Dear Jolters,
Yours Truly is far more simple-minded than most if not all of my colleagues — heck, after three-plus decades I am still puzzled as to how I was ever let through the doors of National Review. (Explanation: Someone goofed!) Anyway, maybe that’s why I find the politics of the last week, and the forthcoming one, to be simple: It’s a bar fight.
And it is. Like the scene in Shane, when the out-manned Alan Ladd and Van Heflin take on the Ryker gang, not wanting to fight, but knowing they had no choice but to put their dukes up, and ditch the Marquis of Queensbury Rules (à la Heflin pushing through the swinging doors with an ax handle, which he employs swiftly, brutally, effectively). The instigators have a code of ethics and honors (well, not really — it’s more like a manual that Alinksy wrote) that doesn’t jibe with mom and apple pie. They play unfair (an understatement!) and for keeps. No quarter is given.
What’s a Conservative Movement to do? You didn’t ask for the fight, and you don’t want the fight, but do you stand there and clutch at pearls while you get the tar kicked out of you?
Whether you’d have preferred a pie fight, the fact is it’s a nasty, furniture-busting barroom brawl. So let’s admit what is happening, grab a bar stool, and swing it at the guy who is about to christen your skull with a bottle of scotch.
If you are looking for a call to arms (I’ll repeat it again below), my colleague Andy McCarthy pens an exceptional piece that is of sharp perspective and unvarnished clarity.
Now, I have a theory to share, but will do that in the P.S. And all that having been blathered, let us get on with the Jolt!
Editorial
1. This was a contrived eleventh-hour ambush of the Kavanaugh nomination. From our editorial:
The hearing will probably degenerate into a political circus, given the theatrics at the first round of hearings even before a charge of sexual assault was on the table. The Democrats have conducted themselves disgracefully throughout this process, with their handling of this charge a new low and new depths sure to follow. But a public airing was unavoidable, certainly once both Kavanaugh and his accuser said they were willing to testify. We hope Republicans don’t blink from asking Ford tough questions about her account, even though such due diligence will be portrayed as rank sexism by Democrats and the media.
Absent any compelling new evidence that backs up the charge, we continue to strongly support Kavanaugh’s confirmation. We believe he’d make an excellent justice. In such a case, when emotions are high, a healthy republic should hew to basic principles of fairness. A good man and deserving judge should not be barred from the high court because of an unproven and almost certainly unprovable accusation of wrongdoing.
2. Enough delays for specious reasons. If the accuser won’t testify, the Judiciary Committee must vote. From our editorial:
It is worth remembering that Ford brought her allegation to the attention of the Washington Post and Feinstein in July, and retained a lawyer weeks ago. While neither the Post, nor Feinstein, nor Katz has uncovered serious corroborating evidence, the discrepancies in her account of the assault continue to add up: The latest is that Patrick Smyth, who Ford says was at the party in question, denies ever being there.
In any case, a hearing before the Judiciary Committee would be an appropriate way for the Senate to gauge the accuracy of this accusation. Just as evidence supporting Kavanaugh’s denial has been brought to the committee via letters from Smyth and Mark Judge, Ford could marshal evidence in her own behalf in testimony. Instead, her attorney and the Democrats appear to have coalesced around the unprecedented demand of an unbounded investigation by an agency that has no business investigating allegations like this one. If Ford continues to decline to testify, then Republicans should move ahead with the confirmation vote. An unanswered invitation is no reason to bring the nation’s affairs to a halt.
A Dozen and Then Some Pieces of Brilliance, Many Brimming with Anger so Righteous the Bejeepers and Maybe Even the Bejeebers Might Be Scared Out of You
1. Andy McCarthy calls out the 800-pound gorilla. It’s a set-up. From his piece:
Well, whaddaya know: Late last night, the partisan Democratic attorneys retained by the putative victim, Christine Blasey Ford, delivered a letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the Judiciary Committee chairman, contending that before any hearing at which she is summoned to testify takes place, there must be a “full investigation by law enforcement officials [to] ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a non-partisan manner.”
My personal favorite part of the missive is the lawyers’ complaint that, based on published reports, it seems that some of the senators have already “made up their minds” about Professor Ford’s story. This takes some gumption, coming from Democratic activists who are working in tandem with Democratic senators who decided to vote against Judge Kavanaugh long before the hearing started. The lawyers utter this tripe while in the middle of a transparent gambit to block the nomination by delaying it interminably — or at least until after the November election.
What a crock.
