but popular with whom? certainly the what time? In what context? In relation to what other goods?” educators and administrators who run the system are largely Where there are no real market transactions, there are no real pleased with it, as they should be; the noncompetitive nature of prices. Where there are no real prices, there is not much real government-run education provides them with salaries and bene- knowledge about actual economic conditions. In the United fits far exceeding what they plausibly could earn in the private States, we have an education system that already is socialized to a sector. Some parents and property owners are very happy with the greater extent than lenin managed for Soviet agriculture. We have public schools as well. The well-off and well-connected tend to a health-care system that is well more than half socialized. We enjoy reasonably good public schools, which help sustain high have a mortgage market that is largely socialized. Not surprising- residential real-estate values in the largely suburban communities ly, our schools, our health-care system, and our mortgage market that host them. but other Americans are much less pleased with are the three most prominent failures of major institutions in their government schools, particularly the poor, non-whites, and recent memory. That is not the fault of barack obama and his those living in inner cities. black families, in particular, consis- hidden socialism. That is the fault of longstanding American eco- tently rate their government schools as performing poorly, and nomic policy and its unhidden socialism. If you are worried about their subjective impressions are borne out by empirical data. The socialism, start at the schoolhouse, not the White house.

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ing bill, after cajoling nine GOP appropriators off the fence and into opposing the bill. “That was a clear indication that power was shifting already as a result of the November election,” Master McConnell observes. “Now we get to determine how the spending will be done for the balance of the fiscal year. And we’ve settled the tax-rate question for two years.” OF THE SENATE For McConnell, decoupling taxes from spending was cru- cial—enabling Republicans to “concentrate exclusively on spending reductions, without having that linked to tax Mitch McConnell gets the job done cuts” in coming months. “It’s a distinct advantage for us,” he says. BY ROBERT COSTA Whatever comes next, you can count on the 68-year-old McConnell to play a starring role. He has the potential to become a Great Compromiser, like Henry Clay, the august ITCH MCCONNell would not smile. The rest of the Kentucky legislator from two centuries ago whose desk he crowd, full of big-name democrats and liberal now occupies; a feared, sharp-elbowed partisan; or, perhaps activists, nodded and cracked grins as Vice Presi - most likely, a combination of the two. As he begins to manage M dent Joe Biden quoted edmund Burke, the famed his newly grown, diverse conference, which includes tea-party Anglo-Irish statesman, on the nature of compromise. But freshmen along with Yankee moderates, McConnell becomes McConnell, the purse-lipped senate GOP leader, remained an even more pivotal figure in Washington. still, unmoved by Biden’s invocation of a favorite conservative philosopher. days before, Biden and McConnell had crafted an agree- ddIsON MITCHell MCCONNell JR. has been enrap- ment to extend Bush-era tax rates for two years. Now, on a tured by the upper chamber—its byzantine rules, its frigid december afternoon, the pair was standing on a dais in A heroic ghosts—for decades. Born and raised in the first-floor auditorium of the eisenhower executive Office Alabama, where he overcame a tough bout with polio, he Building. As Biden playfully cited Burke, McConnell won- moved to a middle-class section of south louisville at age 13. dered why the White House seemed so keen to celebrate the As an undergraduate at the University of louisville in the early deal, along with the rest of their lame-duck maneuvers. 1960s, he became active in campus politics, serving as student- President Obama, the next speaker, heaped on more praise, body president. He tells me that he paid close attention to the hailing the deal as a significant bipartisan achievement and, senate from afar, reading about and debating its happenings more subtly, as a game-changing moment for his administra- with classmates. For a young man interested in national poli- tion. Obama then strolled to a small table nearby to sign the tics, the senate was the center of the universe. bill, swarmed and cheered by democratic allies. McConnell “In those days, John Kennedy had just been elected presi- simply looked on, stone-faced. dent,” McConnell says. “He had defeated Richard Nixon, who To the five-term Kentucky Republican, the whole scene was a former senator. The senate was thought of as a launch- was a tad bewildering. For McConnell, what matters in a deal ing ground for national aspirations.” It was, he says, an “end- is what you give and what you get—the coldblooded count of lessly fascinating place, with people that you saw in the concessions versus gains—not how it is brokered. The misty- news—everett dirksen, Mike Mansfield. All of those giants eyed fixation by the White House and the press corps on the were around.” process of negotiations missed the point—and the score. so it was no surprise that, in the summer of 1964, after grad- “I was amused at the mainstream media trying to declare uating with honors, McConnell made his way to Washington. He the president the ‘comeback kid’ at the end of the lame duck,” was pleased to have secured an internship in the office of sen. McConnell tells me in an interview over the holiday break. John sherman Cooper, the venerable Kentucky Republican, sure, he acknowledges, the president was able to help cut a tax cross-aisle friend of JFK, and supporter of civil rights. deal, ratify the New sTART treaty, and repeal the military’s Up close, McConnell studied how senators interacted, de - “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality. But the fuss bated, and socialized—figuring out who led and who followed. being made over this string of accomplishments, he says, is He realized, early on, that “the senate is a different kind of excessive. institution—designed on purpose to not do things quickly, to The arms pact and “don’t ask” repeal, McConnell argues, force consensus.” both “would have passed” at any point last year. He also swats After the internship concluded, McConnell trekked to the back the creeping conventional wisdom that Republicans University of Kentucky’s college of law, where he took a caved at the last minute. “More noteworthy,” he says, “was the degree in 1967. For the ambitious young attorney, there were fact that we got the president—in a move eerily reminiscent many options post-graduation, but his taste for senate life of [George H. W. Bush’s] decision to go back on his pledge remained strong. He promptly moved back east, this time for a of ‘Read my lips, no new taxes’—to sign a bill extending the full-time legislative-staff position in the office of sen. Marlow current tax rates for two more years, something he had demo- Cook, a Kentucky conservative who would later gain notice— nized and run against for several years.” along with sen. James l. Buckley of New York and others— A day earlier, McConnell had defeated senate majority for urging President Nixon to resign as the Watergate scandal leader Harry Reid’s 2,000-page, $1.1 trillion omnibus spend- deepened.

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ver time, as he rose from lowly foreign-relations- committee member to ethics-committee chairman, O National republican Senatorial Committee chairman to whip, and then to the leader’s spot in late 2006, McConnell came to view Senate leadership as an art, akin to the work of a “choir director trying to get everybody to sing out of the same hymnbook.” Listening, he says, for all of its clichéd simpli city, became his greatest tool. “Listening is the best quality somebody in my job needs to have,” McConnell says. “I’m in the midst of a bunch of very smart people—all a bunch of class-president types, all smart, or they wouldn’t have made it that far in American politics. They’ve all got something important to say. If you’re going to be a leader of a bunch of leaders, you better be a good listener.” On and off the floor, McConnell is a picture of placidity— the clammed-up moue, propped between hound-dog cheeks, comes easy and often. But his blue-gray eyes, framed by George Will–style spectacles, are darting spotlights. A slight glance can stop a pesky staffer or wayward senator cold. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, a smirking freshman Dem - ocrat, experienced the McConnell treatment in August when he was caught mocking the GOP leader’s solemn speech on Supreme Court nominee elena Kagan. Franken, whose rubber- faced routines made him a comic star in the 1980s, groaned and gasped as McConnell spoke. After clicking off his micro- phone, an irritated McConnell approached Franken. “This isn’t Mitch McConnell Saturday Night Live, Al,” he said coolly. A chastened Franken promptly apologized, publicly and privately, and hasn’t made Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the current chairman of much noise since. the Senate republican Conference and a longtime friend of the Capitol Hill reporters, who loiter in the marble halls outside GOP leader, says that by 1969, McConnell had made a lasting the chamber, often chuckle about McConnell’s poker face. In impression on numerous Senate staffers and Nixon White his oratory, his gravelly, evenly paced southern drawl rarely House aides, as well as Sen. Howard Baker, who would later rises above a low simmer. His walk and talk are also slow and become Senate majority leader. hushed—plodding, dignified, and oft-unnoticed. In almost “Senator Baker said to me that ‘you ought to meet Marlow every sense, he has no “tell,” as they say at the card table. Cook’s young legislative assistant; he’s a smart young man Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, an easygoing conservative, and I think you’d like him.’ That was Mitch McConnell,” says he admires McConnell but wouldn’t mind a bit more jovi- Alexander says. McConnell, he reminds us, was not only a top- ality in GOP dealings. Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator, notch staffer, but a master student of the Senate: Within a few “was, frankly, more of my style,” Inhofe says. “He had more of short years, two U.S. senators from Kentucky had become his a sense of humor.” McConnell “is aggressive and gets things mentors. done. He’s very similar to Trent Lott—the same effectiveness, A post in the Ford administration as deputy assistant attor- but not as entertaining.” ney general followed. Next came an extended stint as a judge- Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 republican in the Senate executive in Jefferson County, where he served until his as GOP whip, says that’s part of McConnell’s appeal inside election to the Senate in 1984, when he topped two-term GOP circles—that he prefers serious persuasion over back- Democratic incumbent Dee Huddleston by a razor-thin mar- slapping ingratiation. “Our friendship has grown, but he and I gin. That first victory, swept along by the reagan tide, was would not be natural buddies, per se, in the Senate, if we were hard-fought: McConnell, in a memorable series of ads featur- not working as closely as we do,” he says. ing bloodhounds, chided Huddleston for skipping votes while Other McConnell confidants say much of his manner comes he appeared on the speaking circuit. He pleaded with voters from his old-school reserve, forged at the feet of the institu- to “switch to Mitch.” It worked. tion’s past masters. Others believe that it is strategic—in a 24/7 Once McConnell was back in the ornate chamber, this time media age, one must be careful, and on alert, at all times. Harry as senator, his youthful memories came rushing back, as did reid, a colleague adds, appears to follow a similar approach, lessons learned. But he was not immediately a star. according to which one would rather be icy than in hot water. retiring senator Kit Bond of Missouri fondly remembers All of this has a purpose, says retiring senator Judd Gregg those days in the late 1980s, when he, McConnell, and David of New Hampshire. McConnell, he tells me, “has an intuitive Karnes of Nebraska sat together in the back corner of the last sense of the Senate” and knows the institution’s limits. Never- row. “Mitch labeled us, at the time, the Not ready for Prime - ending sessions of observing, listening, and pitching senators

AP time Players,” he says. on bills, whether perched near the cloakroom or in his Capitol

