The EU’s ‘common agricultural policy’ is an inefficient protectionist racket with very damaging consequences for the developing world. It’s at least arguable, however, that it’s a policy that benefits France. As a result, proposed reforms of this system have made little headway. Judging by this report, that’s not about to change. France has, it seems, acted (dread word) ‘unilaterally’ and negotiated in bad faith in its latest attempt to protect its farmers from the rigors of the free market. One can only say ‘bien fait’. The CAP may be a misguided and corrupt monstrosity, but, in defending it, France is demonstrating that it is prepared to put its interests (as it sees them) above those of the EU as a whole. Tony Blair should show that he can be equally tough in defending Britain’s national interest. He should reject the EU’s ‘constitution’ now – without further discussion.

He won’t, of course.

The Guardian has a good piece on Nurse Bloomberg’s ban on smoking in bars. The good news? Clothes no longer smell like ashtrays.

The bad?

“The downside is that, without the smoke to disguise it, you can now smell the bars: an unappealing cocktail of sweaty people, stale beer and vomit.”

Just another reminder of how the Nurse is affecting the quality of life in New York City.

It’s not easy to decide which Disney character is the most repellent, but the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane is obviously no fan of Thumper:

“For every Shere Khan in The Jungle Book (a matchless introduction to malign ennui, and one of George Sanders’ finest hours), there was the dire prospect of listening to Thumper in Bambi, whose tapping hind paw made me think longingly of Lapin de Garenne au Saupiquet (“You must collect the blood of the rabbit in a jug,” my cookbook says. Any time.).”

He’s right. But why stop there? That simpering Bambi would be better roasted, carved and surrounded by potatoes, gravy and parsnips. As for relentlessly perky Jiminy Cricket, one four-letter word in response to his cheery chirping:

R-A-I-D.

These days, of course, England is not a country that would impress Ms Chase nearly so much. The level of crime would astonish her – as would the reaction of the authorities, passive in the face of burglary, active only in their efforts to prosecute the householder who uses ‘unreasonable force’ in an attempt to defend property that the state can no longer be bothered to protect.

Writing in a recent issue of the London Spectator Charles Moore suggests an alternative approach to scare criminals away, quoting a technique used by one ‘bloody Brown,’ a neighbor of the 19th Century journalist C.J Apperley:

“His garden had been frequently robbed of much of its choicest fruit, and he, being an old soldier…was one not to be trifled with on such occasions…He applied to a dissecting room in London and obtained the leg of a human being, fresh cut from the body, on which he put a stocking and a shoe, and then suspended it in a man-trap over his garden wall. The act obtained him the sobriquet I have mentioned, but his fruit was afterwards safe.”

There’s a lesson there for us all.

One of life’s pleasures (for me anyway) alongside obituaries, Laphroiag, arguing with Derb, and reruns of the last moments of the late President Caucescu is a visit to a secondhand bookstore, mainly because I never know what it is that I am going to find. I was in Madison, Wisconsin, earlier this week and the fine store on State Street yielded three splendidly obscure treasures for a total of $23. The first was the memoir of a Finn (one Unto Parvilahti) who had spent ten years as a prisoner of the Soviets, the second was a 1939 book (The Soviet Power – The Socialist Sixth of The World) by the late – and unlamented – Rev. Hewlett Johnson, the ‘Red Dean’ of Canterbury (a man who would have got on rather badly with Mr. Parvilahti) and the third was This England, a travel book from 1936.

Hewlett Johnson’s effort was a reminder that the idiocy of ‘progressive’ clergymen has never known any limits and nor has their capacity to crawl to dictators. Here are a few choice examples of his ‘analysis’:

“[The Soviet] programme gripped me from its earliest formulation. Majestic in spirit, practical in detail, scientific in form, Christian in spirit…it is a programme which thinks, not in terms of a privileged class, but in terms of each individual soul…”

And then there’s this (remember this book was written two years after the launch of Stalin’s Great Terror):

“Nothing strikes the visitor to the Soviet Union more forcibly than the absence of fear.”

