Sex After Christianity Why China Evolved Forget the Alamo Beyond Fox News ROD DREHER RON UNZ WILLIAM MURCHISON MAISIE ALLISON

MARCH/APRIL 2013

IDEAS OVER IDEOLOGY • PRINCIPLES OVER PARTY

kills our culture

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A NEW AGENDA FOR THE RIGHT? the seedbed of the family; and without MISSING THE MARX Andrew Bacevich (“Counterculture the family, civilization crumbles. As always, Prof. Bacevich wrote an Conservatism,” January/February 2013) JEFF McALISTER insightful and intellectually stimulat- gives us plenty of food for thought in Longview, Texas ing article. However, I believe that he his meditation on what a vigorous con- is completely wrong in claiming that servatism ought to look like. He rightly STAND FIRM ON ABORTION Marxism no longer possesses value observes that “our rst responsibil- Bacevich makes a good case that the as a basis for practical action. On the ity lies in stewardship, preserving our Republican Party should abandon contrary, this teaching is increasingly common inheritance and protecting ideological positions and support es- popular in the United States with rul- that which possesses lasting value.” So sentially paleoconservative ideas, ing elites and the general public alike. far, so good. But later in the article he from wherever they derive, whether Actually, the three basic foundations seems to exhibit cognitive dissonance. William Appleman Williams or Flan- of Marxism have become rmly incor- He brushes o the eorts of tradition- nery O’Connor. porated into the political mainstream. alists to retain in law the millennia-old However, I think his asking us to ese are the following: understanding of marriage, while on “Forget about outlawing abortion...” is 1.) Exploitation of working masses the other hand conceding that the cen- insupportable. Republicans, he says, (proletariat, currently known as the tral problem is “the collapse of hetero- “may judge the fruits produced by the 99 percent) by capitalists owning the sexual marriage as an enduring part- sexual revolution poisonous but the means of production (bourgeoisie, nership sustained for the well-being revolution itself is irreversible.” now referred to as the 1 percent, fat of ospring.” He fails to acknowledge If that statement is true, and it may cats, or banksters) is evil. Its main out- that the breakdown of the natural fam- very well be, then the battle for our come is enrichment of the latter at the ily and the successes of the same-sex civilization and culture is already lost. expense of the impoverishment and “marriage” movement both have their e issue is fundamental—if I may use enslavement of the former. A state- genesis in the same basic problem. that overworked word. Pope John Paul controlled public sector is a by far In the post-World War II period, vari- II said it better than I ever could when superior way of organizing national ous cultural phenomena, from Alfred he visited the United States on August economy. us, it should absorb most Kinsey’s pseudo-science to Hugh Hef- 12, 1993. Speaking to young people in of the available resources. ner’s mainstreaming of pornography to Denver, Colorado, he said: 2.) A free-market economy with its the introduction circa 1960 of “the Pill,” business cycles of expansions and reces- combined to sever what had been seen as All the great causes that are yours sions is inherently unstable. Downturns necessary links between sex, marriage, today will have meaning only to hurt the proletariat (the 99 percent) and and procreation. e sexual revolution the extent that you guarantee the should be prevented at any cost. ere- which exploded in the 1960s gradually right to life and protect the hu- fore, “the invisible hand” of the market entrenched itself in our society and gov- man person … e ultimate test of needs to be replaced with a planning ernment and was heavily promoted in your greatness is the way you treat commission of ideologically trustworthy our media. e dilemma we face is that every human being, but especially experts (Gosplan or Federal Reserve). we no longer possess a clear sense of the the weakest and most defenseless 3.) Established bourgeois social in- sanctity, nature, and purposes of mar- ones. e best traditions of your stitutions, such as family, business cor- riage, and this is reected both in the love presume respect for those poration, legislative assembly, or the epidemic of fatherlessness and the gay who cannot defend themselves. church, defend the status quo in the in- “marriage” juggernaut. ese are merely terests of the ruling 1 percent. erefore, two sides of the same coin. is statement is at the heart of they are deeply repressive, stand on the So, to paraphrase Aristotle: you can’t the matter, and I believe Flannery way of progress, and should be either have it both ways. “e institution most O’Connor would agree with me. Any thoroughly reformed or eliminated. essential to conserve,” wrote Russell political party, any political system that Previous attempts of building social- Kirk, “is the family.” is can’t be done abandons this principle is doomed, be- ism around the world provided a lot of well unless we recover a clear, unam- cause it is based upon a lie. circus (especially for outside observ- biguous understanding of what mar- Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned us ers), but not much bread for the masses. riage actually is, as opposed to the “in- of the dire consequences living a lie. Soon we will be able to nd out if things clusive” construct many today want it Remember the USSR? are going to be dierent this time. to be. Without complementarity of the PAUL DAVID NELSON ANDREI ALYOKHIN sexes, there is no marriage; marriage is Lexington, Kentucky Old Town, Maine

2 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Vol. 12, No. 2, March/April 2013

28 42 47

COVER STORY FRONT LINES ARTS & LETTERS

10 e GOP’s Vietnam 5 Back to conservatism’s future 42 Selected Letters of William How Bush’s wars rede ned CARL T. BOGUS Styron ed. by R. Blakeslee Gilpin and Rose Styron le and right 6 What our China strategy ROBERT DEAN LURIE DANIEL McCARTHY should be WILLIAM S. LIND 45 Conscious Capitalism: ARTICLES Liberating the Heroic Spirit 7 Grover Cleveland for our times of Business by John Mackey 14 Beyond Fox News DANIEL LARISON and Raj Sisodia Post-movement conservatives go MARK SKOUSEN mainstream COMMENTARY MAISIE ALLISON 47 It Didn’t Have to Be is Way: 4 Last magazine standing Why Boom and Bust Is Unnec- 20 Sex Aer Christianity essary—and How the Austrian Gay marriage is a cosmological 9 Assessing Pope Benedict PATRICK J. BUCHANAN School of Economics Breaks the revolution Cycle by Harry C. Veryser ROD DREHER 19 e GOP and gay marriage JOHN ZMIRAK JON HUNTSMAN 24 What Texas Won’t Teach 49 Embers of War: e Fall of U.S. history gives way to race, 40 Gulf States buy Egyptian riots an Empire and the Making of class, and gender PHILIP GIRALDI America’s Vietnam by Frederik WILLIAM MURCHISON Logevall 41 Batavia’s black sheep LEON HADAR 28 How Social Darwinism BILL KAUFFMAN Made Modern China 51 Castlereagh: A Life by John Bew 58 Mad alchemists of Brussels Meritocracy can shape a people DANIEL LARISON RON UNZ TAKI 53 How to Create a Mind: e 38 Will Britain Secede? Secret of Human ought David Cameron puts the UK Revealed by Ray Kurzweil on the road out of the EU ARI SCHULMAN EAMONN FINGLETON 56 e Spanish Civil War by Stanley Payne PAUL GOTTFRIED Cover illustration: Michael Hogue

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 3 e American Conservative Publisher Ron Unz Editor Daniel McCarthy Senior Editors Rod Dreher { Vol. 12, No. 2, March/April 2013 } Daniel Larison Mark Nugent Editorial Director, Digital Maisie Allison Associate Editor Jordan Bloom Reality’s Hour National Correspondent Michael Brendan Dougherty his is a moment of opportu- Beacon and Breitbart.com. What’s le Contributing Editors nity for reality-based conser- for the thinking conservative? W. James Antle III, Andrew J. Bacevich, vatives. e le has power A great deal, in fact—the entire top Doug Bandow, Jeremy Beer, James Bovard, Patrick Deneen, Michael Desch, Richard Gamble, but no philosophy beyond tier, and most of the middle, of the in- Philip Giraldi, David Gordon, Paul Gottfried, the stale remains of 1960s pipedreams. telligent media market. is is where Freddy Gray, Leon Hadar, Peter Hitchens, T Philip Jenkins, Christopher Layne, e neoconservative right is complete- traditional conservatives and foreign- Chase Madar, Eric Margolis, James Pinkerton, ly exhausted, both intellectually and policy realists have their opportunity, Justin Raimondo, Fred Reed, Stuart Reid, politically—marked by just the sort of and it’s where e American Conserva- Sheldon Richman, Steve Sailer, John Schwenkler, Jordan Michael Smith, “irritable mental gestures which seek tive comes in. R.J. Stove, Kelley Vlahos, omas E. Woods Jr. to resemble ideas” that Lionel Trill- We bring together in print the n- Associate Publisher ing described in the 1950s. e eld is est critical minds on the right (and be- Jon Basil Utley open for a prudent, truth-telling con- yond), while online we present a daily Publishing Consultant servatism to win new adherents. If its megadose of traditionalism from Rod Ronald E. Burr message is heard. Dreher and continuous reality-based Editorial Assistants e world of journalism tells the foreign-policy analysis from Daniel Jonathan Coppage Matthew Taylor tale—not by what it reports but in the Larison. TAC’s mindshare has been ris- Founding Editors state of the industry itself. Newsweek ing rapidly even in the face of a dicult Patrick J. Buchanan, Scott McConnell, sought to survive a declining maga- market for all publications. Across all Taki eodoracopulos zine market by becoming rst a liberal platforms—including our Kindle and weekly, then an almost neoconserva- PDF editions—more people are read- e American Ideas Institute tive one, with cover stories by the likes ing e American Conservative than President Wick Allison of Niall Ferguson. Nobody was buying, ever before. e American Conservative, Vol. 12, No. 2, and now Newsweek prints no more. e changing media landscape re- March/April 2013 (ISSN 1540-966X). Reg. Movement conservatism, mean- quires some changes of us, however. U.S. Pat. & Tm. O c. Published 6 times a year by e American Ideas Institute, 1710 Rhode while, has given up on Policy Review— To strengthen the print magazine for Island Avenue NW, Suite 1200, Washington, a wonkish journal begun by the Heri- the long term, we have changed its fre- DC 20036-3128. Periodicals postage paid Washington, DC and additional mailing o ces. tage Foundation in 1977 and whose quency from 12 issues a year to six—a Printed in the USA. POSTMASTER: Send last issue was published in February by move that ensures TAC will not suer address changes to e American Conservative, the Hoover Institution—and Human the fate of Human Events or Newsweek. P.O. Box 1091, Selmer, TN 38375-1091. Subscription rates: $59.95 per year (6 issues) Events, the venerable weekly founded Subscriptions rates have also increased: in the U.S., $69.95 in Canada (U.S. funds), and in 1944 as, in part, a voice for the non- readers have always been generous in $74.95 other foreign via airmail. Back issues: $12.00 (prepaid) per copy in USA, $13.00 in interventionist right. Alas, under the supporting TAC through donations Canada (U.S. funds). same ownership as Regnery publishing as well as subscriptions, and to set the For subscription orders, payments, and other (another formerly reality-based bas- magazine on the rmest footing pos- subscription inquiries— tion of the right), Human Events had sible, we have priced-in the level of By phone: 800-579-6148 (outside the U.S./Canada 731-434-1129) become indistinguishable from the rest support that so many subscribers were Via Web: www.theamericanconservative.com of the GOP media sphere. already volunteering. By mail: e American Conservative, P.O. Box Today the tempo for the movement e forces arrayed against com- 1091, Selmer, TN 38375-1091 conservative mind is set not by a Rus- mon sense, in politics and the media Please allow 6–8 weeks for delivery of your rst issue. sell Kirk or even a William F. Buckley alike, are extraordinary. But reality has Inquiries and letters to the editor should be Jr. but by the likes of Sean Hannity a way of breaking in, and our experi- sent to [email protected]. For advertising sales call Ronald Burr at 703-893-3632. For and Bill O’Reilly—and increasingly by ence shows that right ideas are growing editorial, call 202-955-3600. Internet scandal-mongers of the sort stronger by the hour as old ideologies is issue went to press on March 1, 2013. associated with the Washington Free fall. Copyright 2013 e American Conservative.

4 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Front Lines

Burke Not Buckley The case for community-centric conservatism by CARL T. BOGUS

onservatives are engaged Peter Viereck, an historian in deep introspection these at Mount Holyoke College. days. As they reconsider ese men, though academ- their direction, they would ics, were gied writers, and Cdo well to look back to the formative each produced a popular book period of their movement. ey may advocating the Burkean way. nd something there of great value— What is the Burkean way? something many conservatives think ose who have read only Burke’s their movement embraced, but in Reections on the Revolution in truth rejected. France—his brilliant jeremiad By 1952, liberal candidates had not against the convulsive overthrow only captured the last ve Democratic of the French monarchy—oen presidential nominations but the past think of Burke as an implacable ve Republican nominations as well. defender of institutions and Most observers considered conser- tradition. But that can be mis- vatism dead—a philosophy unsuited leading. Burke was, in fact, a for modern times. A small number reformer, though of a par- Chris Morris of intellectuals disagreed. ey be- ticular kind. He believed lieved that—if redened—conserva- that society was a complex tism might be resuscitated. But they organism that evolved to its passionately disagreed about how it present condition for rea- should be redened. sons that were not always evi- Edmund Burke One group wanted to follow the dent. Burke believed that changes teachings of the great 18th-century are oen desirable—and a constant English statesman Edmund Burke. process of improvement essential—but of all men, did most to establish that Russell Kirk was the most promi- those changes should be made care- principle.” nent of this group. In 1953, Kirk—a fully, with respect for tradition and a At the most fundamental level, young assistant professor of history at concern for unintended consequenc- Burke was a communitarian. It is insti- Michigan State—turned his doctoral es. “We must all obey the great law of tutions—governmental, professional, dissertation into a book. “Burke’s is change,” he wrote. “It is the most pow- religious, educational, and otherwise— the true school of conservative prin- erful law of nature, and the means per- that compose the fabric of society. Each ciple,” Kirk argued, and he described haps of its conservation.” of these institutions has classes of peo- Burke’s philosophy so appealingly that Burke’s new disciples agreed. “Con- ple who devote their careers to preserv- Kirk’s book, e Conservative Mind, servatism,” Russell Kirk wrote, “never ing and improving them: jurists serve became wildly successful. Other is more admirable than when it ac- the law, scholars their disciplines and Burkeans included Clinton Rossiter, cepts change that it disapproves, with universities, clerics their church, and a political scientist at Cornell; Robert good grace, for the sake of the general so on. All citizens, in fact, are engaged Nisbet, a sociologist at Berkeley; and condition; and the impetuous Burke, in a sacred intergenerational compact.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 5 Front Lines

“Society,” Burke said, “becomes a part- as individuals while the individualist liberal. But if conservatives today are nership not only between those who Buckley built a community of thinkers looking for wisdom—and maybe even are living, but between those who are and readers through his magazine. a less truculent partisanship—they living, those who are dead, and those Maybe Buckley’s was the neces- might consider the path not taken. who are to be born.” sary path in the 1950s. Conservatism For the Burkeans of 1950s, empha- then needed to dierentiate itself Carl T. Bogus, who considers himself a liberal sis on community was at the heart of starkly from the prevailing liberalism. Burkean, is a professor of law at Roger Wil- a properly conceived conservatism. Burkeanism would have made that dif- liams University and author of Buckley: Wil- Kirk wrote: “True conservatism … cult because, as Kirk oen observed, liam F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American rises at the antipodes from individual- Burke was both a conservative and a Conservatism. ism. Individualism is social atomism; conservatism is community of spirit.” Robert Nisbet titled his book e Quest for Community. ough it may surprise people who Don’t Break the China have been taught that Edmund Burke We need Beijing as an ally against anarchy. is the father of modern conservatism, by WILLIAM S. LIND the Burkeans were, in fact, defeated by a rival group with a nearly diametri- uch is made of the analogy a rising power poorly. e Obama cally opposed view. e leader of that between the relationship of administration’s resolve to build up group was William F. Buckley Jr., the U.S. to China today American air and naval forces in the founder of National Review. When, Mand that of Great Britain to Imperial Pacic can be aimed at only one coun- in 1952, Buckley rst articulated his Germany before World War I. Just as try, China. Our recent oand guaran- philosophy in God and Man at Yale, Germany had risen quickly to become tee to Japan over the disputed Senkaku/ he called it “individualism,” though a world economic power, so has Chi- Diaoyu islands has a chilling echo of the nearly absolute laissez-faire phi- na. Germany, driven by nationalism, 1914. Like Britain before World War losophy he advocated became better sought commensurate military, naval, I, we appear unwilling to countenance known as libertarianism. and diplomatic power, as does China. the natural rise of a new power; we act How did Buckley prevail? He dely As young powers, both Germany then as if foreign policy were merely a child’s co-opted Kirk by inviting him to write and China now were sometimes brash game of king of the hill. Elements in a regular column for National Review, in ways that were not in their own the Pentagon see a sea and air war with something Kirk could not aord not interest. Both challenged the domi- China as a way to recoup their failures to do aer imprudently giving up his nant power at sea, though they had no in recent land wars, as well as justify faculty position. Kirk abhorred the pressing need to do so. their budgets. libertarian direction in which Buckley But there is another side to the anal- What would a conservative policy and colleagues were taking conser- ogy, one that cautions Washington. toward China look like, one that pro- vatism. Kirk later denounced liber- Britain handled Germany’s rise poorly. ceeded from Russell Kirk’s politics of tarianism for revering “self-interest, She waged aggressive war on the Boers, prudence? It would arise from recogni- closely joined to the nexus of cash a people the Germans regarded as close tion of a paradigm shi of rare historic payment” rather than Burke’s “com- kin, and alienated German public opin- dimensions in the grand-strategic en- munity of souls.” He complained that ion. e Kaiser was le in the awkward vironment. e rise of Fourth Genera- libertarians take “the state for the great position of being more pro-British than tion war—war waged by non-state enti- oppressor” although Burke taught his people. In the Entente Cordiale, ties—has made conict between states that government “is a contrivance of Britain entered into an extra-constitu- obsolete. human wisdom to provide for human tional and strategically unnecessary al- As this kind of war spreads across wants.” Yet for the quarter-century liance aimed at containing Germany. In the globe, defeating one national mili- that he wrote for the magazine, Kirk 1914, while Kaiser Wilhelm II did not tary aer another, it puts at risk the held his tongue. want war, some important Britons did, state system itself. It also denes the For their own reasons, the other including Churchill and, disastrously, 21st century as one in which the deci- three Burkeans also le the eld of Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward sive conict will be between order and battle. Paradoxically, the Burkeans Grey. disorder. e state represents order, never collaborated. ese communi- As Washington “rebalances” its mili- and order is conservatism’s rst objec- tarians acted—and were defeated— tary toward Asia, we too are handling tive. Conservatives are on the side of

6 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 the state, and a conservative foreign I and, more dramatically, aer World foreign-policy idealism, made up of policy seeks above all maintenance of War II, London incrementally passed Wilsonians, globalists, and moon- the state system. at in turn requires the task of maintaining order to the gazers melts in the sun of serial failure, an alliance of all states, including Chi- United States. Britain eventually did realism awakens from hibernation. e na, against non-state forces. this even in areas she had long regard- destruction of states in the name of “de- It is dicult to imagine a conict ed as vital to her interests, including mocracy” and “human rights” may not with greater potential to damage the the Mediterranean and the Persian be an unmixed blessing. Results mat- state system than one between Amer- Gulf. ter—not merely intentions. ica and China. We are currently wit- Just as a return to nessing the consequences of the dis- spheres of inuence integration of one small state, Libya. A can replace conict defeated China, its central government with alliance between A stronger China can and should delegitimized by military failure, could the United States and assume responsibility for maintaining fall into a new period of warring states. China, so it can har- What would be the fate of order in a monize relations else- order in a growing portion of the world. world in which disorder ruled more where, again with the than a billion Chinese? goal of allying all states Avoiding this nightmare scenario against the forces of the and creating an eective alliance with Fourth Generation. We should rec- Results have not been quite this im- China requires that America accept, ognize Russia’s “near abroad” as her portant for a bit over 350 years, since and indeed welcome, China’s rise. A sphere of inuence. We should work the Peace of Westphalia. e state sys- stronger China can and should as- actively to bring Afghanistan into Pak- tem established by Westphalia is under sume primary responsibility for main- istan’s sphere of inuence. While con- assault and may fall to non-state forc- taining order in a growing portion of tested spheres of inuence can exacer- es, ushering in Old Night around the the world. Such a relief of America’s bate conicts, agreed spheres reduce globe. Realism, spheres of inuence, burden—one increasingly beyond our them. By acting as an honest broker and an alliance of all states against the nancial strength to bear—is in our to facilitate such agreement—includ- Fourth Generation comprise the policy interest. Similarly, the maintenance of ing between China and Japan—rather prudence recommends. order is in China’s interest, as well as than joining either side, the U.S. can congruent with fast-recovering tradi- do more for her real interests, includ- William S. Lind is author of the Maneuver tional Chinese culture and Confucian ing her vital interest in maintaining Warfare Handbook and director of the values. the state system. American Conservative Center for Public Conservatives’ old friend realism As the abominable snowman of Transportation. oers a device for bringing harmo- ny to Chinese-American relations: spheres of inuence. As China’s ex- pands, ours can contract, within the shared framework of upholding or- der. One Chinese admiral jokingly Anti-Imperial Presidency proposed drawing a north-south line A 19th-century model for the right foreign-policy through the Pacic, demarcating our by DANIEL LARISON respective spheres of inuence. We should take him up on it, and add that rover Cleveland was the only what set him apart from his contem- as China continues its rise, the line Democrat to serve as presi- poraries, and many of his predeces- will shi. dent in the second half of the sors, was his willingness to employ If this proposal seems radical, it in G19th century, and he was arguably the American power in a limited way for fact reects the way Britain accom- last conservative Democratic presi- anti-imperialist ends. modated a rising United States. e dent in U.S. history. But what made Foreign policy was not a major part possibility of war between America him a truly remarkable and admi- of the rst of Cleveland’s two non- and Britain was taken seriously by rable gure was his opposition to Eu- consecutive terms, although between both sides well up into the 20th cen- ropean imperialism throughout his 1886 and 1888 he successfully coun- tury. But instead of clashing, as Brit- career. Cleveland’s foreign policy was tered German ambitions in the South ish power weakened aer World War in many respects very traditional, but Pacic to take control of Samoa—

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 7 Front Lines risking diplomatic rupture with a speaking, the Monroe Doctrine didn’t portance on arbitration as a means of great power over a place where no ma- apply since the disagreement didn’t avoiding war. Fortunately for all par- jor U.S. interests were at stake. Upon touch on Venezuela’s form of govern- ties, Britain wished to avoid conict entering oce the second time, Cleve- ment or its ability to govern itself. over the Venezuelan issue as well. In land delayed but ultimately could not Cleveland was bending the letter of 1897, Britain and Venezuela signed a prevent the annexation of Hawaii, Monroe’s statement—which had said, treaty in Washington agreeing to sub- which the outgoing Harrison admin- “the American continents, by the free mit to arbitration, and by late 1899 the istration had been eager to realize. and independent condition which dispute had been resolved. Venezuela Following an 1893 coup by Ameri- they have assumed and maintain, are was a test case for the American use can settlers against the native Hawai- henceforth not to be considered as of arbitration, and Cleveland hoped ian government, Benjamin Harrison subjects for future colonization by any it would establish a precedent to be had tried to rush an annexation treaty European powers”—while trying to followed by his successors and other through the Senate during his last days preserve its spirit. nations. Britain initially rejected His aversion to unnecessary mili- the administration’s oer to tary conicts was most obvious in his mediate, leading Cleveland to reaction to the war fever that erupted make the dispute a high-pro- in 1898, the year aer he le oce. Grover Cleveland followed le issue in 1895. Cleveland As Alyn Brodsky recounts in Grover the admonitions of the and Secretary of State Rich- Cleveland: A Study in Character, he ard Olney linked it directly believed it would be “an outrage to Founding generation against to the Monroe Doctrine’s declare war” on Spain even aer the foreign entanglements. guarantee of independence sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, and he and sovereignty for the Latin ridiculed the yellow journalism that American republics, and for clamored for bloodshed. “I decline to a short time it seemed possi- allow my sorrow for those who died ble that Britain and America on the Maine to be perverted to an as president. Cleveland withdrew the might go to war over the issue. advertising scheme for the New York treaty and tried to nd some way to re- Of course, Cleveland had no inten- Journal,” he said. Aer the war, Cleve- pair the damage that the annexationists tion of plunging the U.S. into an un- land objected strongly to the idea had done. But nothing short of direct winnable war against the preeminent that the U.S. should annex the Philip- intervention against the coup govern- military power of his day. But he also pines and joined the Anti-Imperialist ment could restore the status quo ante, wasn’t content to ignore European co- League to protest against that move and that was something Cleveland lonial expansionism in the Western and America’s subsequent war against could not and would not attempt. Hemisphere. As Cleveland saw it, the the Filipinos. Cleveland had more success when possibility that Britain was taking ad- Cleveland followed the admoni- he came to the defense of Venezuela vantage of a weaker state to establish tions of the Founding generation in a boundary dispute with Great Brit- a boundary favorable to its interests against foreign entanglements and in ain’s colony in Guyana, a move that was an intolerable intrusion into the favor of a policy of non-interference briey increased tensions between sovereignty of a fellow republic by a and non-intervention in the internal London and Washington. Resolv- major European state. e disparity aairs of other nations. But he also ing the dispute paved the way for a in power between the disputants, and pursued a more activist course in op- long-term improvement in relations Britain’s colonial projects elsewhere posing European and U.S. colonial between the U.S. and Great Britain— during this same period, led Cleve- schemes than any president had be- though it did so by expanding the land to be extremely suspicious of fore him. e results were mixed, but scope of the Monroe Doctrine be- British goals. they remain an instructive example yond what its authors had originally No less important for Cleveland how a powerful republic might con- intended. than this interpretation of the Mon- duct its foreign policy without the e impasse between Venezu- roe Doctrine was his faith in arbitra- constant recourse to military action to ela and Britain was by far the most tion as a mechanism for resolving which we have become accustomed in signicant international episode in international disputes. Cleveland saw the modern era. Cleveland’s second term, and at rst an obvious role here for the United glance his decision to involve the U.S. States, as the world’s greatest neutral Daniel Larison blogs at seems hard to understand. Strictly republic, but he also placed great im- www.theamericanconservative.com/larison.