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office, are more than somber posturing to McConnell, says The relationship between Obama and McConnell became Gregg: They’re the only way to get things done in a chaotic chilly. As the ambitious new president, riding high in the polls, chamber; to become, with little fanfare, the center of gravity. worked to pump billions toward state coffers, unions, and “He is sort of like [hockey player] Bobby Orr, who knew various public-works projects, McConnell decided to shift. He where the puck was going before the person passed it,” Gregg says that he recognized that behind the president’s cheery, says. “That’s the way Mitch is: He sees things long before oth- bipartisan rhetoric lay a bare-knuckle progressive fighter—a ers do, understands what’s coming, and positions his member- force that demanded an able opposition. ship to deal with issues as they arrive.” In policy lunches and closed-door meetings, McConnell The only place where McConnell appears to loosen up, ever urged his “diminished band” to work to defeat the Obama so slightly, is on the Senate floor. That is his home away from agenda “to the maximum extent possible.” On the stimulus home—where he consoles and inquires, twists arms, and vote in February, three Republicans broke with McConnell’s counts noses. “I’ve always got a to-do list of things I’ve got to stance against the measure—Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan talk to various members about,” McConnell says. “Some of the Collins of Maine, plus Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, most useful time I spend is going around from one member to who soon switched parties. That fight was but an appetizer, and another. It’s an opportunity to be accessible, without going the president soon moved to begin work on passing a massive, through the formality of scheduling a meeting. It’s extremely national health-care program stuffed with mandates and productive and important.” spending demands. On rare occasions, McConnell’s familiarity with the floor “We needed to make sure the American people knew that can get the best of his emotions. In mid-December, as retiring everybody in Washington didn’t think that this was the direc- senators delivered their farewell speeches, McConnell took to tion we ought to take,” McConnell says. “Only if the American the podium to speak about Gregg. As he made his way through people understood that this was not something that was ‘bi - his address, he began to choke up. “When Judd walks out of partisan’ would they have an opportunity to understand the dif- this chamber . . . when he walks out of this chamber for the last ferences, and, hopefully, still prove to be a right-of-center time, he’ll leave an enormous void behind,” McConnell said, country and make a mid-course correction.” coughing away the catch in his voice. Herding together his caucus in 2009 wasn’t easy, especial- ly as Obama, with charisma and savvy, huddled with GOP moderates on health care, trying to sway them to his side. “I’m CCONNEll sees his low-key mien simply as an out- really proud of my members’ staying together,” McConnell growth of “focus,” a prominent word in his vernacu- says. “It was particularly difficult on health care. There was M lar, and what he calls the “single most important endless effort, month after month after month, by the presi- attribute any leader—not just in politics, but in any profes- dent and others to pick off anybody they could get, so they sion—can possess.” In politics, he says, “there are all kinds of could give that awful health-care bill a patina of bipartisan- things coming at you that are unanticipated every day, and ship.” that’s certainly true in my job. But if you focus on the things McConnell, his colleagues say, did not shy away from whip- you are trying to achieve, and don’t get distracted by all of the ping the health-care vote hard, making every effort to ensure other things that are happening all around you, including the that his bloc would hold. By Christmas Eve 2009, when the completely unpredictable, which occurs so frequently, you’ve bill finally reached the Senate floor, Democrats were able to got a much better chance of succeeding.” pass it only by a 60-to-39 party-line vote. “Not a single Focus, McConnell notes, also includes the ability to deal [Republican], in the end, found that enticing,” McConnell with the political reality as it is, instead of as one wishes it to says. “From Olympia Snowe to Jim DeMint, we had 100 per- be. In late January 2009, days after the Obama inauguration, cent opposition. The American people knew where we stood.” McConnell addressed the National Press Club and offered an olive branch to the new president. Now the top Republican inside the Beltway, McConnell wanted to outline his hopes for ITH Republicans having gained a majority in the the upcoming session—and set the stakes. House and new life in the Senate, McConnell sees “Make no mistake: Some of our new president’s proposals W 2011 as an ample opportunity for the GOP, not only will be met with strong, principled resistance from me and to work to repeal aspects of the Obama agenda, but to chart a from others,” McConnell said. “But many of his ambitions new course for the party, away from its past spending ex - show real potential for bipartisan cooperation.” cesses. But as a longtime securer of earmarks, and a pal of the This rhetoric had the shelf life of a milk carton. McConnell Senate’s old bulls, he knows that change, albeit important, says that within days, when the administration began to push will most likely come slowly. If the House, under new GOP for a near-trillion-dollar “stimulus” package, he realized that, speaker John Boehner, passes a flurry of bills, Senate regrettably, Democrats, with their two-chamber majority and a Republicans may have to throw cold water on any over- popular new president, were in no mood to play ball with the-top aspirations, all while fighting for a version of the same Republicans. policy. “I think learning to work in the Senate requires you to take Still, McConnell says, conservatives should not worry. a different measure of what success is,” McConnell says, Senate Republicans, he says, are prepared to make the most reflecting upon the past two years. “Frequently it is not of coming months. He looks forward to seeing others help in passing things, but preventing really unfortunate things from articulating the message, too, from DeMint, the firebrand con- happening.” servative from South Carolina, to rising freshmen and ranking

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You deserve a factual look at . . .      


    

In a previous installment in this series of clarifying messages about Israel and the Middle East, we examined certain myths which, by dint of constant repetition, had acquired currency and acceptance. We looked at the myth of “Palestinian nationhood,” the myth of Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) being “occupied territory,” the myth that Jewish settlements in these territories are “the greatest obstacle to peace,” and the myth that Israel is unwilling to “yield land for peace.” And we cleared up the greatest myth of all, namely that Israel’s administration of the territories, and not the unrelenting hatred of the Arabs against the Jews, is the root cause of the conflict between the Arabs and Israel. But those are not all the myths; there are more.     Reality: There is no prospect at all that anything resembling a
Myth: The Arabs of Israel are a persecuted minority. democratic state could be created in the territories. There is not a Reality: The over one million non-Jews (mostly Arabs) who are single democratic Arab state – all of them are tyrannies of varying citizens of Israel have the same civil rights that Jews have. They degrees. Even today, under partial Israeli administration, Hamas vote, are members of the Knesset (parliament), and are part of and other factions fight for supremacy and ruthlessly murder each Israel’s civil and diplomatic service, just as their Jewish fellow other. Another Lebanon, with its incessant civil wars, is much citizens. Arabs have complete more likely. The lawlessness and religious freedom and full access to “It is in our national interest that chaos that prevail in Gaza since the Israeli legal, health and Israel’s withdrawal is a good educational systems – including reality, not myths, govern our policy.” prospect of what would happen if Arabic and Muslim universities. The Israel – foolishly and under the only difference between the “rights” of Arabs and Jews is that pressure of “world opinion” – were to abandon this territory. As for Jewish young men must serve three years in the military and at demilitarization, that is totally unlikely. Because – with Syria, least one month a year until age 50. Young Jewish women serve Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, most of which are in a declared for two years. The Arabs have no such civic obligation. For them, state of war with Israel, at its borders – an irresistible power military service is voluntary. Not too surprisingly, except for the vacuum would be created. Despite pious promises, the arms Druze, very few avail themselves of the privilege. merchants of the world would find a great new market and the
Myth: Having (ill-advisedly) already given up control of the neighboring hostile Arab countries would be happy to supply Gaza Strip, Israel should also give up the administration of anything else that might be needed. Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) because strategic depth is
Myth: Israel should make “confidence-building gestures” for meaningless in this age of missiles. the sake of peace. Reality: Israel is a mini-state – about half the size of San Reality: What really is it that the world expects Israel to do for Bernardino county in California. If another, even smaller mini- the sake of peace? Most of the 22 Arab countries consider state were carved out of it, Israel would be totally indefensible. themselves in a state of war with Israel and don’t even recognize That is the professional opinion of 100 retired U.S. generals and its “existence.” That has been going on for over sixty years. Isn’t it admirals. If the Arabs were to occupy whatever little strategic about time that the Arabs made some kind of a “gesture?” Could depth Israel has between the Jordan River and its populated coast, they not for instance terminate the constant state of war? Could they would not need any missiles. Artillery and mortars would they not stop launching rockets into Israel from areas that Israel suffice, since Israel would be only nine miles wide at its waist. has abandoned for the sake of peace? Could they not stop the Those who urge such a course either do not understand the suicide bombings, which have killed hundreds of Israelis and situation or have a death wish for Israel. which have made extreme security measures – such as the
Myth: If Israel would allow a Palestinian state to arise in Judea defensive fence and convoluted bypass roads – necessary? Any of and Samaria it would be a democratic state and would be totally these would create a climate of peace and would indeed be the demilitarized. “confidence-building gestures” that the world hopes for. Countless “peace conferences” to settle this festering conflict have taken place. All have ended in failure because of the intransigence of the Arabs. President Clinton, toward the end of his presidency, convened a conference with the late unlamented Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak, the prime minister of Israel at that time. Mr. Barak offered virtually everything that Arafat had requested, except the partition of Jerusalem and the acceptance of the so-called refugees, their descendants having swollen from the 650,000 who fled the nascent state of Israel during the War of Liberation, to an incredible 5 million. Arafat left in a huff and started his infamous intifada instead, a bloody war that has cost thousands of Palestinian and Israeli lives. Israel is America’s staunchest ally and certainly its only true friend in that area of the world. It is in our national interest that reality, not myths, govern our policy.

        FLAME is a tax-exempt, non-profit educational 501 (c)(3) organization. Its purpose is the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world. Your tax- deductible contributions are welcome. They enable us to pursue these goals #"    $## "# and to publish these messages in national newspapers and magazines. We  %
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committee members. Sen. Tom Coburn (R., okla.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R., idaho), for example, are often mentioned as potential leaders on the entitlement debate, should both sides Endangered? choose to move forward. “There are active inside players and more prominent out - side players,” McConnell says. Playing the role of choir director–cum–leader means one has to share the spotlight— Specious and the music. When senators speak out against leadership positions, “i don’t find it a bother,” McConnell asserts. “i don’t Of the ‘northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf’ view our conference as a zero-sum game, in other words, if somebody becomes more prominent, somebody becomes less and similar absurdities prominent. We have 47 independent contractors doing their own thing, to the best of their ability. i’m not a dictator.” His BY TRAVIS KAVULLA job, he declares, is “all carrot and no stick.” And this year, those carrots—the rhetorical kind—could be Missoula, Mont. proffered to his colleagues across the aisle: Twenty-one ooking at those walking into the federal courtroom in Democrats and two independents who caucus with them are up this university town in western Montana last summer, for reelection in 2012. “That’s the wild card,” McConnell says. it was easy to see who was on which side. “How do those, especially from redder states, want to position L Jeans, moustaches, baseball caps and cowboy hats, themselves?” pistols in side holsters: Here were the ranchers and the hunters. As for President obama, he will be forced to “pivot” if he They obligingly checked their firearms with the marshal at the wants to accomplish anything on the Hill. “Let’s just discuss entrance. The others: a collection of capris-wearing, vacant- some things that we can actually do with this guy,” McConnell looking, long-haired individuals, the environmentalists and responds, when i press him to expand on the scope of his greens for whom this mountain town is famous. (Ralph nader hopes. “Look, if he’s willing to honor the results of the elec- won 15 percent of the county in 2000, and Forbes credits tion, and do things that we would do anyway, which is what Missoula with the highest per capita consumption of illegal happened on the tax bill, why would we say no?” drugs in the United States.) “if he’s willing to engage in significant entitlement reform, The issue might have been aerial pesticide spraying, or per- we’ll be there to help him,” McConnell says. And as a student mits to move tar-sands drilling equipment, or the ill effects of of history, he is more than aware that such cross-party collab- cattle grazing on the greater sage-grouse. The economy of the oration is politically feasible for both sides, if structured with West, still rich with unexploited natural resources, no longer care. brooks a frontier mentality. Drilling a well, cutting a tree, min- “Reagan and Tip o’neill did the last Social Security fix in ing the earth, shooting predatory wildlife, running livestock on 1983,” McConnell recalls. “i was running in 1984 and the sub- the range—nearly any activity that has anything to do with ject never even came up. The reason it didn’t even come up land use is subject nowadays to litigation, as land own ers and was because it was a bipartisan deal. in fact, the best thing those who would make use of the land jockey against envi - about divided government is that it is the time you are most ronmentalists whose goal, in any given case, is to grind the likely to be able to achieve entitlement reform.” McConnell process to a halt. pauses. “now, will the president do it? We will see. Should he? Landing before the federal bar this day was the saga of the Absolutely.” endangered gray wolf. one after another, attorneys for the lit- McConnell’s political genius over the last two years, his igants rose, introducing themselves as counsel for groups with colleagues say, was realizing that the goP’s growth had to names like Defenders of Wildlife. one law firm working for be built around united fights against unpopular bills, not a the litigants was Earthjustice, whose institutional slogan (seri- rebranding or a recalibrated message. As William White, the ously) is: “Because the earth needs a good lawyer.” Evidently longtime Senate chronicler, once said, “There are not many the Lorax had a prior engagement. times when a Senate leader can afford to ‘get tough.’” Meanwhile, the Justice Department—defending the U.S. McConnell, his colleagues say, has mastered that balance, after Fish and Wildlife Service—had assigned a newbie, who suf- a lifetime of study of the Senate that began one summer years fered through the stuttering and palsy of nervousness in open ago in the office of Sen. John Sherman Cooper. court. He seemed way out of his league. By comparison, the McConnell is already planning to run for reelection in 2014, states of Montana and idaho had sent assistant attorneys gen- when he’ll be 72. The Senate life is not just a job, but a calling. eral. in 2006, Teddy kennedy traveled to the University of Louis - Wolves are a trifling issue elsewhere, but out West they have ville, where McConnell had established a center for leadership become as integral to the political discussion as obama care studies. kennedy, another avid student of Senate history, wist- and spending. And what a strange issue it is. never mind that fully noted in an address to students that McConnell’s mentor, Canada and Alaska have enormous populations of gray Senator Cooper, “was a giant,” and an unlikely, but valued, wolves, that Minnesota still has its timberwolves. in the 1990s, partner on many issues with his brother, Jack. wolves were reintroduced to Montana, idaho, and Wyoming “i only wish he hadn’t inspired his young aide Mitch McConnell to work so hard to build the Republican party Mr. Kavulla is a public-service commissioner of the state of Montana and a former here,” kennedy laughed. McConnell smiled. associate editor of NATIONAL REVIEW.

