I have written a fair amount about Fidel Castro, over the years, and a fair amount about Jimmy Carter, too. Perhaps readers are sick of hearing about those men. Sometimes I get sick of writing about them. But let me do so here, briefly: for the two men have come together, again. In recent days, Carter has told the press, “I think Fidel is staying as aloof as he possibly can.” Yet he also “reserves the right to come forward on a particular occasion when he feels his voice might be helpful in clarifying an issue.” (Full article here.) Is that the way a democrat talks about an absolute dictator? Is that the way a man of God, or of humanism, talks about a torturer and murderer? Is that the way a former American president talks about a man who seized power by force, and maintains it by force? Yes, it is. And that is sickening. ‐Years ago, Carter was mighty upset — visibly, publicly upset — when Violeta Chamorro beat Daniel Ortega in an election. This result was somehow not permitted. Carter tried to get Chamorro to share power with Ortega and the Sandinistas. Jeane Kirkpatrick remarked to me, “You would have thought a democrat would be happy.” Yes, you would have. ‐One amazing thing about Senator Specter’s switch of parties was the brazenness of it. Just days before his switch, he said he would not leave the Republican party and why: checks and balances, blah, blah, blah. Really, really strong statements — no wiggle room; no “Well, maybe . . .” And then he says, in effect, “Never mind. Disregard that previous talk.” I’m not sure that a normal person could do this. A normal person could not tolerate — the sheer dislocation. But, as has been observed before, politics may not be for normal people. One more thought: Is it absolutely necessary that Specter serve in the Senate forever? Or that Bob Byrd do? Don’t these people have grandchildren or hobbies or something? Beware the politician who needs the office. And I like something that Phil Gramm said to me, as he left the Senate “As my grandmama used to say, ‘The graveyard is full of indispensable men.’” ‐I want to examine something that appeared in an Associated Press report, here. We read, “Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, is a world-renowned Mideast peacemaker, while Netanyahu has a hawkish reputation.” 1) Peres is a renowned peacemaker, is he? Okay: What peace has he made? Ms. AP Reporter, please tell me what peace he has made. People in the Middle East will be curious to know, too. 2) Sometimes the hawks are in the best position to make peace — see Menachem Begin. 3) Peres and Rabin shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Yasser Arafat — lest one has forgotten. Okay, I think three’s enough points for now. ‐It had been many years since I saw a Paul Krugman column, but I was coming home from Europe, and swiped an International Herald Tribune from a cart. (This was on an airplane; the papers were free. I was not stealing.) There was a Krugman column in that edition. I read,

. . . Republicans have become embarrassing to watch. And it doesn’t feel right to make fun of crazy people. Better, perhaps, to focus on the real policy debates, which are all among Democrats.
But here’s the thing: the G.O.P. looked as crazy 10 or 15 years ago as it does now. That didn’t stop Republicans from taking control of both Congress and the White House. And they could return to power if the Democrats stumble.

I stopped reading there. I heard better insults on the playground at Pattengill Elementary School — less childish ones, too. And I had a memory: Andrew Rosenthal, head of the Times’s op-ed page, said, “The problem with conservative columnists is that many of them lie in print.” Clearly, he prefers a much classier brand of columnist. And, by the way: What if a right-of-center Times columnist referred to Democrats casually as “crazy”? (To see the Krugman column in question, go here.) ‐One columnist who would never, ever be accepted by the New York Times is Thomas Sowell: What a great writer, thinker, and man. His column of April 28 is a particularly good specimen. I’d like to draw attention to just a few sentences from it: “Bending over backward is a very bad position from which to try to defend yourself.” “President Obama can ban the phrase ‘war on terror,’ but he cannot ban the terrorists’ war on us.” And this:

Those who choose to live outside [proper] laws, whether terrorists or pirates, can be — and have been — shot on sight. Squeamishness is neither law nor morality. And moral exhibitionism is beneath contempt, when it sacrifices the safety of those who live within the law for the sake of self-satisfied preening, whether in editorial offices or in the White House.