8 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Made in America PATRICK J. BUCHANAN Pope Benedict’s Farewell

o govern the bark of the end of the century. Catholic high gants for decades. Saint Peter and pro- schools lost half their enrollment. In Europe, Christianity is regarded “ claim the Gospel, both Churches have been put up for sale to less as the founding faith of the West strength of mind and pay diocesan debts. and the wellspring of Western culture bodyT are necessary, strength which in And the predator-priest sex-abuse and civilization than as an antique; a the last few months, has deteriorated scandal, with the oenses dating back religion that European Man once em- in me to the extent that I have had to decades, continues to suppurate and braced before the coming of the En- recognize my incapacity to adequately stain her reputation and extract bil- lightenment. Many cathedrals on the ful ll the ministry entrusted to me.” lions from the Sunday collections of continent have taken on the aspect of With those brave, wise, simple the abiding faithful. Greek and Roman temples—places to words, Benedict XVI announced an e highest-ranking Catholic poli- visit and marvel at what once was, and end of his papacy. How stands the ticians, Vice President Joe Biden and no longer is. Church he has led for eight years? House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, e Faith is Europe, Europe is the While he could not match the cha- support same-sex marriage and belong Faith, wrote Hilaire Belloc. And when risma of his predecessor, John Paul II, to a party whose platform calls for fund- the faith dies, the culture dies, the civi- his has been a successful papacy. He re- ing abortions to the day of birth. Catho- lization dies, and the people die. So stored some of the ancient beauty and lic teaching on contraception, divorce, historians and poets alike have written. majesty to the liturgy. He brought back and sexual morality is openly mocked. Surely that seems true in Europe. In to the fold separated Anglican breth- Among Catholics, there has long been the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centu- ren. e Church is making converts in a dispute over the issue: did Vatican II ries, Western Man, under the banners sub-Saharan Africa. And in America, cause the crisis in the Church, or did the of God and country, conquered almost new traditionalist colleges and semi- council merely fail to arrest what was an the entire world. But now that Christi- naries have begun to ourish. inevitable decline with the triumph of anity has died in much of the West, the at is looking back eight years. the counterculture of the 1960s? culture seems decadent, the civilization Looking back half a century, to that As one looks around the world and in decline. No Western nation has had October day in 1962 when Pope John back beyond the last half-century, it a birth rate in three decades that will XXIII declared the opening of Vatican seems that Catholicism and Christiani- enable its native-born to survive. II, the Church appears to have been in ty have been in a centuries-long retreat. Dispensing with Christianity, West- a decline that, in parts of the world, In the mid-19th century, Matthew Ar- ern peoples sought new gods and new seems to be leading to near extinction. nold wrote in “Dover Beach”: faiths: communism, Leninism, fas- At Vatican II, the Rev. Joseph Ratzing- cism, Nazism. ose gods all failed. er, the future Benedict XVI, was among e Sea of Faith Now we have converted to even new- the reformers who were going to bring Was once, too, at the full, and round er faiths to create paradise in this, the the church into the modern world. e earth’s shore only world we shall ever know. Demo- encounter did not turn out well. Lay like the folds of a bright girdle cratic capitalism, consumerism, global- In 1965, three in four American furled. ism, environmentalism, egalitarianism. Catholics attended Sunday mass. To- But now I only hear e Secular City seems to have tri- day, it is closer to one in four. e Its melancholy, long, withdrawing umphed over the City of God. number of priests has fallen by a third, roar … But in the Islamic world, an ancient of nuns by two-thirds. Orders like the and transcendental faith is undergo- Christian Brothers have virtually van- In Christianity’s cradle, the Holy ing a great awakening aer centuries ished. e Jesuits are down to a frac- Land and the Near East, from Egypt to of slumber and seems anxious to re- tion of their strength in the 1950s. Afghanistan, Christians are subjected engage and settle accounts with an ag- Parochial schools teaching 4.5 mil- to persecution and pogroms, as their nostic West. lion children in the early 1960s were numbers dwindle. In Latin America, As ever, the outcome of the struggle teaching a third of that number at the Church has been losing congre- for the world is in doubt.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 9 Cover

e GOP’s Vietnam How Republican foreign policy lost the culture war—and a generation

by DANIEL McCARTHY

merica doesn’t really have a two-party Republicans in Congress were still more likely than system. It has a one-and-a-half-party sys- Democrats to support civil rights legislation. Atti- tem, where one party at a time tends to tudes toward abortion and homosexuality did not dominate the national agenda while the clearly divide le from right: Ronald Reagan, Barry Aother becomes a half-party—one that might hold Goldwater, and even William F. Buckley favored onto the House of Representatives and some state liberalizing abortion laws in the early 1960s, while governments, but that isn’t trusted by voters to run as late as 1972 Democratic vice presidential nomi- the country. nees Sargent Shriver and omas Eagleton were an- e Republicans are America’s half-party today. tiabortion. Few mainstream gures in either party is is a reversal from a generation ago, when the supported gay rights, but it was clear enough from GOP typically held the White House—for all but their social circles that right-wingers such as Reagan, four years from 1969 to 1993—and occasionally the Goldwater, and Buckley were not about to launch Senate, while Democrats, despite a 40-year major- any witch-hunts. ity in the House of Representatives, were the party Nor were attitudes toward drugs a mark of parti- Americans deemed incompetent to govern at the san distinction: Clare Booth Luce was an early evan- national level. gelist for LSD. She urged her husband, Time propri- e root of the GOP’s problem now is the same etor Henry Luce, to try it, and he “did much more to as that of the Democrats in 1969: the party’s repu- popularize acid than Timothy Leary,” in Abbie Ho- tation has been ruined by a botched, unnecessary man’s opinion. Buckley, of course, was a longtime war—Vietnam in the case of the Democrats, Iraq for supporter of marijuana decriminalization. the GOP. is may sound implausible: every politi- One could nd many more right-wingers who cal scientist knows that Americans don’t care about took the opposite views—but one could nd just as foreign policy; certainly they don’t vote based on it. many Democrats who did as well. e civil rights But foreign policy is not just about foreign policy: it’s movement and the sexual revolution had supporters also about culture. and opponents on both sides of the aisle. at the “culture war”—as well as the “War on And in the early ’60s, Democrats still had a Drugs”—assumed its present shape in the wake reputation for military prowess. eir party had of the Vietnam conict is no accident. Vietnam led the country against Nazi Germany, and while polarized, realigned, and radicalized cultural fac- tions. During the Lyndon Johnson administration, Daniel McCarthy is editor of e American Conservative.

10 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Republicans blamed them for losing China to Com- beyond the battleeld. Moderates or conservatives munism, John F. Kennedy gained more traction in the party were caught in a pincer: Democrats against Richard Nixon in 1960 when he accused the were branded with unmanliness and lack of patrio- Eisenhower administration of letting a (ctitious) tism—and radicals in the party (as well as outside “Missile Gap” open up with the Soviet Union. Re- of it) actually embraced these extremes. e party’s publicans certainly weren’t the only party considered remaining Cold War liberals could not exorcise the competent to handle foreign aairs. ghost of Lyndon Johnson: their ideology had failed at changed with Vietnam. President Johnson in practice in the eyes of the public and was rejected seemed to have started a war he couldn’t win or even in theory by their own side’s brightest young minds. end. It split his party and transformed the American Yet non-le Democrats secure in House districts and le: until then, labor muscle and social-democratic state governments had a hard time understanding brains were the le’s principal organs. ey tended this. ey were just safe enough not to have to admit to support the war and oppose the cultural upheav- the magnitude of their catastrophe. als that coincided with it—positions diametrically An opportunity now arose for the right to strike opposite those of the student movement and nascent a sharper contrast with this New Le than had ever New Le. “Cold War liberalism was forced to choose been possible with the old Democratic Party. e between the two terms of its denition, and chose radicals themselves had made the personal political, war,” recalled former Students for a Democratic Society leader Todd Gitlin in e Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. But that was only the beginning America has a one-and-a-half-party system, of how losing the Vietnam War where one party at a time tends would lose the Democrats Amer- to dominate the national agenda. ica as well. ere were concrete connections between the conict The Republicans are America’s half-party today. abroad and increasingly radical social movements at home: vet- erans came back from Indochina having tried, and in some cases being addicted to, and now the quiet social tolerance of old-guard con- drugs. (“During scal year 1971,” according to Git- servatives like Buckley and Goldwater was unfash- lin, “for every hundred soldiers… twenty smoked ionable—indeed, treasonous. e New Right that marijuana frequently, ten used opium or heroin regu- emerged in the 1970s around gures such as George larly.”) Blacks wondered why they were being draed Wallace and Jerry Falwell was proud to be every- to ght in the name of freedoms they didn’t enjoy. thing the New Le was not: pro-white, Protestant, Young radicals who refused to go to war, meanwhile, heterosexual, and all-American. is was a very dif- in rejecting the military rejected everything associ- ferent style and emphasis from that of the old Na- ated with it: the haircuts, the university system (and tional Review set, who had been embarrassed by too administrators’ place in loco parentis), and in some much talk about race or sex, were disproportionately cases the norms of bourgeois life itself. e war and Catholic and Jewish, and tended to be heavily An- its failures put the lie to everything. glophile when not actually European by birth. Radicals were not the only ones who felt this: ordi- More important than the radicalization of the nary Americans also had to contend with the unset- right, however, Republicans were now able to claim tling questions an unsuccessful war raises. A disas- the nation’s center ground—the GOP became the trous conict can shatter a nation’s faith, as attested party of simple military competence, patriotism, by the eects of World War I even on Europe’s nomi- and national unity. is was what Richard Nixon’s nal victors. Patriotism and authority in all forms “silent majority” was all about. Nixon was not a New come into question—which is not to say that the Right president—the New Right would be much answer most Americans arrived at was to reject such more right-wing than Nixon had been—but he did concepts. But clearly if they were to be rearmed, attach some of the New Right’s identity-based poli- they had to be purged of the war’s pollution. tics to the only faintly ideological middle American Democrats thus became not only the party of voter. Normal now meant center-right and Republi- strategic ineptitude but also a symbol of defeats can. e Democrats were by 1972 very obviously the

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 11 Cover

party of abnormality: of acid, amnesty, and abortion. what their foreign-policy follies mean for the cul- Democrats struggled to glue their coalition back ture. Instead of the causes of gay rights and black together, but the South was permanently lost, and power being tied to the party that started a war in the New Le couldn’t be reconciled with many of the Vietnam that it couldn’t nish, the causes of tradi- old social democrats—some of whom began migrat- tional marriage and tax cuts are now tied to a party ing into the Republican camp as “neoconservatives.” that started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it ese mostly Jewish New York intellectuals might couldn’t nish. seem strange bedfellows for Southern evangelicals. Already by 1992 Republicans had become com- But admirers of George Wallace and Scoop Jackson placent about their post-Vietnam identity. Not only could come together over what Commentary editor had the foreign-policy landscape changed with the end of the Cold War, but the cultural associations of the Vietnam defeat were fading. For Baby Boomers, mem- The “culture war” that Pat Buchanan spoke of ories of the Vietnam era were insepa- rable from feelings about racial politics at the 1992 Republican convention was, among and sexual morality—the alignments other things, a symptom of Vietnam syndrome. brought about by the war had set the template for a generation’s understand- ing of le and right. Younger voters not only had no memory of the war itself—an 18-year- Norman Podhoretz identied as “the two ruling pas- old rst-time voter in 1992 was born the year aer sions of neoconservatism—its anti-Communism Nixon withdrew most U.S. forces from Indochina— and its revulsion against the counterculture.” but its cultural aermath didn’t and couldn’t evoke rough the 1980s, both alternate Democratic the same feelings as for Boomers. Young voters had brands—Johnson-style Cold War liberalism and no reason to see the social movements associated peacenik McGovernism—were tainted by Vietnam with the Vietnam War as radical or un-American. and the war’s cultural aershocks. e party could e sexual revolution had been background noise not shake its reputation for defeatism and radicalism for them since the day they were born. merely by nominating a Southern Baptist like Jimmy e “culture war” that Pat Buchanan spoke of at Carter or an old-line laborite like Walter Mondale. the 1992 Republican convention was, among other And even though America had become mildly an- things, a symptom of Vietnam syndrome: a chance tiwar—Nixon got out of Vietnam and Reagan never to right the wrongs of the 1960s and 1970s, if not launched an intervention on such a scale—it was in the rice paddies of Indochina then in the hearts not antiwar in a way that the Democratic Party’s le and minds of Americans, turning back the clock to a could capitalize on. more wholesome time before the war and its cultural Instead the Republican Party, for all its anti-Com- coattails. munist rhetoric, adopted a conict-averse Realpo- For younger voter cohorts, this couldn’t make litik exemplied by Nixon’s opening to China and sense. ey were a postwar generation, culturally as Reagan’s negotiations with Gorbachev—maneuvers well as militarily, and the idea of winning back what that cemented the GOP’s reputation for adult lead- had been lost in the wars of the 1960s was emo- ership among centrist voters. e long-remembered tionally incomprehensible. ese voters lacked the excesses of the New Le and the reality-based poli- psychological backdrop that pulled the Boomers to- cies—especially foreign policy—of the Republican ward the GOP aer Vietnam. And over the next 20 Party reduced Democrats to role of half-party for years, as talk radio and Fox News continued to pitch almost a quarter of a century. the Republican message to Boomer ears, Americans born aer 1975 simply tuned out. at might only have made Millennials and their hat’s a role Republicans might have to get used older siblings a neutral cohort, had it not been for Tto today, thanks to the Iraq War and prolonged the Iraq War—which has not only done to the GOP occupation of Afghanistan. And like the Democrats what Vietnam did to the Democrats as a party, but of the ’70s and ’80s, Republicans of the 21st century has also done to conservatism as an ideology what not even begun to grapple with the magnitude of Vietnam did to the social-democratic le.

12 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 America has been at war in Afghanistan for the the rising generation. (Sixty percent of voters under entire adult life of any voter under 30. For still 30 supported Obama in 2012, as did 52 percent of younger Americans, every living memory is of a those age 30–44.) And older conservatives, seeing country with troops in combat overseas—and for that generation’s disdain for the culture war, are apt what? e wars haven’t brought prosperity: just the to write them o completely. If you’re not outraged opposite. ey haven’t rearmed traditional sex by same-sex marriage, how can you be any kind of roles or Christianity or family values, all of which conservative? are challenged by veterans coming home with miss- But the reason even young conservatives aren’t ing limbs or mangled minds. e cultural resonanc- interested in those kinds of battles is that they’re es of this decade of war are the opposite of those of ghting others closer to home. Americans born af- Vietnam; they’re closer to those of Great Britain af- ter 1975 have grown up in an environment in which, ter World War I. Britain, too, won its war and won- Todd Gitlin admits, “only the most sentimental ex- dered what that meant. hippie could fail to recognize the prices paid on Republicans split over Bush’s wars as deeply the road to the new freedom: the booming teenage as Democrats once split over Vietnam. e raw pregnancy rate; the dread diseases that accompa- numbers aren’t similar—the antiwar right is not nied the surge in promiscuity; the damage done by as numerous as the antiwar le once was—but the drugs; the undermining of family commitment…” philosophical depth of the divide is as great. And Young adults who have come from home back- it’s a generation gap. Boomer Republicans are still grounds marked by divorce, or from intact families reghting old wars—Benghazi is the new Khe Sanh, that nonetheless never sat down at a dinner table, and they’ve adopted Israel not only as avatar of the want to form stronger bonds than their parents did. lost South Vietnam but as symbol of the Providen- Boomers who view post-Boomer attitudes toward tial favor and military virtue our nation lost in the sex in light of a “revolution” are doing it wrong. It 1960s. Yet even the younger evangelicals—let alone was the Boomers, or at least a key cohort among Ron Paul’s youthful supporters and the neo-tradi- them, who believed in free love as a salvic con- tionalist “crunchy cons”—don’t buy it. cept. Young American have grown up with pro- e GOP never learned to talk to the post-Viet- miscuity and knowledge of drugs, aren’t panicked nam generation in the rst place; over the last de- about these things, but don’t see them as possessing cade, it compounded the problem by launching wars redemptive signicance either. Even most young that, far from resolving the unnished business of progressives do not believe in personal “liberation” the Vietnam era, only made clear that those who are of the sort that was at the core of the ’60s le—just reghting the conicts of that time are oblivious to as no one today believes in the kind of “libera- today’s realities. tion” once associated with Fidel Castro and Ho Chi While Republicans wage a war on the past, Barack Minh. Obama has staked claim to the future—in the same e Republican Party may not be able to escape way that Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan once its McGovern phase, even if Democrats screw up did. e reputation for competence in wielding (as they will) and we briey get a Republican Carter. power that Nixon (before Watergate) and Reagan e party and the ideology soaked into it have lost accumulated now accrues to Obama’s advantage. their reputation for competence, and they’ve lost He brought the troops home from Iraq—however the emotional resonances that come with being the reluctantly—and is on course to end the war in Af- party of America: victory, prosperity, normality. In- ghanistan next year. His foreign policy, like Nixon’s stead the resonances that come from the War on Ter- and Reagan’s, involves plenty of military force. But ror are of a party and an era marked by resentment, like those Republicans, the incumbent Democrat recession, and insecurity. Although the party still has avoided debacles of the sort that characterized sees Ronald Reagan it looks in the mirror, what the the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and George rest of the country sees is George W. Bush—much W. Bush. as post-Vietnam Democrats continued to think of Meanwhile, Obama is winning the culture war themselves as the party of Franklin Roosevelt when because that war continues to be fought by the in the minds of most Americans they had become right in the terms of the Vietnam era. at mistake, the party of Johnson and McGovern. coupled with the natural credit a leader gets from Until the Republican Party can come to grips with keeping the country out of quagmires, gives the its failure, the Democrats will be the party Ameri- president’s party a tremendous advantage among cans trust to govern.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 13 Do you still want to use these requested photos? Media Online collection of localists concerned about community in a world lived at scale

The American Interest, Francis Fukuyama’s breakaway journal on Can the entire movement galaxy be smaller? I'd like to international affairs incorporate a small/linear post-movement constellation above it to feature in this order: University Bookman, Host to Glenn Front Porch Republic, The American Conservative, The Manhattan Reynolds’s National Interest - American Interest Institute's smart, Andrew Sullivan partisan hybrid of urban-focused pro-war quarterly Weekly Standard logo should appear on the second libertarianism circle, close to the Washington Free Beacon, which should move to the third An important, substantive Ross Douthat Beyond Fox News successor to Public Interest Tucker Carlson’s Drudge, move to third attempt to play Arianna George Will, move to second Meet the post-movement conservatives. NA editor Yuval Levin Huffington. Bright spot: Commentary, move to second brings a Burkean Matt Lewis David Frum American Spectator - second perspective, tweaks Incoherent, but Hudson Institute - second Republican policies high-minded online by MAISIE ALLISON MVPs: Jim Manzi, Conor Friedersdorf community, with Let's eliminate the fth circle and have those people Daniel Foster, and (not finding just oat informally where they are (to show that they regulars Rob Long and photo with Conor Ramesh Ponnuru John Yoo permission) are part of movement team but also not very inuential Friedersdorf independent thinkers) The Atlantic Where the Washington Post's eter Viereck reintroduced conservatism Religion and public life. Jennifer Rubin got her start I will ask Conor Friedersdorf for headshot directly to modern America in 1949 with his Standouts: Matthew Schmitz classic Conservatism Revisited. “ is and Helen Rittelmeyer Conservative was the book,” wrote George Nash in message board Bill Kristol can move to second circle next to Weekly his seminal history of 20th-century conserva- for grassroots Standard if he ts P ranting tive thought, “which, more than any other of National Review's Andrew Sullivan, A calcified, self-perpetuating the early postwar era, created the new con- unorthodox policy Doing the best work: The Dish fundraising apparatus, now Joe Scarborough servatism as a self-conscious intellectual wonk Reihan Salam Henry Olsen, Norm I'd like to gure out a way to have Andrew Sullivan, Ross boasts affiliations with featuring Jim DeMint George Will Ornstein, and Jim Rush Limbaugh The master Douthat, David Frum, Joe Scarborough, and Conor force.” CNN and Reuters What Pethokoukis entertainer (desperately Friedersdorf oat in separate group on rst page... Viereck’s conservatism was pre-political, happened trying to keep up) “more contemplative than activist.” In fact, to you? CharlesCh A conservative outlet for KrauthammerKraK ut 2) Can we add Yuval Levin to to the fth circle that is no he believed that to identify conservatism cultural criticism, (not(not finding longer a circle? I've attached his headshot. primarily in political terms would be self- highbrow and usually photopho with 3) Can we add Ricochet to the third circle? Hysterics as permission.pperm defeating. He opposed the notion of a “con- smart investigative ThisThThihihiscs camecameaam fromffrom Fox News website) servative movement” before it even got o David Frum, journalism David Brooks the ground. Newsweek / He directed an early salvo at God and The Daily Beast The Examiner's Tim Man at Yale, which most of today’s con- Carney dominates Reaganomics the corporate- servatives consider a founding text of the forever government Strong partisan movement (in most cases, without having collusion beat analysis by Ed read it). In a 1951 review published in the Bill Kristol’s oracle, redeemed Morrissey and New York Times, Viereck took issue with the by Christopher Caldwell, Allahpundit young William F. Buckley Jr.’s indiscrimi- Andrew Ferguson, and Rabble-rousing in search of Erick Erickson Jonathan Last page views nate alarmism: Ross Douthat, Michelle Malkin’s The New York Times contribution: "Twitchy," a site Quality consider- that aggregates tweets e author irresponsibly treats not only ations of science and mild social democracy but even most technology in society social reform as almost crypto-commu- nism. He damns communism, our main Matt Drudge enemy, not half so violently as lesser en- Home of Erick Erickson’s A grandaddy of the movement, The scoopster, overwrought populism now out of print, right-wing before even when there is emies like the income tax and inheritance right-wing was the norm no scoop Joe Scarborough, MSNBC, Politico 14 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Edited by Maisie Allison and Jonathan Coppage; Graphic: Michael Hogue; Photos: Getty Images; Graeme Jennings-Washington Examiner; Josh Haner-New York Times Do you still want to use these requested photos?