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by order of the Clinton administration. At the same time, the ful analytical tool, but absolutely stifling in judicial practice, federal bureaucracy invented the name “northern Rocky NEPA empowers environmental litigants to sue over small Mountain gray wolf” so the reintroduced species, upon cross- details of impact statements almost as a matter of course. As ing the Canadian border, could be declared “endangered.” This in the wolf affair, the outcome of a case more often hinges on was quite the contrivance, but just the thing necessary to make procedural discrepancies than on real environmental science. the ludicrous arrangement stick under the Endangered Species Often, the NEPA process does not even result in a final ruling; Act of 1973 (ESA). the delay associated with the law is enough to suffocate a pro- Unsurprisingly, the wolf reclaimed its niche. By 2008, ject by itself. wolves numbered more than 1,500 in the tri-state area—five Add to NEPA and the ESA the multiple, overlapping regula- times the “recovery target” stipulated at the outset of reintro- tory jurisdictions of the federal government. The EPA’s finding duction—and the Bush administration okayed the removal of under the Clean Air Act that carbon dioxide is an air pollutant the wolf from the endangered-species list. It was a decision gives it vast new powers over oil- and natural-gas-drilling even the Obama administration stood by, and wolf manage- operations and pipelines. The Army Corps of En gin eers has a ment reverted to the states in 2009—except in Wyoming, say over navigable rivers. The Antiquities Act allows the pres- where state wildlife officials had pluckily signaled their inten- ident to unilaterally designate large areas of land as “national tion to classify the wolf as a pest, subject to an open season, monuments”—something that was meant to apply to things and the feds worried that the wolf’s foothold would be quick- like Indian sites and Plymouth Rock, but that, starting in the ly eroded. Montana and Idaho, on the other hand, developed Clinton administration, has been used to set aside swathes of policies designed to maintain population levels. hundreds of thousands of acres. Taken together, the federal Unwittingly, the trigger-happy Wyomingites had handed environmental laws and bureaucracy destine any development environmentalist groups just the bone wrench they’d been on public land to years-long litigation at the hands of obstruc- looking for to jam up the wolf’s delisting. Wyoming’s exclu- tionists. sion allowed the invocation of an arcane provision within the While environmentalists like to claim the mantle of science, ESA dictating that a vertebrate mammal must be listed as federal environmental law hands decision-making to judges, “endangered” across its entire designated range, or not at all. who work to produce outcomes in conformance with the maze So when at last federal district judge Don Molloy—who sits of the law. The bottom line is that decisions about forests are over many environmental-law cases in Missoula and is consid- not being made by foresters, and wildlife is not being managed ered one of the greener judges in the western judiciary—heard by biologists. Increasingly, management decisions of a highly the wolf case, it was all too obvious what the ESA would technical nature are made in faraway places by political agents require of its black-robed high priest. If the legal fiction that is or judges with no subject-specific training. the “northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf” was “endangered” in Since environmental lawsuits typically name a branch of the Wyoming, the animal would have to be called “endangered” federal government as the defendant, the whole process is open in Idaho and Montana too. to collusion between environmentalists outside of government Wolves are today so numerous in some areas of the West that and political appointees within it—particularly those who whole herds of elk have disappeared from their historic range- direct the Interior and Agriculture Departments, which together land, but that hardly matters in the legal scheme. The ESA is control the majority of federal land. Not even a judge’s ruling less an exercise in proper wildlife management than a piece of was required before the Bureau of Land Man age ment (BLM), Old Testament proscription designed to ensure a cuddly ani- guardian of the more bleak landscapes in the federal portfolio, mal’s mindless propagation. Indeed, vertebrate mammals (i.e., suspended 61 natural-gas-drilling leases on the grounds that the cuddly animals) receive special protections under the law. drilling might allow modest amounts of methane, a greenhouse Of course Mother Nature does not differentiate between the gas, to leak into the atmosphere. (Some of the suspensions stately wolf and the lowly worm, and, in that sense, the law is have now been lifted.) The reason for BLM’s capitulation: an abdication of sound wildlife science, not an advancement The NEPA-required impact statement had been silent on the of it. Many conservationists are rightly disgusted by its imple- drilling’s possible contribution to global warming—a minor mentation, if not its intent. error by any serious measure, especially since huge amounts of How did the fate of wolves become a judicial issue? Thank carbon di ox ide, another greenhouse gas, will be released when federal environmental law, an enormous compendium of the gas is burned. But this lacuna in the environmental-impact which has been passed since the 1960s. With wolves, it is the statement was a fatal error in the Alice in Wonderland world of ESA that comes into play, but environmentalists have many environmental law. other weapons at their disposal. Wolves anger westerners because of their depredations on domestic livestock and on game animals like elk. But wolves are just one of many environmental-law issues that have turned HE National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) federal judges in the West and elsewhere into arbiters of dis- requires virtually any project undertaken on federal putes between locals, who have the proximity and knowledge T land to be vetted in a costly environmental-impact to manage land reasonably, and the absentee landlord that is statement—a document that frequently runs in the thousands the federal government, a behemoth that owns 30 percent of of pages and is usually prepared by well-remunerated consul- Montana’s land and even larger fractions of other Western tancies. The NEPA process compares what you would like to states. The litigiousness engendered by federal law has crip- do on federal land with whatever else might possibly be done pled natural-resource industries that were once central to the on the same land, exploring the impacts of all options. A use- region’s economy and identity.

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Perhaps the most tragic example is forestry. National what she did, taking the swift and nimble corrective action typ- forests were conceived of by Teddy Roosevelt and his chief ical of private landowners. The stakes are, for her, so very high. forester, Gifford Pinchot, as a way to turn a profit and provide Her house could be burned by a fire, or the infestation could lumber for the nation. Not anymore. Lawsuits and a U.S. grow worse. Fretwell and other landowners have strong incen- Forest Ser vice whose revenues are disconnected from sales of tives to preserve their houses and their trees through manage- wood products have caused forestry on the federal estate to ment actions that flow from what is actually happening on the plunge. In 1987, America’s national forests produced 13 bil- ground. Not so with the federal government. lion board feet of timber. In 2008, that number fell to 2 billion Locals speak of the coming inferno in a fatalistic way. The board feet. dead, reddened husks will have to be cleared away somehow, The Lolo National Forest in Montana, heretofore one of the and federal paralysis leaves a massive fire as the only option. most productive reserves, was the subject of 19 lawsuits over Once upon a time, there was a thriving salvage industry for just the seven-year period from 1998 to 2005, according to re - this type of thing: Dead wood, in other ways unusable, can serve searcher Alison Berry of the Sonoran Institute. Although the as fuel—even for electricity, as recent biomass innovations have forest had been deemed overgrown and logging permits had demonstrated. But with each passing day, the remaining timber been approved by the experts, thinning and logging projects becomes less usable and more prone to fire. are at a standstill today. The reaction to the plague of beetles is telling of how people What’s in it for environmentalists? What are they trying to conceive, and misconceive, of nature. Depending on your point accomplish? To understand that, one has to understand the lib- of view, the beetle was either nature taking its course, albeit in eral environmentalist approach to national forests. As hap- a sweeping and discomfiting way, or the first horseman of the pened with the wolf, the litigation process creates endless climate-change apocalypse. For environmentalists, this was the delay, and in doing so defaults the management decision to stuff of which their dogma is made. The beetles had not even doing nothing—which environmentalists equate with let- finished their meal before global warming was fingered as the ting nature takes its course. culprit by local editorialists, politicians including Montana’s That view of nature is not simply warped, but Sen. Max Baucus, and grassroots eco-activists. premised on a fallacious view of what is “natur- Pine-bark beetles are usually killed by a spring frost, al” in the first place. And to get a better but an unseasonably warm spring rouses the bugs and understanding of this, you need to know sends them on their scourge. The enviros had a prima about the beetle. facie case—a warmer globe would mean more bee- tles—if you’re the type of person who finds a causation in every correlation. In fact, eS, the mountain pine-bark bee- worse beetle kills certainly occurred be - tle—the montane forest’s equivalent fore a written record began, which in the Y of the locust or the red tide. For the last American West is not so long ago. This several years it has plagued the Mountain West. really didn’t matter to the environmen- From British Columbia to Colorado, the beetle talists, for whom everything hitherto has burrowed into trees covering several million designated “an act of God” is now attributable acres, leaving whole hillsides and landscapes to anthropogenic global warming. riddled with the reddened corpses of lodgepole and pon- As the warming palaver got moving in the derosa. usual quarters, the real story was happening on the Closer up, on hikes, trees can be seen in their death throes, ground, where a pattern was emerging. The national forests trying to push out the beetles with violent pustules of sap. But and federally designated wildernesses in western Montana their limbs droop, their living tissues, the xylem and phloem, were devastated by the beetle, while state, tribal, and private destroyed. These magnificent trees are being eaten alive in the landholdings that bordered them suffered considerably less tens of millions and finished off by a fungus that attends the damage. And those non-federal lands have seen an uptick in beetle’s progress through the pine stands. As with wolves, logging over the past several years, even as federal timber sales news of the beetle outbreak rarely makes headlines else - continue to plummet. where, and certainly not in Washington, D.C., or the coastal The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal forest abuts states whose congressmen and senators are the big players on the Lolo National Forest, subject of ad nauseam environmen- the natural-resources committees. Meanwhile, Rocky Moun - tal litigation. On the Indian reservation, logging is expedited tain communities are witnessing firsthand a plague of a scale because the forest, under the tribe’s management policy (much not seen in a century. like the original policy of the national forests), must pay for its “It’s going to end up in a catastrophic fire,” says Holly own upkeep and be a source of profit for the tribe. The tribal Fretwell matter-of-factly, when asked about the dead trees. court hears lawsuits concerning land use, but it often requires Fretwell is a researcher at the Property and environment Re - environmental groups to post a bond to cover part of the search Center, in Bozeman, Mont., who has written about the cost in delaying a logging project, which will be forfeited if federal government’s self-defeating approach to land manage- the environmental litigant loses. Such lawsuits rarely pro- ment. ceed—why would they, when litigating in federal courts is Last year, three huge pine trees in Fretwell’s backyard were almost always free and, because of attorney’s-fee awards, even infested by the beetle. “Most of us would get out there right profitable for the plaintiffs? away and cut down those trees,” Fretwell says. And that is just The consequence is that tribal, state, and private forests have