What’s more, the USSR was such a clean-cut place:

“Sex plays a comparatively small part in Soviet Russia…and everything lascivious or degenerate has been expunged from Soviet public life…”Petting parties” are unknown…”

Well, thank heavens for that.

Mary Ellen Chase’s This England was an altogether more pleasant, if rather rose-tinted, experience. For all the sugar-coating, however, it was difficult to read it and not come to the wistful conclusion that, for all its flaws England was, in many ways, a much nicer society than it is today. What’s more, those who could afford it also knew what made for a proper breakfast:

“Porridge with milk, rarely with cream, fish [kippers, I presume], bacon (or sausage or liver or kidneys or cold ham) and eggs, toast and orange marmalade, tea or coffee, the Times or The Daily Mail, a terse comment upon the weather and then calm, good-natured silence…”

A scepter’d isle indeed.

If, at some time in the late 1930s, a well-known author had given the government a list of writers and other public intellectuals who he thought could not be trusted to counter Nazi propaganda, this would have been regarded as unremarkable and, indeed, rather praiseworthy. No one would still be discussing it decades and decades later. How different it is when the ‘betrayed’ apologists for totalitarianism are communists at the height of the Stalin era.

Here’s a piece on the ‘scandal’ over George Orwell’s decision to give the British government a list of people he thought were pro-communist or worse.

One of the names was, interestingly enough, our old friend Walter Duranty.

From Fox News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Documents bearing the seal of Saddam Hussein's secret service were seized early Saturday by U.S. forces during a raid of a Baghdad community hall.

The documents, which were handed over to senior intelligence analysts, mentioned Iraq's nuclear program and may possibly contain information regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (search).

About 50 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division stormed the building at about 1 a.m. after sealing off part of Baghdad's Azamiyah (search) district — a center of support for Saddam's ousted regime. The neighborhood was where Saddam — or someone presenting himself as the Iraqi leader — last appeared in public before the capture of Baghdad on April 9.

Man, oh, Maneshevitz, it would be nice if this leads to huge stockpiles of WMD. But we've been burned on promising stories before, so we'll see.

Not sure what to make of it, but anecdotally interesting:

Jonah:

Is anyone else getting suspicious? I work in the high tech area as an engineer. I socialize with many "working class" people. I attend a church that has a majority of its members working in non-professional fields. Nobody is unemployed and as a matter of fact, nobody can find enough people to fill the available slots where they work.

At my place of employment, our best and least best engineers are leaving for fantastic offers at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Grumman, etc. At our church, the tradespeople have more work than they can possibly accomplish. My family had to search for over a year to find a builder to execute a renovation at our house. The lead guy on our framing crew said that a few years ago he only hired people with experience. Now, he'll take anyone who is a hard worker. Every fast food place, convenience store, gas station or whatever that I frequent has a "now hiring" sign posted every which way one looks. Something just doesn't add up.

I wonder if you would take one of your columns and analyze the "high" unemployment rate that the Left has latched onto as the only chink in George Bush's armor. I'm suspicious that extended benefits and other government perks haven't caused some folks to just kick back and stop working. I don't have the answer, but as an engineer, when facts just don't go together logically, I get suspicious.

Two observations. First, as I've said before, the Department of Motor Vehicles is too often a p.r. disaster for race relations and for liberals generally. The average suburban white probably has very little interaction with the welfare-state services provided by their local city governments. Perhaps the only physical interaction they have, aside from perhaps jury duty, is at the DMV. When the staff at the DMV is rude, incompetent or just plain uncaring, that is the impression suburban residents get of the whole system. That's bad news. The fact that these employees often tend to be African-American in major cities, only compounds the prejudices of suburban whites. (Of course, Patty and Selma are the perfect poster-women for white DMV workers).

Second, I was standing next to an black guy in a track suit on the line at the DMV yesterday and we were making small talk. As we endured the snail's pace of the line to pay off tickets and fines, he pointed to the tellers and said, "Look at this! I ain't never seen people take such a longtime to take someone else's money. This is the only place in the world where people are slow at taking money." I thought it was an excellent point.