Online collection of localists concerned about community in a world lived at scale

The American Interest, Francis Fukuyama’s breakaway journal on Can the entire movement galaxy be smaller? I'd like to international affairs incorporate a small/linear post-movement constellation above it to feature in this order: University Bookman, Host to Glenn Front Porch Republic, The American Conservative, The Manhattan Reynolds’s National Interest - American Interest Institute's smart, Andrew Sullivan partisan hybrid of urban-focused pro-war quarterly Weekly Standard logo should appear on the second libertarianism circle, close to the Washington Free Beacon, which should move to the third An important, substantive Ross Douthat successor to Public Interest Tucker Carlson’s Drudge, move to third attempt to play Arianna George Will, move to second NA editor Yuval Levin Huffington. Bright spot: Commentary, move to second brings a Burkean Matt Lewis David Frum American Spectator - second perspective, tweaks Incoherent, but Hudson Institute - second Republican policies high-minded online MVPs: Jim Manzi, Conor Friedersdorf community, with Let's eliminate the fth circle and have those people Daniel Foster, and (not finding just oat informally where they are (to show that they regulars Rob Long and photo with Conor Ramesh Ponnuru John Yoo permission) are part of movement team but also not very inuential Friedersdorf independent thinkers) The Atlantic Where the Washington Post's Religion and public life. Jennifer Rubin got her start I will ask Conor Friedersdorf for headshot directly Standouts: Matthew Schmitz and Helen Rittelmeyer Conservative message board Bill Kristol can move to second circle next to Weekly for grassroots Standard if he ts ranting National Review's Andrew Sullivan, A calcified, self-perpetuating unorthodox policy Doing the best work: The Dish fundraising apparatus, now Joe Scarborough wonk Reihan Salam Henry Olsen, Norm I'd like to gure out a way to have Andrew Sullivan, Ross boasts affiliations with featuring Jim DeMint George Will Ornstein, and Jim Rush Limbaugh The master Douthat, David Frum, Joe Scarborough, and Conor CNN and Reuters What Pethokoukis entertainer (desperately Friedersdorf oat in separate group on rst page... happened trying to keep up) to you? CharlesCh A conservative outlet for KrauthammerKraK ut 2) Can we add Yuval Levin to to the fth circle that is no cultural criticism, (not(not finding longer a circle? I've attached his headshot. highbrow and usually photopho with 3) Can we add Ricochet to the third circle? Hysterics as permission.pperm smart investigative ThisThThihihiscs camecameaam fromffrom Fox News website) David Frum, journalism David Brooks Newsweek / The Daily Beast The Examiner's Tim Carney dominates Reaganomics the corporate- forever government Strong partisan collusion beat analysis by Ed Bill Kristol’s oracle, redeemed Morrissey and by Christopher Caldwell, Allahpundit Andrew Ferguson, and Rabble-rousing in search of Erick Erickson Jonathan Last page views Ross Douthat, Michelle Malkin’s The New York Times contribution: "Twitchy," a site Quality consider- that aggregates tweets ations of science and technology in society

Matt Drudge Home of Erick Erickson’s A grandaddy of the movement, The scoopster, overwrought populism now out of print, right-wing before even when there is right-wing was the norm no scoop Joe Scarborough, MSNBC, Politico MARCH/APRILEdited by2013 Maisie Allison and Jonathan Coppage; Graphic: Michael Hogue; Photos: Getty Images; Graeme Jennings-Washington THE AMERICANExaminer; Josh Haner-New CONSERVATIVE York Times 15 Media

tax. Words will really fail you when you reach ism as the movement’s “original sin.” He was equally the book’s nal ‘message’: trustees and alumni uncomfortable with its later xation on Goldwater: should violate the legally established academic “Fortunately, [Russell] Kirk’s positive contribution freedom to ‘banish from the classroom’ not sometimes almost balances such embarrassing ven- merely Communists but all professors deviat- tures into practical national politics.” ing from Adam Smith! Above all, Viereck worried that a politically charged conservatism would degenerate into “a tran- As the movement coalesced over the next few sient fad irrelevant to real needs.” A static conser- years, Viereck’s wariness of economic materialism vatism “does real harm when it … enters short-run and “right-wing nationalist thought control” led politics conjuring up mirages to conceal sordid reali- coalition-builder Frank S. Meyer—a senior editor ties or to distract from them.” He quoted a 1953 es- of National Review—to dub him a “counterfeit con- say by philanthropist August Heckscher: “Conserva- servative.” Viereck returned the compliment. In a tism at best remains deeper and more pervasive than 1962 New Republic essay, “ e New Conservatism: any party; and a party that does claim it exclusively is One of Its Founders Asks What Went Wrong,” he ex- likely to deform and exploit it for its own purposes.” plained: “A scrutiny of the plain facts of the situation has forced our report on the new conservatives to be mainly negative.” e Rise of Post-Movement Conservatism at was Viereck’s last formal written pronounce- ment on the state of conservatism. Yet more than a For his part, Buckley perpetuated Cold War frenzy in half-century later, his views are making a comeback National Review but also published cheerful and sig- among independent, “post-movement” conserva- nicant conservative thinking on literature and public tives. Even more curious, Viereck’s disciples can be policy. Among some dissidents, however—openly in found not on the fringes but in the pages of e New the case of Viereck and quietly in the case of Kirk— York Times, Newsweek/ e Daily Beast, and e At- there had always been a certain Burkean unease about lantic, where Viereck was rst published. For a new NR’s partisan politics. As the movement doubled generation of writers and conservative thinkers, it is down on the GOP, its legions took groupthink to new almost as if Viereck had set the tone of 1950s conser- and bizarre levels, placing party loyalty at a premium vatism instead of Buckley. and backing wholeheartedly the Republican line. Post-movement conservatives are not political operatives. Unorthodox writ- ers like Ross Douthat, Andrew Sullivan, and Conor Friedersdorf can be loosely The Viereck disposition was never described as Burkeans. A few, including former Bush speechwriter David Frum meant for the high-pitched fervors and Reagan economic adviser Bruce of movement conservatism. Bartlett, were forced out of the move- ment for their apostasies. ose who have eschewed built-in movement ca- reer paths—a gig on Fox News! a talk show on AM radio!—and multiplat- form merchandising opportunities face Of course, the Viereck disposition was never meant a dilemma. ey must forgo the movement entirely for the high-pitched fervors of movement conser- or operate carefully at its margins, working toward a vatism. Viereck himself accepted the New Deal and conservatism that is interested in much more than trade unions as “counter-revolutionary” measures and electoral success. acknowledged the rootedness of both the American Perhaps because of their aversion to narrow- conservative tradition and our “moderate native lib- minded activism, these writers have been adept at eralism.” “ e Burkean builds on the concrete existing incorporating a broader, more nuanced conserva- historical base, not on a vacuum of abstract wishful tive sensibility into the mainstream. Friedersdorf, thinking,” he wrote. He warned against conservatism a libertarian-leaning writer who got his start as an as a zero-sum political program, and he decried its under-blogger for Sullivan, happily advances a cri- adherents’ stubborn ambivalence toward McCarthy- tique of liberalism and contemporary conservatism

16 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 alike at e Atlantic’s website. His blog post “Why I Free Beacon: “Fox News Cites Free Beacon Report.”) Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama” (on constitutional Here the mission ranges from “use journalism to and civil liberties grounds) was shared by 174,000 advance the movement” to “#war.” As one attendee readers on Facebook. at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual confer- David Frum went independent in 2009 with the ence told Atlantic reporter Molly Ball last year, “You now defunct website FrumForum—a “gathering couldn’t get in an argument around here no matter place for conservatives who still believe the Earth how hard you tried.” is round,” according to e New Republic—and was Conor Friedersdorf says that much of the move- red from AEI a year later for breaking with the ment media simply feels old—“not many new ideas party on healthcare reform. (He joined Newsweek/ being batted around there”—and points to a gen- e Daily Beast aer that.) In a 2011 essay for New erational conundrum: “What everyone thinks of York, Frum decried the “drying up” of conservative as great moments in the conservative movement— creativity and described the movement as a “going- Buckley founding National Review, Goldwater, Rea- out-of-business sale for the baby boom generation.” gan getting elected—all of those things happened “ e problems that generate politi- cal movements are either solved or are shown to be unsolvable or just irrele- vant because of passage of time,” Frum told e American Conservative. Con- The conservative media in particular tinuing with the same ideas aer that means “you become blind to reality has become bigger, more consolidated, around you. e conservative move- and corporate. ment is increasingly removed from the concerns of future generations, which don’t use politics to memorialize old historical conicts.” “I don’t think it makes sense to use the phrase before Rush Limbaugh, talk radio, and Fox News,” ‘conservative movement’ now,” he says, “when the he says. “ e movement is still generating revenue conservative outlook almost entirely overlaps with for its various projects but now has little to do with the Republican Party, and in some ways is bigger actually advancing conservative ideas.” For instance, than the Republican Party. A lot of the practices and he asks, “what has the Heritage Foundation accom- habits that you develop when you’re a small faction plished since the mid-1990s to justify its level of ex- become inappropriate when you get big.” e Pro- penditure?” crustean movement, he wrote in New York, has be- “We need a certain amount of icebreaking to cre- come a “whole alternative knowledge system.” ate space,” Frum adds. “We’re way overdue for gen- e conservative media in particular—once the erational change in the conservative world. … e vibrant repository of philosophical debate and keen Reagan record is not a motivator for next generation wit—has become bigger, more consolidated, and of voters.” corporate. As former GOP congressman Joe Scar- Meanwhile, post-Reagan, post-movement conser- borough, who brings concerns about the debt and vatism has distanced itself from boomer nostalgia perpetual war to MSNBC and Politico, observed at and isn’t constantly compelled to dangle its ideologi- a National Review Institute event in January: “the cal credentials out of fear of retribution from readers. debate has been stied. It has been stied because ese conservatives are free to explore dierent prem- we have created this conservative groupthink over ises while leaving party shibboleths behind, particu- 30 years that has become more and more narrow. A larly when it comes to post-Great Recession econom- conservative groupthink that would allow all of our ics and foreign policy aer Iraq. ey are certainly not primary presidential candidates being asked if they beholden to the short-term trajectory of the Republi- would take a 10-to-1 deal on spending cuts to taxes, can Party. and everybody’s afraid to talk.” Friedersdorf’s former boss Andrew Sullivan has e groupthink is so extensive that several con- brought the conservatism of Michael Oakeshott to servative publications seem to exist only to promote the pages of e New Republic, Time, e Atlantic, the work of other, indistinguishable movement out- and Newsweek/ e Daily Beast. In February he lets. (One typical headline from the Washington took his blog fully independent—and has raised

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 17 Media

more than $600,000 in digital subscriptions from foresaw in his review of God and Man: “some of us readers. Sullivan makes the case for a conservatism have preached a conservative ‘revolt against revolt.’ of “no party or clique.” He turned to the example of If the laboring mountain of the new campus of con- Viereck in a recent blog post: servatism can turn out no humane and imaginative Churchill but merely this product of narrow eco- e conservative criticism of today’s GOP that nomic privilege, then we might need a revolt against I and others have engaged in is not new. It was the revolt against revolt.” there at the beginning of the ‘movement’ in the Should the present revolt, if we can indeed call post-war period and has never really le. In it that, heed the movement’s lessons and break the other words, there is a distinctive conservative bondage of the Republican Party? In an essay for the strain of non-violence, pragmatism, restraint Imaginative Conservative website, George Carey, a and limited government that is at peace with professor of government at Georgetown, put it this the New Deal. How else to explain Eisenhower way: or the rst Bush or Reagan in some moods? A Burkean based conservatism cannot be true Certainly, Viereck’s comfort with “generous emo- to itself if it is aligned permanently with either of tions” in the context of civil rights, and his recog- our political parties. e most obvious consid- nition of the “shared liberalconservative base” as a erations bear out this conclusion. On what basis rooted American reality, resonates with Sullivan, a can loyalty to an organization, lacking any abid- committed Obamacon who was gay marriage’s earli- ing principles and seeking nothing more than est and most articulate proponent. electoral victory, be justied? … At this level, the e deeply pro-life Ross Douthat takes on philo- party is eectively brain dead, beyond repair. … sophical and cultural questions in the New York Instead of worrying about the trials and tribula- Times. James Poulos, who founded the “Postmodern tions of the Republican party, for instance, we Conservative” blog at First ings, is now a producer ought to repudiate it and move on. at Hungton Post Live and contributor to Forbes and Vice. Others, like Josh Barro, a sharp policy ana- Carey elaborated in an email: “Why is there this lyst for Bloomberg, resist the conservative label alto- deep concern for a political party that has abandoned gether. Barro calls himself a neoliberal. us? Does this linkage to party make these ideas more attractive? If the ideas are sound, why can’t they just stand by themselves?” Indeed, conservatism is “deeper and Several conservative publications seem more pervasive than any party,” a sensibil- to exist only to promote the work of other, ity that is naturally incorporated into the indistinguishable movement outlets. mainstream. In Viereck’s words: “ e an- swer is: children, don’t oversimplify, don’t pigeonhole: allow for pluralistic overlap- pings that defy abstract blueprints and l a b e l s .” Friedersdorf notes that the movement itself began While the movement may continue its political as a meager upstart: “Alternative or dissident con- huckstering for some time—in part because it is servatism has a better chance” of succeeding “than so protable—the Republican Party has hit a wall. America suddenly deciding that [National Review Meanwhile, the conservative temperament ourish- writer and historian] Victor Davis Hanson has been es in scattered, improbable places. Could this fugi- right all along.” tive existence be more authentic to conservatism? Perhaps post-movement conservatism won’t ac- complish much in practical political terms, but in “A Revolt Against the Revolt Against Revolt” nurturing a fertile intellectual tradition it may well do more good for the country than all the political Buckley’s insurgency challenged a crumbling, staid campaigns of the last decade. liberal establishment; now the counter-establish- ment he founded suers from the same large-scale Maisie Allison is editorial director, digital of intellectual decline. It’s a scenario that Viereck half- e American Conservative.

18 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Jon Huntsman

Why Marriage Equality Is Right

he party of eodore Roos- not Hispanic neighbors. We should understood emotionally through one’s evelt and Ronald Reagan has applaud states that lead on reforming own experience with family, neigh- now lost the popular vote in drug policy. And, consistent with the bors, and friends. e party of Lincoln ve of the last six presiden- Republican Party’s origins, we must should stand with our best tradition of Ttial elections. e marketplace of ideas demand equality under the law for all equality and support full civil marriage will render us irrelevant, and soon, if Americans. for all Americans. we are not honest about our time and While serving as governor of Utah, I is is both the right thing to do and place in history. Unfortunately, much pushed for civil unions and expanded will better allow us to confront the real of the discussion has focused on cos- reciprocal benets for gay citizens. I choice our country is facing: a choice metic solutions to, say, our underper- did so not because of political pres- between the Founders’ vision of a lim- formance among ethnic and young sure—indeed, at the time 70 percent ited government that empowers free voters. is is a mistake: we cannot of Utahns were opposed—but because markets, with a level playing eld giv- cross this river by feeling for stones. as governor my role was to work for ing opportunity to all, and a world of Instead, we need to take a hard look at everybody, even those who didn’t crony capitalism and rent-seeking by what today’s conservatism stands for. have access to a powerful lobby. Civil the most powerful economic interests. Conservatives can start by examin- unions, I believed, were a practical step Adam Smith was not only an archi- ing how Republicans working with that would bring all citizens more fully tect of the modern world of extraor- Democrats have governed in several into the fabric of a state they already dinary economic opportunity, he was successful states, including Utah: free- were—and always had been—a part of. a moralist whose rst book was e market-based healthcare reform, tax at was four years ago. Today we eory of Moral Sentiments. e foun- reform that eliminated deductions and have an opportunity to do more: con- dation of his thought was his insight closed loopholes to bring down rates, servatives should start to lead again that free markets and open commerce and practical education reforms that and push their states to join the nine strengthened our moral ber by rein- spoke to 21st-century realities. others that allow all their citizens to forcing the community of shared and Instead of using immigration reform marry. I’ve been married for 29 years. reciprocal economic interests. Govern- as a wedge issue, like many leaders in My marriage has been the greatest joy ment, he thought, had to be limited lest Washington, Utah passed legislation of my life. ere is nothing conserva- it be captured and corrupted by special to help manage immigration based on tive about denying other Americans business interests who wanted protec- our real economic needs. If conserva- the ability to forge that same relation- tion from competition and the recipro- tives come to the table with solutions ship with the person they love. cal requirements of community. that put our communities rst, it will All Americans should be treated We are at a crossroads. I believe go a long way toward winning elec- equally by the law, whether they marry the American people will vote for tions. in a church, another religious insti- free markets under equal rules of the But it’s dicult to get people even tution, or a town hall. is does not game—because there is no opportuni- to consider your reform ideas if they mean that any religious group would ty or job growth any other way. But the think, with good reason, you don’t be forced by the state to recognize re- American people will not hear us out if like or respect them. Building a win- lationships that run counter to their we stand against their friends, family, ning coalition to tackle the looming conscience. Civil equality is compatible and individual liberty. scal and trust decits will be impos- with, and indeed promotes, freedom of sible if we continue to alienate broad conscience. Jon Huntsman is a former governor of Utah segments of the population. We must Marriage is not an issue that peo- and was a Huntsman Corporation executive be happy warriors who refuse to toler- ple rationalize through the abstract and U.S. ambassador to China and Singa- ate those who want Hispanic votes but lens of the law; rather it is something pore.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 19 Culture

Sex A er Christianity Gay marriage is not just a social revolution but a cosmological one.

by ROD DREHER

wenty years ago, new president Bill Clinton conspicuous subjects and objects of the crisis— stepped on a political landmine when he have been forced to invent a complete cosmology tried to ful ll a campaign promise to per- to grasp it. No one says the changes will come mit gay soldiers to serve openly. Same-sex easily. But it’s just possible that a small and de- Tmarriage barely registered as a political cause; the spised sexual minority will change America for- country was then three years away from the Defense ever. of Marriage Act and four years from comedian Ellen DeGeneres’s prime-time coming out. ey were right, and though the word “cosmology” en came what historians will one day recall as a may strike readers as philosophically grandiose, its cultural revolution. Now we’re entering the endgame use now appears downright prophetic. e struggle of the struggle over gay rights and the meaning of ho- for the rights of “a small and despised sexual minori- mosexuality. Conservatives have been routed, both in ty” would not have succeeded if the old Christian cos- court and increasingly in the court of public opinion. mology had held: put bluntly, the gay-rights cause has It is commonly believed that the only reason to oppose succeeded precisely because the Christian cosmology same-sex marriage is rank bigotry or for religious rea- has dissipated in the mind of the West. sons, neither of which—the argument goes—has any Same-sex marriage strikes the decisive blow against place in determining laws or public standards. the old order. e Nation’s triumphalist rhetoric from e magnitude of the defeat suered by moral tra- two decades ago is not overripe; the radicals appreci- ditionalists will become ever clearer as older Ameri- ated what was at stake far better than did many—es- cans pass from the scene. Poll aer poll shows that for pecially bourgeois apologists for same-sex marriage the young, homosexuality is normal and gay marriage as a conservative phenomenon. Gay marriage will is no big deal—except, of course, if one opposes it, in indeed change America forever, in ways that are only which case one has the approximate moral status of a now becoming visible. For better or for worse, it will segregationist in the late 1960s. make ours a far less Christian culture. It already is do- All this is, in fact, a much bigger deal than most ing exactly that. people on both sides realize, and for a reason that eludes even ardent opponents of gay rights. Back in hen they were writing the widely acclaimed 1993, a cover story in e Nation identi ed the gay- W2010 book American Grace, a comprehensive rights cause as the summit and keystone of the culture study of contemporary religious belief and practice, war: political scientists Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell noticed two inverse trend lines in social- All the crosscurrents of present-day liberation science measures, both starting around 1990. struggles are subsumed in the gay struggle. e ey found that young Americans coming into gay moment is in some ways similar to the mo- adulthood at that time began to accept homosexu- ment that other communities have experienced ality as morally licit in larger numbers. ey also in the nation’s past, but it is also something more, observed that younger Americans began more and because sexual identity is in crisis throughout the population, and gay people—at once the most Rod Dreher blogs at www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher.

20 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Religious affiliation by age Unaffiliated Affiliated 18-29 32% 67% 30-49 21 77 50-64 15 84 65+ 9 90

1996: 65% Oppose

2012: 48% Public opinion on gay marriage 44%

Favor 27% graphic by Michael Hogue Michael by graphic

Note: ’Don’t know/refused’ not shown Source: Pew Research Center

more to fall away from organized religion. e evan- Indeed, according to a 2012 Pew Research Center gelical boom of the 1970s and 1980s stopped, and if study, the Nones comprise one out of three Americans not for a tsunami of Hispanic immigration the U.S. under 30. is is not simply a matter of young people Catholic church would be losing adherents at the doing what young people tend to do: keep church at same rate as the long-dwindling Protestant mainline. arm’s length until they settle down. Pew’s Greg Smith Over time, the data showed, attitudes on moral is- told NPR that this generation is more religiously un- sues proved to be strong predictors of religious en- aliated than any on record. Putnam—the Harvard gagement. In particular, the more liberal one was on scholar best known for his best-selling civic culture homosexuality, the less likely one was to claim reli- study Bowling Alone—has said that there’s no reason gious aliation. It’s not that younger Americans were to think they will return to church in signi cant num- becoming atheists. Rather, most of them identify as bers as they age. “spiritual, but not religious.” Combined with atheists Putnam and Campbell were careful to say in and agnostics, these “Nones”—the term is Putnam’s American Grace that correlation is not causation, but and Campbell’s—comprise the nation’s fastest-grow- they did point out that as gay activism moved toward ing faith demographic. center stage in American political life—around the

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 21 Culture

time of e Nation’s cover story—the vivid public he wrote, “the rejection of sexual individualism” was role many Christian leaders took in opposing gay “very near the center of the symbolic that has not rights alienated young Americans from organized held.” He meant that renouncing the sexual autono- religion. my and sensuality of pagan culture was at the core of In a dinner conversation not long aer the publica- Christian culture—a culture that, crucially, did not tion of American Grace, Putnam told me that Christian merely renounce but redirected the erotic instinct. churches would have to liberalize on sexual teaching at the West was rapidly re-paganizing around sen- if they hoped to retain the loyalty of younger genera- suality and sexual liberation was a powerful sign of tions. is seems at rst like a reasonable conclusion, Christianity’s demise. but the experience of America’s liberal denominations It is nearly impossible for contemporary Ameri- belies that prescription. Mainline Protestant churches, cans to grasp why sex was a central concern of early which have been far more accepting of homosexuality Christianity. Sarah Ruden, the Yale-trained classics and sexual liberation in general, have continued their translator, explains the culture into which Christian- stark membership decline. ity appeared in her 2010 book Paul Among e People. It seems that when people decide that historically Ruden contends that it’s profoundly ignorant to think normative Christianity is wrong about sex, they typi- of the Apostle Paul as a dour proto-Puritan descend- cally don’t nd a church that endorses their liberal ing upon happy-go-lucky pagan hippies, ordering views. ey quit going to church altogether. them to stop having fun. is raises a critically important question: is sex In fact, Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and mar- the linchpin of Christian cultural order? Is it really riage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, the case that to cast o Christian teaching on sex and sexually exploitive Greco-Roman culture of the time— sexuality is to remove the factor that gives—or gave— exploitive especially of slaves and women, whose value Christianity its power as a social force? to pagan males lay chiey in their ability to produce children and provide sexual pleasure. Christianity, as hough he might not have put it quite that way, the articulated by Paul, worked a cultural revolution, re- Teminent sociologist Philip Rie would probably straining and channeling male eros, elevating the status have said yes. Rie’s landmark 1966 book e Tri- of both women and of the human body, and infusing umph Of the erapeutic analyzes what he calls the marriage—and marital sexuality—with love. “deconversion” of the West from Christianity. Nearly Christian marriage, Ruden writes, was “as dierent everyone recognizes that this process has been un- from anything before or since as the command to turn derway since the Enlightenment, but Rie showed the other cheek.” e point is not that Christianity that it had reached a more advanced stage than most was only, or primarily, about rede ning and revaluing people—least of all Christians—recognized. sexuality, but that within a Christian anthropology Rie, who died in 2006, was an unbeliever, but he sex takes on a new and dierent meaning, one that understood that religion is the key to understanding mandated a radical change of behavior and cultural any culture. For Rie, the essence of any and every norms. In Christianity, what people do with their culture can be identi ed by what it forbids. Each im- sexuality cannot be separated from what the human poses a series of moral demands on its members, for person is. the sake of serving communal purposes, and helps It would be absurd to claim that Christian civili- them cope with these demands. A culture requires zation ever achieved a golden age of social harmony a cultus—a sense of sacred order, a cosmology that and sexual bliss. It is easy to nd eras in Christian roots these moral demands within a metaphysical history when church authorities were obsessed with framework. sexual purity. But as Rie recognizes, Christianity did You don’t behave this way and not that way because establish a way to harness the sexual instinct, embed it’s good for you; you do so because this moral vision it within a community, and direct it in positive ways. is encoded in the nature of reality. is is the basis What makes our own era dierent from the past, of natural-law theory, which has been at the heart of says Rie, is that we have ceased to believe in the contemporary secular arguments against same-sex Christian cultural framework, yet we have made it marriage (and which have persuaded no one). impossible to believe in any other that does what cul- Rie, writing in the 1960s, identi ed the sexual ture must do: restrain individual passions and chan- revolution—though he did not use that term—as a nel them creatively toward communal purposes. leading indicator of Christianity’s death as a cultur- Rather, in the modern era, we have inverted the ally determinative force. In classical Christian culture, role of culture. Instead of teaching us what we must

22 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 deprive ourselves of to be civilized, we have a society termed “moralistic therapeutic deism”—the feelgood, that tells us we nd meaning and purpose in releasing pseudo-Christianity that has supplanted the norma- ourselves from the old prohibitions. tive version of the faith in contemporary America— How this came to be is a complicated story involv- suggests that the task will be extremely dicult. ing the rise of humanism, the advent of the Enlighten- Conservative Christians have lost the ght over gay ment, and the coming of modernity. As philosopher marriage and, as we have seen, did so decades before Charles Taylor writes in his magisterial religious and anyone even thought same-sex marriage was a possi- cultural history A Secular Age, “e entire ethical bility. Gay-marriage proponents succeeded so quickly stance of moderns supposes and follows on from the because they showed the public that what they were death of God (and of course, of the meaningful cos- ghting for was consonant with what most post-1960s mos).” To be modern is to believe in one’s individual Americans already believed about the meaning of sex desires as the locus of authority and self-de nition. and marriage. e question Western Christians face Gradually the West lost the sense that Christian- now is whether or not they are going to lose Christi- ity had much to do with civilizational order, Taylor anity altogether in this new dispensation. writes. In the 20th century, casting o restric- tive Christian ideals about sexuality became increasingly identi ed with health. By the 1960s, the conviction that sexual expression Gay marriage signifies the final was healthy and good—the more of it, the triumph of the Sexual Revolution better—and that sexual desire was intrinsic to and the dethroning of Christianity. one’s personal identity culminated in the sex- ual revolution, the animating spirit of which held that freedom and authenticity were to be found not in sexual withholding (the Chris- tian view) but in sexual expression and assertion. at Too many of them think that same-sex marriage is is how the modern American claims his freedom. merely a question of sexual ethics. ey fail to see that To Rie, ours is a particular kind of “revolutionary gay marriage, and the concomitant collapse of mar- epoch” because the revolution cannot by its nature be riage among poor and working-class heterosexuals, institutionalized. Because it denies the possibility of makes perfect sense given the autonomous individual- Because American Christianity has communal knowledge of binding truths transcending ism sacralized by modernity and embraced by contem- been privatized, it is also highly secularized. the individual, the revolution cannot establish a stable porary culture—indeed, by many who call themselves social order. As Rie characterizes it, “e answer to Christians. ey don’t grasp that Christianity, properly all questions of ‘what for’ is ‘more’.” understood, is not a moralistic therapeutic adjunct to Our post-Christian culture, then, is an “anti-cul- bourgeois individualism—a common response among ture.” We are compelled by the logic of modernity and American Christians, one denounced by Rie in 2005 the myth of individual freedom to continue tearing as “simply pathetic”—but is radically opposed to the away the last vestiges of the old order, convinced that cultural order (or disorder) that reigns today. true happiness and harmony will be ours once all lim- ey are ghting the culture war moralistically, not its have been nulli ed. cosmologically. ey have not only lost the culture, Gay marriage signi es the nal triumph of the Sex- but unless they understand the nature of the ght and ual Revolution and the dethroning of Christianity be- change their strategy to ght cosmologically, within a cause it denies the core concept of Christian anthro- few generations they may also lose their religion. pology. In classical Christian teaching, the divinely “e death of a culture begins when its norma- sanctioned union of male and female is an icon of the tive institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways relationship of Christ to His church and ultimately of that remain inwardly compelling,” Rie writes. By God to His creation. is is why gay marriage negates that standard, Christianity in America, if not Ameri- Christian cosmology, from which we derive our mod- can spirituality, is in mortal danger. e future is not ern concept of human rights and other fundamental foreordained: Taylor shares much of Rie’s historical goods of modernity. Whether we can keep them in analysis but is more hopeful about the potential for the post-Christian epoch remains to be seen. renewal. Still, if the faith does not recover, the histori- It also remains to be seen whether we can keep cal autopsy will conclude that gay marriage was not a Christianity without accepting Christian chastity. cause but a symptom, the sign that revealed the pa- Sociologist Christian Smith’s research on what he has tient’s terminal condition.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 23 Education