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been thinned. So when the beetle came, these forests suffered their “recovery targets.” Process must not take precedence far less damage than the overgrown (but otherwise biological- over science—but that’s what happens all too often under a ly similar) national forests bordering them. draconian environmental law that stifles local innovation. The most profound irony of the locking up of timber re- Empowering local management should be at the heart of sources is that the national forests and many other lands that reform. Some states (Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, and Alas - man has presumed to keep in their “natural” state are, in fact, ka) are more than half-owned by the feds. National forests, far from untouched to begin with. American Indians, along parks, wildlife refuges, and wildernesses all look to Congress with trappers, settlers, ranchers, and farmers (all of whose for appropriations, and their revenues are not linked to what main fuel source was wood), game wardens, the U.S. Fish and actually occurs on the land itself. That must change. The fruits Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the BLM—all (or in this case the lack of fruits) of land-management policy have an accumulated history of centuries of intensive med- should be felt by the local chapter of the federal bureaucracy. dling in places we wrongly regard as “untouched” nature. Congress can take a big step forward by making national Man has transformed nature, and that bell cannot easily forests dependent on forestry revenues for their operating bud- be unrung. While environmentalist doctrine today favors the gets. No logging? No money. Instead of setting aside money to concept of preserving “wilderness,” Indians on the eastern fight forest fires, spend some of it to spur the construction of seaboard and in the West were active foresters who wielded biomass energy-generation facilities, thereby creating another fire to manage forests and brushland. As Wil liam Cronon constituency to demand beetle-killed timber. argued in his classic work of environmental history, Changes Similar methods could work for the sparser and less scenic, in the Land, controlled fires set by American Indians resulted but often energy-rich, BLM holdings. Federal lands that are in a landscape considerably altered from its natural state, with meant to be set aside solely for posterity and recreation, like greater habitat for beaver and other fur-bearers and widespread the national parks, should be more reliant on user fees. growth of wild strawberries, which would have been crowded Unfortunately, the only solutions on the table are half-hearted out by a forest run rampant. All this, even before the white man measures like that of Sen. Jon Tester, a threatened Montana had discovered this nature. Democrat up for reelection in 2012, who offered to put more Only later did romantics like Henry David Thoreau wax wilderness aside in exchange for a promise of more logging on poetic about a great, untouched, even slightly menacing wood- federal lands. At least, that was what Tester originally pro- land. They dreamt up what was essentially a new nature. The posed; after the bill emerged from the wringer of Democratic long-term effect of this strange intellectual moment has been committee staff, there remained the requirement to create more thickly grown public forests that are more susceptible to bee- “wilderness” land permanently set aside from human use, but tle outbreaks and catastrophic fires—nature’s unpleasant way the logging mandate had disappeared. The bill was never voted of catching up on an overgrown forest that has previously upon, and Tester plans to reintroduce it, with a logging man- escaped its earthly fate, and that man lost his own chance to date, in the new Congress. thin due to something rather less timeless, the U.S. federal I am a newly elected official representing a vast slice of court system. under populated, resource-rich Montana, so I have seen first- Pat Connell, a forester and a state legislator representing part hand the disenchantment of ranchers, farmers, foresters, and of the thickly forested Bitterroot Valley in southwest Montana, recreationalists in the face of a federal officialdom that is aloof says that trees can go two ways—by fire or by logging—and and unresponsive to local concerns. Distrust is running high, that the latter is much preferable. especially in the wake of a leaked Interior Department memo “I believe in the profession of forestry, and one of the fun- that appeared to endorse a plan to set aside 2 million acres of damental concepts is that we can use this wood, instead of let- historic cattle rangeland as a “grasslands national monument.” ting it burn,” Connell says. Each tree is harvested differently. Such a plan would erode the livelihood of families who have “When we harvest lodgepole, we cut it wide and burn the ranched on BLM lands for generations, and would foreclose ground, replicating what a fire does.” With ponderosa, the any possibility of drilling for natural gas in as-yet unexplored cutting is more sporadic, reflecting the lower-intensity burn areas of the state. that occurs among that species of pine. Why do Montanans and westerners in general have such dis- Indeed, the natural option is harsh and undesirable. A fire taste for the federal government? Just look at the reams of that destroyed the beetle-killed trees would create massive air court opinions, the numerous injunctions, and the bureaucratic pollution, require the evacuation of human settlements, spur tangles that never even make it to court. America’s federal massive erosion, and kill off a huge amount of the region’s lands used to be engines of productivity. Now, they are fal- wildlife. Yet this is the outcome all but guaranteed by federal low—even as Montanans remember brighter days, even as environmental law. they await an inferno that will destroy the beauty of the place where they have lived their lives, even as they worry about a stroke of the president’s pen that could do more to spell out a HAT can be done to reform these nonsensical laws? rancher’s future than he himself does. The better question might be: Where to begin? Re - The rural western states’ economy always has revolved W forming the ESA would probably be the biggest bat- around natural resources, and always has been dependent on tle of “optics” that one could pick on the environmental-law public lands. The more federal policy erodes that consortium, front. Winning it would mean more quickly turning manage- the more livelihoods it will destroy and the worse the ultimate ment over to states and removing the loophole that can make it conflagration will be—not only of trees, but of the political impossible to delist species like wolves even after they’ve met sentiment of westerners, trammeled by the law.

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The Long View BY ROB LONG

Federal Pull-the-Plug Plan (Reg. ice cream and/or hold a bacon double 12,965; page 4,520; Volume 47, cheeseburger aloft. Section 56R; ii) as a part of the sign- 9. If a nurse is present, she may, if in process into a federal health-care advisable, appear topless. Federal Health Care Act facility. If this has ALREADY been 10. Patient should be reminded accomplished, you WILL NOT be of the future toll of environmental Form 17Ai: reimbursed for conducting the ELC. disaster, global warming, terrorism, End of Life/Authorized Life You MAY be eligible for PREMIUM economic unrest, and societal break - Termination/Difficult Next of Kin FAST-TRAK reimbursement for down. Does patient really want to Reimbursement Procedures Expedited Leave-Taking Procedures live through all of that? [ELTP] if you qualify. Please see NOTE A: For PREMIUM FAST- Federal Guidelines for the Health NOTE A. TRAK reimbursement for ELTP, Care Reform Act–authorized “End of The ELC process as conducted please verify the following condi- Life Counseling” [ELC] procedures: must include the following points of tions: ELC sessions are now fully reim- discussion: 1. Patient signed papers upon ad - bursable as part of existing federal 1. The intense pain the patient will mission to facility; health-care programs and are encour- undoubtedly suffer, right up until the 2. Nurse and/or complementary aged for all patients of all ages and end, unless “something else” is done. health-care professional was out of conditions. 2. The enormous cost and emotion- the room; Doctors will be reimbursed for al toll on loved ones the patient is 3. Relatives/next of kin were dis- con ducting ELC sessions with ALL selfishly and pointlessly causing. [If tracted by television; pa tients, and each facility is eligible loved ones refuse to participate or in 4. Machine was turned off in an to participate in the FAST-OUT- some way remain obstructive, see undetected fashion; PREMIUM program, which reimbur- NOTE B for additional reimburse- 5. Organs were harvested. ses at 175 percent each ELC that re sults ment options.] NOTE B: For Difficult Next of Kin in an Authorized Life Termi nation 3. Meeting all your old friends, [DNK]: [ALT] within the same fiscal year. family, nanas, and pets on the Rain - 1. Difficult Next of Kin may be Please note: You will be reim- bow Bridge, as has been confirmed encouraged to participate in the bursed ONLY if the following steps by science. ELC with a DNK Voucher. ONLY a are completed and Forms XX7-1 4. Large catheter shown to pa - DNK Voucher will be reimbursed and and XX7-3 have been filed IN tient—“Do you want this stuck up ONLY if signed and counter-signed ADVANCE with your local billing your you-know-what, or can I pull by billing director in your area. center. the plug?” NO EXCEPTIONS. DNK Vouchers Prior to ELC session, please verify: 5. Explanation that “it’s just a cold” come in denominations of $1,000, 1. Patient is still breathing. (If pa - isn’t a diagnosis a non–medically $5,000, and $10,000. Issuance of tient is NOT breathing, or if this is a trained person is qualified to make. A DNK Vouchers in excess of $25,000 retroactive filing following a Non- cough and a runny nose and an “achy REQUIRES two (2) signatures from Authorized Life Termination [NALT], feeling” is a terminal condition, in billing department, and an accompa- please use form 17Bii: Post-Pull many cases. nying form. Authorization and Reimbursement 6. The patient should be informed 2. DNKs can be admitted into the Procedures.) that a lifetime of “sore throats” and hospital facility for any reason, and 2. Patient registers life or lifelike “allergies” brings up quality-of-life for any surgeries, if necessary to con- symptoms in FOUR of the following issues that need to be addressed. duct an effective ELC. All surgeries six major areas: pulse, pupil dilation, Loved ones tortured by the sound of and procedures will be reimbursed light respiration, voice recognition, sniffling and cough-syrup slurping— and no accompanying paperwork will within earshot, in same general area is that something the patient can live be required. (not to exceed 100 feet during coun- with? Thank you for your adherence to seling session). 7. If patient is sedated and/or these guidelines. If you have any 3. Patient has not already filed medicated during ELC session, re- questions, please refer to our FAQ at Adv anced Health Care Directive imbursement will be given for http://healthcareguidelines.gov/reim- with sheaf of required paperwork medications ONLY upon death of bursement/endlife/costmanagement from admission to hospital facility. patient. BEFORE you call our office. PLEASE NOTE: Many facilities 8. Obese patients may be coun- Save our forests! Please file elec- automatically enroll patients in the seled while watching doctor scoop tronically!