2. More Andy: Our ace on this matter gives a thorough history lesson on the Democrats’ politicizing of the SCOTUS-nominee process (exclusively for GOP nominees!). From his savaging:
Justices Ginsburg and Breyer were well qualified. But, of course, so had been Bork and Thomas. Because they were Democrats, however, Ginsburg and Breyer sailed through. The two things Democrats and Republicans have in common are 1) abiding respect for the personal integrity and legal acumen of Democratic judicial nominees and 2) effective acceptance of the Democrats’ claimed prerogative to “Bork” any Republican court nominee, no matter how impeccably credentialed, no matter their obvious integrity.
Republicans have defeated Democratic nominees, but they never Bork them. They never demagogue Democratic nominees as sex offenders, racists, or homophobes. There are no “Spartacus” moments.
Even when Republicans are put off by a Democratic nominee’s progressive activism, they seem apologetic, quick to concede that the progressive in question adheres to a mainstream constitutional philosophy — one that is championed by leading American law schools and bar associations because it effectively rewrites the Constitution to promote progressive pieties. Old GOP hands then typically vote “aye” while mumbling something about bipartisanship and some “presumption” that the president is entitled to have his nominees confirmed (a grant of deference that Democrats do not reciprocate, and that actually applies only to offices in the executive branch that exercise the president’s own power, not to slots in the independent judicial branch).
Even in 2016, when Republicans blocked Merrick Garland, President Obama’s late-term gambit to fill the vacancy created by the titanic Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, there was no besmirching of Judge Garland’s character. It was pure political calculation and exactly what Democrats would have done if roles had been reversed (minus the character assassination).
3. Jonah Goldberg congratulates Diane Feinstein for making our politics even uglier.
4. And Michael Swartz calls for to be censured. From his piece:
In substance, she “deliberately misled and deceived” her fellow senators, with the “effect of impeding discovery of evidence” relevant to the performance of their constitutional duties. No one should know better than Feinstein herself that such deceptive and obstructive conduct, widely regarded as “unacceptable,” “fully deserves censure,” so that “future generations of Americans . . . know that such behavior is not only unacceptable but also bears grave consequences,” bringing “shame and dishonor” to the person guilty of it and to the office that person holds, who has “violated the trust of the American people.” These quoted words all come from the resolution of censure Feinstein herself introduced concerning President Bill Clinton’s behavior in connection with his sex scandal. She can hardly be heard to complain if she is held to the same standard.
Comparison with other past censure cases only makes Feinstein’s situation look worse. The last three senators censured, Thomas Dodd, Herman Talmadge, and Dave Durenberger, were all condemned for financial hanky-panky: converting campaign contributions to personal use and the like. They were all found to have brought the Senate into “dishonor and disrepute” even though nothing they had done implicated the Senate’s performance of its constitutional duties. Feinstein, in sharpest contrast, sought to keep her committee from timely and properly investigating an apparently serious charge of misconduct, and is still doing so, even in the face of criticism from all (or most) quarters.
5. Dan McLaughlin looks into all the legal nooks and crannies of the accusation and the accuser, and find credibility favors Kavanaugh. It’s thorough and detailed. And here is how it ends:
For my part, I think the Judiciary Committee should go forward on Monday and let Kavanaugh testify, even if he’s the only witness; his good name has been placed in the crosshairs, he’s the nominee, and he should have the opportunity to defend himself before the world. Even as a matter of pure politics, it would benefit Senate Republicans to do that to clear the air. If Blasey Ford testifies as well, the Judiciary Committee would be well within its rights to probe the many reasons for questioning the credibility of her story, and the Senate will be entirely justified in confirming Brett Kavanaugh if they end up hearing nothing more than we have seen so far. And if Christine Blasey Ford refuses to show up for the hearing and stands only on statements that aren’t under oath or to federal investigators, that would, and should, be the last straw.
6. Victor Davis Hanson smacks a two-by-four upside the thick skull of Democratic progressivism, which is proving a descent into madness. From his piece:
The new heartthrob of the Democratic party, socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Westchester County resident, promises that a new generation of socialists such as herself will take the party hard leftward to perpetual electoral dominance. And to prove the growing popularity of redistributive socialism, she just posed with a hardhat construction worker in a chic $3,505 outfit: a Gabriela Hearst “Angela” double-breasted wool-blend blazer ($1,990), Gabriela Hearst pants ($890), and some Monolo Blahnik shoes ($625). A socialist might wonder how many needy children could have been clothed with adequate Walmart ware for $3,505 — 40, 50, or more? Not since the disclosure of Bernie Sanders’s three homes, or Elizabeth Warren’s past real-estate success in flipping houses (“you can make big money buying houses and flipping them quickly”) have we been so personally enlightened about the Animal Farm two-legs-for-us/four-legs-for-them rules of the new Democratic socialism.