What Texas Won’t Teach U.S. history takes a back seat to race, class, and gender

by WILLIAM MURCHISON

e know, axiomatically, how it is with in the world. e newly emerging narrative concerns victors in one cause and another— a nation of far more complex origins and ambitions they claim the spoils and write the than formerly taught, harder to understand and in- history; in the latter case, untangling terpret, with darker corners, lacking the old teleol- Wheroism from villainy, assigning signi cance to the ogy, the old sense of purpose and ful llment. outcomes, de ning challenges still to come. I beg the reader: hold it right there. What’s wrong, Why wonder (to the extent anyone does these from the standpoint of scholarship, with complexi- days) that from many a seat in the modern class- ties and dark, or just darkish, corners? Is there no room, America seems strikingly dierent from the right or need to study and know about such? I plan star-spangled nation generally on view during—oh, to return to this matter. Meanwhile, what did the I don’t know, the early ‘60s might do as point of de- NAS report—titled “Recasting History”—actually parture. at was the era in which I occupied my do and say? own seat in the history classrooms of the University Quite a bit. A team of NAS-aliated scholars of Texas (currently called, due to system expansion, singled out one of my alma maters—UT—and its the University of Texas-Austin). formidable academic rival Texas A&M Univer- A few years aer my graduation, with a history sity for a detailed study of institutional responses B.A., followed by study at Stanford for the history to a 1971 state law meant to spread and entrench Master of Arts, came the tempests and upheavals of historical knowledge among students at publicly the Vietnam war-counterculture era, whose victors funded colleges and universities. I invite contem- were… guess who? plation of the date—1971, when countercultural No point leaving readers in suspense. A study rage at “fascist pig Amerika” was all the rage. Law- by the National Association of Scholars, an orga- makers thought it sensible, even moral, to require nization of counter-countercultural academics in six semester hours in American or Texas history various disciplines, dedicated to “the tradition of for graduation from a publicly funded college or reasoned scholarship and civil debate,” raises the university. A certain kind of instruction, I can only timely question, “Are Race, Class, and Gender assume at this chronological remove, was implied. Dominating American History?,” meaning history To put it in simplest terms, the teaching of fascist as presently taught on college campuses. e ver- pig Amerikan history was out. dict as rendered would appear to be yes; unques- In 2013, UT and A&M continue to enforce the tionably; positively. legislative requirement, through survey courses but Race, class, and gender (formerly spelled “s-e-x”) also, as options, certain specialized classes. So far so appear to be undermining the narrative of America good. But what comes aer “so far” turns out not to we once upon a time received as coherent and con- be very good at all, according to the report. When nected: the story of disparate colonies welding them- selves into a nation of largely positive achievements, William Murchison is a nationally syndicated columnist and with a generally positive vision of itself and its place longtime commentator on politics, religion, and society.

24 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 NAS researchers looked at the courses, the reading lists, and the research interests of Teaching that gives strong emphasis the teachers, they saw that to race, class, or gender (RCG) When NAS researchers looked at courses, reading all too oen the course readings gave lists and research interests of teachers, here’s what strong emphasis to race, class, or gen- they found: der (RCG) social history, an emphasis so University of Texas strong that it diminished the attention 83% given to other subjects in American his- of them tory (such as military, diplomatic, reli- received gious, intellectual history). e result is their Ph.D.s in the ’90s that these institutions frequently oered 78% or later a less-than-comprehensive picture of were high assigners of U.S. history. 67% RCG reading received e researchers found that “78 percent their Ph.D.s of UT faculty members were high assign- in the ’70s and ’80s ers of RCG readings.” By contrast, just 50 percent of A&M faculty assigned similar readings. Hmmmm. Could it be, this sort Texas A&M of emphasis came naturally to certain fac- 90% ulty members? So one might think. “More received recent Ph.D.s,” says the report, “are more their Ph.D.s likely to focus research on race, class, and in the ’90s 50% or later gender. 83 percent of UT faculty members were high teaching these courses who received their assigners of Ph.D.s in the 90s or later had RCG research RCG reading 36% received interests,” versus just 67 percent of UT fac- their Ph.D.s ulty members who got their doctorates in in the ’70s the ’70s and ’80s. At A&M the imbalance and ’80s was more pronounced yet. Nine in 10 of the ’90s Ph.D.’s who were scrutinized “had RCG research interests.” Not so the ’70s and ’80s contingent, just 36 percent of whom were attached. A good thing? A bad thing? Which, or what? Ac- did you learn?” is the basic end-of-semester question cording to the NAS report: for whoever completes a course of any sort, having earned a grade of any kind. What you learn, almost As RCG emphases crowd out other aspects inevitably—putting aside the possibility of a rare and themes in American history, we nd other personal obsession with the impartial acquisition of problems setting in, including the narrow tai- knowledge—is what you soaked up in the classroom loring of ‘special topics’ courses and the absence or imbibed from assigned readings. e authors of of signi cant primary source documents [e.g., the NAS report apply the principle to American his- Tocqueville, the Mayower Compact, the Fed- tory: “for most students”—i.e., non-history majors— eralist Papers]. Special topics courses used by “these courses provide the only exposure they will students to ful ll the history requirement lack ever get to college-level American history…” What historical breadth; they seem to exist mainly to do they learn from a course heavy on racial consid- allow faculty members to teach their special in- erations? ey learn about race. And from a course terests. on “gender”? Uh-huh. And so on. ey grasp inad- equately, if at all, in the report’s words, “the larger ey threaten, accordingly, to give race, class, and political conicts, institutional frameworks, and gender issues “precedence over all others.” philosophic ideals that have governed the course of Here, precisely, we get down to brass tacks. “What American history”—hardly what Texas legislators

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 25 Education

could have had in mind four decades ago when they tives in the department. O.H. Radkey, an acclaimed came up with and imposed the U. S. history require- expert on the Soviet Union, was staunchly anticom- ment. munist; he liked referring to FDR as “that American A few illustrations. During the 2010 fall semes- president reputed to be great.” ter—the period covered by the NAS study—UT of- fered, in ful llment of the U.S. history requirement, t was another day, another age, as UT’s pushback “History of Mexican Americans in the U.S.,” “Intro- Iagainst the NAS report quickly made clear. Why duction to American Studies,” “Black Power Move- didn’t NAS just call for stringing up the history fac- ment,” “Mexican-American Women, 1910–Present,” ulty from lampposts? A serious, meticulous, care- “Race and Revolution,” and “e United States and fully craed report got no more respect at UT than Africa.” it would have if accompanied by just such a sum- Among reading assignments at UT: “Africanisms mons to retribution. in American Culture,” “Chicana Feminist ought,” Ka-BOOM! e student newspaper went aer NAS “Lakota Woman,” “Little X: Growing Up in the for insulting students fully able, thank you, to appre- Nation of Islam,” “e Shawnees and the War for ciate the complexity of American history. e uni- America,” “When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers versity itself called the report “narrowly de ned and Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in Colo- largely inaccurate,” bestowing no attention on how the nial New Mexico, 1500–1800”—shall I go on? report had been narrowly framed to test compliance It occurred to the NAS researchers that some with a legislative mandate nor acknowledging that the modest reforms in the curriculum might not go university’s own website had provided all the infor- amiss. e report calls for, inter alia, hiring faculty mation. Never mind: “Teaching race, class, and gen- “with a broader range of research interests,” and der topics,” UT went on, “… helps broaden our under- designing better courses, not to mention basically standing of American society by adding new voices depoliticizing history. A&M, in the critique, fared and perspectives to the American story.” NAS had acknowledged as much, the point of the report being to coun- sel against examining the superstruc- ture of history by recent demographic Would it not help to have some understanding add-ons. What if you don’t understand of the processes by which even societies the architecture of the whole on ac- founded on the dead ideas of dead men count of overemphasizing new and comparatively unconventional fea- have their origins and fruitions? tures? Would it not help to have some understanding of the processes by which even societies founded on the dead ideas of dead men have their ori- better—largely, I would bet, due to its more mili- gins and fruitions? Does it not help to know how we tary-agrarian culture. (e school was founded as got to such-and-such a place under such-and-such Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College. Until the circumstances? You would not suppose so to hear 1960s of baneful memory every student belonged the academic yowlers, angry at criticism, fearful of to the Corps of Cadets.) Snootier, livelier UT, in seeing their loves and attachments fall from present the state’s capital city, has long assumed it was of favor. a dierent order entirely from the Farmers at Ag- e academic ladies and gentleman don’t want dis- gieland, privileged by nature to take chances, to cussion, it appears. at would be too much like free aunt its intellectual stu. speech. What they want is the rostrum to announce e history faculty during my own time at UT— their contempt for those who don’t see things exactly the early to late ’60s—wore their liberalism lightly, as they themselves see them. such liberalism as actually pertained to them, which e possibility of driving race and women’s rights was of a generally genial sort. I said, laughingly, to my away into academic obscurity is the merest joke. “U. S. Since 1865” teacher, who had become a jovial Who wants to displace vital knowledge? On the sparring partner: “Are you going to grade my paper other hand, isn’t that what goes right now, from the as a liberal, or as a fair man?” I got a good laugh from other direction? “Broadly integrative approaches to him—and an “A” to boot. ere were even conserva- core subjects and comprehensive surveys have been

26 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 displaced by narrow, specialized, and ideologically wrote soon aer the report came out. “ese issues,” partisan approaches, largely driven by faculty re- he said in an op-ed column for the Austin American- search agendas.” Such was the burden of NAS’s criti- Statesman, “are by no means unique to UT—they de- cism, from which UT recoils as from a snake. scribe the situation at most history departments in Upon the authors of the report, UT’s alumni as- America ever since the 1960s and 1970s.” sociation sicced a professor named Jeremi Suri, I should think pretty much everyone by now who proceeded to come emotionally unglued. He knows academia to be in the grip of aging ’60s called the report “frankly dumb”—a sovereign types who manage, by sheer power likely as not— judgment he managed to form and administer in power over promotion, power over tenure, power advance of the report’s actual release. (Whoever over grants and sabbaticals—to set the tone among said historians’ eyes are forever trained on ob- younger scholars. e obsessions of the ’60s types jects to their rear?) It appeared to Suri, an inter- are race, class, and gender, as was the case 40 years national aairs scholar, newly arrived at UT from Wisconsin, that NAS was demanding “a simple and one-sided history of just a few people”—a point The obsessions of the ’60s types NAS had gone out of its way to refute are race, class, and gender, in the unreleased report concerning whose contents Suri seemed so inti- as was the case 40 years ago. mately informed. In an exchange on the alum association’s blog with NAS’s Richard Fonte, Suri, in characteristi- cally open-minded fashion, ripped the “reckless and self-serving critics” who seem to pop- ago. e mainspring idea is that the sins of the pre- ulate our country’s history, “most of whom ended counterculture United States, dominated by clueless as discredited malcontents.” “What is driving this white males, should be eradicated, that the former report?”, Suri demanded of Fonte. “Why should we victims (including those unborn when the original believe a word you say?” oenses were committed) should be made whole Because it might be true? Or worth a moment of somehow, at any rate through having their “stories” conversation? What about just worth hearing for the told by the academic bien-pensants, the enlightened sake of exposure to a contrasting viewpoint? ones. A UT-educated attorney, who for some odd rea- How can anyone criticize such a goal? Hence son found Suri’s language “oensive and intolerant,” what Professor Pells calls the “almost oppressive or- responded on the same blog: “As the rst native thodoxy and … lack of intellectual diversity among born American son of immigrants, I have no desire the UT history faculty.” It’s what you get when you to see American history taught solely as an homage close down discussion; when you cut o critics at to dead white males. But dead white males and the the knees. Everybody believes the same. Everyone texts they craed had the predominant role in the comes to love Big Brother. nation’s founding and for much of its history,” creat- I hate being hard on the University of Texas, ing “an adaptable system that has provided countless which treated me well enough in the old days. Four millions of immigrants opportunity.” generations, and multifarious members, of my fam- e ’60s, the ’60s! e sheer nuttiness of the age! ily have attended school there since 1886, when the e credulousness of 50- and 60-year-olds today, school was a mere three years old and hopes were conditioned by the zeitgeist to see the American high for general access to knowledge and wisdom. procession as shaped by the cras and wiles of dead, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make slave-owning, probably wife-beating patriarchs! e you free,” according to the immortal words engraved desire to relaunch the narrative—start telling people on UT’s famous Tower. e place will survive—and what America’s really all about! A survivor of the ’60s more than that—even if the history department thinks, and fears, that’s what mainly goes on here. should ultimately go down the tubes, having resisted Unfortunately, it doesn’t go on just at Texas’s two self-examination to the point of laughability. I was major public universities. e infection is pretty pleased all the same to read that Newsweek and the widespread. As, ironically, a retired University of Daily Beast list UT among the country’s top 25 party Texas professor of intellectual history, Richard Pells, schools—an honor to fall back on if all else fails.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 27 Science

How Social Darwinism Made Modern China A thousand years of meritocracy shaped the Middle Kingdom.

by RON UNZ

uring the three decades following Deng seemed far less unexpected to our leading thinkers Xiaoping’s 1978 reforms, China achieved of 100 years ago, many of whom prophesied that the the fastest sustained rate of economic Middle Kingdom would eventually regain its rank- growth in human history, with the re- ing among the foremost nations of the world. is Dsulting 40-fold rise in the size of China’s economy was certainly the expectation of A.E. Ross, one of leaving it poised to surpass America’s as the larg- America’s greatest early sociologists, whose book est in the world. A billion ordinary Han Chinese e Changing Chinese looked past the destitution, have li ed themselves economically from oxen and misery, and corruption of the China of his day to bicycles to the verge of automobiles within a single a future modernized China perhaps on a techno- generation. logical par with America and the leading European China’s academic performance has been just nations. Ross’s views were widely echoed by public as stunning. e 2009 Program for International intellectuals such as Lothrop Stoddard, who fore- Student Assessment (PISA) tests placed gigantic saw China’s probable awakening from centuries of Shanghai—a megalopolis of 15 million—at the ab- inward-looking slumber as a looming challenge to solute top of world student achievement. PISA re- the worldwide hegemony long enjoyed by the vari- sults from the rest of the country have been nearly ous European-descended nations. as impressive, with the average scores of hundreds of millions of provincial Chinese—mostly from he likely roots of such widespread Chinese suc- rural families with annual incomes below $2,000— Tcess have received little detailed exploration in matching or exceeding those of Europe’s most ad- today’s major Western media, which tends to shy vanced and successful countries, such as Germany, away from considering the particular characteristics France, and Switzerland, and ranking well above of ethnic groups or nationalities, as opposed to their America’s results. institutional systems and forms of government. Yet ese successes follow closely on the heels of a although the latter obviously play a crucial role— previous generation of similar economic and tech- Maoist China was far less economically successful nological gains for several much smaller Chinese- than Dengist China—it is useful to note that the ex- ancestry countries in that same part of the world, amples of Chinese success cited above range across such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and a wide diversity of socioeconomic/political systems. the great academic and socioeconomic success of For decades, Hong Kong enjoyed one of the most small Chinese-descended minority populations in free-market, nearly anarcho-libertarian economic predominantly white nations, including America, systems; during that same period, Singapore was Canada, and Australia. e children of the Yellow governed by the tight hand of Lee Kuan Yew and his Emperor seem destined to play an enormous role in socialistic People’s Action Party, which built a one- Mankind’s future. party state with a large degree of government guid- Although these developments might have shocked ance and control. Yet both these populations were Westerners of the mid-20th Century—when China overwhelmingly Chinese, and both experienced al- was best known for its terrible poverty and Mao- ist revolutionary fanaticism—they would have Ron Unz is publisher of e American Conservative.

28 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 predicted by America’s leading intellec- GDP per capita growth tuals of the 1960s or 1970s, and many of Constant 2005 purchasing power parity Ratios, 1980=100 their successors have had just as much 1,500 diculty recognizing the dramatic

1,400 sweep of events through which they are living. A perfect example of this strange 1,300 myopia may be found in the writings of 1,200 leading development economists Da- 1,100 ron Acemoglu and James Robinson, 1,000 whose brief discussions of China’s rap- 900 id rise to world economic dominance China 800 seem to portray the phenomenon as a temporary illusion almost certain soon 700 to collapse because the institutional ap- 600 proach followed diers from the ultra- 500 free-market neoliberalism that they 400 recommend. e large role that the

300 government plays in guiding Chinese U.S. 200 economic decisions dooms it to failure, despite all evidence to the contrary, 100 while America’s heavily nancialized ’80 ’85 ’90 ’95 ’00 ’05 ’11 economy must be successful, regardless of our high unemployment and low growth. According to Acemoglu and Robinson, nearly all international suc- most equally rapid economic development, moving cess or failure is determined by governmental insti- in 50 years from total postwar destitution and teem- tutions, and since China possesses the wrong ones, ing refugee slums to ranking among the wealthiest failure is certain, though there seems no sign of it. places on earth. And Taiwan, whose much larger Perhaps such academics will be proven correct, and Chinese-ancestry population pursued an interme- China’s economic miracle will collapse into the de- diate development model, enjoyed similar economic bacle they predict. But if this does not occur, and the success. international trend lines of the last 35 years continue Despite a long legacy of racial discrimination and for another ve or ten, we should consider turning for mistreatment, small Chinese communities in Amer- explanations to those long-forgotten thinkers who actu- ica also prospered and advanced, even as their num- ally foretold these world developments that we are now bers grew rapidly following passage of the 1965 Im- experiencing, individuals such as Ross and Stoddard. migration Act. In recent years a remarkable fraction e widespread devastation produced by the Japanese of America’s top students—whether judged by the ob- invasion, World War II, and the Chinese Civil War, jective winners’ circle of the Mathematics Olympiad followed by the economic calamity of Maoism, did de- and Intel Science competition or by the somewhat lay the predicted rise of China by a generation or two, more subjective rates of admission to Ivy League col- but except for such unforeseen events, their analysis of leges—have been of Chinese ancestry. e results are Chinese potential seems remarkably prescient. For ex- particularly striking when cast in quantitative terms: ample, Stoddard approvingly quotes the late Victorian although just 1 percent of American high-school predictions of Professor Charles E. Pearson: graduates each year have ethnic Chinese origins, sur- name analysis indicates that they currently include Does any one doubt that the day is at hand when nearly 15 percent of the highest-achieving students, China will have cheap fuel from her coal-mines, a performance ratio more than four times better than cheap transport by railways and steamers, and that of American Jews, the top-scoring white ances- will have founded technical schools to develop try group. Chinese people seem to be doing extremely her industries? Whenever that day comes, she well all over the world, across a wide range of eco- may wrest the control of the world’s markets, nomic and cultural landscapes. especially throughout Asia, from England and Almost none of these global developments were Germany.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 29 Science

A People Shaped by eir public discourse the notion that many centuries of Dicult Environment particular circumstances might leave an indelible imprint upon a people. But with the turn of the new Western intellectual life a century ago was quite dif- millennium, such analyses have once again begun ap- ferent from that of today, with contrary doctrines pearing in respectable intellectual quarters. and taboos, and the spirit of that age certainly held e most notable example of this would surely be sway over its leading gures. Racialism—the notion A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark’s fascinating 2007 that dierent peoples tend to have dierent innate analysis of the deep origins of Britain’s industrial traits, as largely fashioned by their particular histo- revolution, which was widely reviewed and praised ries—was dominant then, so much so that the notion throughout elite circles, with New York Times eco- was almost universally held and applied, sometimes nomics columnist Tyler Cowen hailing it as possibly in rather crude fashion, to both European and non- “the next blockbuster in economics” and Berkeley European populations. economist Brad DeLong characterizing it as “bril- With regard to the Chinese, the widespread view liant.” was that many of their prominent characteristics had Although Clark’s work focused on many dierent been shaped by thousands of years of history in a gen- factors, the one that attracted the greatest attention erally stable and organized society possessing central was his demographic analysis of British history based political administration, a situation almost unique upon a close examination of individual testaments. among the peoples of the world. In eect, despite tem- Clark discovered evidence that for centuries the porary periods of political fragmentation, East Asia’s wealthier British had le signicantly more surviving own Roman Empire had never fallen, and a thousand- children than their poorer compatriots, thus leading year interregnum of barbarism, economic collapse, their descendents to constitute an ever larger share of and technological backwardness had been avoided. each generation. Presumably, this was because they On the less fortunate side, the enormous popula- could aord to marry at a younger age, and their su- tion growth of recent centuries had gradually caught perior nutritional and living arrangements reduced up with and overtaken China’s exceptionally ecient mortality rates for themselves and their families. In- agricultural system, reducing the lives of most Chi- deed, the near-Malthusian poverty of much ordinary nese to the brink of Malthusian starvation; and these English life during this era meant that the impov- pressures and constraints were believed to be reected erished lower classes o en failed even to reproduce in the Chinese people. For example, Stoddard wrote: themselves over time, gradually being replaced by the downwardly mobile children of their nancial betters. Winnowed by ages of grim elimination in a land Since personal economic achievement was probably populated to the uttermost limits of subsistence, in part due to traits such as diligence, prudence, and the Chinese race is selected as no other for sur- productivity, Clark argued that these characteris- vival under the ercest conditions of economic tics steadily became more widespread in the British stress. At home the average Chinese lives his population, laying the human basis for later national whole life literally within a hand’s breadth of economic success. starvation. Accordingly, when removed to the Leaving aside whether or not the historical evidence easier environment of other lands, the China- actually supports Clark’s hypothesis—economist man brings with him a working capacity which Robert C. Allen has published a strong and fairly per- simply appalls his competitors. suasive refutation—the theoretical framework he ad- vances seems a perfectly plausible one. Although the Stoddard backed these riveting phrases with a wide stylistic aspects and quantitative approaches certainly selection of detailed and descriptive quotations from dier, much of Clark’s analysis for England seems to prominent observers, both Western and Chinese. Al- have clear parallels in how Stoddard, Ross, and others though Ross was more cautiously empirical in his ob- of their era characterized China. So perhaps it would servations and less literary in his style, his analysis was be useful to explore whether a Clarkian analysis might quite similar, with his book on the Chinese containing be applicable to the people of the Middle Kingdom. over 40 pages describing the grim and gripping details Interestingly enough, Clark himself devotes a few of daily survival, provided under the evocative chapter- pages to considering this question and concludes that heading “e Struggle for Existence in China.” in contrast to the British case, wealthier Chinese were During the second half of the 20th century, ideolog- no more fecund than the poorer, eliminating the pos- ical considerations largely eliminated from American sibility of any similar generational trend. But Clark is

30 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 A Song-dynasty depiction of a civil-service examination not a China specialist, and his brief analysis relies on transformed the governmental superstructure. the birth records of the descendents of the ruling im- A central feature of this system was the replacement perial dynasty, a group totally unrepresentative of the of the local rule of aristocratic elements by a class of broader population. In fact, a more careful examina- ocial meritocrats, empowered by the central gov- tion of the Chinese source material reveals persuasive ernment and selected by competitive examination. evidence for a substantial skew in family size, directly In essence, China eliminated the role of hereditary related to economic success, with the pattern being feudal lords and the social structure they represented perhaps even stronger and more universally apparent more than 1,000 years before European countries did than was the case for Britain or any other country. the same, substituting a system of legal equality for Moreover, certain unique aspects of traditional Chi- virtually the entire population beneath the reigning nese society may have maintained and amplied this emperor and his family. long-term eect, in a manner unlike that found in most e social importance of competitive examinations other societies in Europe or elsewhere. China indeed was enormous, playing the same role in determining may constitute the largest and longest-lasting instance membership in the ruling elite that the aristocratic of an extreme “Social Darwinist” society anywhere in bloodlines of Europe’s nobility did until modern human history, perhaps with important implications times, and this system embedded itself just as deep- for the shaping of the modern Chinese people. ly in the popular culture. e great noble houses of France or Germany might trace their lineages back to ancestors elevated under Charlemagne or Barbarossa, e Social Economy of Traditional China with their heirs a erward rising and falling in stand- ing and estates, while in China the proud family tradi- Chinese society is notable for its stability and longevity. tions would boast generations of top-scoring test-tak- From the gradual establishment of the bureaucratic im- ers, along with the important government positions perial state based on mandarinate rule during the Sui that they had received as a result. Whereas in Europe (589-618) and T’ang (618-907) dynasties down to the there existed fanciful stories of a heroic commoner Communist Revolution of 1948, a single set of social youth doing some great deed for the king and con- and economic relations appears to have maintained its sequently being elevated to a knighthood or higher, grip on the country, evolving only slightly while dy- such tales were conned to ction down to the French nastic successions and military conquests periodically Revolution. But in China, even the greatest lineages of

