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The
Rise and Fahl of Saddam Algerians thousands of miles from the 1991 Gulf War nonetheless perceived Saddam as a hero. He was praised as fahl, meaning "male (of large animals), stallion; outstanding personality, luminary, star, master." The perception has spread in the Arab world that Saddam is indeed capable of feats of exceptional potency. Pitiful in themselves, such fantasies cannot survive a military defeat and the implosion of Saddam's regime. But the longer the futile diplomatic skirmishing lasts, and the more peace demonstrations appear on television for Saddam to draw encouragement from, the greater his honor as a man defying his enemies against all reason. And who knows, perhaps even getting away with it once again, becoming a Supreme Leader such as the Arab world has not known for centuries, bolder and braver than the last pretender to the title, Gamal Abdul Nasser, the Egyptian president who also threw out a challenging Ahlan wasahlan to his enemies. Losing his war, Nasser wept in public for shame.
Blair's growing unpopularity in Britain is only marginally related to his support of an Iraq invasion. Indeed, his brave stand on the war would attract more respect at home were it not undermined in advance by his domestic political failures. Blair was elected on a platform of improving public services without raising taxes; instead he has raised taxes without improving public services. Among the results are massive traffic congestion, long hospital waiting lists, perpetual delays on the railroad, a growing pension crisis, and mounting tax bills. These failures of policy themselves stem from two political causes — Blair's unfinished reform of his own party, and his commitment to European integration. "New Labour" and the "Third Way" were interesting theoretical inventions, but they were never translated into practical politics. In addition, Blair's signing of the European social charter has ensured that an avalanche of labor regulations from Brussels will overwhelm the deregulated British labor market that is Britain's main competitive advantage.
In 2000, hospitals and emergency-service providers lost more than $200 million because they weren't reimbursed for treatment given to illegal aliens, according to a study sponsored by the United States/Mexico Border Counties Coalition. Individual physicians may have lost another $100 million. That's because federal law requires emergency rooms to accept all comers, regardless of their citizenship or their ability to pay for services. Hospitals already take a beating from malpractice litigation, Medicaid reimbursement schemes, and uninsured patients — it's a tough business to be in just about anywhere. Those near the border, however, must cope with the added complication of illegal-alien freeloaders. Many area hospitals are being forced to cut back services or to close their doors entirely, which means that out-of-control immigration has become not only an inconvenience for millions of Americans, but a public-health hazard.
The BRIDGE Act would permit a profitable, promising small business, with $10 million or less in gross receipts, to defer up to $250,000 in federal income taxes for two years, and pay the taxes owed with interest over the next four. The deferred tax amount would be placed in a trust account to be used as collateral for a loan. The idea is to help businesses during a critical time in their growth when outside financing is difficult and costly to obtain. In making their case, the bill's sponsors point to an estimate that such a tax deferment would create over 640,000 jobs in its first three years. According to the Joint Tax Committee, allowing small businesses to retain their profits temporarily, thereby "bridging" their funding gap, would "cost" government several billion dollars in tax revenue in the early years, but would result in a $1.1 billion net revenue gain over a ten-year period.
In my experience, litigation gives rise to symptoms far more frequently than symptoms give rise to litigation. What happens is this: A person discovers that he has been the victim of some potentially actionable negligence, whereupon his symptomatology begins to expand like ink on blotting paper. Ours being an age of information, the process is often speeded up by access to the Internet, with its myriad websites established by advocacy and self-help groups. The litigant, formerly healthy, rapidly succumbs to every kind of unprovable ailment: headache, loss of concentration, dizziness, depression, lack of energy, indifference to pleasure, anxiety, and so forth. Within a comparatively short time, even an active, vigorous, and intelligent person can be reduced to a gibbering wreck. When a man says that his whole life has been ruined by some trifling incident or accident, I know — without having to ask — that I am in the presence of litigation.
What makes countries like France so valuable in areas like pie-making and sexual intercourse are the same traits that make them so useless in areas like warfare and multilateral agreement. Don't we all know someone, in our life or our business, obsessed with process and steps and organizational flows? Someone who impedes progress and delays action, not necessarily out of malice, but out of some deeply held belief that it's better, when confronted with a choice, not to make one? Well, mes amis, that's France. And it's our fault for getting tangled up with them. It's our fault for forgetting that stubborn French pride has given the world many things, but a just peace isn't one of them. And it's our fault for forgetting that American impetuousness has given the world many things too, but we make some sorry scrambled eggs. The French have nothing to be sorry for: They're simply acting French, as is their right. But what's our excuse?
There is another way in which these martyrdoms have been a touch theatrical. None were likely to have serious consequences. Now that there's a chance that they might, Sheen has seemed to shy away. Following a conviction for trespass at a demonstration, he is on three years' probation and is taking care to avoid the police. As he explained to Newsday, "If I get arrested for anything now, I go right in the slammer." The actor's taste for martyrdom clearly includes neither the big house nor the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars from his appearances in Aaron Sorkin's fake White House (Sheen reportedly earns around $300,000 for each episode of The West Wing, not so much less than the $400,000 that George W. Bush makes for a year in the real thing), but it's telling that it has taken this, rather than any change of heart, to stop — at least until his probation expires — the seemingly endless run of arrests.
Although it is not without its difficulties, the "Anglosphere" is the most plausible alternative to the traditional Western alliance. James Bennett regards the Anglosphere as a part of Western civilization that is branching off into its own, no longer purely Western civilization. That civilization is characterized by a high degree of individualism and dynamism, and by a talent for assimilation. It is also characterized by high trust. In low-trust societies — here Bennett is borrowing from Banfield and Fukuyama — cooperation outside the family and clan is difficult and rare. The rule of law and contract rights are thus hard to establish, civil society is weak, and social and economic development are slow. It is, for Bennett, no accident that it was in the Anglosphere that the industrial revolution and parliamentary democracy first emerged, and it is there that they have most comfortably spread. Nor is it an accident that when French intellectuals and Malaysian prime ministers wish to denounce free markets, the phrase they use is "Anglo-Saxon capitalism."
Q. Mr. Buckley, why
did you write this book, Getting
It Right? BOOKS, ARTS &
MANNERS The Whole Shoe-Bang
— David Pryce-Jones Campus Crusader for
Conservatism — Sarah Maserati The Straggler: I Was an Illegal Alien — John Derbyshire on life as an illegal immigrant. Shelf Life: The Old Mill Stream — Michael Potemra on J. S. Mill, Jacques Maritain, and the Iraq war. SECTIONS |
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