According to the prepublicity, the latest book - Living History: the Bulk Order of the Phoenix - would see Hillary rise from the ashes yet again, step out of Billy's shadow and prepare to take Housewhites back from the evil usurper Lord W Bush (as fans know, the W stands for Woldemort, but by tradition the name is never said). But instead it's mostly hundreds of pages about who Hillary sat by at the many school dinners she's attended, with a brief passage about when Billy told her about Moaning Monica. According to the book, after spending the summer golfing with Uncle Vernon Jordan, he admits to Hillary that, although he did play quidditch, he never put his bludger in the golden snitch. Hillary thinks this is a lot of hufflepuff and, although he doesn't die, Billy finds himself under an impediment curse which means that for the rest of the book he hardly gets to take his wand out at all and Uncle Vernon starts calling him Nearly Headless Bill.

<
When we turned off the highway suddenly there were teenage boys along both sides of the street about every 20 feet or so, all holding large American flags on long flag poles, and again with their hands on their hearts. We thought at first it was the Boy Scouts or 4H Club or something, but it continued -- for two and a half miles. Hundreds of young people, standing silently on the side of the road with flags. At one point we passed an elementary school, and all the children were outside, shoulder to shoulder holding flags -- kindergartners, handicapped, teachers, staff, everyone. Some held signs of love and support. Then came teenage girls and younger boys, all holding flags. Then adults. Then families. All standing silently on the side of the road. No one spoke, not even the very young children. The last few turns found people crowded together holding flags or with their hands on their hearts. Some were on horseback.

The military presence -- at least two generals, a fist full of colonels, and representatives from every branch of the service, plus the color guard which attended James, and some who served with him -- was very impressive and respectful, but the love and pride from this community who had lost one of their own was the most amazing thing I've ever been privileged to witness.>>

What they seek is not simply a comfortable life and social acceptance. They already have much of that. What they want is 100-percent complete acceptance. Many social conservatives in America believe there is a God and a Holy Spirit and a Bible that condemns homosexuality as an abomination, and they will not be defeated.

The problem is that no one outside a few ragtag religious-right groups is really fighting the tide you cite. Most conservatives do not. The GOP certainly does not. It is considered censorship to fight Hollywood, and religious discrimination to fight it in Washington. But the real "culture war" on this issue is person by person, endangered soul by endangered soul.

Don't be so pessimistic. The last great wave of gay activism was followed by the conservative takeover of 1994. A wave of gay-marriage activism in the United States could be yet another wave of political disaster for the Democratic Party. But it won't be if we wave white flags. Now is the not the time to go wobbly!

I'm off to the DMV

The Dems should know that Brett Kavanagh was hardly a rabid anti-Clintonite. Matter of fact, when I did a book review for the Wall Street Journal, a review which helped debunk the idea that Vince Foster's body was moved, etc.... in other words, one that supported the basic story of where and why the poor man committed suicide (okay, I bashed the Clintons on other matters during my book review, but not on that basic fact of this sad episode, and not on matters I discussed with Mr. Kavanagh), the main person who walked me through the public evidence and the Starr report (with full authorization from his superiors), and thus who cleared up some of the anti-Clinton conspiracy theories (to the benefit of the Clintons), was Brett Kavanagh. The Wash Post's portrayal of Kavanagh as a part of the "vast right wing conspiracy" is thus just not accurate; I found him a helpful, fact-based, careful attorney. I assume his legal philosophy leans right, because the Bush administration seems to be considering him for a judgeship. But while on the Starr team dealing with me at least, he sure as heck gave no evidence of any ulterior agenda. He seems like a man of deep integrity.

A bunch of people have sent me links to this story which seems to be spreading like a rash among the far lefty websites. It is extremely odd in format and style. But the gist of it seems to be that poor Cynthia McKinney never said Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11. The author, Greg Palast, seems to be saying that some damning "quote" by McKinney accusing Bush of advanced knowledge of 9/11 was "made up." He writes: "The 'quote' from McKinney is a complete fabrication. A whopper, a fabulous fib, a fake, a flim-flam. Just freakin’ made up." But he never actually prints the quote. So, here's the quote I have in mind from the Washington Post account about her interview on Pacifica Radio:

We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th. . . . What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?