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 31 Science

academic performers almost invariably had roots in Harpending have persuasively suggested for the evo- the ordinary peasantry. lution of high intelligence among the Ashkenazi Jews Not only was China the rst national state to uti- of Europe. e latter group constituted a small, repro- lize competitive written examinations for selection ductively isolated population overwhelmingly con- purposes, but it is quite possible that almost all other centrated in the sorts of business and nancial activ- instances everywhere in the world ultimately derive ity that would have strongly favored more intelligent from the Chinese example. It has long been estab- individuals, and one with insignicant gene-ow from lished that the Chinese system served as the model the external population not undergoing such selective for the meritocratic civil services that transformed the pressure. By contrast, there is no evidence that success- ful Chinese merchants or scholars were unwill- ing to take brides from the general population, and any reasonable rate of such intermarriage In China, even the greatest lineages of each generation would have totally swamped academic performers almost invariably the selective impact of mercantile or scholarly had roots in the ordinary peasantry. success. If we are hoping to nd any rough parallel to the process that Clark hypothesizes for Britain, we must concentrate our attention on the life circumstances of China’s broad ru- eciency of Britain and other European states during ral peasantry—well over 90 percent of the population the 18th and 19th centuries. But persuasive histori- during all these centuries—just as the aforementioned cal arguments have also been advanced that the same 19th-century observers generally had done. is even true for university entrance tests and honors examinations, with Cambridge’s famed Math Tripos being the earliest example. Modern written tests may Absence of Caste and Fluidity of Class actually be as Chinese as chopsticks. With Chinese civilization having spent most of In fact, although Western observers tended to focus the past 1,500 years allocating its positions of na- on China’s horric poverty above all else, traditional tional power and inuence by examination, there has Chinese society actually possessed certain unusual or sometimes been speculation that test-taking ability even unique characteristics that may help account for has become embedded in the Chinese people at the the shaping of the Chinese people. Perhaps the most biological as well as cultural level. Yet although there important of these was the near total absence of social might be an element of truth to this, it hardly seems caste and the extreme uidity of economic class. likely to be signicant. During the eras in question, Feudalism had ended in China a thousand years China’s total population numbered far into the tens of before the French Revolution, and nearly all Chinese millions, growing in unsteady fashion from perhaps stood equal before the law. e “gentry”—those who 60 million before AD 900 to well over 400 million by had passed an ocial examination and received an 1850. But the number of Chinese passing the highest academic degree—possessed certain privileges and imperial exam and attaining the exalted rank of chin- the “mean people”—prostitutes, entertainers, slaves, shih during most of the last six centuries was o en and various other degraded social elements—suered less than 100 per year, down from a high of over 200 under legal discrimination. But both these strata were under the Sung dynasty (960–1279), and even if we minute in size, with each usually amounting to less include the lesser rank of chu-jen, the national total of than 1 percent of the general population, while “the such degree-holders was probably just in the low tens common people”—everyone else, including the peas- of thousands, a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the overall antry—enjoyed complete legal equality. population—totally dwarfed by the numbers of Chi- However, such legal equality was totally divorced nese making their living as artisans or merchants, let from economic equality, and extreme gradations of alone the overwhelming mass of the rural peasantry. wealth and poverty were found in every corner of so- e cultural impact of rule by a test-selected elite was ciety, down to the smallest and most homogenous vil- enormous, but the direct genetic impact would have lage. During most of the 20th century, the traditional been negligible. Marxian class analysis of Chinese rural life divided is same diculty of relative proportions frustrates the population according to graduated wealth and any attempt to apply in China an evolutionary model degree of “exploitative” income: landlords, who ob- similar to the one that Gregory Cochran and Henry tained most or all of their income from rent or hired

32 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 labor; rich, middle, and poor peasants, grouped ac- density was only one- h that of Jiangsu province. cording to decreasing wealth and rental income and Chinese agricultural methods had always been increasing tendency to hire out their own labor; and exceptionally ecient, but by the 19th century, the agricultural laborers, who owned negligible land and continuing growth of the Chinese population had - obtained nearly all their income from hiring them- nally caught and surpassed the absolute Malthusian selves out to others. carrying-capacity of the farming system under its ex- In hard times, these variations in wealth might isting technical and economic structure. Population easily mean the dierence between life and death, growth was largely held in check by mortality (includ- but everyone acknowledged that such distinctions ing high infant mortality), decreased fertility due to were purely economic and subject to change: a land- malnutrition, disease, and periodic regional famines lord who lost his land would become a poor peasant; that killed an average of 5 percent of the population. a poor peasant who came into wealth would be the Even the Chinese language came to incorporate the equal of any landlord. During its political struggle, the centrality of food, with the traditional words of greet- Chinese Communist Party claimed that landlords and ing being “Have you eaten?” and the common phrase rich peasants constituted about 10 percent of the pop- denoting a wedding, funeral, or other important so- ulation and possessed 70-80 percent of the land, while cial occasion being “to eat good things.” poor peasants and hired laborers made up the over- e cultural and ideological constraints of Chinese whelming majority of the population and owned just society posed major obstacles to mitigating this never- 10–15 percent of the land. Neutral observers found ending human calamity. Although impoverished Eu- these claims somewhat exaggerated for propagandis- ropeans of this era, male and female alike, o en mar- tic purposes, but not all that far from the harsh reality. ried late or not at all, early marriage and family were Complete legal equality and extreme economic central pillars of Chinese life, with the sage Mencius inequality together fostered one of the most un- stating that to have no children was the worst of un- restrained free-market systems known to history, not only in China’s cities but much more im- Feudalism had ended in China a thousand years portantly in its vast countryside, before the French Revolution, and nearly all which contained nearly the entire population. Land, the primary Chinese stood equal before the law. form of wealth, was freely bought, sold, traded, rented out, sub-leased, or mortgaged as loan collateral. Money-lending and lial acts; indeed, marriage and anticipated children food-lending were widely practiced, especially during were the mark of adulthood. Furthermore, only male times of famine, with usurious rates of interest being heirs could continue the family name and ensure that the norm, o en in excess of 10 percent per month oneself and one’s ancestors would be paid the proper compounded. In extreme cases, children or even ritual respect, and multiple sons were required to pro- wives might be sold for cash and food. Unless aided tect against the vagaries of fate. On a more practical by relatives, peasants without land or money routinely level, married daughters became part of their hus- starved to death. Meanwhile, the agricultural activity band’s household, and only sons could ensure provi- of more prosperous peasants was highly commercial- sion for one’s old age. ized and entrepreneurial, with complex business ar- Nearly all peasant societies sanctify lial loyalty, rangements o en the norm. marriage, family, and children, while elevating sons For centuries, a central fact of daily life in rural above daughters, but in traditional China these ten- China had been the tremendous human density, as dencies seem to have been especially strong, repre- the Middle Kingdom’s population expanded from 65 senting a central goal and focus of all daily life beyond million to 430 million during the ve centuries before bare survival. Given the terrible poverty, cruel choices 1850, eventually forcing nearly all land to be cultivated were o en made, and female infanticide, including to maximum eciency. Although Chinese society was through neglect, was the primary means of birth con- almost entirely rural and agricultural, Shandong prov- trol among the poor, leading to a typical shortfall of ince in 1750 had well over twice the population densi- 10-15 percent among women of marriageable age. ty of the Netherlands, the most urbanized and densely Reproductive competition for those remaining wom- populated part of Europe, while during the early years en was therefore erce, with virtually every woman of the Industrial Revolution, England’s population marrying, generally by her late teens. e inevitable

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 33 Science

result was a large and steady natural increase in the in the society was the open possibility of local eco- total population, except when constrained by various nomic advancement for the suciently enterprising forms of increased mortality. and diligent rural peasant. Ironically enough, a per- fect description of such upward mobility was provid- ed by Communist revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, Remarkable Upward Mobility But who recounted how his father had risen from being a Relentless Downward Mobility landless poor peasant to rich peasant status:

e vast majority of Chinese might be impoverished My father was a poor peasant and while still young peasants, but for those with ability and luck, the pos- was obliged to join the army because of heavy sibilities of upward mobility were quite remarkable in debts. He was a soldier for many years. Later on what was an essentially classless society. e richer he returned to the village where I was born, and strata of each village possessed the wealth to give their by saving carefully and gathering together a little most able children a classical education in hopes of money through small trading and other enter- preparing them for the series of ocial examinations. prise he managed to buy back his land. If the son of a rich peasant or petty landlord were suf- As middle peasants then my family owned f- ciently diligent and intellectually able, he might pass teen mou [about 2.5 acres] of land. On this they such an examination and obtain an ocial degree, could raise sixty tan of rice a year. e ve mem- opening enormous opportunities for political power bers of the family consumed a total of thirty-ve and wealth. tan—that is, about seven each—which le an an- For the Ming (1368–1644) and Ch’ing (1644–1911) nual surplus of twenty-ve tan. Using this sur- dynasties, statistics exist on the social origins of the plus, my father accumulated a little capital and in chin-shih class, the highest ocial rank, and these time purchased seven more mou, which gave the demonstrate a rate of upward mobility unmatched by family the status of ‘rich’ peasants. We could ten almost any Western society, whether modern or pre- raise eighty-four tan of rice a year. modern. Over 30 percent of such elite degree-holders When I was ten years of age and the family came from commoner families that for three previ- owned only  een mou of land, the ve mem- ous generations had produced no one of high o- bers of the family consisted of my father, mother, cial rank, and in the data from earlier centuries, this grandfather, younger brother, and myself. Af- fraction of “new men” reached a high of 84 percent. ter we had acquired the additional seven mou, Such numbers far exceed the equivalent gures for my grandfather died, but there came another Cambridge University during all the centuries since younger brother. However, we still had a surplus its foundation, and would probably seem remarkable of forty-nine tan of rice each year, and on this my at America’s elite Ivy League colleges today or in the father prospered. past. Meanwhile, downward social mobility was also At the time my father was a middle peasant he common among even the highest families. As a sum- began to deal in grain transport and selling, by mary statistic, across the six centuries of these two dy- which he made a little money. A er he became a nasties less than 6 percent of China’s ruling elites came ‘rich’ peasant, he devoted most of his time to that from the ruling elites of the previous generation. business. He hired a full-time farm laborer, and e founding philosophical principle of the modern put his children to work on the farm, as well as Western world has been the “Equality of Man,” while his wife. I began to work at farming tasks when that of Confucianist China was the polar opposite be- I was six years old. My father had no shop for lief in the inherent inequality of men. Yet in reality, the his business. He simply purchased grain from the latter o en seemed to fulll better the ideological goals poor farmers and then transported it to the city of the former. Frontier America might have had its merchants, where he got a higher price. In the mythos of presidents born in log cabins, but for many winter, when the rice was being ground, he hired centuries a substantial fraction of the Middle King- an extra laborer to work on the farm, so that at dom’s ruling mandarins did indeed come from rural that time there were seven mouths to feed. My rice paddies, a state of aairs that would have seemed family ate frugally, but had enough always. almost unimaginable in any European country until the Age of Revolution, and even long a erward. Mao’s account gives no indication that he regarded Such potential for elevation into the ruling Chinese his family’s rise as extraordinary in any way; his fa- elite was remarkable, but a far more important factor ther had obviously done well, but there were probably

34 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 many other families in Mao’s village that had similarly man is poor, then his son can’t aord to marry; improved their lot during the course of a single gen- and if his son can’t marry, there can’t be a third eration. Such opportunities for rapid social mobil- generation.’ ity would have been almost impossible in any of the feudal or class-ridden societies of the same period, in … Because of the marked shortage of women, Europe or most other parts of the world. there was always a great number of men without wives at all. is included the overwhelming ma- owever, the ip-side of possible peasant upward jority of long-term hired laborers… e poorest Hmobility was the far greater likelihood of down- families died out, being unable to arrange mar- ward mobility, which was enormous and probably riages for their sons. e future generations of represented the single most signicant factor shaping poor were the descendants of bankrupted mid- the modern Chinese people. Each generation, a few dle and rich peasants and landlords. who were lucky or able might rise, but a vast multi- tude always fell, and those families near the bottom … Further down the economic scale there were simply disappeared from the world. Traditional rural many families with unmarried sons who had al- China was a society faced with the reality of an enor- ready passed the customary marriage age, thus mous and inexorable downward mobility: for centu- limiting the size of the family. Wong Mi was a ries, nearly all Chinese ended their lives much poorer case in point. He was already twenty-three, with than had their parents. both of his parents in their mid-sixties; but since e strong case for such downward mobility was the family was able to rent only an acre of poor demonstrated a quarter century ago by historian Ed- land and could not nance his marriage, he lived win E. Moise, whose crucial article on the subject has with the old parents, and the family consisted of received far less attention than it deserves, perhaps three members. Wong Chun, a landless peas- because the intellectual climate of the late 1970s pre- ant in his forties, had been in the same position vented readers from drawing the obvious evolution- when he lived with his aged parents ten years be- ary implications. fore, and now, both parents having died, he lived In many respects, Moise’s demographic analysis of alone. ere were ten or  een families in the China eerily anticipated that of Clark for England, as village with single unmarried sons. he pointed out that only the wealthier families of a Chinese village could aord the costs associated with … As previously mentioned, there were about obtaining wives for their sons, with female infanticide twenty families in Nanching that had no land at and other factors regularly ensuring up to a 15 percent all and constituted the bottom group in the vil- shortfall in the number of available women. us, the lage’s pyramid of land ownership. A few of these poorest village strata usually failed to reproduce at all, families were tenant farmers, but the majority, while poverty and malnourishment also tended to since they could not nance even the buying of lower fertility and raise infant mortality as one moved tools, fertilizer, and seeds, worked as “long-term” downward along the economic gradient. At the same agricultural laborers on an annual basis. As such, time, the wealthiest villagers sometimes could aord they normally were paid about 1,000 catties of multiple wives or concubines and regularly produced unhusked rice per year and board and room if much larger numbers of surviving ospring. Each they owned no home. is income might equal or generation, the poorest disappeared, the less au- even exceed what they might have wrested from a ent failed to replenish their numbers, and all those small rented farm, but it was not enough to sup- lower rungs on the economic ladder were lled by the port a family of average size without supplemen- downwardly mobile children of the fecund wealthy. tary employment undertaken by other members is fundamental reality of Chinese rural existence of the family. For this reason, many of them never was certainly obvious to the peasants themselves and married, and the largest number of bachelors was to outside observers, and there exists an enormous to be found among landless peasants. Wong Tu- quantity of anecdotal evidence describing the situa- en, a landless peasant working for a rich peasant tion, whether gathered by Moise or found elsewhere, for nearly ten years, was still a “bare stick” (un- as illustrated by a few examples: married man) in his  ies; and there were others in the village like him. ey were objects of ridi- ‘How could any man in our village claim that his cule and pity in the eyes of the villagers, whose life family had been poor for three generations? If a [sic] centered upon the family.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 35 Science

Furthermore, the forces of downward mobility in a village. For example, a century a er a couple of poor rural Chinese society were greatly accentuated by Yang brothers arrived in a region as farm laborers, fenjia, the traditional system of inheritance, which re- their descendents had formed a clan of 80-90 families quired equal division of property among all sons, in in one village and the entire population of a neighbor- sharp contrast to the practice of primogeniture com- ing one. In a Guangdong village, a merchant family monly found in European countries. named Huang arrived and bought land, growing in If most or all of a father’s property went to the el- numbers and land ownership over the centuries until dest son, then the long-term survival of a reasonably their descendants replaced most of the other families, auent peasant family was assured unless the primary which became poor and ultimately disappeared, while heir were a complete wastrel or encountered unusually the Huangs eventually constituted 74 percent of the bad fortune. But in China, cultural pressures forced a total local population, including a complete mix of the wealthy man to do his best to maximize the number of rich, middle, and poor. his surviving sons, and within the richer strata of a vil- lage it was not uncommon for a man to leave two, three, or even more male heirs, compelling each to begin his e Implications for the Chinese People economic independence with merely a fraction of his and for American Ideology father’s wealth. Unless they succeeded in substantially augmenting their inheritance, the sons of a particularly In many respects, the Chinese society portrayed fecund rich landlord might be middle peasants—and by our historical and sociological sources seems an his grandchildren, starving poor peasants. Families almost perfect example of the sort of local environ- whose elevated status derived from a single fortuitous ment that would be expected to produce a deep im- circumstance or a transient trait not deeply rooted in print upon the characteristics of its inhabitants. Even their behavioral characteristics therefore enjoyed only prior to the start of this harsh development process, eeting economic success, and poverty eventually China had spent thousands of years as one of the culled their descendents from the village. world’s most advanced economic and technological e members of a successful family could maintain civilizations. e socioeconomic system established their economic position over time only if in each gen- from the end of the sixth century AD onward then eration large amounts of additional wealth were ex- remained largely stable and unchanged for well over tracted from their land and their neighbors through a millennium, with the sort of orderly and law-based high intelligence, sharp business sense, hard work, society that beneted those who followed its rules and great diligence. e penalty for major business and ruthlessly weeded out the troublemaker. During miscalculations or lack of sucient eort was either many of those centuries, the burden of overpopula- personal or reproductive extinction. As American ob- tion placed enormous economic pressure on each server William Hinton graphically described: family to survive, while a powerful cultural tradition emphasized the production of surviving ospring, Security, relative comfort, inuence, position, especially sons, as the greatest goal in life, even if that and leisure [were] maintained amidst a sea of result might lead to the impoverishment of the next the most dismal and frightening poverty and generation. Agricultural eciency was remarkably hunger—a poverty and hunger which at all times high but required great eort and diligence, while threatened to engulf any family which relaxed its the complexities of economic decision-making— vigilance, took pity on its poor neighbors, failed how to manage land, crop selection, and investment to extract the last copper of rent and interest, or decisions—were far greater than those faced by the ceased for an instant the incessant accumula- simple peasant serf found in most other parts of the tion of grain and money. ose who did not go world, with the rewards for success and the penalties up went down, and those who went down o en for failure being extreme. e sheer size and cultural went to their deaths or at least to the dissolution unity of the Chinese population would have facilitat- and dispersal of their families. ed the rapid appearance and spread of useful innova- tions, including those at the purely biological level. However, under favorable circumstances, a family It is important to recognize that although good successful in business might expand its numbers from business ability was critical for the long-term suc- generation to generation until it gradually squeezed cess of a line of Chinese peasants, the overall shap- out all its less competitive neighbors, with its progeny ing constraints diered considerably from those that eventually constituting nearly the entire population of might have aected a mercantile caste such as the

36 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe or the Parsis of In- bly predicting the economic trajectory of the world’s dia. ese latter groups occupied highly specialized largest country, they seem to have anticipated devel- economic niches in which a keen head for gures or opments that almost none of their successors of the a ruthless business sense might have been all that was last 50 years ever imagined. is should certainly required for personal success and prosperity. But in give us pause. the world of rural Chinese villages, even the wealth- Consider also the ironic case of Bruce Lahn, a ier elements usually spent the majority of the lives in brilliant Chinese-born genetics researcher at the backbreaking labor, working alongside their families University of Chicago. In an interview a few years and their hired men in the elds and rice paddies. ago, he casually mentioned his speculation that the Successful peasants might benet from a good intel- socially conformist tendencies of most Chinese peo- lect, but they also required the propensity for hard ple might be due to the fact that for the last 2,000 manual toil, determination, diligence, and even such years the Chinese government had regularly elimi- purely physical traits as resistance to injury and ef- nated its more rebellious subjects, a suggestion that ciency in food digestion. Given such multiple selec- would surely be regarded as totally obvious and in- tive pressures and constraints, we would expect the nocuous everywhere in the world except in the West shi in the prevalence of any single one of these traits to be far slower than if it alone determined success, Sometimes the best means of recognizing one’s and the many centuries of steady ideological blinders is to consider seriously the ideas Chinese selection across the world’s largest population would have been and perspectives of alien minds that lack them. required to produce any substantial result. e impact of such strong selective forces obvi- of the last half century or so. Not long before that ously manifests at multiple levels, with cultural so - interview, Lahn had achieved great scientic acclaim ware being far more exible and responsive than any for his breakthrough discoveries on the possible ge- gradual shi s in innate tendencies, and distinguish- netic origins of human civilization, but this research ing between evidence of these two mechanisms is eventually provoked such heated controversy that he hardly a trivial task. But it seems quite unlikely that was dissuaded from continuing it. the second, deeper sort of biological human change Yet although Chinese researchers living in America would not have occurred during a thousand years willingly conform to American ideological restric- or more of these relentlessly shaping pressures, and tions, this is not the case with Chinese researchers in simply to ignore or dismiss such an important pos- China itself, and it is hardly surprising that BGI—the sibility is unreasonable. Yet that seems to have been Beijing Genomics Institute—has become the recog- the dominant strain of Western intellectual belief for nized world leader in cutting-edge human genetics the last two or three generations. research. is is despite the billions spent by its Amer- Sometimes the best means of recognizing one’s ican counterparts, which must operate within a much ideological blinders is to consider seriously the ideas more circumscribed framework of acceptable ideas. and perspectives of alien minds that lack them, and During the Cold War, the enormous governmental in the case of Western society these happen to in- investments of the Soviet regime in many elds pro- clude most of our greatest intellectual gures from duced nothing, since they were based on a model of 80 or 90 years ago, now suddenly restored to avail- reality that was both unquestionable and also false. ability by the magic of the Internet. Admittedly, in e growing divergence between that ideological some respects these individuals were naïve in their model and the real world eventually doomed the thinking or treated various ideas in crude fashion, USSR, whose vast and permanent bulk blew away in a but in many more cases their analyses were remark- sudden gust of wind two decades ago. American lead- ably acute and scientically insightful, o en func- ers should take care that they do not stubbornly ad- tioning as an invaluable corrective to the assumed here to scientically false doctrines that will lead our truths of the present. And in certain matters, nota- own country to risk a similar fate.

An electronic version of this article, including a bibliography and endnotes, can be found here: www.theamericanconservative.com/pdf/darwinism-china.pdf

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 37 World

Will Britain Secede? Horseburgers are on the menu as the UK loses its taste for globalism.

by EAMONN FINGLETON

UBLIN—International politics o ers Nominally Cyprus-based and owned by a holding many case studies for believers in chaos company in the British Virgin Islands, Draap does theory. Just as the apping of a buttery’s much of its business in the Netherlands. In the view wings in a Brazilian rainforest may trig- of many Europeans, the company’s byzantine owner- Dger a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, seemingly ship structure and apparent contempt for the public minor political developments in one nation can interest illustrate much of what is wrong with global- have unexpectedly large knock-on e ects elsewhere. ism. Just think how di erent things might have been For British voters in particular, the horsemeat if a chau eur in Sarajevo in June 1914 had not shenanigans may prove to be the last straw in their turned into the wrong street. e Archduke Franz relationship with globalism. ey have long voiced Ferdinand would have dodged a bullet, World War I exasperation with the European Union and in many would never have happened, Russia would have been polls have indicated that they want out. us, in mid- saved from Communism, and without the Treaty of January, even before the horsemeat saga had become Versailles to rail against, Hitler would probably nev- a Europe-wide cause célèbre, the UK’s pro-EU prime er have come to power. minister, David Cameron, felt obliged to promise In our own time, a few hanging chads in the 2000 the British electorate a straight in-out referendum presidential election have had a lot to answer for. on EU membership. Cameron probably didn’t re- If the Florida count had gone slightly di erently, alize it, but he may have touched o a geopolitical George W. Bush would never have been president, avalanche. Certainly the horsemeat revelations have the “Vulcans” would never have had their shot at strengthened the hand of those in the UK who revile Saddam Hussein, the U.S. Treasury would be $2 tril- the EU and all its works. lion richer, and nearly a million Iraqis would still be If the British turn their backs on the EU, the alive. knock-on e ect in fanning anti-globalist feeling in e chaos-theory case study of the moment is the the United States may prove far from negligible. In European Union’s horsemeat scandal and what it the face of East Asia’s relentless pursuit of one-way means for the UK’s future. e episode started on free trade, Washington’s vaunted strategy of “global an apparently small scale when hamburgers sold leadership” has amounted to borrowing from China in Irish supermarkets were found to contain horse to save the world from China. British withdrawal DNA. Further discoveries were made in the UK, and from the EU—the likely result of any honestly struc- suddenly much of the European food industry was tured referendum—may well jolt policymakers on engulfed in obloquy. Horsemeat sourced from places both sides of the Atlantic into rejoining the reality- like Romania and Poland had been used in products based community. sold across Europe by everybody from Nestlé in e mother country has oen been a harbinger Switzerland to Findus in Sweden. A key role seems to of change in the tides of U.S. politics. In the busy have been played by a company called Draap Trad- ing—an interesting choice of name, given that draap Eamonn Fingleton is the author of In the Jaws of the Dragon: spelt backward is paard, the Dutch word for horse. America’s Fate in the Coming Era of Chinese Hegemony.