Finally, Occasio-Cortez herself is in some jeopardy of being upstaged by yet another young, zealous, female identity-politics socialist: Julia Salazar, candidate for the state legislature in New York. Oddly, almost everything that Salazar has said to enhance her progressive credentials is untrue — and untrue in a blatant Elizabeth Warren, Ward Churchill, and Rachel Dolezel identity-fraud way. Salazar is not an immigrant; she did not grow up impoverished; she is not part Jewish; and she did not graduate from Columbia University.
All that we can say about this new progressivism is the same as what we can say about the cult of sanctuary cities, ensuring universal Medicare for all, and the idea of abolishing ICE: It operates outside the realm of reason and truth as it descends into collective madness.
7. Michelle Malkin, adept at taking no prisoners, continues to keep the jails empty. She has a thing or two to say about dudes gushing over “Believe Women.” From her new column:
I have a message for virtue-signaling men who’ve rushed to embrace Me Too operatives hurling uncorroborated sexual-assault allegations into the chaotic court of public opinion.
Stuff it.
Your blanket “Believe Women” bloviations are moral and intellectual abominations that insult every human being of sound mind and soul.
8. Judge Kavanaugh . . . There’s a Mr. Kafka on Line One. El Jefe Rich Lowry reacts to the accusations. From his column:
If someone is capable of such a thing, even as a teenager, it is a black mark against his character. And character is usually destiny. It is no accident that the men taken down by #MeToo are invariably repeat offenders.
Not only is there no other allegation against Kavanaugh, the assault charge runs against everything we know about his personal and professional life, as attested by everyone who has known him. His exemplary reputation, earned over the course of decades and a matter of public record, should outweigh a charge that is unproven and, as far we know, unprovable.
The confirmation process for the Supreme Court has long been badly broken, a forum for sheer blood sport. If, based on what we know now, this accusation keeps Kavanaugh from the Court, it will be a new low. The Senate will have embraced a new world where the existence of an allegation, regardless of whether it can be proven, is enough to stop a nominee and destroy his good name.
9. Armond White hands down a death sentence for Assassination Nation. From his review:
Fans of dystopian junk like Get Out and BlacKkKlansman will fall for anything, but they shouldn’t get their hopes up for Assassination Nation. Levinson’s sexual and generational politics are so shallow that he betrays their own trendy self-righteousness. I suppose we’re fortunate that, during this era of media and government witch-hunting, another dumb filmmaker from the Sundance-Hollywood cabal cannot get his political biases to line up cogently. Levinson so miscalculates this Salem-witch-trial parody that he eventually overshoots what should be its obvious point.
In a truly clever, maybe even cautionary, satire, Lily and her band of avenging tarts would represent Clinton, Pelosi, Warren, and Feinstein — the obsessed, politically treacherous ladies we’re witnessing right now. Such a movie might shine a light on the self-pity that leads Clinton to take a loss of political power as a personal wound and to project blame on foreign hackers, all while she advocates revolution and eventual political ruination. (Some form of assassination seems to be the obsession of #Resistance members’ distorted imaginations. Without political power, they feel exposed and terrified and become vicious, as if they are meant to permanently run our country and our culture.) In the brilliant, devastatingly funny Mom and Dad, Brian Taylor got to the heart of our culture’s self-destructive bent. Even Taylor’s simple evocative title outclasses Assassination Nation and its foolish, chaotic blatancy.
10. The drive to sanctify Transgender Orthodoxy — and to shut up all non-genuflectors — is getting a big boost from pediatrician groups. Maddie Kearns hits both sides of the Atlantic to get the very big story. From it:
In the same week that the U.K.’s “equalities minister” launched an inquiry into why there has been a 4,000 percent increase in girls seeking gender reassignment in the past ten years (from 40 in 2009–10 to 1,806 in 2017–18), the American Academy of Pediatrics released its official policy statement on how to ensure “comprehensive care and support for transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents.”
All of this relates to a global child-welfare battle that is being fought in schools and surgeries across the English-speaking world. One of the most successful tactics used by the activists is to pathologize the debate; only “transphobes” question ostensibly pro-trans assumptions.
But whichever side of the transgender debate one falls on — from within the medical community — the following questions ought to be raised in relation to the AAP’s recent statement: (1) To what extent did activists and interested third parties influence this policy? (2) To what extent was the AAP able to hear from all stakeholders? (Especially parents who feel unable to speak up publicly due to concern for their relationship with their child, and professionals who fear animosity from an activist trans community.) And, related, (3) Is this official policy likely to be helpful or harmful to children?