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paper is in deep, serious trouble. But Times was in trouble, but Ochs pursued a reading McGowan’s book serves to strategy of brand differentiation. Where Two bring home the point that, even if you’ve other papers were highly partisan, he been paying close attention, it’s actually emphasized straight reporting. At a time Quarts ten times worse than you know. when other papers’ journalism was yel- The Times remains, even in its de - low, Ochs chose to make the Times’ jour- cline, an important American institu - nalism gray. He guessed that people Low tion. But the Republic survived before would be interested in hearing the facts GLENN HARLAN Adolph Ochs established the “good, presented more or less straight, rather REYNOLDS gray Times” as America’s single most than through a partisan filter. important source of news and bien- Ochs’s judgment was correct, and the pensant opinion, and it will surely sur- Times recovered and then prospered. vive even if the Times is gone or, like Though people still complained—and Newsweek, transformed beyond recog- though there were stains upon its honor, nition. If the fall of the Times were as with Walter Duranty’s cover-up re - merely another case of a family business garding Stalin’s mass murders—the squandered by the wastrels of latter gen- New York Times gradually came to oc - erations, the tale would be sad, but not cupy a central position in American especially important. journalism. Among the political and The story of the Times—though it educated classes, at least, its reporting certainly is a story of a family business was generally regarded as definitive, squandered by the wastrels of latter and its choice of headlines influenced Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and generations—is something far more (some would say “dictated”) coverage Fall of the New York Times Means for America, serious. For as McGowan demon- decisions at the major television net- by William McGowan (Encounter, strates, the attitudes, insecurities, and works, and at regional and local papers 288 pp., $25.95) incompetences that led to the New York around the nation. even conservatives Times’ decline are unfortunately present who disdained the Times as liberal treat- ’ve been blogging at my Insta - among a large portion of America’s ed it, mostly, with respect. Pundit.com site for going on ten political class, and not solely on the left. As McGowan makes clear, maintain- years, and—as with most blog- It is the Times’ misfortune to be presided ing this position took constant effort. I gers of almost any political per- over by wastrels who do not appreciate Abe Rosenthal, who ran the paper suasion—one theme of my blogging the sacrifice and self-discipline that from 1977 through 1986 (and whom has been the deteriorating quality of led to their position. For America as a McGowan regards as the Times’ best the New York Times’ news and editorial whole to suffer a similar fate would be a editor), warned that because of the coverage, spiced occasionally with tragedy. staff’s overwhelmingly liberal political snarky comments on the deteriorating In McGowan’s telling, the Times’ fall leanings, “you have to keep your hand state of its finances. from grace is a recent one. Although on the tiller and steer to the right, or it’ll A friend of mine who worked at the conservatives have complained about drift off to the left.” Rosenthal was also Times used to pepper me with angry the New York Times for decades, Mc - particularly concerned about keeping e-mails about that blogging, but those Gowan holds up the late-20th-century political opinions out of the culture petered out, and when I ran into him NYT as a place where journalism was sections and news reports—under his recently—now laid off—he remarked: separated from opinion, and where a supervision, there were to be no “editor- “You know how bad you think manage- decent regard for the opinions of ial needles.” ment is at the Times? It’s ten times worse America as a whole limited forays into As McGowan tells it, the Times’ than you know.” ideology. But, in fact, the Times’ self- fall from grace began in earnest as I thought of this conversation while I image as a source of more-or-less Rosenthal retired, and as Pinch Sulz - was reading William McGowan’s Gray objective journalism was itself a mar- berger was hoisted aloft on “the golden Lady Down. everyone—with the possi- keting ploy dating back to the previous ropes of nepotism.” Unlike his father, ble exception of Arthur Ochs “Pinch” century. Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger Sr., Sulzberger Jr., who has presided over Adolph Ochs—who got his start Pinch was less concerned with balanc- the Times’ decline—knows that the during Reconstruction as a “printer’s ing either the coverage or the books, and devil” at the pro-Republican Knoxville instead began to run the Times as a sort Mr. Reynolds is Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Chronicle, going on to buy the Chat - of upscale Village Voice: not a great Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee. He tanooga Times at the age of 19—pur- news organization that tried to tell the blogs at InstaPundit.com and hosts “InstaVision” on chased the New York Times with truth as accurately as possible, but a PJTV.com. bor rowed money in 1896. The New York snarky in-group publication that told

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS its increasingly homogeneous audience from, and far inferior to, the New York things it wanted to hear. The difference Times of a generation ago. (It is also far between generations is summed up neat- less profitable, reduced most recently to Agents of ly in this anecdote: being propped up by massive loans from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.) Influence Walking across Boston Common one As I read the book, this piling up of day discussing the war, Punch asked disaster stories sometimes felt like CLAIRE BERLINSKI Arthur Jr. which he would like to see get overkill, but it was not: McGowan shot if an American soldier came across deploys the sheer repetitiveness of the a North Vietnamese soldier in battle. Arthur Jr. defiantly answered that he problems as a way of making clear that would like the American to get shot they are systemic ones, not just the because it was the other guy’s country. result of a few bad actors or bad deci- For Punch, the remark bordered on sions. And there lies the most troubling treason, and the two began shouting. aspect of McGowan’s book: The sys- Sulzberger Jr. later said that his father’s temic problem goes beyond the Times. inquiry was the dumbest question he Were it simply that Arthur “Pinch” had ever heard in his life. Sulzberger Jr. is a bad manager and edi- tor, the story here would be a simple Fast-forward a few years and Pinch, one. But although he is certainly both, The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance that now firmly ensconced—despite resis- the Times’ problems seem to embody Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East, tance from the board of directors—as not just Pinch’s personal failings, but by Mitchell Bard (Harper, publisher, cancels Rosenthal’s op-ed also the failings of a generation of 432 pp., $27.99) column, leaving Rosenthal feeling American intellectual and political “betrayed and heartbroken.” Pinch leaders. N 2007, John Mearsheimer and wanted something new at the Times, and If there is a single lesson to be taken Stephen Walt published The he got it, something that avoided the from McGowan’s book, it is that the Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign dumb questions of his father’s genera- maintenance of great institutions takes I Policy. Its arguments are by now tion. constant effort and a considerable familiar—actually, they were always Pinch wanted edge, something with a degree of self-denial: an ability to familiar: powerful, disloyal Jews; too New Leftish angle, and, above all, diver- restrain one’s own short-term selfish many of them; bad for America. The sity. He told critics that if the Times was impulses, and those of colleagues, in book was, predictably and drearily, a alienating older white-male readers, order to allow the institution to do its bestseller. then “we’re doing something right.” He job. A second lesson is that those of In this rejoinder, Mitchell Bard, the hired Howell Raines as editorial-page Pinch’s generation, America’s own former editor of AIPAC’s weekly editor, a man suffering, McGowan writes, ’68ers, don’t care much for maintenance newsletter, taps into a longstanding from “a lifelong sense of Southern guilt” or self-denial. outrage and says the obvious: Walt, and “a simplistic, perhaps even Mani - Pinch’s political attitudes—from his Mearsheimer, you’re out of your minds. chean political vision.” simplistic Vietnam War stance, to his Whatever power, money, and influence Raines wasn’t interested in nuance, knee-jerk racial views, to his assump- the Jewish lobby wields in America is and under his direction, the Times edi - tion that any out-group must be sup- eclipsed by the power, money, and influ- torial pages became a vehicle for ported—are pretty much a caricature of ence of the enemies of the Jews, Saudi preaching more than for converting. the upper-class Sixties New Left. So is Arabia in particular. As for the argument Mean while, Pinch was allowing politics his cavalier attitude toward finances, that Israelis don’t have America’s inter- to seep into first culture, and then news and toward the views of those paying ests at heart, let’s fret about that when the coverage, all while pushing ever-greater the bills. Those are, alas, also the atti- Saudis stop financing al-Qaeda. efforts at “diversity” hiring onto the tudes of those currently in charge in Bard will inevitably be deemed partial paper’s news divisions. Washington. In reading Gray Lady because he’s part of the Israel lobby. Much of McGowan’s book is the tale Down, I felt that I was reading, in This in fact says nothing about whether of what went wrong: From the Jayson miniature, the story of America under his case is sound; logically, one could Blair plagiarism-and-fraud scandal the present administration. Like the just as well argue that he lobbies for (brought about because Pinch’s “diver- Times, we wonder what we will do Israel because he finds his own argu- sity” emphasis elevated an unqualified when the loaned foreign billions run ments persuasive. The same critics will reporter to the top levels of the paper), out, and like the Times, we wonder why probably be less hasty to note that he is to the Duke Lacrosse false rape charges, the man at the top seems so uncon- also a research scholar with impeccable to Hurricane Katrina, the Plame scan - cerned and aloof. academic credentials, for what those are dal, and weapons of mass destruction, When I started reading McGowan’s among many other disasters, McGowan book, I wondered who would turn the Claire Berlinski is a freelance journalist who lives in piles up incident after incident demon- Times around. By the time I finished, I Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No strating beyond dispute that the New was wondering: Who will turn America Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher York Times of today is very different around? Matters.

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worth (not much, I suppose: so are added detailing the way Saudi money Mearsheimer and Walt). His work on the has radicalized states and groups in the A C. S. LEWIS influence of ethnic-interest-group lob- non-Arab Muslim world. BODICE-RIPPER, bies in the U.S. is cited in the disserta- Were he catering to an academic audi- FROM AFRICA tion of every graduate student who has ence, he would probably have written written about the subject since 1991, two different books, one about Saudi In making books there is no end, when Bard published The Water’s Edge petrodiplomacy, the other about lobby and Beyond: Defining the Limits to groups who promote a particular form of And little merit. You have read Domestic Influence on U.S. Middle East the Palestinian narrative (all martyrdom, Of world on world that has no friend, Policy. all day) in the Arab–Israeli conflict. In volumes equally as dead; It would be best, however, for critics There’s great overlap, to be sure, but it to put these points aside and focus on his really makes sense to link them as he arguments. Much of what Bard recounts does only if you consider the underlying And if I sent a screed to you has been reported elsewhere, but I have argument to be, “Walt and Mearsheimer, never seen such a complete, patient you’re out of your minds, and Carter, On life unending, you would sigh, catalogue of the financial details of you’re on the take.” But since that’s As, certainly, you’ve read that too, Saudi influence-peddling anywhere exactly his argument, this approach And I am plainly going to die. else. If Bard makes any single point works well enough. every American should grasp, it’s this: The first part of the book is an abbre- The Saudis are spending $4 billion viated history of the Arab–Israeli con- But what about a hot desire— per annum to promote themselves and flict with a focus on junctures at which In a few words, because you share it? their utterly immoderate version of America yielded to pressure—or the Islam—exceeding the Soviet Union’s expectation of pressure—from the Arab A fantasy, a secret fire? budget for foreign subversion during lobby, or certainly didn’t yield to pres- But if you’re bored, of course I’ll spare it. the Cold War. And while they may be sure from the Israel lobby. Not much will pay ing too much for what they’re get- surprise those familiar with the history, ting—most Americans, Bard notes, still but to summarize the key points: The Nineteen years old, I took a ride loathe them—they’re certainly not get- thesis of an all-powerful Jewish lobby, or Across the fields and met the one ting nothing. even a very powerful one, simply cannot Who spent entire months inside, Bard furnishes detailed lists, page account for the overwhelming documen- after page, of American universities, tary evidence of the State Department’s Only remembering her son. think tanks, politicians, and academics implacable opposition to the creation who drink lustily from the Saudi fire- of Israel. Loy Henderson, for example, It was as strange as in a book— hose. He does not establish that the State’s director of Near Eastern affairs, Saudis have succeeded in buying off the vehemently opposed partition and claimed And yet she spoke to me and smiled. entire American elite and brainwashing in a secret memo to the secretary of state She had a silly, open look, their kids; but he surely proves that that his views reflected those of “nearly they’re trying their best. The chapter in every member of the Foreign Service or As if I were her hapless child. which he details the funds flowing from of the Department who has worked to the House of Saud toward Jimmy Carter any appreciable extent on Near Eastern My eyes resolved on flat contempt— is particularly devastating; in that case, problems.” it’s safe to say they’ve succeeded. The Jewish lobby was not sufficiently That stayed with me in this new land, “The Arab Lobby” is a title dictated powerful to overcome the Arab lobby’s Where grief, from which I seem exempt, by the demands of symmetry, but Bard pressure for an American arms embargo Nests bare and shaking in my hand. acknowledges that it’s a misnomer, and on Israel. Nor was it powerful enough to it is in my view (which is, not inciden- prevent Israel’s exclusion from NATO; tally, from Istanbul) unfortunate. He’s nor to secure economic aid for the new But what about the ulcerous spot mixing up unrelated or tangentially state; nor to prevent Eisenhower from Scoured by the gravelly blood of yearning, related actors and goals to make them fit forcing Israel’s withdrawal from the under the “Arab” rubric. For one thing, Sinai following the Suez campaign. It Where so much is, but love is not? the Arab world is nothing if not divided, was only in 1958, when, during the The names, the theories for that burning! so no one actor, and certainly not the Jordan crisis, the Saudis refused to per- Saudis, can lobby on its behalf; for mit the U.S. to transit its airspace— another, the Arab and the Muslim Israel obliged—that American strategy Let Mercy strip my life of sleep. worlds are not the same. In parts of the began to shift. It was not the Israel lobby Renew me, give me eyes to see. book, what he calls the Arab lobby that shifted it: It was the demonstration Since You have paid, the truth is cheap: might better be termed the immoderate- of Israel’s value as a strategic ally. Muslim lobby or just the naïve-but- The arms embargo, likewise, re - There is one God, for her and me. voluble Tiers-Mondiste lobby; indeed, mained in place and was not reversed a chapter could profitably have been until the Kennedy administration; even —SARAH RUDEN

