Happiness is a new National Review, with, not one, but two Mark Steyn pieces in it — you can see the new issue in digital form here. There is Mark’s backpage column, Happy Warrior, and also an essay called “Prime Minister Obama: Will European statism supplant the American Way?” (Er, looks like it.)
I would like to make a tiny comment on the essay — tiny but fun. Mark says, “What do Europeans do with all that time?” (Time freed up by short work weeks and so on.) “Do they paint, write, make movies? Not so’s you’d notice. Not compared with 40 years ago. Never mind Bach or even Offenbach, these days the French can’t produce a Sacha Distel or the Germans a Bert Kaempfert . . .”
Here’s my tiny comment: Shostakovich was one of the great lovers of music of all time — not just a contributor to it (and a full-out genius), but an absolute lover. He loved every type of music, couldn’t get enough of it. And his standard line was, “I love all of music from Bach to Offenbach.”
My own contribution to the new NR is an interview with John Negroponte, former director of national intelligence, former ambassador in Iraq, former a lot of things. And I will have a longish NRO series on him, using our complete interview, in due course. Let me tell you what he said about Iran and nukes — sobering words, given what the man must know:
“I think that’s what they want, I think that’s what they’re headed towards, I think that’s what they’re going to get.”
Shortly after Negroponte became DNI in 2005, his office estimated that Iran would have a nuclear weapon sometime between 2010 and 2015. “I don’t believe that that assessment has essentially changed,” he says.
But don’t we have the means to stop the Iranians? Negroponte: “I think we can delay them through sanctions, through import restrictions, through working with other countries. But definitively stop them? Even if you used coercive means, I think it would be quite difficult by now.”
Anyway, you can get your new issue right here. And there is more than Steyn, Negroponte, and Armageddon in it. For instance, you got, not one, but two pieces by Rob Long. Who says life in Obama’s America ain’t good?