Palast seems to be saying this quote was either misinterpreted or was never uttered by McKinney in the first place. I don't have time to wade through transcripts over at Pacifica Radio, but if he's saying she never said this, I don't understand why Cynthia McKinney didn't flatly deny she ever said it. Instead, she seemed to be conceding she said it when she issued a backpeddling statement in response to her comments: "I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case."

Now, correct me if I'm wrong but if the quote was a complete fabrication, even a loonybird like McKinney would say so rather that issue a statement like that.

So, I assume Palast is asserting that the above quote doesn't mean what many rational people think it means. If that's the case, fine. But you can't say McKinney has been the subject of disinformation campaign which includes outright journalistic fraud.

In short, unless I'm missing something, stop sending me this article because I think it is weird, unpersuasive and in no way changes my mind on the subject of Ms. McKinney's enduring asininity.

I should add something. While we welcome, love and appreciate the contributions and subscriptions, there's something else some of you can do: Advertise. If you work for -- or own -- a firm which you think might benefit from advertising on one of the best and best-read sites of its kind, you could help yourself and us (and the country, and the world and the Universe, and the multiverse!) at the same time. Contact Jim Fowler and tell him Jonah Goldberg sent ya.

From a reader:

Before the recent discussion about Keynes in the corner, I didn't know he was gay (I guess I missed that chapter in gender studies). But I find myself ruminating on the other possible implications. For one, it certainly creates all sorts of innuendo surrounding Richard Nixon's famous declaration that "We are all Keynesians now."

It's an interesting argument, I've been pondering something similar too for a while. Though I think it would open up all sorts of unintended consequences too. Anyway, here's an interesting take from Gideon's Blog.

All this chat about Hayek is the perfect excuse (particularly as I am stuck in a near deserted hotel in the middle of nowhere) to tell my only story about the great man. It was some time in the late 1970s and the venue was (appropriately or inappropriately enough) the Keynes Auditorium (or Hall, or something like that) in Cambridge. Hayek was the speaker and most of the audience, stuck in the orthodoxies of that era, was either astonished, appalled or both.

At the end of his talk (which was, needless to say, quite brilliant) Hayek bravely asked for questions. Brimming with indignation and bubbling with bile, one man rose to his feet and asked “that’s all very well, Professor Hayek, but don’t you believe it is possible to have an egalitarian society.”

“Oh yes, “ replied Hayek, “you can have an egalitarian society – but only at the lowest possible level.”

Good point from a reader:

Jonah, It seem somebody, liberals presumably, is re-writing the guidelines about the sanctity of marriage. On one hand, they're claiming that a man and a woman who shack up together can live just as securely, and raise children just as well, as a married couple, and therefore they should not be looked down upon because they're sharing a bed without a pair of wedding rings. On the other hand, the liberals claim that a marriage between a man and a man, and a woman and a woman, is a sign that gays are committed to a stable, monogomous relationships, and hence can become part of the American family. "It's a beautiful thing," they say. So...which is it? Is marriage an archaic tradition whose time has passed only when a man and woman want to skip the altar and hit the sack? Or is it a "beautiful thing" only when it helps legitamize a man shacking up with a man and making booty-call sound less Sodom- and Gomorrah-like?

This guy hits all the right buttons:

Mr.Goldberg,

A few months ago, you floated the idea of making an anti-communist alarm clock along the lines of the Batman & Robin alarm clock from your youth (that alarm clock was a few years before my time.) I suggested that one could wake up to a song called Alger Hiss Was Guilty, sung to the tune of "You Don't Win Friends With Salad." [A taunting tune sung by Homer and the rest of the Simpsons to tease Lisa for her vegetarianism] I thought you might like to know that the song works with the Rosenbergs as well. "The Rosenbergs Were Guilty, The Rosenbergs Were Guilty etc..."