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS then, the shipments were small and sent much more powerful—the logic of as balancing measures in moments of Soviet–American rivalry regularly over- extreme urgency. The Israelis became rode both. major recipients of American military But this is a historian’s quibble. It’s the aid only after the Six-Day War of 1967, second part of the book—the catalogue when they dealt a stunning blow, in the of what the Saudis are buying in America minds of American policymakers (and today—that’s critical: the university cur- in reality), to Soviet dreams of establish- riculums, the charities used as terror- ing hegemony in the region. The Israel finance fronts, the Islamic centers and lobby wasn’t powerful enough, howev- mosques that promote violent anti- er, to prevent the imposition of another Americanism and anti-Semitism, the arms embargo during that war, nor to Islamist prison chaplains, the Islamist prevent the sales of the F-15, F-15 think tanks, the television shows and enhancements, and AWACS aircraft to propaganda committees, the conferences Saudi Arabia. Israeli objections to the and student organizations, and above all arming of the Saudis were overridden the politicians. His central arguments— again and again on the grounds that the that something has gone deeply wrong in Persian Gulf needed protection from the the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, Soviets more than Israel needed protec- that it now requires our urgent scrutiny, tion from the Arabs. and that Walt and Mearsheimer are out Perhaps an editor should have of their minds—are ones with which I restrained the current of understandable entirely agree. The Cold War is over, but indignation that runs through Bard’s the Saudis haven’t changed; his descrip- prose. It would have run through mine, tion, for example, of Saudi rulers who too, obviously, but his lividity will make demanded American arms to protect it easier for critics to dismiss the book them from Nasser’s Egypt—and further as Zionist hucksterism, no matter how demanded that no Jews be among the valid his arguments. Mind you, the same U.S. military officers sent to instruct critics would say that were his prose as them in the use of the equipment—will dry as the Sinai. It’s possible there’s a have an odiously familiar ring to those small group of people out there who who have recently been perusing the simply don’t know what to make of this WikiLeaks cables. Plus c’est la même debate, and Bard’s “I’ve had it up to here chose. with you dissimulating, hypocritical The book does leave an important morons” approach might put them off. question unanswered. Bard asks, rhetor- (Then again, there are probably no more ically, what would happen if tomorrow than five such people in existence.) Israel were to disappear. Would the other If I don’t take issue with Bard’s parti- problems of the Middle East also dis - sanship or his outrage, I must take issue appear? Would Shiites and Sunnis fall Itonly with one of his historical views: He is lovingly into each other’s arms; would too quick to dismiss the Cold War ratio- Lebanon become the region’s Switz- nale for our relationship with the House erland? Of course not. But there is anoth- takes a of Saud. Distasteful though they were, er question he might ask: If, tomorrow, we really hadn’t much choice: The oil reserves equal to those of the Persian moment. threat to the Persian Gulf was no fanta- Gulf were discovered beneath the Great sy, and we would have lost the Cold War Lakes, would the problem of Islamic Make a difference had its resources fallen under Soviet extremism disappear? in the lives of the men and women control. The Cold War was a real war; it The answer to that question, alas, is who protect our freedom. forced upon the U.S. terrible choices, as also “of course not.” Even sharply re - VOLUNTEER. DONATE. REMEMBER. wars do. In a memorandum to Kissinger ducing our dependence upon Saudi oil USO.ORG expressing an absolutely typical Amer - won’t reduce the problem much now; in ican policy-making sentiment, Nixon the first place, we don’t buy most of our wrote that “‘evenhandedness’ is the oil from the Saudis—we buy it from right policy, but above all our interest Canada and Mexico—and in the second, is—what gives the Soviets the most oil is a fungible commodity. So long trouble—don’t let Arab–Israeli conflict as the rest of the world, and China in obscure that interest.” If Bard is right to particular, remains hungry for oil, the say the Israel lobby was not as powerful Saudis will have a market for their prod- as often alleged during this era, he is uct. And we will have a serious problem wrong to claim that the Arab lobby was on our hands.

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is crucial for Beran to get these defi - Top ciencies right, because his prescription for the pathology of the elites is “con - SEARCH serva tive compassion” (as in Chapter 6, Down “Conservative Compassion versus Social Pity”), and he makes conservative com- OUR HELEN RITTELMEYER passion sound like liberal social pity minus all the problems. Many of the defi- ARCHIVES Pathology of the Elites: How the Arrogant Classes ciencies he identifies hit home; a few do Plan to Run Your Life, by Michael Knox Beran not. (Ivan R. Dee, 312 pp., $26.95) Moral systems, including the Christian HERE ones that Beran seems to like, tend to he ideology of the American impose themselves on people, never ruling class has done great harm more so than when their adherents are AND OTHER LEADING to those classes which do not elites with the power to do the impos - T have the privilege of ruling, and ing. But he perceptively notes that lib - JOURNALS OF few people are better equipped to analyze er alism sin gularly lacks “protocols of OPINION ON THE the “pathology of the elites” than Michael self-examination.” Meritocrats put great Knox Beran, a regular NR contributor faith in their merit, and technocrats see no PROGRESSIVE AND (indeed, some of the essays in this book reason for self-doubt when their solutions have their origin in the pages of this mag- are dictated by mere common sense and CONSERVATIVE SIDES; azine). Beran is not only the author of sev- math. The old “moral and spiritual tradi- eral acclaimed books, including studies of tions of the West” had humility, which 1,000,000 PAGES Robert F. Kennedy and Thomas Jefferson, stood as a buffer against utopianism and OF HISTORY AND but he has followed the prep school–Ivy therefore totalitarianism. League–law school–Westchester pipeline But do we really believe Beran when he CULTURE. with great precision, so Pathology of the says that liberalism is deficient in love? he Elites is something of an inside job. returns again and again to the old com- Beran’s exposé goes like this: The plaint that liberal programs fail to address HARPERS Amer ican ruling class purports to be lib- themselves to whole persons “made in the eral and humanitarian, but this is a sooth- image of their maker,” citing welfare and THE NATION ing self-deception; what it really wants is public education as two instances where I- power. The expansion of its bureaucratic and-Thou has been replaced by I-and- THE NEW REPUBLIC and cultural power has, both by design and Client. But in most of our school systems, by accident, eroded the power of rival teachers could use a little less cultiva - COMMONWEAL institutions. Pastoral charity has been re - tion of the whole child and a little more placed by the far less humane welfare im personal rote instruction. (Indeed, COMMENTARY office, “with its whiff of Lysol and futil- Beran’s chapter on memorizing poetry, ity.” The virtues of self-government have “In De fense of Rhyme-Time,” is one of NATIONAL REVIEW been denigrated and undermined by the book’s best.) Welfare programs are government programs. The common man bureaucratic, but so are most churches. NACLA once learned civic virtue in the public Religious charities perform their charity square and personal virtue from the West- face to face, on the human level, but so do THE NEW YORK ern canon; experts have excluded him social workers. And contracting charity REVIEW OF BOOKS from the former, for lack of credentials, services out to community organiza- and progressive educators have denied tions—which liberals started doing a long THE AMERICAN him access to the latter. time ago, in response to charges that their Beran acknowledges that many liberal poverty programs were too impersonal— SPECTATOR efforts are well-intentioned, and lets has not usually made them more effective, Lionel Trilling explain what went wrong: or less liberal. Liberal advocates of wel- “Some paradox of our nature leads us, fare understand that their targets are whole HTTP://METASEARCH. when once we have made our fellow men persons; what they do not understand is the objects of our enlightened interest, to economics. OPINIONARCHIVES.COM go on to make them the objects of our But a general strengthening of civic pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our culture, which is one of Beran’s main rec- coercion.” Beran opens the book with this ommendations, would certainly be a good quotation and returns often to its thesis: thing, regardless. It’s hard to reduce civic  that concern for one’s fellow man is very culture to a white paper, so Beran’s sug-
  fine, but the liberal version is deficient in gestions are mostly vague, but he men- ways that end inevitably in oppression. It tions New Urbanism more than once as a