38 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 parliamentary year of 1967, for instance, the British good inside all EU countries,” says Neville-Jones. legalized both abortion and homosexual behavior— “at is patently not the case, and the result is anom- six years ahead of Roe v. Wade and more than three alies which, given UK political culture and the ac- decades before remaining anti-gay laws in the Unit- tivities of constituency MPs, cannot be shoved under ed States were struck from the statute book. Simi- the carpet.” larly, the British were earlier to embrace the fashion Douglas Carswell, a Hayekian who counts as one for nancial and economic deregulation. e ideas of the Conservative Party’s most passionate Euro- of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman had struck skeptics, cites the EU’s anti-democratic character as root among the British media and political estab- another bone of contention. “My American friends lishment as early as 1976, and Margaret atcher have no idea how anti-democratic the EU really became Prime Minister 18 months ahead of Ronald is,” he says. “It has been calculated that between 70 Reagan’s 1980 presidential victory. percent and 80 percent of our laws are now coming e irony today is that Cameron is hardly central from the EU bureaucracy. In American terms, it is casting’s idea of a bomb-thrower, and the parliamentarians who have forced his hand hail mainly from the right of his Conserva- tive Party and see themselves as The cause of globalism is now enthusiastic supporters of global thoroughly discredited in the UK. free trade. e cause of globalism is now thoroughly discredited in the UK. Even Cameron does not conceal his disgust with some of its aspects, not least its role as if federal agencies were able to make laws without in undercutting the British tax base. Feelings have reference to Congress or to the states.” not been soothed by the release of a report docu- Unfortunately, as the prominent Labour Party Eu- menting how major U.S. corporations minimize rophile Denis MacShane points out, any e ort now their British tax liabilities by channeling their Brit- by the UK to roll back the less welcome aspects of ish revenues through tax havens. Among those cited the European “project” comes a little late. “Cameron were such household names as Starbucks, Google, needs to persuade 26 other governments and parlia- and Amazon, which despite doing huge business in ments that opening a major treaty revision to satisfy the UK pay hardly any tax there. Some homegrown Britain is something to be desired,” he recently com- British corporations such as Vodafone and Barclays mented. “A new treaty would require a nightmarish have also been pilloried. Much of the criticism has ratication process involving referendums in coun- come from media organizations like the Telegraph tries like Denmark, France, and Ireland that would and Mail that have traditionally been pro-business plunge Europe into years of inward-looking rows at pillars of the Conservative Party establishment. a time when it still hasn’t emerged from the worst Top Conservatives generally hope the UK will economic crisis in its history.” remain in the EU. Yet while they believe in main- In terms of British party politics, however, Camer- taining close trade links with the Continent, few of on’s gambit is a Machiavellian masterstroke. He has them identify with Brussels’s push for “ever closer promised that the referendum will be held only a er union”—political union, that is. us Baroness Pau- the Conservative Party is returned to power in a gen- line Neville-Jones, a Conservative member of the eral election expected in 2015. As Labour Party lead- House of Lords and a former intelligence chief, cites er Ed Miliband has already ruled out a referendum, the European justice agenda as a major source of this leaves countless anti-EU Labour voters high and friction. A key issue is the so-called European Ar- dry. Even the United Kingdom Independence Party rest Warrant which renders the British government (UKIP), an anti-EU group, has been cunningly side- powerless to second-guess extradition requests from tracked. Drawing its support mainly from the right, other EU nations. As a result, several British citi- UKIP had loomed as an ever larger threat to the zens have su ered scarifying legal misadventures in, Conservatives’ traditional base. Now the Conserva- among other places, Greece. tives can credibly allege that a UKIP vote will mere- “e problem is that the system is based on the ly divide Euroskeptics and let in the Labour Party, ction that police, courts, and prisons are all equally a majority of whose leaders are dyed-in-the-wool

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 39 World

Europhiles. UKIP stalwarts like Godfrey Bloom, a me. “What he has done is like buying a ticket on the member of the European Parliament, splutter that Titanic while knowing the outcome in advance.” Cameron will in the end renege on a straight in-out Training his guns on the Conservatives, Denis vote. is might be a correct reading of Cameron’s MacShane sums things up with a di erent metaphor. instincts, but the pressure on Conservative leaders Cameron, he says, has opened a Pandora’s Box. Be- to follow through with an honest referendum—not cause it is preordained that the EU will not o er sig- least from their own rank-and-le—is now intense. nicant concessions, Cameron has set the UK on the e immediate consequence of Cameron’s initia- road to exit. is looks like a solid bet to me. Mac- tive has been to bolster Conservative cohesion. us, Shane sees this as a tragedy, but the UK would sud- as prominent a Euroskeptic as Liam Fox, a once and denly be free to set its own agenda again and would possibly future contender for leadership of the Con- hardly be more isolated than it was in the 1950s and servatives, immediately came out strongly in Cam- 1960s, years that older Britons remember with fond- eron’s support in a Daily Mail commentary. In an ness. In the longer run, the UK would surely move interview, he was cock-a-hoop at the Labour Party’s closer to the United States and Canada, and the re- marginalization. “Miliband has made a major mis- sult might be a new Anglophone trading bloc—one take” in promising not to hold a referendum, he told where horsemeat would not be on the menu.

DEEPBACKGROUND by PHILIP GIRALDI

great deal of reporting on the political unrest probrium involved in actually forming a government. in Egypt o ers simple explanations fully The primary objective of the new alignment would Acomprehensible to readers in London, Paris, be to restore order, further enhancing the mili- or New York, couched in the political expressions tary’s status. On January 29, the Egyptian Army’s that those audiences are accustomed to hearing. commanding general, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, not Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi has been surprisingly suggested that the army might have to depicted as an Islamist with an Islamist agenda who intervene if the civilian government proves incapable is also an inept leader unable to solve any of Egypt’s of suppressing the rioting. manifold problems, most particularly its shrinking So who is behind the unrest? The money fueling economy. This in turn is producing a revolt of the the confrontation comes from Saudi Arabia and middle class—which supported genuine reform after the Gulf States, none of which are enamored of the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak—as well as the Muslim Brotherhood or Morsi. They fear that of the proletariat and working class, which have the untidy democracy, such as it is, in Egypt and seen declines in already marginal standards of living elsewhere amid the Arab Spring could spill over to and have been on the receiving end of brutal police their states, and they desire a return to something crackdowns that have included well-documented like the military-backed regime of Mubarak, which instances of torture both in Cairo and in the eco- was politically reliable and dedicated to suppressing nomically significant governorates adjacent to the political extremism and even dissent in all forms. A Suez Canal. government of national unity, backed by the army, But the conventional wisdom may not be com- that would give lip service to democratic institutions pletely accurate. Washington has evidence that as would be just fine. much as a billion dollars has been clandestinely The U.S. government is aware of how the money introduced into Egypt since the June presidential flowing into Egypt is being used, and it too disap- election. The money has gone to some organizers of proves of the messy democracy in Egypt. There the riots taking place, including junior Army oŠcers is some sentiment on the U.S. National Security in mufti, to force the regime to react with excessive Council and in the White House favoring a return to force and lose what little legitimacy it retains—which something like the Mubarak rule in Egypt, if that could is precisely what has happened. A fatally weakened be arranged “democratically,” without sparking a wider Morsi government might well have to accept a new conflagration. regime of national unity that would include the military, which would become the dominant force in Philip Giraldi, a former CIA o cer, is executive director the arrangement without having to risk the op- of the Council for the National Interest.

40 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Home Plate BILL KAUFFMAN

Look Homeward, Devil

homas Wolfe, the adjectival crashing boredom. oended by my Italian jokes. (My Tar Heel, not the dandi ed A month or so before publication Stella lineage provided insucient Virginia expositor of e I came down with the usual auctorial protection—but then my grandmother Right Stu, philosophized in premonitions of disaster. ere was a always said we were “northern Italian, This execrably titled You Can’t Go Home good deal of anticipation around town almost Swiss.”) From the other side, Again that “A man learns a great deal surrounding publication, to which my I was taken to task by the octogenar- about life from writing and publishing reaction was “Holy Crow—people here ian grande dame of our city, who had a book.” are actually going to read this.” What, I grown up in pre-sprawl Long Island He can say that again… and again. wondered, was the modern equivalent and still sounded like it. (I’ll always love Wolfe, who meant a of being run out of town on a rail? She confronted me aer a concert great deal to me when I was younger, For in Dispatches, I treated with at St. James Episcopal Church. “I’m but one of my favorite stories about wit (half-wit, if you don’t like it) and baaah-lee speaking to you,” she an- the logorrheic author is that he pref- gleeful scatter-sprayed invective the nounced. aced the manuscript that became Look ethno-religious conicts that once Wolfe-like, I had known my vener- Homeward, Angel with an assurance rived—and, in a way, forti ed—my able critic since I was a boy. I threw my that “I do not believe the writing to be town. As a typical American mon- hands up in mock surrender. wordy, prolix, or redundant.”) grel, with mixed bloodlines and a “Sorry… sorry,” I stammered, cer- March 2013 marks the tenth anni- shambling sympathy for all sides of tain that I knew the source of her dis- versary of the simultaneous launching the American divide, I claimed an ex- pleasure: my raillery about upper-crust of the Iraq War and my memoirish tale emption from oppressive sensitivity Protestants. of going home again (and what I found codes. I wrote about the faded WASP “How could you say that I have an there), Dispatches from the Muckdog ruling class from the point of view ox-cent?” she asked in her inimitable Gazette. of the once déclassé Italian and Irish accent. I guess there just wasn’t enough Catholics, and I wrote about the latter I laughed. “Is that all?” space in the American attention span from the p.o.v. of the former. Aer all, “Yes. And why must you use so to accommodate both these events, I’m dago, mick, limey, kraut, papist, much profanity?” so despite the best eorts of the good Prot… that’s a pretty wide free- re I acknowledged my literary To- folks at Henry Holt, shock and awe zone. urette’s. Within the month she was hogged all the headlines. ose bas- Wolfe described “with bitter cha- speaking to me again. As I write this tards Bush and Cheney—what infernal grin” the reception of Look Homeward, she is 92 and we’re still pals. timing they have! Angel by his hometown of Asheville, Various outlets sold upwards of 800 I did, however, learn a bit about life North Carolina. e vitriol fell like acid copies of the book in Batavia—an ex- from that experience. rain. But then Wolfe had ed North traordinary number for a rural work- Honesty is not just the best but the Carolina for exile in the Vampire City. ing-class burg of 15,000 souls. As for only policy for a writer. As oreau He wrote of a tormentor: “One ven- sales in the rest of the good old USA… counseled, “Say what you have to say, erable old lady, whom I had known all I blame Bush. not what you ought. Any truth is bet- my life, wrote me that although she had I had used as an epigraph this line ter than make-believe.” Given that this never believed in lynch law, she would from Sinclair Lewis’s Cass Timberlane: book’s subject was my hometown of do nothing to prevent a mob from “To its fugitive children, Grand Repub- Batavia, New York, there was no way dragging my ‘big overgroan karkus’ lic will forgive almost anything, if they to be honest without bruising feelings. across the public square.” will but come back home.” To have been cautious or solicitous I heard through the grapevine of— You can go home again. And if they’ll would have caused severe anemia and mercifully few—people who were forgive me, they’ll forgive anyone.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 41 Arts&Letters

Greatness Visible luminating given Styron’s complicated too many cases, in foisting upon relationship with the African-Amer- the multitude a belief in so much by ROBERT DEAN LUR IE ican intellectual community in the which is utter fantasy. wake of the publication of e Confes- Selected Letters of William Styron, R. sions of Nat Turner. Many years later, aer he had rec- Blakeslee Gilpin and Rose Styron, eds., e book begins with some dis- onciled somewhat with Christianity, Random House, 704 pages patches from the young author-to-be or at least with the idea of Christian- to his father, while Styron was at Duke ity, Styron found himself in his father’s iven that letter writing is a University as a member of the Ma- position: patiently listening to and dead art form, there are prob- rines’ V-12 ocer training program counseling his child (daughter Susan- ably not many more books of in 1943. Precociousness distinguishes na) through her own crisis of faith. His Gthis ilk waiting in the wings. Certainly these early epistles; in one example, response to this challenge is one of the authors and other notable gures will composed at the tender age of 19, Sty- high points of the collection: continue to correspond with each ron grapples with what he perceives to other, but changes in technology have be unresolvable conicts within the It may or may not be a consolation wrested much of the poetry from the Protestant Christianity of his upbring- to you that your intense wonder enterprise. I can’t see myself working ing. While this is far from an unusual and turmoil about the meaning of up a lot of enthusiasm for e Collected predicament for a young, curious soul the human condition is, in fact, a Emails of Michael Chabon. Can you? feeling its way in the wider world, Sty- part of the human condition—or Happily, this collection of William ron’s musings are on an altogether dif- at least as it is experienced by sen- Styron’s letters is an impressive—albeit ferent plane from the typical “I’m not sitive and questing souls like your- incomplete—masterpiece of the genre. going to church anymore; it’s boring” self. ... A sherman in the Arabian Unlike many of his contemporaries, complaint. He writes: Gulf nds purpose in life by sh- the author of Sophie’s Choice and e ing, a Wyoming sheepherder by Confessions of Nat Turner did not save In parts the Bible is a literary mas- tending his sheep and remaining carbon copies of his correspondence terpiece. Nothing ner has been close to Nature and that big sky. for posterity, and that made tracking written than the story of Job and On a somewhat higher level intel- down Styron’s casually cast-o long- the sermon of Ecclesiastes, and I lectually, a person like James Joyce, hand missives an exceptionally daunt- believe that if Christ was not the a profoundly pessimistic man at ing task. e editors were unable to son of God, he approached such bottom, could nd reason and locate, for example, any of the letters a divine kinship as nearly as any purpose through these moments Styron wrote to the novelist and civil man ever born. But it is impos- termed ‘epiphanies’—instances of rights activist James Baldwin—letters sible for me to cling to a Faith intense revelation (through love, that would certainly have proven il- which attempts, and succeeds in or a glimpse of transcendental

42 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Michael Hogue Michael

beauty in the natural world) which life wrote anything for fun. Every novel and original in your works.” While he gave such a sense of joy and self- had to be big, game-changing, Zeit- was only partially successful at em- realization that they justi ed and, geist-de ning. One would think he set bodying the rst half of this axiom, in eect, rati ed the existence of himself up for a fall with such loy as- no one can doubt his follow-through him who experienced them. In pirations but, remarkably, Styron came on the second. Right out of the gate, other words, the existential an- pretty close to ful lling his ambition: he clashed with editors and critics guish becomes undone; through three of his four published novels—Lie over explicit passages in Lie Down in moments of aesthetic and spiritual Down in Darkness, e Confessions of Darkness. With e Confessions of Nat ful llment we nd the very reason Nat Turner, and Sophie’s Choice—were Turner, the white, Virginia-born au- for existence. greeted by most critics as major works. thor unintentionally provoked the ire Even the dicult second book—Set of some prominent black intellectuals A span of almost 30 years separates is House on Fire—had an improba- with his decision to write the slave in- these letters. Yet the same keen, questing ble second act in France, where it came surrectionist’s story in the rst person. intelligence informs both dispatches. to be regarded as one of the most im- In Sophie’s Choice he had the audacity Another character trait apparently portant English-language novels of the to cast his titular Auschwitz survivor in place from the beginning was Sty- post-World War II period. as a Polish Catholic, a decision that ron’s burning desire to be an impor- Styron liked to quote Flaubert: “Be angered some Jewish critics who felt tant, capital-A Author. From the evi- regular and orderly in your life like a Styron had muddied the waters in his dence of the letters, Styron never in his bourgeois, so that you may be violent attempt to emphasize the universal,

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 43 Arts&Letters rather than explicitly Jewish, tragedy ing American Writer. “I have not seen In her 2011 memoir Reading My of the Holocaust. rough all of these hide nor hair of Norman,” Styron writes Father, Alexandra Styron reveals that controversies, Styron barreled onward, James Jones in a letter from 1959, her famous dad could be a terror at unwilling to constrain himself. home. Certainly his struggle with de- ere was, however, a dark side to except to hear that he has coming pression did not end with the publica- this purity of vision: William Styron out soon an anthology of his work tion of Darkness Visible, and his fam- could be an insuerable snob. e called Advertisements for Myself, a ily oen bore the brunt of his roiling letters reveal a man who seemed to characteristically self-eacing ti- mood swings. Yet she and others have derive no pleasure from any form of tle, which includes a 75,000 word recounted how Styron would patient- entertainment below the level of high essay, heretofore unpublished, ly spend hours on the phone talking art. He listened almost exclusively to about the problems facing a man complete strangers out of committing classical music, disdained (during the who wishes to become a ‘major suicide. Tellingly, in his letters Styron early part of his career at least) popular writer in our time.’ e sad, sad glosses over these acts of compassion. lms, eschewed sports, and was utterly thing is that Norman could be a He seemed to understand intuitively contemptuous of popular writers he major writer, but I don’t see how that, in this area of his life at least, larg- felt were dumbing down the masses. he can be one if all his energy is er forces were at work. e hacks in question? Leon Uris and thrown into crap like this. e nal letter in the collection is Herman Wouk. Neither could be mis- addressed simply “To Readers” and taken for Flaubert, but I suspect I’m e cogency of Styron’s argument is accompanied by the instructions “To not the only soul who pines for that be- undercut by the fact that, in many of be made public at my death.” “Every- guiling era in which Wouk was consid- his letters (as well as in interviews at the one must keep up the struggle,” Styron ered an appropriate beach read. In light time) he too threw all of his energy into writes, “for it is always likely that you of all the rare ed bitchiness on display, “crap like this”: jockeying for position will win the battle and nearly a certain- Styron’s gradual revelations—begin- and slandering his contemporaries. ty you will win the war. To all of you, ning in his letters from abroad during e only dierence between Styron suerers and non-suerers alike, I send the 1950s—of his lecherous streak and and Mailer is that Mailer gured out my abiding love.” us the lifelong pes- taste for hard liquor come as some- how to pro t from his ruminations. simist bequeaths a legacy of hope. thing of a relief: at least he had some Styron spent much of his career ac- e Selected Letters of William common appetites. tively striving for, and for the most part Styron reect the man. ey can be attaining, literary greatness. warm, transcendent, and sublime, as Yet his true de ning mo- well as vindictive, profane, and petty. ment—the one that, I be- Yet they are never anything less than Styron spent much of his career lieve, will secure his place in a joy to read. Rose Styron, co-editor of actively striving for, and for the most the rmament—came as the the collection, is to be commended for part attaining, literary greatness. result not of calculated am- her big-heartedness in allowing her bition but of setback. At the late husband’s turbulent soul to shine tail end of 1985, crippled by forth in all its complicated glory. It is suicidal depression, Styron indeed a blessing that this man lived e capital-A Author was also con- admitted himself to Yale-New Haven in the bygone era of pen-and-paper sumed, to the point of distraction, by Hospital for intensive treatment. What correspondence—a quirk of timing worries over his position vis–à–vis the happened next was extraordinary, at that has enabled this accidental au- other “important writers” of his time: least in the annals of literature: instead tobiography to be clawed back from Bellow, Updike, Vidal, etc. He was par- of shooting himself à la Hemingway or dusty shelves and special collections ticularly obsessed with the accomplish- drinking himself to death à la Fitzger- around the world. As his beautiful, ments of his erstwhile friend Norman ald, Styron channeled his struggle with heart-baring letters make clear, Wil- Mailer. Aer several years of boisterous mental illness into a searing memoir, liam Styron needn’t have spent so camaraderie, the two had a bitter fall- Darkness Visible, which became one of much of his life fretting over his sta- ing out in 1958 over comments Styron the most acclaimed books of his career. tus. Almost from the beginning, his allegedly made about Mailer’s wife. Yet It was a surprising twist indeed that an greatness was assured. the real problem may have been that the author famous for his tragic endings men were too much alike: both were sent forth into the world a cathartic Robert Dean Lurie is the author of No status-obsessed, both actively jockey- document that gave many suerers of Certainty Attached: Steve Kilbey and e ing for the position of Greatest Liv- depression the strength to avert tragedy. Church.

44 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Whole Foods’ stant fear of being underpaid, over- tomers with high prices and mislead- worked, or unemployed thanks to the ing advertising and employees with Better Business upper hand of management, while low wages and high turnover? consumers are deceived by “hidden Having read dozens of business by MAR K SKOUS EN persuaders” into buying “bads” rather books over the years, I can say with than “goods.” All this despite the Her- considerable authority that Conscious Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the culean eorts by such management Capitalism is the most ambitious Heroic Spirit of Business, John Mackey gurus as Frederick Taylor, Alfred management model ever conceived, and Raj Sisodia, Harvard Business Sloan, Edward Deming, Louis Kelso, and if implemented it could catapult Review Press, 368 pages Peter Drucker, Steve Covey, and Jim the world of business to what Adam Collins. Big government and non- Smith described eloquently as the ver since the robber barons pro t organizations seem a neces- “highest degree of opulence.” Indeed, stalked the earth and Balzac sary countervailing power to a deeply if Mackey’s application of higher con- expostulated that “behind ev- awed private enterprise system. sciousness had been in the board- Eery great fortune is a crime,” the me- In response, utopian visionaries room a generation ago, I like to think dia has attacked Wall Street, Madison have sought to transform capitalism that we could have avoided the suo- Avenue, and anything to do with cor- into a system that is “humane,” “so- cating regulations of Sarbanes-Oxley porations. In the latest Gallup poll on cial,” “enlightened,” “good,” and even and Dodd-Frank and the dire straits the trustworthiness of various profes- “better.” But aer countless how-to of companies like GM, Sears, and Ci- sions, business executives come out books and MBA courses little better than lawyers and used-car on business ethics, lead- salesmen, far below the ethical stand- ership, and corporate ings of medical doctors, engineers, culture, the question re- Mackey denies Milton Friedman’s and police ocers. mains: can the business view that the only responsibility of Even as the global marketplace has world develop a system raised the standard of living a hun- bene cial to all the stake- capitalist firms is to maximize profits dredfold in the past century, the accu- holders in a rm—own- to their shareholders. sations keep pouring in—that capital- ers, consumers, workers, ism promotes inequality, materialism, investors, suppliers, and greed, environmental degradation, the community at large? and short-termism on Wall Street, Enter John Mackey, cofounder and tibank (even Enron). and that fraud, deception, and corpo- co-CEO of Whole Foods Market. He Mackey wants rms to stop focus- rate welfarism would run rampant if and his co-author, Raj Sisodia, a pro- ing exclusively on the bottom line—he it weren’t for Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd- fessor at Bentley University, have cre- would replace the traditional “share- Frank, and a host of government reg- ated solutions they call “conscious holder” philosophy with a “stakehold- ulatory agencies. capitalism” and “ rms of endearment.” er” philosophy. “Business is not about But corporate management has e authors oer a balanced score making as much money as possible,” come a long way since the dark days of card, with chapters on “loyal, trust- he asserts. “It’s about creating value Carnegie, Morgan, Gould, and Rock- ing customers”; “passionate, inspired for stakeholders.” Companies must efeller. e rst glimmer of hope came team members”; “patient, purposeful develop sterling reputations to at- when Henry Ford instituted the $5-a- investors”; “collaborative, innovative tract loyal customers, employees, and day wage in 1913 and recognized that suppliers”; “ourishing, welcoming suppliers and to generate community workers deserved to participate in the communities”; and “a healthy, vibrant goodwill. If they do, superior returns company’s fortunes. Ford’s decision to environment.” Mackey and Sisodia can be achieved in earnings and the more than double their daily pay al- conclude that business is not a sport- stock price, but as a byproduct, not as lowed employees for the rst time to ing event, “a zero-sum game with a a primary goal. buy the cars they were making and winner and a loser. It’s a win, win, win, Conscious capitalism is not just high helped toward dispelling the Marxist win game.” theory: the book contains numerous charge of exploitation and alienation. Yet skepticism abounds. Capitalism case studies, starting with the $16 bil- Still, battle lines have been drawn may be cooperative, but it can also lion grocery-store chain that Mackey between labor and capital, and be- be ruthlessly competitive. How can has been directing since the early tween consumers and producers, into one avoid being labeled a “sel sh and 1980s. In the grocery business, tradi- the 21st century. Workers live in con- greedy businessman,” exploiting cus- tionally known for its low margins,