Regards,

[Name withheld]

P.S.

If the donation drive is still running next week (a pay week for me,) count on my contribution. I have a dentist bill to pay this week.

As you may have noticed, Rich has been a bit absent lately because he's crashing on his book. I thought only we at NRO were mad at him. But apparently he's been neglecting his cat too, judging by the look on its face.

You may have noticed, I've stayed out of much of the Corner badinage over the issue of gay marriage. I am sympathetic to all -- or almost all -- of the arguments made by Frum, Kurtz, Derbyshire and others. I’m also sympathetic to Stuttaford (and Andrew Sullivan). On the one hand, I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility that if we legalized gay marriage it would turn out to be an unmitigated disaster. Of course, as with so many cultural disasters, the odds are it would unfold so slowly few people would recognize its causes. We'd probably just redefine disaster as another form of success as we do so often when the culture goes to hell.

But I guess the only question I have for the conservative opponents of gay marriage -- and I count myself among them, I suppose -- is: What do they propose to do about gays? Let's assume gays aren’t going anywhere. Let's assume that whether it's nurture or nature or both, there's nothing we could do culturally or medically or otherwise to change the fact that out-of-the-closet-gays are a permanent fixture of human reality for centuries to come. What then do they propose? If their answer to the permanence of homosexuality is "nothing," that's certainly ideologically defensible. Inactivism should always be the first instinct of the conservative.

But if we take Stanley at his word that homosexual promiscuity is as bad as he seems to think it is, what cultural signals should we send to discourage it? After all such promiscuity is bad for the unmarried too, right? Certainly encouraging gays to enter stable relationships would curb such behavior. As a matter of politics – cultural and democratic – it just strikes me as impractical not to have an alternative social institution on offer for gays if, as a society, we are going to deny them access to the institution of marriage. If marriage is off-limits, is it such a horrendous compromise to change the laws so as to allow gays to share assets and entitlements with their partners? What is wrong with permitting private contracts to deal with such things as visitation rights to hospitals and all of the other “rights” currently denied to couples who cannot marry? Yes, I think government should give social space to the institution of marriage, but why should government forbid private contracts between private citizens. If a single man wants to designate another man who is not a blood relative as the beneficiary of his social security death benefits why should the government stand in the way?

In short, while I’m tempermentally sympathetic to “do nothing” proposals, this seems like one of those cases where you can’t beat something with nothing. I’ve come out in favor of civil unions of one kind or another, not because I’m excited about it, but because I don’t see how there’s any other option in the long run.

To: klopez@nationalreview.com

Subject: Renewed and gave a gift. And if you keep it up, I guess I will have to donate again.

Thanks Carl

The Prowler reports that Hillary's Senate office is requiring -- "encouraging" -- groups to buy her book in bulk if they want her to speak at their events.

It should be no shocker that I agree totally with Roger about the Rosenbergs. But Roger, you might have missed this piece in last Sunday's NYT Week in Review section where the paper lets the Rosenberg's kids make the most sympathetic case for their parents. If memory serves this is not the first time the Times has played this game. They also did a fawning profile of Alger Hiss' son. The technique is very clever because it allows the author to be more sympathetic to traitors out of deference to their children and the reader goes along with it.

Japan has been mired in a deflationary depression for 10 years, and has been priming the pump furiously, to no obvious effect.

The Keynesian National Recovery Act and other New Deal legislation did little or nothing to end the Great Depression, and may have prolonged it. What the WPA and the like did accomplish was charitable (it put people to work and thereby kept them from hunger) and psychological (it told people someone was doing something for them, and thereby kept political stability). But the New Deal did not bring economic recovery. What finally brought about a solid and sustained economic recovery in the 1950s was the revival of global trade after WWII.