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS concrete way to rehabilitate agora culture Paul summarizes the central finding through “the old public spaces.” He gives of fetal-origins research as follows: The special praise to Poundbury, the quaint Present at child in the womb is not “an inert being— (and centrally planned) British town ‘the larval stage of human develop- commissioned by Prince Charles and The Creation ment,’” but rather “an active and dynamic designed by Leon Krier. Beran’s faith in creature, responding and even adapting to the promise of this “little city, rich in civic RYAN T. ANDERSON conditions inside and outside its mother’s focal points” sounds very like an argu- body as it readies itself for life in the par- ment Krier himself made for including at ticular world it will soon enter.” Likewise, least one church in his urban plans: “Even the pregnant mother is not a “passive if people don’t go to church anymore, it is incubator,” but “a powerful and often pos- important to have such a public space, a itive influence on her child even before landmark which is always open to all and it’s born.” fulfills mystical and symbolic functions” Paul is careful to emphasize positive, to (as one architecture critic summarized avoid increasing the pressure on women Krier’s rationale). Which would be nice if who are already made to see every choice it worked, but even Krier now admits that they make as potentially harmful to their it doesn’t. Poundbury itself has no church, unborn child. She notes, for example, that because by the time Krier was designing eating well during pregnancy can yield it, he had come to the conclusion that a Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape long-lasting benefits. Research shows public space’s “mystical and symbolic the Rest of Our Lives, by Annie Murphy Paul that flavors from foods reach the amni otic functions” depend entirely on residents’ (Free Press, 320 pp., $26) fluid that we all swallowed in utero: wishes, not the architect’s. Being fed a diet of sugary, salty, and fatty Beran would agree with the older and HIS story begins in a Tot Lot foods helps structure the development of wiser Krier that top-down plans work playground on Manhattan’s the fetal brain’s reward center to prefer only when they are grounded in native Upper West Side. Watching her such foods—but the same goes for being traditions; he says as much in his essay T three-year-old son play, author fed a diet of vegetables, fruits, and other on George W. Bush’s “freevangelical” Annie Murphy Paul wonders: “What healthy foods. Also, babies tailor their foreign policy. And, with an admirable makes you the way you are?” Every physiology according to the level of nutri- modesty entirely in keeping with his the- human life is unique and irreplaceable, ents they received in the womb: Those sis, he does not pretend to have mastered full of wonder, beauty, and mystery; no who are gestated on slim pickings are the native traditions of those non-elites one quite knows how we get to be who we often unprepared biologically for a post- who rarely mingle with lawyers from are, but that doesn’t stop us from specu- natal gluttony, hence much of modern Westchester County, N.Y. lating. At the Tot Lot, Paul is told that her obesity. (Studies of babies who were ges- His lack of empathy for the ruling class son has his father’s professorial tempera- tated during famines and wars but came is surprising, though. In all of their bene - ment and his mother’s journalistic sensi- of age during times of plenty support this volent gestures, Beran detects in liberals tivity, “as if his personality traits were thesis.) a Nietzschean will to power, rather than lottery numbers drawn at conception.” Just as our taste buds and metabolism genuine concern run aground on the Then there are the crucial first years after are developing in utero, so too are our shoals of reality. As a graduate of Groton, birth, in which nature and nurture play responses to stress. Recent studies of he should perhaps have taken a lesson their eternally disputed parts. pregnant women with post-traumatic from Endicott Peabody, the school’s To these important factors we must now stress disorder (PTSD) show that there founder and its headmaster for 56 years add another: fetal origins. This is a bur- is a “transgenerational transmission of and several generations of elite boys. geoning new line of research, which Paul, PTSD risk.” Even after controlling for (FDR said that, apart from his parents, a science journalist, ably investigates and early-childhood experience and parent- Peabody influenced him more than any- presents to general readers. She describes ing, the evidence suggests that suscep - one.) Peabody spent his life struggling how our prenatal environment influences tibility to PTSD is passed down from with the pathology of the elites; he was the expression of our genes, how this mother to child in the womb. Likewise, disturbed by how few of his graduates unwitting nurture in the womb shapes our various forms of depression, anxiety, and ended up ministers and how many ended nature—not only the growth of our physi- mood disorders affect the developing up Wall Street liberals and New Deal cal organs, but our health, appetites, intel- child. Doctors are finding that “a pregnant mandarins. But he never lost hope that his ligence, personality, and even lifespan. woman’s emotional state can influence wayward pupils would retain some of the While the book is not as well organized as the fetus’s developing brain and nervous lessons he had tried to impart—his plain- one might have hoped—and a bit thin system, potentially shaping the way the tive last words were: “Franklin Roosevelt toward the end—it’s engagingly written offspring will experience and manage its is a very religious man.” Beran’s analysis and full of interesting facts and figures. own emotions.” While Paul makes clear might have been even more trenchant if that she is no determinist—“prenatal ex - he had been able to find, in spite of his Mr. Anderson is editor of Public Discourse: perience doesn’t force the individual frustration with the elites, that kind of Ethics, Law, and the Common Good, an down a particular path; at most, it points charity for them. online publication of the Witherspoon Institute. us in a general direction, and we can take

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another route if we choose”—she is an implication of the research that she expectant mothers. So much for forget- equally clear that our personalities begin popularizes: No mere clump of cells or ting women. to form remarkably early, and much blob of tissue, the unborn child is a living, Still, there is much more to be done hinges on the mother. dynamic, self-directing, and interacting to assist pregnant women in delivering Paul encourages people to reach out to baby. (Or, as Paul puts it, “a learning, healthy and happy babies, and Origins assist pregnant women, especially during adapting, responding fetus.”) provides helpful suggestions. If we want times of personal crisis and national emer- The doctors she spoke with grew un - healthy adults, we should direct some gency (research from 9/11 pregnancies easy when Paul asked them about abor- energy toward encouraging healthy moth- shows the impact of crisis on the unborn). tion: Research into “fetal origins is ers. Focusing on pregnant women during She quotes one researcher: “Historically, con cerned with the relationship between their pregnancy is, after all, a “far more people knew that it was a good idea to prenatal experience and postnatal life,” manageable task than convincing the take special care of pregnant women. But they told her. “For the aborted fetus, there entire population to eat well or exercise in modern times, we’ve forgotten that.” is no postnatal life, so the matter of fetal regularly or stop smoking.” Not only will While she cautions against going too far origins is moot.” But this is an evasive it benefit the mothers, it will benefit the  and treating women as invalids, Paul urges response. The central issue in the abortion current and future lives of their unborn all to realize that “pregnancy and child - debate is whether there ought to be  a post-children. The pro-life community should rearing do make us more dependent on natal life for the unborn child, and much run with some of these ideas and be at the others.” This statement is typical, as she is of that hinges on what the “fetus” is—andvanguard of this emerging movement, nuanced in her discussion of the various fetal-origins research is shedding im - even if it should resist some of Paul’s sta- influences on unborn life and what we portant light on that question.     tist instincts   on how to do so. should do about them. But just as fetal-origins research makes Paul closes the book with a moving While Origins is well-written, one of the abortion-rights supporter uneasy,  so passage about the delivery of her new

    Annie Murphy Paul is nuanced in her discussion of the various influences on unborn life and what

we should do about them.

the oddest stylistic features is Paul’s con- too, Paul argues, should it discomfit the baby: “There’s nothing more real than a sistent reference to the unborn child as a pro-lifer. Anyone who relegates “the baby. When we hold our babies for the “fetus.” Now in certain medical contexts, pregnant woman to the role of human first time, we imagine them clean and including within this book, using such a incubator,” as Paul argues pro-lifers have, new, unmarked by life, when in fact they term makes sense. But too often Paul’s will be challenged by this research. If have already been shaped by the world, use of “fetus” is jarring. Describing her abortion-rights supporters “have indeed and by us. It’s a koan of parenthood, one own ultrasound, she writes: “There was forgotten the fetus,” so “pro-life forces worthy of contemplation: We are meeting my fetus moving on the screen, limbs jerk- have also ‘forgotten someone’: the preg- someone we know well for the very first ing loosely like a marionette.” Mothers I nant woman.” time.” But if that’s true, how long can one know say: “There was my baby moving As it happens, I finished reading remain an “abortion-rights supporter”? on the screen.” A page later, Paul writes: Origins the day after attending the Contemplating the wonder and beauty “There’s no doubt that seeing one’s future St. Joseph County (Ind.) Right to Life din - and mystery of human life will have its child on an ultrasound monitor is a pow- ner. As the dinner concluded, guests were effects. erful experience.” Why “future”? Why asked to open an envelope with a person- not “seeing one’s child”? She speaks, alized card for each of us. My card read: in her own voice, of “fetus” and “future “My name is Paloma, on Wednesday, “Rated One of New York City child,” yet she quotes a psychology re - May 7, 2008, my life ended before I ‘Best Value’ Hotels.” ... Zagats search authority as finding that women was born. Please pray for my family. strongly agree with the following state- Though I am with Jesus, they still grieve.” ments: “After watching the ultrasound I Likewise, at each Mass, my parish in - know my baby better.” “After viewing the cludes a prayer petition for expecting ultrasound I feel more attached to my mothers. At that same Right to Life baby.” Exactly: Baby. Not “fetus” or “fu - dinner, a major fundraising goal was to ture child.” support the South Bend Women’s Care New York’s all suite hotel is located in Center and the billboard—located right the heart of the city, near corporations, Only at the book’s end, where Paul theatre & great restaurants. Affordable reminisces about “marching arm in arm” next to the local abortion clinic—adver- elegance with all the amenities of home. at an “abortion-rights rally,” does the tising the center. One week later, un - reader finally understand why she was at dergraduates at my university collected 149 E. 39th St. (Bet 3rd & Lex) New York, NY 10016 such pains to use the clinical term “fetus.” donations and bought necessary care Reservations 1-800-248-9999 Ask about our special National Review rates. Paul clearly sees—and wants to mute— items as they organized a baby shower for

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BOOKS, ARTS & MANNERS make him part personal trainer, part psy- western True Grit. Portis’s novel was Film chiatrist, and a complete shock to the originally adapted for the screen in 1969, system for a repressed aristocrat like with John Wayne playing Cogburn, the Bertie. drunken, eye-patched, and trigger-happy Out of It goes without saying that the shock is lawman hired by a doughty 14-year-old, salutary, that Bertie and Lionel form an Mattie Ross (Kim Darby in the original, a The Past unexpected friendship, and that when the newcomer named hailee Steinfeld in the crisis arrives, the kingdom rallies, grate- Coens’ movie), to bring her father’s killer ROSS DOUTHAT fully, around its somewhat less tongue- to justice along the post–Civil War fron- tied king. The King’s Speech is mainly tier. The new version proves that casting a hey arrive all at once, the year’s well-cooked comfort food for Anglo - more technically proficient actor doesn’t serious movies, in a Christmas philes: It has plummy accents, faultless always produce a better performance. rush that gluts theaters and sets and costumes, a raft of master thespi- even though Wayne mainly put a dis- T dazes critics. After so many ans—helena Bonham Carter, Michael solute, cantankerous twist on his usual fine performances, so many sterling Gambon, Derek Jacobi—in supporting screen persona, his Cogburn was a more scripts, and so much directorial excel- parts, and an entirely unobjectionable compelling figure than Bridges’s hammy, lence, most reviewers limp into the political message (down with hitler and growling, “look, Ma, I’m acting” inter- new year a little overwhelmed, pining for snobbery, but God save the king!). pretation of the character. the lowbrow longueurs of August and Only Firth finds something more in The movie around Bridges, though, is September, when the only question was the material. Resisting the temptation to excellent. Whether it was strictly neces- how much snark to hurl at The Expen - make Bertie and his stammer even re - sary I’m not sure: The Coens made much dables or Piranha 3D. motely charming, he strangles on his of how they intended to draw more deep - happily, this magazine’s fortnightly words rather than just stumbling over ly from Portis’s novel, but the original publishing schedule supplies a little more them, playing the duke-turned-king as a movie was already reasonably faithful to time to recover and reflect. But I still feel man for whom the mind-body connection the book, and there are times when the obliged to take December’s better films has become the most awful sort of prison. new Grit feels more like a shot-by-shot two at a time, lest I find myself still re - We’ve seen repressed aristocrats in a remake than a complete reimagining. viewing them in March. hundred movies and Masterpiece Theatre (The biggest change to the narrative is a We’ll start, then, with the season’s two serials. But this is the rare performance coda that frames the story from a quarter historical dramas—one that’s somewhat that finds the tortured humanity in the century later, which feels like a letdown worse than its showiest performance, and cliché. and a mistake.) another that’s somewhat better. The one It helps that Firth is more comprehen- But there are improvements as well, that’s worse is The King’s Speech, a com- sible, even at his most strangled, than Jeff mostly in the emphases and shadings. petent but unsurprising period piece that’s Bridges’s Rooster Cogburn in Joel and Roger Deakins’s cinematography is more redeemed from middlingness by Colin ethan Coen’s take on the Charles Portis artful than anything in the 1969 version, Firth’s superb turn as Albert Frederick the score is more haunting, and there’s Arthur George of Windsor, a.k.a. the perhaps a bit more of Portis’s baroque and Duke of york, a.k.a. “Bertie”—or, as his fascinating dialogue. Matt Damon makes elder brother cruelly calls him, “b-b-b-b- a better (and funnier) LaBoeuf, the vain Bertie.” Texas Ranger who joins up with Mattie The duke, you see, has a terrible stam- and Rooster, than Glen Campbell did in mer, which renders him unable to deliver the original. As Mattie, Steinfeld isn’t gracious speeches, preside at great occa- better than Darby, but she’s different in sions, and otherwise perform the various interesting ways: She’s actually 14, where ceremonial duties required of a British Darby was 22, which may be why she royal. This is a particular problem for feels free to underplay Mattie’s girlish- Bertie because the time is the 1930s, and ness, and emphasize her Calvinist inten - his elder brother is the reckless and Nazi- sity, her forcefulness and intelligence, and sympathizing edward VIII (an appro - (of course) her grit. priately unstable-seeming Guy Pearce), This emphasis fits the movie’s overall whose passion for a Baltimore divorcee tone, which is Coen to the core: rumina- eventually forces him to offload the tive, prolix, existential, and fascinated crown to his stuttering younger sibling. by the way that faithful, moral, and deter- With war clouds gathering and Britain in mined individuals wrestle with the appar- need, the soon-to-be George VI must find ently random violence and stupidity of the someone to solve his speech impedi - universe. (Mattie and Marge Gunderson ment. And that someone turns out to be from Fargo would make an interesting a commoner—and worse, an Austral - team.) The original True Grit was more of ian!—named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey a yarn; this one is more of a sermon. I’m

PARAMOUNT PICTURES Rush), whose unorthodox methods Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn glad we have them both.