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 45 Arts&Letters

and Milton Friedman. He rejects the Randian notion that “sel shness” and “greed” are virtues and denies Fried- man’s view that the only responsibility of capitalist rms is to maximize pro ts to their shareholders. If there’s one undeveloped section in the book, it’s how to deal with failure. Gage Skidmore / Creative Commons BY-SA (CC 2.0) How do owners, workers, and suppli- ers respond to the creative-destructive nature of global capitalism—down- turns in the economy, failed product selection, heavily unionized industries, foreign competition, and sectors in secular decline? Most companies go through tough times where they must downsize, turn around, or go bank- rupt, leaving workers unemployed and bills unpaid. How would conscious capitalism apply to their situation? e authors only briey address John Mackey speaks at the 2013 Students for Liberty conference this. Are they suggesting that if busi- ness leaders follow the tenets of con- Whole Foods has achieved high mar- with a similar philosophy and equal scious capitalism they will never fail, gins and does so with little advertis- success, such as Starbucks, e Con- that they can always adjust to the new ing: customers are the stores’ best ad- tainer Store, the Tata Group, Costco, demands of ckle customers, obsolete vocates. Despite volatility, its stock has Google, Southwest Airlines, Panera technology, and government regula- handily outperformed every index, has Bread, Twitter, Trader Joe’s, and Waste tions, that rms will seldom if ever a return on equity of 13.7 percent, and Management. have to lay o workers in mass or close is near an all-time high. Mackey and Sisodia don’t pull any stores? e authors seem uncomfort- Whole Foods has been listed on the punches. ey are critical of Wall able with the idea of ring anyone. Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work Street’s short-term quantitative met- How would they advise a company For rankings since 1998. Employees— rics. ey express reservations about going bankrupt like Hostess, which “team members”—receive above-av- Jim Collins’s list of “good to great” faced entrenched union demands? erage wages and bene ts, including companies, such as Circuit City, Fan- Most importantly, how do compa- medical savings accounts and “well- nie Mae, and Altria (formerly Philip nies avoid the danger of stakeholder ness centers.” ere are lots of built- Morris), all of which Mackey says have imbalance, giving too much control in incentives to improve performance embraced “unconscious” policies. to executives, team members, or the and earn more. Under his de nition of good capital- wider community? Whole Foods has created some of ism, some companies might have to In an appendix, Mackey and Siso- the most innovative labor policies change their product line or their cor- dia compare their model with other anywhere, including a.) a cap on total porate culture, or simply disappear. philosophies of capitalism, such as Bill compensation, including bonuses, for Mackey is critical of big pharma for its Gates’s “creative” capitalism. ey dis- any employee at 19 times the average unethical and aggressive promotion tance themselves from the “corporate pay of all workers; b.) total transpar- of drugs with dangerous side eects. social responsibility” plan adopted by ency in salaries and wages; and c.) And he rejects out of hand GE’s policy many companies—they claim it is of- the same bene ts, including stock op- under Jack Welch of ring the bottom ten more PR than an integrated mod- tions, for all full-time employees. is 10 percent of its workforce each year. el—and warn against “charismatic” radical approach seems to be work- Although he calls free enterprise leadership. Unfortunately, they don’t ing: the company has a turnover rate and entrepreneurship the source of discuss Charles Koch’s market-based of less than 10 percent a year. “unprecedented prosperity for human- management (MBM), which has cata- roughout the book, Mackey and ity,” Mackey challenges the philosophi- pulted Koch Industries into being the Sisodia highlight other companies cal vanguards of capitalism, Ayn Rand second largest private company in the

46 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 world, or John Allison’s Objectivist Austrians Don’t ica’s Christians how to gather a spiri- model that transformed BB&T into tual harvest through our era of endless the fastest growing regional bank in Blow Bubbles prosperity, and Karl Rove was count- the country. It would be fun to have ing the chickens who would build Koch, Allison, and Mackey compare by JOHN ZMIR AK the Republicans’ “permanent major- notes in a public forum, especially ity.” Of course, we were also bringing with regard to whether a successful It Didn’t Have to Be is Way: Why modern constitutional freedoms to company should be public or private. Boom and Bust Is Unnecessary—and the whole Islamic world, so news was (Koch Industries is private.) How the Austrian School of Economics good from the colonies. All this, in the Mackey’s conscious capitalism faces Breaks the Cycle, Harry C. Veryser, ISI reign of a president for whom English an uphill battle to satisfy everyone, in- Books, 328 pages was a second language. (Bush, sadly, cluding union bosses—Whole Foods had no rst.) workers remain non-union—environ- emember the golden days of We know now that all those paper mentalists, and animal-rights activists 2007, when we were all in- pro ts that pued our portfolios were (despite Whole Foods’ advanced poli- vestment prodigies? ough I as solid as tsarist rubles and that the cies). His ideal manager can’t com- Rcouldn’t balance a checkbook or drive “compassion” which briey infused pletely avoid such troubles as store a car, I had raked in 25 percent increas- conservatism was a bribe to get a few closings, layos, and other inevitable es each year on my 401k since 2001, so thousand seniors to vote Republi- eects of a dynamic global economy. I felt like a bookish Donald Trump. can once—in return for leaving their But he’s gone further than anyone While I worked as a college English grandchildren eyeball-deep in debt. to build a better world: as Benjamin teacher at a school with 70 students, But wasn’t it fun while it lasted? Who Franklin once wrote, “it is incredible the nice man from Fidelity showed me could have possibly predicted that all the quantity of good that may be done how I could retire in 20 years with a the experts who carefully managed in a country by a single man who will nest egg of $1 million—heady stu for the investment boom, and the tech- make a business out of it.” a doorman’s son who’d never checked nocrats in academia and government In sum, Mackey appears to have dis- his credit rating. Dinesh D’Souza had who enabled and cheered them on, covered how business can achieve the published a helpful book, e Virtue of would wind up as deeply discredited goal that Peter Drucker described as Prosperity, which explained to Amer- as Bernie Mado’s word of honor? the “ideal non-revolutionary so- cial welfare institution.” For Mack- ey, it’s not the state, church, alma mater, or nonpro t organization but the place most people spend most of their waking hours work- ing and developing their closest relationships—the private com- pany. Mackey cites a Gallup world poll indicating that the number one determinant of happiness is “a good job.” He steadfastly be- lieves that business, the voluntary shared passion of individuals, “can create a world in which all people live lives full of purpose, love, and creativity—a world of compassion, freedom, and prosperity.” at’s a rather an ingenious dis- covery for a kid who never took a business class in college.

Mark Skousen is the editor of Forecasts & Strategies and the producer of Free- Michael Hogue dom Fest.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 47 Arts&Letters

Harry Veryser’s lively and readable worthless loans, all mooshed together the last ties between the money sup- new book has the answer: the Austri- then sliced thin and sold, would some- ply and tangible assets such as gold. It an economists, that’s who. In It Didn’t how acquire value? Did these people be- should sober boosters of the Repub- Have to Be is, this economist and lieve in magic? Statists like Paul Krug- lican Party that the last such link to entrepreneur shows how the current man and Alan Blinder who failed to see gold—and hence to real-world disci- morass was the unavoidable outcome this catastrophe coming are emerging pline on politicians—was severed by of speci c policy decisions, some of from the woodwork now to explain Richard Nixon in 1971. Veryser also which reach back decades—and how in retrospect that this implosion was shows how economic, political, and thinkers of the Austrian school of the result of too little regulation—the international turmoil can be traced, in economics, exiled from academia and natural outcome of free-market greed, part, to the meddling of politicians in ignored by policymakers, accurately unguided by the visible hand of Uncle the otherwise self-correcting mecha- predicted how the crisis would come. Sam. Veryser shows that this diagnosis nism of the market: it is no accident, e basic narrative is not in dispute: is pristinely, perfectly wrong, like an au- he says, echoing Röpke, that the col- banks, under pressure for short-term topsy report that blames a lung cancer lapse of international trade in the wake pro ts and goaded by regulators who death on “not enough cigarettes to kill of the Great Depression coincided the tumor.” with the rise of aggressive national- What in fact tanked our ism. Either goods will cross borders or What happened in 2008, economy was something quite armies will; the golden age of free trade simple that Veryser explains in in the 19th century made possible the Austrians know, was nothing new; satisfying detail: politicians ea- “long peace” that ended in 1914. in fact, such artificial booms ger to win votes tried to keep ere is much more in this book pervade our history. the economy hyperstimulated by than a stark diagnosis of economic feeding it with ever more money. crashes and a solid case for restoring As a result, there was too much some kind of gold standard; Very- money oating around with no ser shows how most of the key prin- wanted to enforce racial equality in good place to go, so banks lowered their ciples that mainstream academics use home ownership, made hundreds of standards and made ever riskier loans. to understand microeconomics were thousands of loans to people who… Such “mal-investments” were doomed lied—oen without giving credit— had never checked their credit ratings. from the get-go, and the longer govern- from Austrian theorists, whose faithful Some of them had gone bankrupt. ment policies tried to keep the pyramid disciples are frozen out of universities Others earned less in a month than scheme standing, the higher the tab as “cranks.” We see how the Austrians the monthly mortgage payments they’d would get. What happened in 2008, predicted the implosion of the Soviet soon have to make. Many were middle- Austrians know, was nothing new; in Union even as Harvard professors is- class people who’d already mortgaged fact, such arti cial booms pervade our sued textbooks explaining how the So- the homes they actually lived in; they history, from the ultra-low interest rates viet model “worked.” Best of all, Very- bought additional properties they Alan Greenspan gave President Clin- ser shows how the insights of Austrian could never pay for but hoped to “ip,” ton—which pued up share prices for economics can be uncoupled from the on the theory that real estate prices the dotcoms of the 1990s—to the stock “anarcho-capitalist” politics with never go down. Such loans, which any and real estate bubbles of 1927-28. Be- which they are oen bundled. Ludwig sane accounting would tally as worth- cause they direct resources to places von Mises didn’t favor restoring medi- less, were sliced up, repackaged, and where they don’t belong, investment eval Icelandic anarchy, but rather the granted AAA ratings, then sold as bubbles amount to little more than pay- Habsburg monarchy. ere is plenty securities—and our retirement plans ing people on your credit card to dig of room, in other words, for social and duly purchased them, which is why a bunch of holes, then borrowing still religious conservatives to learn from you and I will be working until we are more to have them all lled in. Yes, this the sober analyses of the Austrians— 80. We all know this much. does boost employment, for a while. But the only school of empirical economic What boggles the mind is how Har- what are you le with in the end? thought that takes seriously human vard MBAs, Wharton professors, Fed- Veryser points to such key Austrian dignity, personal responsibility, and the eral Reserve chairmen, and other types theorists as Ludwig von Mises, Fried- role of the natural virtues in promoting who convene at places like Davos to rich Hayek, and Wilhelm Röpke, who the common good. plan the global future could have be- predicted that bubbles and subsequent lieved things would turn out dierently. crashes were the unavoidable result of John Zmirak is author of Wilhelm Röpke and What would make someone think that politicizing the currency—of cutting e Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Catechism.

48 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 How Do You Say of the French against Ho had to be potent political force in the modern convinced that they were advanc- era: nationalism. Both books tell of “Quagmire” in ing the cause of democracy for their costly and futile eorts on the part of own country, the young American the French and the Americans—one French? aid worker insisted. “e only way to could as well substitute the British by LEON HADAR make them so convinced was to build or the Soviets—to advance fanciful up a genuine nationalist force that universal ideologies (such as liberal Embers of War: e Fall of an Empire was neither pro-Communist nor ob- democracy or international social- and the Making of America’s Vietnam, ligated to France and that could rally ism) in the face of intractable local Fredrik Logevall, Random House, 839 the public to its side,” writes Logevall. realities. pages In e Quiet American—set in In a way, Alden Pyle is the tragic 1952, and which Greene started writ- hero of an historical epoch that has raham Greene’s novel e ing that year in his hotel room in not yet ended. In Logevall’s nal Quiet American—adapt- Saigon—the character of ed into lms in 1958 and Alden Pyle was modeled G2002—was inspired by the author’s aer Hochstetter (and experiences as a war correspondent not, as some have specu- in French Indochina in the early lated, aer the legend- 1950s, in particular by his conversa- ary Cold War-era coun- Alden Pyle is the tragic hero tions with American aid worker Lee terinsurgency strategist of an historical epoch Hochstetter while the two were driv- Edward Lansdale). Pyle’s that has yet not ended. ing back to Saigon from a tour to Ben views are described to the Tre province in the countryside in novel’s protagonist, a Brit- October 1951. ish war correspondent As the Swedish-born historian named omas Fowler and Cornell University professor (based on Greene him- Fredrik Logevall recounts in Embers self), as follows: “ere of War, during their ride to the city was always a ird Force to be found chapter, against the backdrop of the Hochstetter, who had served as the free from Communism and the taint Arab Spring, neoconservatives and public-aairs director for the U.S. of colonialism—national democracy, liberal internationalists continue to Economic Aid Mission in Saigon, he called it; you only had to nd a fantasize about a ird Force, one lectured Greene about the need for a leader and keep him safe from the old that rejects pro-Western military dic- “ird Force” in French-ruled Viet- colonial powers.” tators and the anti-Western Muslim nam, one not beholden either to the at Logevall devotes an entire Brotherhood alike and is expected to French colonialists or to their main chapter to Greene’s experiences in promote liberal-democratic values in adversaries, the guerilla forces led by Vietnam—beginning with the French Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Lebanon, Pales- Ho Chi Minh. occupation and ending with a simi- tine, and right now in Syria. Ho’s ghters—the Viet Minh, a larly disastrous eort by the United Substitute “Iraq” or “Syria” for nationalist and communist move- States to pacify that Southeast Asian “Vietnam,” and “American” for ment—operated from Hanoi in the country—demonstrates his skills and “French,” and the arguments that north of the country and were resist- creativity as a writer and historian. Logevall quotes from journalist Sol ing French attempts to re-establish e chapter about the writing of Sanders, writing in e New Repub- control over Indochina aer the end e Quiet American makes for a pow- lic in 1951, would sound familiar to of Japanese occupation in 1945, part erful narrative-inside-a-narrative. readers of e New Republic today: of a wider strategy of restoring the Greene’s novel not only foreshad- “Beneath the layers of opportunists, French empire in Southeast Asia and owed the collapse of the remnants French spies, and hangers-on, there elsewhere. of the French empire in Indochina is a hard nucleus of patriots who are But as Hochstetter explained to and the making and the unmaking ghting for an independent, libertar- Greene, French eorts to defeat the of America’s Vietnam in the years to ian Vietnam.” Before Ahmad Cha- Viet Minh militarily while denying come; more importantly, and not un- labi in Iraq, there was Bao Dai (the the non-communist Vietnamese real like Logevall’s Embers of War, it high- westernized Emperor of Vietnam) independence were doomed to fail. lighted the tragedies of trying to use or Trình Minh ế (a amboyant e Vietnamese ghting on the side military power to overcome the most colonel with ties to an exotic religious

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 49 Arts&Letters sect) in Indochina—favorites of the to approach President Woodrow Wil- War strategy for the next 20 years, democracy-promoters in Paris and son, present him with “e Demands with American policymakers prop- Washington. of the Vietnamese People,” and con- ping up French eorts to maintain Another eective way in which vince the Americans that he repre- control of Indochina while ghting Logevall lays out his historical inves- sented a group of rebels ghting for Ho—who was, aer all, a self-pro- tigation is by introducing a series of liberty against colonialism. claimed Communist. e Americans “What if?” suppositions. History is Wilson’s notion of making the needed the French to help contain the “full of alternative political choices, world safe for democracy did not Soviet menace in Europe, and so the major and minor, considered and extend to the Vietnamese and other restoration of the French empire in taken, reconsidered and altered, in colored peoples. But Ho stuck to his Southeast Asia was seen as advancing Paris and Saigon, in Washington and conviction that the Americans would struggle against Communism. eventually support e United States played a critical him in his quest for role in assisting the French in what independence—and became known as the First Indochina some, in spirit at least, War, which ended with France los- did, including Presi- ing and Vietnam being divided into Genuine nationalists in Vietnam dent Franklin D. Roo- a pro-Western state in south and a or Syria see in America a foreign power sevelt. northern one led by Ho and backed is is where Lo- by the Soviet Union and China. at motivated mostly by its own interests. gevall’s alternate his- was the turning point: thereaer, tory comes in. FDR America’s policy blueprint vis-à-vis and some of his lead- Vietnam did not really change until ing foreign-policy ad- the fall of Saigon in 1975. visors were staunch Yet there may have been a few op- anti-colonialists who portunities to reverse U.S. policy and Beijing, and in the Viet Minh’s head- believed that the goal of World War change history, according to Logevall. quarters in the jungles of Tonkin,” II was to liberate everyone—Euro- Rejecting French requests for support explains Logevall, who insists that peans and non-Europeans—from in the First Indochina War would his narrative is “a reminder to us that foreign occupation: Britain should have been one alternate scenario. to decision makers of the past, the be forced out of India, and France (As it happened, however, President future was merely a set of possibili- should not reclaim Indochina. So Dwight Eisenhower and Secretary of ties.” imagine if FDR had not died in 1945, State John Foster Dulles were eager Logevall’s starts his account in and he and his anti-imperialist allies to help the French and draw the U.S. 1940, with the fall of France to Nazi provided support for Ho, who had directly into the war. “Eisenhower ac- Germany and implications that actually based Vietnam’s declaration tively contemplated taking the Unit- would have for France’s empire in of independence on the American ed States directly into the war and Southeast Asia. He concludes that one. sought a blank check from Congress the decline and fall of European he- Logevall believes that history to free his hands,” Logevall notes.) gemony in Indochina was inevitable, would have turned in a dierent Or Washington could have pulled and the pressing question for all ma- direction if Roosevelt had been re- its support from Ngo Dinh Diem, jor players in the region’s drama—for sponsible for drawing the outlines of South Vietnam’s staunchly anti-com- the French and the British, for the Washington’s post-1945 global strat- munist Catholic president, whose au- Chinese and the Soviets, for Ho Chi egy instead of President Harry Tru- thoritarian methods—along with the Minh and the noncommunist Viet- man and the architects of the Cold corrupt practices of his family and namese—was from the start: what War. In the case of Indochina, the political supporters—alienated Viet- were the Americans going to do? Americans would have prevented the nam’s Buddhist majority. Indeed, according Logevall, the return of French rule, and Ho and Yet even if one agrees with Lo- United States had been a key part other leaders of independence move- gevall’s assumption that Ho was rst of the story going back to the Paris ments in the region would have allied and foremost a nationalist for whom peace conference of 1919, when with the United States. Communism was only an ideology Ho—an admirer of America’s politi- Instead, thanks to Truman, U.S. that helped promote economic de- cal ideals and of George Washington policy in Southeast Asia became an velopment and social cohesion, the and Abraham Lincoln—tried in vain integral part of Washington’s Cold context of the Cold War made it dif-

50 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 cult for the U.S. to pursue policies The Man Who Put of his political thought.” that amounted to betraying real or e rebellion of 1798—the rising imagined allies. Europe in Order of the United Irishmen against British If historical outcomes are not pre- rule—convinced Castlereagh that the determined, what accounts for the by DANIEL LARIS ON status quo was unsustainable and led recurrence of certain glaring foreign- him to support Ireland’s full integra- policy mistakes? “Somehow, Ameri- Castlereagh: A Life, John Bew, Oxford tion into the United Kingdom over can leaders for a long time convinced University Press, 722 pages the strenuous objections of his former themselves that the remarkable simi- political allies. As a facilitator of the larities between the French experi- here is nothing worse for the 1801 Act of Union, which abolished ence and their own were not really reputation of a major histori- the Irish parliament, Castlereagh be- there,” Logevall argues. “It was, for cal gure than to be reduced came a hate- gure among Irish na- the most part, self delusion.” Tto the status of a cartoon villain. at tionalists. at was the beginning of At the center of this delusion lies is the fate to which the memory of his alienation from the people of his the notion that in going abroad “in Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh native country. search of monsters to destroy” Amer- (1769-1822), has oen been consigned. Meanwhile, Castlereagh’s support ica is dierent from everyone else: Instead of simply rehabilitating his for Catholic rights, which he main- the U.S. supposedly is not practicing subject, John Bew’s generally sym- tained throughout his career, earned cynical forms of Realpolitik, like the pathetic Castlereagh aims to under- him the distrust of many in the Angli- French and others, but making the stand his thinking and motives more can establishment, including George world safe for liberal democracy and completely than previous studies have III himself. Despite being a genuine free markets. is explains the never- done. supporter of Catholic emancipation, ending search for that elusive ird Challenging the caricature drawn he fell short of seeing it enacted into Force in Vietnam or Syria, a foreign by the likes of Byron and Shelley, Bew law because of continued resistance faction that will of its own accord carefully reconstructs take up America’s most cherished Castlereagh’s private and values. public lives through ex- But genuine nationalists in Viet- tensive investigation of nam or Syria see in America a foreign his personal correspon- The major theme of Castlereagh’s power motivated mostly by its own dence, as well as that of his career was his support for a interests. ey may want the United relatives and colleagues. foreign policy guided by the States to assist their political strug- Bew treats Castlereagh’s gles, but they don’t imagine America’s statesmanship as a uni ed British national interest. objectives are synonymous with their whole, rather than reduc- own freedom and independence. ing it to his role in shap- And when Americans try to pre- ing Britain’s foreign policy tend otherwise—that ideals and not in the last decade of his career. Above in Parliament and was viewed as a interests are what drive the U.S. to all, this new biography tries to explain sell-out on this issue as well. send troops to foreign lands for “re- how Castlereagh came to form his dis- In many respects, Castlereagh’s re- gime change”—those on the receiv- tinctive view of world aairs. cord on Irish issues presaged later pe- ing end of this generosity are not Castlereagh began his political ca- riods of his career in which he was a moved. As a young congressman who reer with excellent credentials as an lonely moderate caught between ultra- had visited Saigon in 1951 wrote in Irish “patriot.” Raised as a Presbyte- conservatives and radicals. A case in his journal: “We are more and more rian and inuenced by the ideas of the point is his reaction to the French Revo- becoming colonialists in the minds Scottish Enlightenment, Castlereagh lution, which was hostile but not nearly of the people.” Unfortunately, John F. pursued a course as a moderate re- as polemical as that of Edmund Burke; Kennedy as president would become former in Ireland’s own parliament, or his position on end of the slave trade, one of the architects of U.S. interven- before being elected to the British which was a gradualist one that repeat- tion in Vietnam. House of Commons in 1794. Bew does edly put him at odds with the abolition- an excellent job of demonstrating how ist William Wilberforce. Whenever Leon Hadar, a Washington-based journalist Castlereagh’s Irish background had an faced with two starkly opposed posi- and foreign-policy analyst, is the author of enduring impact on his ideas. As Bew tions, Castlereagh’s instinct was to avoid Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East. concludes, “Ireland was the crucible both and nd a compromise.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 51 Arts&Letters

e major theme of Castlereagh’s neighbors were Castlereagh’s foreign- ference in the aairs of other states. career was his support for a foreign policy priorities. As a partner with Mackintosh’s argument works just policy guided by the British national Austria’s Prince Metternich, he would as well as a refutation of today’s liber- interest, a principle that caused him to be co-architect of the congress sys- al-interventionist appeals for military be a stalwart supporter of war against tem created at Vienna in 1814-15. To action in support of foreign insur- France before and aer Napoleon’s rise his credit, the alliance system that he gents. Remarkable as it may seem, at to power but that also led him to ab- helped to usher in and to sustain dur- the time the Whigs were defenders of jure postwar policies that would leave ing its early years preserved general the inviolability of state sovereignty France too weak and Russia too strong peace in Europe for decades aer his against the meddling of European in Europe. Aer the Congress of Vien- suicide in 1822. conservatives. Castlereagh, as ever, na, Castlereagh was wary of anything But aer Vienna he was unwilling was stuck with the unenviable task of that would open the door to a Russian to commit Britain to new conicts for supporting a European system that military presence in Western Europe— the purpose of propping up or restor- made these interventions possible including the universal pretensions of ing local rulers. Because of his desire while working to keep Britain out of the Holy Alliance, the czar’s coalition to keep the postwar system from fall- them. with fellow monarchist powers Aus- ing apart, he didn’t oppose the other On many occasions Castlereagh ex- powers when they acted pressed his aversion to empty rheto- to suppress revolutions, ric in the conduct of foreign policy. but he had no enthusiasm During a debate over British aid for for the Holy Alliance— Spanish rebels in 1816, he said: “If we which he called “a piece begin to assume a dictatorial func- Having prevailed over Napoleon, of sublime mysticism and tion towards other powers, we should Britain under Castlereagh’s guidance nonsense”—and he un- become an object of deserved hatred. derstood that the British e mind of man could not devise a was not bent on an ideological public had no interest in mode of interference more calculated project of restoration. supporting the eastern utterly to ruin the unfortunate persons monarchies in this way. on whose behalf it was intended.” He His policy toward the saw little value in public moralizing interventions of other if it were not going to be followed by governments was by his concrete action. As he said to critics of own admission “passive,” Britain’s response to the Austrian sup- tria and Prussia—but he also aimed to but he also laid out strictures against pression of Naples, “He should deem keep Russia as a member of the Euro- entangling Britain in the internal con- it most pusillanimous conduct on our pean system to prevent it from disturb- icts of other states. Only when there part, if, aer interfering on a question ing the peace. He saw Britain’s role in was a major threat to European secu- of this nature, we limited our interfer- Europe as both mediator and balancer, rity and the balance of power would ence to the mere delivery of a scroll of and he hoped to maintain equilibrium he countenance renewed hostilities. paper, and did not follow it up with among the great powers so that none Many of Castlereagh’s critics at some more eectual measures.” Noth- would pose the threat to stability that times adopted even stricter non-inter- ing would have seemed more useless France had posed in the two decades ventionist positions than he did, and to him than merely “speaking out” in before the congress. there was broad public consensus that support of a rebellion. When he had perceived British Britain shouldn’t involve itself in new As foreign secretary, Castlereagh interests to be threatened by French European conicts. One of his Whig was unwilling to involve Britain in hegemony in Europe, Castlereagh opponents, Sir James Mackintosh, ar- Restoration-era military campaigns, had been reliably hawkish—he rou- gued for a non-interventionist policy but aer two decades of war against tinely supported enormous expendi- that also ruled out humanitarian jus- France he was even more unsympa- tures for war and worked to increase ti cations for intervention, in reaction thetic to uprisings against established greatly the size of the British army. He to Austria’s use of reports about rebel governments than he had been earlier was instrumental in Wellington’s rise atrocities to justify military action in in his career. Bew criticizes his subject to command and unfailingly backed Naples. is position reected the fear for short-term, unimaginative think- him in all of his military campaigns. that Britain’s allies through the Trop- ing in this case—one of the few times Restoring the balance of power and pau Protocol of 1820 were creating a when Bew strongly takes Castlereagh ending Napoleon’s threat to France’s dangerous precedent for endless inter- to task for his shortcomings—but in

52 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 light of Castlereagh’s experience it would have been extraordinary for him to have adopted any other view of liberal revolutions in Europe. Even when it came to the Greek War for Independence, for which he felt more sympathy, he could not endorse Rus- sian support for the Greek cause, and Hogue Michael he invoked the same principles of sta- bility and order that had de ned the postwar allies’ settlement as his justi- cation. He also feared that the Greek revolt would provide Russia with a pretext for expanding its inuence to the detriment of the balance of power in Europe—and therefore to the detri- ment of British interests. e principle of nonintervention that Castlereagh outlined in his State Paper of May 5, 1820 reected his thinking at that point in the postwar period. It rejected the option of sup- porting the re-establishment of mo- narchical governments in Spain and Portugal and rearmed that Britain’s interest was in collective European peace and security. As the paper put it, Britain did not belong to an alli- ance “intended as an Union for the Government of the World, or for the superintendence of the internal aairs of other States.” Having prevailed over pioneer Ray Kurzweil, who was hired Napoleon, Britain under Castlereagh’s Never Mind Humanity as a director of engineering at Google guidance was not bent on an ideologi- by ARI SCHULMAN the month aer the book’s release. cal project of restoration, and it had Kurzweil’s theory begins with the nothing at stake in internal political How to Create a Mind: e Secret premise that the basic function of the conicts elsewhere in Europe. of Human ought Revealed, Ray mammalian brain is pattern recogni- Castlereagh was not opposed to Kurzweil, Viking, 352 pages tion. Backed by scattered empirical intervention in all instances, but as a evidence, he suggests that neurons pragmatic realist he was able to dis- ne might think that if someone are bunched into small groups, each tinguish between foreign conicts that ever gured out how to create a of which can recognize very simple imperiled British interests and those mind—if the secret of human patterns in raw information from the that did not. ough Bew makes no Othought were ever revealed—explain- senses. With hundreds of millions argument for using Castlereagh’s re- ing it would take more than a normal- of these units working in concert, a cord as a template for responding to sized book. But such is the promise simple, uniform learning method can today’s foreign-policy problems, his of Ray Kurzweil’s new volume, which build up to progressively more com- book nonetheless provides a case for tackles the most perplexing riddle in plex features and so tackle complicated Castlereagh’s continued relevance as the history of scienti c investigation cognitive tasks. Like our own percep- a guide to prudent statesmanship in in a mere 282 pages (plus endnotes). tion, Kurzweil’s system is sensitive to world aairs. e book might be dismissed on the context: for instance, it is more likely bluster of its title alone, were it not to recognize a smudged character as an Daniel Larison blogs at the latest work from the famed futur- “E” when it is preceded by the charac- www.theamericanconservative.com/larison. ist, inventor, and arti cial-intelligence ters “appl” than by “banan.”