As they say, read the whole thing. ‐Has Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali ever been your hero? He has never been mine. But I think I’m having a change of heart. You know the expression “to speak truth to power”? Boutrous-Ghali has spoken truth to lunacy — on al-Jazeera. MEMRI has the clip, here. And here is what transpired:

Interviewer: Dr. Ghali, don’t you live in Egypt?
Boutrous-Ghali: Yes, I do.
Interviewer: Don’t you see all the problems?
Boutrous-Ghali: These problems exist all over the world, not only in Egypt.
Interviewer: All over the world?
Boutrous-Ghali: Yes.
Interviewer: Something like the al-Ahram strike takes place all over the world?
Boutrous-Ghali: Yes, there are daily strikes throughout the world.
Interviewer: Things are different now. This is the first time in the history of Egypt that every day, we see new sectors of Egyptian society striking, because of the severe problems they face.
Boutrous-Ghali: All of this is because of the Camp David Accords?
Interviewer: Of course.
Boutrous-Ghali: Come on, man . . .
Interviewer: It was Camp David that brought all this.
Boutrous-Ghali: You remind me of the times when everything was attributed to colonialism. . . .
Interviewer: How do you view the peace accord 30 years later?
Boutrous-Ghali: I swear that just like the Saudi caller just said, this was the greatest triumph for Egyptian diplomacy. . . . Why are you smiling? I guess you are not convinced.
Interviewer: Thank you. I always look forward to interviewing you.
Boutrous-Ghali: Thank you.
Interviewer: Thank you too.