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After inspecting the hole and warning protection for the deck, and a tipping sta- The Straggler me not to tell the town, the contractor tion at the edge, with a raised stop for the began weaving grandiose engineering barrow’s wheel to “feel” at the tipping schemes built around major items of point. Any task, I explained to my son, Shovel heavy construction machinery: a crane goes more or less smoothly according with a claw bucket, or a conveyor belt, to the quality of the preparation. By Ready or else gotta remove a section of fence lunchtime the job was shovel ready. We there, and a fruit tree too . . . pump out sallied forth at 1 p.m. and set to shoveling. the water (which was no more than six We shoveled, barrowed, shoveled, and inches deep) . . . restore piping for barrowed for six and a half hours, with drainage . . . only a few short breaks, and cleared the “Why can’t I just have a load of dirt whole pile! dumped in the driveway and wheel - It was an average father-son bonding barrow it in through the garden gate?” I experience until a moment of paternal joy asked. The poor fellow looked pained, as near the end. By this point it was dark; we the phrygians must have looked when were working by the house’s outside JOHN DERBYSHIRE Alexander sliced through the Gordian security lights. A cold, bitter wind had knot. I got rid of him and did some men- come up with the darkness. We were ne of our township’s very few tal arithmetic: π r-squared times h . . . utterly exhausted. Ironic banter had faded claims to fame, perhaps the about ten yards, leaving room for topsoil: out an hour before; now nothing was only one, arises from its a hundred or so wheelbarrow-loads. passing between us but the occasional O cesspools. The Wikipedia arti- Definitely doable. So where do I get ten grunt or curse (permitted, under the cle headed “cesspool” devotes an entire yards of dirt? circumstances). Then mrs. Straggler paragraph to Huntington. In numbers of Dirt, I learned, is better than dirt appeared at the patio door, calling us to people sucked down into collapsing old cheap: It is free. Construction companies dinner. cesspools, we lead the nation. There were dig up a lot of dirt and have to dump it The mountain had been reduced to a three deaths just this past decade. somewhere. They can take it to some few molehills. We were almost done. In The Straggler family avoided this mis- approved site, for which privilege they satisfaction at our unexpected success, fortune by sheer good luck. There is a have to pay and fill out forms; or they and in deference to my son, who had been wooden deck at the back of our house, can dump it on some citizen’s property at working heroically without complaint a few inches above the lawn. One night his request and turn Accounts payable and was plainly bushed, I said we could in mid-December a large hole suddenly into Accounts Receivable, charging the go in to dinner with clear consciences, appeared in the lawn just beyond the citizen a nominal fee for their trouble. leaving the remainder for tomorrow. deck, at a spot we must have walked over Free market: 1. municipal bureaucracy: “no,” he said. “Let’s finish the job, a thousand times. The hole was deep and 0. After consulting Craigslist I ordered Dad. There’s only three or four barrow- cylindrical, though narrowing at the up ten yards of dirt from a firm in the loads left.” top, like the bottle dungeons found in next county at an agreed small delivery It turned out to be five, yet strangely medieval Scottish castles. The interior charge. It would, the voice on the phone those five seemed lighter than any of the diameter was seven feet, depth about assured me, be clean dirt—no unwieldy others. After tipping the last one into the eight. There was some water at the bot- lumps of stone, concrete, or brickwork hole I said what my own dad used to say tom, and some fragments of rusted-away embedded, no noxious chemicals. Clean on completing a long repetitive task: pipework jutting from the walls. dirt! “That’s what the cobbler threw at his I consulted with an elderly neighbor On the afternoon of December 23 my wife.” (I.e. the last.) who has lived in the street all his life. dirt arrived. The dump truck was enor- Shovels, broom, and wheelbarrow His first words on seeing the hole were: mous; it backed up my driveway with went back to their home in the garage. “Don’t tell the town!” If our township inches to spare. The dirt pile, too, was Father and son staggered in to a splendid authorities got to know about the hole, enormous when dumped. I contemplated dinner made by my incomparable wife. they would descend on us in force armed it with rising doubt. It might take days After dinner we sat by a blazing log fire. with inspection warrants, environmental- to shift. What if the weather turned bad? The tree, dressed and lit by my busy, impact studies, certifications, and de - I’d need a tarp to cover it. Where could I capable daughter, glowed from its corner. mands for fees, and with a mighty host of get a tarp that big? my 15-year-old son, We watched Christmas movies on TV. I favored contractors in their train. The home from school, joined in my contem- opened a bottle of port, carrying forward common idiom “Don’t make a federal plations. I shared my weather worries another of my dad’s idiosyncrasies—he case out of it” is seldom heard in new with him. He said he thought the weather drank port only at Christmas. The TV York townships, where a town case is would be fine the next day, so we could at weatherman warned of snow; but the much more to be feared. least make a start. hole was filled, the driveway empty, the It was, my neighbor confirmed, an The next day, Christmas eve, was in - household budget barely dented, the ancient forgotten cesspool. “Keep quiet deed fine, though cold. After some unre- house itself warm, secure, and decorated. and just fill it in,” he advised. I called a lated morning chores I spent an hour Christmastime: family time: comfort contractor he recommended. constructing ramps for the wheelbarrow, and joy.

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Athwart BY JAMES LILEKS Mojo Myth

HE president attended church in Hawaii, but he by defective Republicans—sorry, defecting Republicans, went the day after Christmas, so as not to distract who belong to a long line of GOPers who have the jellied from the other guy’s limelight. Decent of him; spines of frock-coated diplomats. Yes, by all means, trust T the babe only gets one day a year. He had much Russia. The proof is in the Putin, as they say. It’s easy to see to be grateful for, since the month of December had seen the why Democrats vote for these treaties; they hate weapons. If Miracle of the Reinvested Mojo. Gone was the battered, the United States came up with a weapon that would destroy diminished wisp of a president who ceded his podium to the everyone else’s weapons and shower the planet with daisy husky bloviations of Clinton the First; now he was back, petals and gummi bears, they’d oppose it. The Republicans baby, with a tripartite victory under his belt. Let’s recap: who signed on come from liberal states that believe that the Stunning Victory No. 1: He’d gotten the tax deal he alternative to an arms-control treaty is a blackened planet never wanted and had long complained about with the trailing a caul of ash as it moves through space. Newspaper prickly tone of a food critic forced to admit that the foie editorialists in your home town frown in disapproval. Vote gras–stuffed veal is delicious though sodden with cruelty. for New START and you’re one of those rare cretins from He even admitted that raising taxes in a recession would be the right who “grow in office,” and with luck maybe you unwise, which was nice. It’s a bit like a medieval blood - can stand erect someday and carve a tool out of bone. Not letter admitting that the patient should occasionally take a a weapon. Maybe a napkin ring. break from being covered with leech- So how will Mr. Mojo spend his es, if only to produce a fresh supply juice? of humours and phlogiston, but any February 2011. TASP, or Totally sort of recognition of something Awesome Single Payer overhaul, called “economics” is welcome, re - passes the House on a 435–0 vote. gardless of the necessity that pro- “There’s no way our incoming fresh- duced it. man class could say no to the ulti- Victory No. 2: “Don’t ask, don’t mate apotheosis of national health tell,” a hateful creation of homo - care,” a veteran congressman will phobic generals who used black-ops note with rue. “Given the loud red mind-control technology to force the throbbing amount of mojo coming Congress and President Clinton to from 1600 Penn, it was all we could do their bidding, was revoked and do to keep the Tea Party congress- replaced with “Who cares, what - men from demanding death panels. ever?” This was also proof of mojo Hell, they even wanted to call them reacquisition. Congress, terrified of a Grandma-Smother Murder Boards.” mainstream-media culture that bristled with constant hos- State Pension Bailout Act of 2011. This act, which might tility to gay issues, had refused to consider the matter and have raised eyebrows in the pre-mojo era, incorporates the quailed in the face of a president who’d just gotten a tax deal DREAM act and extends full California-level retirement he hated. He’s almost drunk with power, lads—if we don’t benefits to everyone living north of the southernmost point give him this, he might sign an executive order requiring of the outer ring of the suburbs of Mexico City. “We high-speed trains from Chicago to Hawaii. thought the 2010 elections constituted a message about This issue matters a great deal to coastal opinion leaders spending and the concept of citizenship,” Tom Tancredo and people who have a horror of being thought of as Mean, will say, “but it’s clear that anyone who can accept a con- but most people don’t care much. They figure there are tinuation of the tax code and a repudiation of his party’s already gays in the military, and if the prospect of furtive stance on immigration was playing rope-a-dope. The glances in the shower hasn’t demolished Israel’s capacity to Republican caucus was prepared to extend lifetime health defend itself, the United States can probably get through benefits to anyone on the left side of the Panama Canal, but this. Even in Middle America, people know gay folk, and the administration played hardball on that one.” if one of them said, “You know, I’m going to Afghanistan Environmental regs will set the maximum amount of to put rifle rounds through the brainpans of Taliban girl- carbon anyone can use, possess, or give off, and appoint as whippers,” most people would say get ’er done. The presi- neighborhood enforcers all those relatives who lecture you dent could have done this earlier, of course, but as he said about global warming. It will be called “cap-and-tirade.” recently, his views on gay issues are “evolving,” meaning, That’s just the few first months. If there’s mojo left over, an election is nigh. the administration may work on its goal of a carbon-neutral Victory No. 3: The New START treaty. He was assisted navy, with all ships converted to renewable, sustainable power sources. Specifically, wind. The first lady will be AFP / Mr. Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com. pushing for row power, as well. Good exercise. SAUL LOEB

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For a strong economy and clean air, PHOTOGRAPH BY MADAME CHEN YING We s t i ng hou s e | is focused on nuclear energy. WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC COMPANY LLC

e nuclear energy renaissance has already created thousands of new jobs. By providing reliable and aordable electricity, nuclear energy helps keep business competitive and power future worldwide job growth.

Westinghouse and its more than 15,000 global employees are proud of our leadership position in this important industry. Our technology is the design basis for well over 40 percent of the world’s operating nuclear power plants.

Our newest design, the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power plant, is the most advanced of its kind currently available in the global marketplace with more than 40 countries having expressed an interest. Four units are under construction in China along with four in the United States. e AP1000 design has also been announced as the technology of choice for 12 new plants in the United States.

Today, nuclear energy provides 16 percent of total global electricity generation. Additionally, nuclear energy accounts for more than 45 percent of the carbon-free electricity in the world.

Building additional advanced nuclear plants like the AP1000 units will provide future generations with safe, clean and reliable electricity.

Check us out at www.westinghousenuclear.com