If you buy into the basic assumptions of monetarist and/or supply-side economics, you can't also buy into Keynesian economics. They are mutually exclusive. Monetarists believe that inflation and deflation are purely monetary phenomena. Supply-siders think what drives growth in the long term is the marginal return on invested capital. Keynesians think that what drives both inflation and growth is “aggregate demand” which they think the government can manipulate through deficit spending and/or running a surplus. If growth is low and inflation low, a Keynesian would say that government should spend more to increase aggregate demand. A supply-sider would say that this will actually decrease growth because the increased spending will require raises in taxes or in borrowing (which implies hikes in future taxes, which would be discounted back to the present by the market), which in turn would reduce the marginal return on invested capital. And further, a supply-sider would say, this deficit spending would increase inflation because, by reducing returns on investment, it would encourage consumption over investment. With an uptick in inflation and a drop in real growth, you could get a rise in nominal growth, which would look like a recovery to debtors and other folks at the bottom of the economic barrel, but for the economy as a whole you'd have a net loss.

Of course, you can also not buy into ANY economic theory, and simply conclude that economics is a branch of psychology, and therefore whatever works works. This was basically the Clinton/Rubin economic stance: don't worry about the theory, just do what the markets seem to want and all will be well. That works fine until the market decides that you really have figured out how to ensure permanent low-inflation growth, at which point you'll have a speculative blow-off and a deflationary crash. Which is what just happened to us. This is the Austrian “malinvestment” thesis of where depressions come from--the market periodically “overinvests” after which there's a deflationary recession to work off the excess capacity thus created - and the standard critique from economists is that it isn't an economic theory (why should the market “overinvest” sometimes but not other times?) but a psychological one. Which is true. But that doesn't disprove the theory.

Kathryn, If you were keeping this drive going until you got me to sign up, then it worked. As a university professor who is late on a book deadline, but can't bear the thought of not reading every word on NRO and in the Corner, you think I'd exhibit better judgement than adding to my required reading. I hope you're proud of yourself. Rich Erickson

Yes, it's a metaphor. This has been my term of choice for people -- like Krugman -- who get hysterical about stuff they imagine to be a big deal rather than stuff that is actually a big deal. In fact, whenever my daughter is in her crib and pulls the bottom of her outfit over her head, my wife and I say "she's pulling a Krugman."

Derb -- Yes, I agree. In the race to discuss the gay angle I think both of us cut some corners. I agree that Keynesianism isn't as awful as conservatives (including myself in those posts) sometimes make it sound. And, I should have been more clear about Hayek. The Road to Serfdom wasn't an explicitly anti-Keynesian treatise. But, Keynes and Hayek were legendary mortal intellectual enemies in 1930s Britain (though they were quite friendly socially). It was Hayek's "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money," written in 1936 which was the real -- and winning -- anti-Keynesian broadside, not the Road to Serfdom. My point about the RtS was that it was a foundational book of the modern right and its author was opposed to Keynes for reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with who could quote Oscar Wilde verbatim. Indeed, all of this underscores the point that Krugman, once again, has his dress over his head about a completely made-up issue.

UPDATE: See post above: "I'M AN IDIOT"

KLo,

Haven't checked the Corner for a few days, and just got done reading three days worth of blegging. Then, to top it off, I read Jonah's opening day bleg, and am still wiping away the tears.

As an NRO freeloader for the past year, founder of the Flying Monkeys chapter at work, and a Corner addict, I am proud to say that I can add to the list NRODT-subscriber . I have a few demands, however:

1) The institution of an intermittent "culture column" by Jonah's couch.
2) A 1:1 posting parity of Star Trek blurbs for every mention of the NY Yankees in the Corner.
3) The diversion of some fraction of my subscription fee towards an "on location" series of columns on beach erosion in the Bahamas by the Derb. I'm sure that he can come up with an appropriate equation to determine his cut...

Brad Sweet Washington, DC

The problem with Mr. Levin pointing a finger of accusation at the Bush administration is that he's also pointing three fingers at himself. You see, Mr. Levin also serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and has for some time. Presumably, he knows something about Iraq's weapons programs. So, when he repeatedly insisted that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, was he "shading intelligence information" or did he "exaggerate or overstate . . . intelligence information?"