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 53 Arts&Letters

In contrast, early AI research began behind his ideas mainly through text machine, which accounts for why we by assuming that the mind is inherently and poorly labeled diagrams, avoiding are a uniquely creative species.” Later, formal and computer-like, even in its almost any math, which is surely safe immediately aer reciting the diction- most immediate manifestations—for to use when accompanied by proper ary de nition of “metaphor,” Kurzweil example, that our perceptions strictly verbal explanations. Because the book abruptly asks, “Do you see any meta- precede our interpretations of them be- tries to split the dierence between phors in Sonnet 73 by Shakespeare?”, cause our eyes are like video cameras. lay readers and those who are already then reproduces the sonnet. (In case Cognitive scientists have only recently somewhat versed in AI, it leaves many you were wondering, yes, the son- begun to reverse this view, document- question marks for both. net does turn out to have some meta- ing the ways that our perceptions are at much of the latter half of the phors.) intertwined with our interpretations of book is little more than a quick-and- e sophomoric attempts to de- them, as in the apple/banana example. dirty rehash of his earlier work does scribe metaphor point to the ultimate Although Kurzweil still views cognition not help. Kurzweil’s monograph on failings of what Kurzweil describes as as ultimately reducible to computation, thought seems curiously thoughtless his uni ed theory of mind—a theory his insistence on starting from intuitions in places, and the prose is sprinkled whose power of explanation he re- about the mind itself, rather than about with odd, at sentences that ape the peatedly compares to those of Darwin computers, is a welcome corrective to “Deep oughts” segments from “Sat- and Einstein. He gives no account, for many of the dogmas of early AI. urday Night Live” of yore: “A common example, of a basic feature of percep- e argument, however, is weakened aphorism is, ‘You are what you eat.’ It tion, described elegantly by Emily by its exposition, which inadvertently is even more true to say, ‘You are what Dickinson in a poem Kurzweil makes demonstrates Kurzweil’s claim that you think’.” “If you haven’t actually the opening epigraph to the book but simple ideas can come across as much experienced ecstatic love personally, does not seem to have fully thought more complicated than they really you have undoubtedly heard about it.” through: “e Brain—is wider than are. Kurzweil describes the formulas “e neocortex is a great metaphor the Sky— / For—put them side by American Conservative 1/3 page side— / e one the other will con- tain ... ” Perceptions do not simply a new book about the lure of ideology in politics from categorize the world, as Kurzweil sug- gests, but experientially grasp it. But FORMER EUROPEAN COMMISSIONER disembodied information, no matter how sophisticated, is not enough to Frits Bolkestein create this experience—which is why computers today are no more capable of grasping the world than inert books or scrolls have been for the past three millennia. Kurzweil simply waves this con- cern aside, arguing that qualities like “I think many intellectuals these are “emergent properties” of the brain, and so will presumably arise will blush as they read it.” from an emulation of human thought. –Theodore Dalrymple e trouble is that, like mathematics, all of computation is already a way of formalizing and thus mimicking portions of thought, but that is not enough to allow computers to feel themselves thinking those thoughts. fritsbolkestein.com Perhaps Kurzweil’s system, which mimics a dierent portion of human thought, will somehow change this— THE INTELLECTUAL but he oers no argument for why it will. His descriptions of his system as TEMPTATION “symbolic” and “metaphorical” de- pend on the very leap his theory needs

The Intellectual54 THE Temptation AMERICAN Print Ads.indd CONSERVATIVE 1 1/22/13 2:00 PM MARCH/APRIL 2013 to explain: how does the brain move tures, and websites that have formed human thought missing from Kurz- from being merely a piece of matter a sort of global Kurzweil brand, he has weil’s theory is language. Describing in the world, extending the organism’s spelled out his vision of a future in it as but a useful “invention,” he gives ability to behave there in sophisti- which advances in biotechnology ex- no account of language’s distinctive cated ways, to a piece of matter that pand our lifespans inde nitely while role in human cognition—not simply contains the world—or at least has the neural implants enhance our cogni- in communicating our experiences sense that it does? tive abilities and gradually replace our and perceptions but in fundamentally e fact that Kurzweil ignores or meat-based brains. shaping them, even constituting them. even denies the great mystery of con- With computers manipulating our Rather than owing from some sciousness may help explain why his neurons, he argues, we can experience grand reection about human nature, theory has yet to create a mind. In anything we imagine. For instance, Kurzweil’s project begins from a con- truth, despite the revelatory sugges- Kurzweil writes in his 2005 book e ception of that nature whittled down tion of the book’s title, his theory is Singularity Is Near: When Humans to near nothing. Even for poets, words only a minor variation on ideas that Transcend Biology of the date back decades, to when Kurzweil possibilities of virtual sex, used them to build text-recognition in which you could down- systems. And while these techniques load a program to instruct have produced many remarkable re- “nanobots in and around How does the brain move sults in specialized arti cial-intel- your nervous system [to] from being merely a piece of matter ligence tasks, they have yet to create generate the appropriate generalized intelligence or creativity, signals for all of your sens- in the world to a being a piece much less sentience or rst-person es: visual, auditory, tactile of matter that contains the world? awareness. of course, even olfactory,” Perhaps owing to this failure, Kurz- stimulating your nervous weil spends much of the book suggest- system into feeling a com- ing that the features of consciousness plete sensory experience he cannot explain—the qualities of as if you were having sex with your are always nally inadequate to our the senses and the rest of our felt life favorite celebrity or any other object depths. Yet engineers whose views of and their role in deliberate thought of your desire. What’s love got to do human nature are the shallowest have and action—are mostly irrelevant to with it? anointed themselves as designers of human cognition. Of course, Kurzweil Perhaps because Kurzweil sees fan- the next stage in human evolution. is only the latest in a long line of theo- tasies like these as the greatest objects All of this might amount to nothing rists whose attempts to describe and of our aspiration, it is not surprising were it not for the fact that Kurzweil replicate human cognition have side- to nd in How to Create a Mind that cannot be dismissed as a crank. Build- lined the role of rst-person aware- his descriptions of the human nature ing on his previous AI innovations, he ness, subjective motivations, willful he seeks to perfect seem so passion- has a large audience for his prophecies, action, creativity, and other aspects of less and dreary. Despite paying lip ser- including prominent gures in indus- how we actually experience our lives vice to artistic depictions of love and try and academia. In the end, these fol- and our decisions. other elevated experiences, he refers lowers of “transhumanism” might just Yet the kicker is that Kurzweil’s to attraction as a “program,” says that gure out how to pull o some of their ultimate goal is to apply his theory love “exists to meet the [evolutionary] goals. What some critics fear about this not simply to creating intelligent ma- needs of the neocortex,” and explains eort by Kurzweil and others to reen- chines but to our own minds, bringing the accompanying experiences of eu- gineer our bodies and minds is that, them within the purview of computer phoria and yearning as “account[ed] plagued by unintended consequences, engineers. e very world of feeling for” by “high levels of dopamine and the results could turn out quite other and experience that Kurzweil suggests norepinephrine.” His descriptions of than predicted. Indeed—but should we has little relevance to understanding creativity and spirituality are even less be any more comforted by the possibil- why we humans are the way we are is inspiriting than this. ity that the post-human nature they the same world he promises to deliver is very paltriness is the real secret create might turn out just as they de- to us in ways faster, deeper, stronger, of Kurzweil’s theory, which promises scribe it? more vibrant, and more intense and to create a mind without really having mind-blowing than we can possibly to describe what it is like to have one. Ari N. Schulman is a senior editor of e imagine. In a series of books, lec- Perhaps the most important feature of New Atlantis.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 55 Arts&Letters

Spain’s Leftist oen engaged in factional strife with In February of that year the NF had their own ranks. lost in a very close, widely disputed Civil War On the eve of the Nationalist insur- election. e winning side did noth- gency, the Worker Party of Marxist ing to stop the well-organized assas- by PAUL GOTTFR IED Uni cation (POUM)—which Payne sinations of opposition leaders and describes as a “hyperrevolutionary” what turned rapidly into the mass e Spanish Civil War, Stanley Payne, party of the le, and which George murder of Catholic clergy. It was not Cambridge, 268 pages Orwell joined during his adventures General Franco and his fellow insur- as a Republican volunteer—was try- gents who overthrew a functioning tanley Payne’s study of the Span- ing to overthrow Spain’s leist govern- constitutional regime; the Republican ish Civil War and the events ment, presumably to replace it with a side and its president, Manuel Azana, leading up to that cataclysm is more radical dictatorship. Payne em- brought about the upheaval even be- Sthe latest work by one of America’s phasizes that the Spanish le was far fore the military stepped in. premier historians of Europe. A long- more extreme than any other Europe- Payne does not evince any sympa- time professor at the University of an le of the period. is he ascribes thy for the man who became the Na- Wisconsin, Payne has distinguished not to the “backwardness” of Spain tionalists’ commander in chief, the himself for decades as the dean of but to the political instability of a rap- pudgy and far from charismatic Fran- 20th-century Spanish history and as idly modernizing country that had cisco Franco. Although good at hus- a dispassionate analyst of interwar no strong tradition of parliamentary banding resources in the zones under fascist movements. Payne incorpo- compromise. Even more important, his control, and a de politician who rates into his fact-packed mono- Spain was cursed with Europe’s larg- ended up absorbing his quasi-fascist graphs careful, balanced research— est anarcho-syndicalist organization, Falangist supporters into a coalition and unlike most academic historians, a political faction that happily killed that removed their eective inuence he approximates Herbert Butter eld’s and pillaged—far more than did the (except as window dressing for his re- view of what a historian should be, a relatively phlegmatic Muscovite Com- gime), Franco nonetheless is shown practitioner of a cra that aims at ob- munists in the Partido Comunista de to have been severely de cient as a jectivity. España, a subject Payne has discussed commander and as a uni er aer the For all these reasons, Payne’s new in depth in a separate work. struggle. He dithered for years before study of what the le considers a clas- One might question in what sense cutting o Catalonia from the rest of sic confrontation of good against evil the Republicans represented the “le- Spain and before taking Barcelona will not sit well with the academic es- gitimate” regime, which the “fascists” and nally marching on Madrid. His tablishment. Payne does not view the overthrew. From the time the Span- strategic ineptitude only served Sta- Socialists or their Anarchist and Com- ish le took power in 1931—losing lin and Hitler—Stalin tried to use the munist allies during the Spanish Civil control in 1934 but then regaining it confusion in the Republican camp to War as admirable or more “democrat- in February 1936—it persecuted the take charge of the Spanish le, and ic” than the Nationalist coalition—in- Catholic Church, permitted and even Hitler hoped to see the war prolonged cluding monarchists and the Catholic abetted the seizure of ecclesiastic and to provide diversion while he annexed right—on the other side. He shows that other non-state-owned property, and Central and Eastern Europe. en, from the time the Spanish Republic for several months before the military at the end of the war, Franco sup- was proclaimed in 1931 until the coup uprising did nothing signi cant to ported the execution of at least 28,000 of July 1936, which precipitated the prevent armed violence and the kill- of his one-time armed enemies. is civil war that lasted almost three years, ing of parliamentary opponents. e brought the total of those executed by the Spanish le was knee-deep in con- Assault Guard, to which the leist the Nationalists somewhat above the spiracies against the country’s constitu- government conceded constabulary staggering number butchered by the tional government. In 1932 and 1933, power aer its victory in 1936, mur- other side. the Socialist General Confederation of dered among many others Jose Calvo Payne puts Franco’s actions aer the Labor (GCT) attempted three abortive Sotelo, the leader of the monarchist war in a stark light; clearly he does not uprisings against a leist government party, and narrowly failed to kill Jose follow Michael Burleigh, Brian Cro- in which their own party was a partici- Maria Gil Robles, the head of the zier, and other historians who depict pant. Payne argues that the Spanish le Spanish Catholic Confederation of Franco as an able leader in dicult was not only destructively impetuous Autonomous Rightists (CEDA), the times. is, however, makes Payne’s but hopelessly divided: its parties not largest bloc within the right-of-center case against the Republican side all only fought with each other but were National Front. the more damning.

56 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 e Republican orgy of murders the Republican side because of his fear clericals. Although not murderously came mostly at the beginning of the that a Nationalist victory would give violent like the Spanish le in the struggle and involved the torture Hitler access to Spanish ports. But 1930s, the French anti-Catholics got and murder of about 7,000 Catholic Franco stayed out of World War II, ex- their turn to be nasty aer the Dreyfus clergy, as well as the wholesale des- cept in a limited, very calculated way. Aair, when they took over the gov- ecration and dynamiting of churches. In 1941, he permitted volunteers ernment. During the preceding three Had the Republicans won, it is likely to form the Blue Division, a military decades, the anti-clerical Radical Re- this slaughter would have continued, cadre that aided the German “struggle publicans had to restrain themselves, albeit in a less systematic fashion than against Bolshevism.” Nonetheless, while dealing with an assortment the way in which the Nationalists dis- these anti-Communist volunteers, of monarchists, clericalists, and the posed of their enemies. e Republi- who eventually numbered as many as Republican right in the French As- cans felt an implacable hatred for the 50,000, were prohibited from ghting sembly. But once totally in power, the Church, the ferocity of which Payne against Hitler’s Western adversaries. French anti-Catholic le expelled reli- never hides. Even in those territories In 1943, Franco tried to withdraw the gious orders, seized church property, belonging to their Basque separatist volunteers, with only allies—who were anti-Nationalist but some success, and be- devoutly Catholic—Republicans went gan to display benevo- around killing clergy and destroying lent neutrality toward churches. the U.S. and England. Payne’s new study of what the left is, as Payne stresses, had no ratio- Despite pressure from considers a classic confrontation of nal basis whatever. By 1936 the Church Hitler, he would not al- good against evil will not sit well had been separated from the state, and low the Germans to oc- religious freedom seemed rmly es- cupy Spanish territory with the academic establishment. tablished. At the beginning of the war, for military purposes Franco and his fellow insurgent leaders and was adamantly op- were quite willing to accept this. And posed to having the the Nationalist side was not without its Wehrmacht stationed in Spanish Mo- imposed a thoroughly laicized pub- own form of multiculturalism: Franco rocco as a base of operations against lic educational system, and purged landed in Spain with a large Muslim the Allies in North Africa. Hitler’s ob- churchgoers from the ocer corps. force he raised in Spanish Morocco, servation was correct: trying to nego- Finally, one might question Payne’s and as many as 80,000 Muslim vol- tiate with the Spanish Caudillo—the tributes to “liberal democracy” as unteers—constituting 7 percent of his title Franco took for himself—was a regime that exalts lawfulness and army—fought in the Nationalist ranks. like “having one’s teeth pulled.” In the tolerance. A look at the Spanish gov- Only aer the Republicans unleashed latter part of the war, Franco and his ernment since the 1980s, with its their violence did it become useful for ambassadors also granted Spanish cit- multicultural Socialist administra- the Nationalists to present themselves izenship to Sephardic Jews in Greece tions, might well belie this view. Lib- as champions of Spain’s Catholic past. and other areas under German con- eral democracy is far from the gold Before that, the military leaders of the trol, the eect of which was to save standard for good government in all uprising had no interest in dumping those being targeted by Hitler from times and places; it may sometimes be the Republic or waging a Catholic cru- deportation and death. a slippery slope leading to the politics sade. One might cavil with Payne on a of envy and enforced political correct- Payne also correctly observes that few minor points. e Polish presi- ness. One may be allowed to contrast the Spanish civil war, far from being dential dictatorship established under the last 20 years of the Franco gov- the “dress rehearsal for World War II” General Josef Pilsudski in 1926 was ernment, with its economic growth that it has become in standard text- not, as Payne suggests, a “nationalist and relaxation of censorship, with books, had little eect on the Europe- insurrection with a rightist character.” the wave of political correctness and an-wide conict. Mussolini supported Pilsudski was a centrist in Polish poli- Socialist mismanagement that has be- the Nationalist side (while Nazi Ger- tics. His most notable opponent was fallen liberal democratic Spain since many sent far more limited aid to the head of the expansionist-minded, then. Franco), and the Soviets sent massive anti-Semitic and anti-German Na- arms shipments and troops to the Re- tional Democrats, Roman Dmowski. Paul Gottfried is the author of Leo Strauss publicans. Churchill, initially sup- e French Radical Republicans, and the Conservative Movement in portive of Franco, later leaned toward pace Payne, were not moderate anti- America.

MARCH/APRIL 2013 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE 57 Taki

Escape from the EU

h, to be in England! e Prime Minister David Cameron re- machine keeps rolling along, making weather is bad, the cities cently gave a speech that assuaged Brit- it almost impossible to leave the com- are crowded with beard- ish fears concerning the power play mon currency without leaving Europe ed Pakistanis, and the by Brussels. It was bold and strong, altogether. OHuman Rights Act of 2007 shields articulating the anxieties of a people Britain, unlike small economies like foreign criminals under the dubi- who have enjoyed freedom for the last those of Greece and Portugal, could ous right to family life. All a foreign 800 years. He pledged a referendum by easily go at it without Brussels. If I had criminal in Britain has to do once he’s 2017, if he is re-elected in 2015. is is ten dollars for every time I’ve heard re- convicted and about to be deported is a very big if. And it involves the kind of sponsible people say that the eurozone get a British girlfriend. I kid you not. deceptive rhetoric that has become so is doomed, I could buy a new yacht. An army of ambulance-chasing law- depressingly familiar in the European And some of those have been mem- yers makes sure the criminals know debate. e Brits joined the EU under a bers of Parliament and even ministers. their rights. deceitfully worded referendum which Yet nothing is happening. As my friend So, to be or not to be in the Euro- led the people to believe they were join- Charles Moore wrote in the Daily Tele- pean Union, that is the question for ing a free-trade bloc. Ever since, there graph, “the biggest error of European most British today. I decided to move has been a stream of directives from a history has been the idea that some from London, where I lived for close sclerotic Brussels bureaucracy paralyz- new order—a Holy Roman Empire, a to 40 years, once the place was overrun ing free enterprise and rms’ ability to Napoleonic system, a Reich, a United by EU rules that remain wedded to an compete with a booming wider world. States of Europe—can dissolve the unworkable idea that one size ts all. Brussels is bloated, monstrously costly, dangerous rivalries of Europeans.” e unelected bureaucrats of Brussels ineectual, and totally corrupt. Hear, hear! envision a Franco-German empire that So what are the British people to I’ve said it before and will say it to stretches from Seville to Sylt and from do? Europe lurches from one crisis to my dying day, a Greek is as dierent Sligo to Salzburg, a 230-million bloc the next, rst Greece, then Spain, fol- from a Swede in culture and way of run by these same unelected boobies, lowed by Portugal, and now Italy. e thinking as it is possible to be. A Tex- with high taxes and strict censorship of Germans are pouring vast loans into a an has more in common with a Con- free speech. bottomless pit, with Chancellor Angela necticut Yankee than a German has ese boobies are now pushing Merkel exposing her Eastern European with his French neighbor. And when it further with agrant attacks on press upbringing’s idea that the state and its comes to the Brits, fuggedaboutit. Yet freedom, giving draconian powers to servants know best. Many observers this one-size-ts-all alchemy is being control the media and even sack jour- think that sooner or later the German cooked by the tin pot crooks in Brus- nalists. What Uncle Joe Stalin man- people will revolt against the crazy sels, who vote themselves extraordi- aged to do in the Soviet Union gen- price they are paying for keeping the nary salaries. e same old bunch of erations ago, the Brussels gang is about eurozone aoat. I’m not so sure. politicians have been in power since to impose on Europeans, with “media e European dream is chiseled the war, with a sheep-like electorate councils” in the place of the dreaded in stone in most northern European voting them as if in a trance. My hope Cheka. ese “independent” so-called minds, and while the southern Euro- is the Brits will say no one day, but councils would be monitored by the peans refuse to blame themselves for if a were a gambler, which I am, my European Commission, which as yet the state of their nances—they blame money is on the crooks in Brussels. does not have the right of the midnight the Germans for the austerity mea- ere is no Maggie atcher to save knock on our doors. sures they’ve imposed—the Brussels the country.

58 THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MARCH/APRIL 2013 Visit alphapub.com for FREE eBooks and Natural-law Essays Consider an intelligence capable of creating a vast universe with one habitable planet populated by reasoning creatures that unknowingly are defying one of its natural laws.

Name that intelligence as you choose—surely the earth and its population didn’t “just happen.” Consider also that, over time, “Just found your site. researchers learned to comply with natural laws by observing their I was quite impressed repetitious functioning, and called them the laws of physics. and look forward to In addition, people mistakenly formed their own laws of right and hours of enjoyment wrong action and during the rule of mankind’s laws, warfare and and learning. Thanks.” dissention affl ict the entire human race to this day. - Frank The good news is that decades ago, nature’s law of behavior was identifi ed by Richard W. Wetherill. He named it the law of right action, calling for people to behave in a rational, honest way. When conformed to, this natural law creates a rational, honest society, whereas society’s nonconformity continues causing the in- creasingly chaotic situations being experienced today. Clearly, the creator intended people to be rational and honest, but acting on their desires is preventing it. Sadly the behavioral law is still not known to a large segment of society, but most people know that conforming to natural laws is mandatory. Also, procedures and products are available to relieve people’s unhealthy symptoms, but mankind’s well-intended efforts do not address the basic cause, so we persist. People must diligently conform to nature’s self-enforcing behavioral law. That is the action which spontaneously releases multiple numbers of distortions of logic, as they contradict what “I have fi nished reading this natural law deems is right action. The truth is that only by the book How To Solve conforming to nature’s behavioral law can people be given the Problems. So simple, fruits of peace and well-being promised by the creator of all self- yet so profound and enforcing natural laws! powerful. Thank you.” - Alex Visit alphapub.com for more information or for a free mailing write to The Alpha Publishing House, PO Box 255, Royersford, PA 19468.

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