Two lines I will always clutch to my heart: “Come on, man” — you can say that to a million Arab conspiracy theories. And, “You remind me of the times when everything was attributed to colonialism.” I have never been a Boutrous-Ghali fan. But, for those lines, I’ll love him — certainly respect him — forever. ‐Unquestionably a great man is Jianli Yang, the Chinese dissident, former political prisoner, Tiananmen Square hero, intellectual, etc. I have written about him many times, on NRO and in NR. (For example, see this piece.) Yang works tirelessly, always thinking: and he has an impressive new paper on Tibet and the Tibetan democratic struggle. You may see this paper here. One of his main ideas: Tibetan democrats and Chinese democrats should really work together, their struggle being, essentially, one. ‐You may have heard about Ed Koch’s tombstone — the tombstone he has selected. He has had inscribed the words Daniel Pearl was made to say: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.” But then Koch goes on to say, on that tombstone, “Daniel Pearl, 2002, just before he was beheaded by a Muslim terrorist.” Geez. He did not have to say “Muslim terrorist,” whatever the facts. Pretty ballsy, I’d say. The mayor is something. (You can view the tombstone at this link.) ‐It is a curious, painful subject: the romance of the Left in free countries with tyrants of virtually every stripe. I have banged on about this subject quite a lot: especially where Cuba is concerned. And, increasingly, where radical Islam, or Islamofascism, is concerned. David Horowitz had an early book: Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. The book had a hot, hot cover: showing a hand lighting a fuse. The book itself was cool, calm, and collected — marshaling fact after fact, argument after argument, making a case. (I reviewed the book, and that review is here.) Now Jamie Glazov has written United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror. Tough title, huh? Tough case to make? Would that it were tougher . . . Glazov is managing editor of FrontPage Magazine, a publication of which Horowitz is editor. Glazov was born in the Soviet Union, the son of dissidents. He has no illusion whatever about tyranny and its abettors. You may remember when London had a big anti-war march — a march against the Iraq War, and, I believe, the War on Terror generally. Militant lesbian groups marched side by side with Islamist groups. Mark Steyn commented that the lesbians either did not know or did not care that, if the Islamists had power, they, the lesbians, might not fare so well. Cynthia McKinney, the former congresswoman from Georgia, is a good example of the American left-wing political activist. She showed up on al-Jazeera in a head scarf, wanting to show her solidarity. But surely an American leftist has no truck with radical Muslims — given their views on homosexuals, the role of women, etc. Right? Well . . . Let’s just say the world is a funny place. Think of Afghanistan under the Taliban and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Two more brutal tyrannies would be hard to imagine. In Afghanistan, they killed homosexuals in a pretty interesting way: It involved a trench, a stone wall, and a bulldozer. In Iraq, rape was routinely a weapon of coercion. Plus, they cut out tongues for dissent. Plus, they put men into industrial shredders, feet first, so that torturers could hear the screams. Etc., etc. Did the Left applaud the overthrow of these two regimes? Even if people thought that these wars were strategically wrong — could they at least express appreciation for the removal of those tyrannies? Oh, no. As I said, in more exasperated moments, there are people who would rather an Afghan homosexual be crushed to death than that he suffer the ignominy of being liberated by George W. Bush and the U.S. military. Anyway, I have Jamie Glazov’s book on my desk, and will crack it soon. On the cover, David Frum says, “Ferocious.” Good. ‐I’m not sure I’ll ever get the chance to question President Obama. But if I had such a chance today, here are some things I’d like to ask: Your daughters attend Sidwell Friends. Under the D.C. school-choice program, two ordinary kids have been attending Sidwell, too. You and the Democrats are killing the program. The kids’ mother is heartsick that they will have to return to the public schools: almost certainly violent and inept. Do you feel any pang whatsoever? How do you justify your hostility to school choice? You told the Iranian government that you want a relationship “based on mutual respect.” What about the Iranian government do you respect? When you grip-and-grin with tyrants, do you think of the effect on their democratic opposition, including their prisoners? Or is that Bush-thought to be discarded in the new era? What do you think of the Bay of Pigs? A noble cause, no matter what the execution? An ignoble cause? How about Vietnam? Anyway . . . ‐I read this in a golf article: “Because two international players have decided not to play, Klauk has earned the final spot in the field next week . . .” International players? Really? Meaning, players from Trieste, or players with dual or multiple citizenships? Nope: The writer means “foreign players,” of course. Only, the word “foreign,” in this odd new era, has been banned, effectively. (Remember when Ted Turner did that at CNN?) When Americans play in Europe, or elsewhere abroad: Are they “international players”? Does language mean anything? Political correctness has done a lot of harm, not least in its corruption of English. ‐Roger Kimball once said that Walter Bagehot’s reputation suffered because people were unsure how to pronounce his name. That made them hesitate to ask about him in libraries and bookstores, to recommend him to friends, and so on. I feel the same way about Leonardo Sciascia, the Sicilian writer: Outside of Italy, people really don’t know how to say his name. In my neighborhood, a new little Italian place has opened up: “Noi Due.” That means “We Two,” or “Us Two.” And I think these people have made a big mistake, commercially: because no one knows how to pronounce the name of the restaurant. It will make them shy about recommending it, etc. Then again, what do I know? I’ve never done anything commercial or entrepreneurial — and that includes a boyhood lemonade stand. On such matters, I might should remain silent. (That locution is in tribute to certain regions of our country.) ‐Donizetti wrote an opera called The Elixir of Love. In it, “Dr.” Dulcamara, an eloquent con man, sells potions to hicks. These include a love potion — and that is “the elixir of love.” People have loved this opera, and laughed at its characters, for generations. Flash forward to the other week. I’m in line at a store, and, at the checkout, there is this potion, of a sort: It claims to de-wrinkle clothes without benefit of an iron. You spray it on and, with a little fiddling, you have no wrinkles. Boy, I thought: What a fabulous idea. I could really use this stuff, especially with the travel I do. I get it home, test it out, and — what an idiot I was, to have bought that liquid. It can no more de-wrinkle clothes than I can fly. And why should it? What possibly could I have been thinking? There’s one born every minute, I guess. But I thought, in this day and age, with all the regulation and lawsuits and so on . . . Anyway, teaches me to laugh at rustics in operas, or anywhere else. See you!

#JAYBOOK#