11. The truly great D.J. Jaffe discusses the impressive results of state laws that permit mandated treatment of the most seriously mentally ill. From his report:
Assisted outpatient treatment is the practice of delivering outpatient treatment under court order to a small, highly targeted population: adults with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who meet specific criteria, such as repeated past hospitalizations, violence, or arrests due to their failure to comply with treatment. AOT allows judges to require these individuals to stay in closely monitored treatment for up to a year, while they continue to live in the community.
Mandated and monitored treatment has been a huge success. Studies in New York, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Arizona, and Iowa show that AOT increased treatment compliance or lowered the number of days spent homeless or hospitalized or incarcerated in the 70 percent range, an outstanding result since only the most seriously mentally ill are eligible.
12. Who’d a thunk it: California civil-rights groups are suing the tree-huggers and wind lovers. Robert Bryce reports on this battle between Strange New Enemies. From his piece:
The land-use problem facing Big Wind in California is the same throughout the rest of the U.S. and Europe: People in cities like the idea of wind turbines. People in rural areas increasingly don’t want anything to do with them. Those rural landowners don’t want to see the red blinking lights atop those massive turbines, all night, every night, for the rest of their lives. Nor do they want to be subjected to the harmful noise — both audible and inaudible — that they produce.
Even before SB 100 passed, though, California’s leaders were already facing a legal backlash from minority leaders over the high cost of the state’s climate policies. On April 27, The Two Hundred, a coalition of civil-rights leaders, filed a lawsuit in state court against the California Air Resources Board, seeking an injunction against some of the state’s carbon dioxide–reduction rules. The 102-page lawsuit declares that California’s “reputation as a global climate leader is built on the state’s dual claims of substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously enjoying a thriving economy. Neither claim is true.”
The gist of the lawsuit is this: California’s high housing, transportation, and energy costs are discriminatory because they are a regressive tax on the poor. The suit claims that the state’s climate laws violate the Fair Employment and Housing Act because CARB’s new greenhouse-gas-emissions rules on housing units in the state “have a disparate negative impact on minority communities and are discriminatory against minority communities and their members.” The suit also claims the state’s climate laws are illegal under the Federal Housing Act, again because their effect is felt predominantly by minority communities. It also makes a constitutional claim that minorities are being denied equal protection under the law because California’s climate regulations are making affordable housing unavailable to them.
13. Michael Knox Beran laments the supplanting of the philosopher and poet by the techie and financier. From his essay:
Four centuries ago Francis Bacon predicted that the “knowledge which we now possess will not teach a man even what to wish.” Crack the algorithms of nature, Bacon believed, and human beings could liberate themselves through technology. He went so far as to suggest that they could repair the damage of the Fall and restore a lost paradise.
Today’s elites are in thrall to messianic Baconism. Jeff Bezos speaks of the “beginning of a Golden Age.” Mark Zuckerberg prophesies a new world of meaning and purpose, to be contrived by ever-more-poignant algorithms. The drudgery of uncongenial labor will be eliminated as robots take over the more irksome tasks of life. In the ensuing embarrassment of riches, every citizen will enjoy a guaranteed income paid out of the treasury of the state. In place of dead-end jobs, we will have not only new virtual communities, but new synthetic realities, to which we will turn with relief from the dreariness of our actual ones. Mortality itself will yield to the wizard’s wand, or so investors in Calico, the California Life Company, foresee.
Which translated means: The dream that animates Silicon Valley and Wall Street — the world of applied science and the capital that underwrites it — is now as revolutionary in its aspirations as the dreams that inspired the Enlightenment philosophes of the 18th century and the Bolshevik and Maoist iconoclasts of the 20th. It is where the action is: It is supplying the madder music, the stronger wine, that were once the property of the old utopian creeds. And it is monopolizing the talent of the nation.
14. The uber-great Lee Edwards scores Elizabeth Warren’s “Accountable Capitalism Act” as being socialist and unconstitutional dreck. From his analysis:
ACA is not a small or even a giant step toward socialism. It is socialism. Senator Warren’s legislation is the most radical congressional proposal since the National Recovery Administration Act of 1933, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court just two years later.
Let us begin with a simple question: What if all the stakeholders disagree about the size of the next pay raise or the hiring of transgender workers or the construction of a new plant or how to market a new product? Who is going to resolve the impasse — the Office of United States Corporations? As the business ethicist Kenneth Goodpaster put it: Multiplying the number of stakeholders “blurs traditional goals in terms of entrepreneurial risk-taking” and “pushes decision-making towards paralysis.”
And why is it more “just” for assorted stakeholders to claim a share of the profits? The owners of a company are its shareholders who invested their money in the enterprise. If there is a loss, it is the shareholders who suffer. Other stakeholders — workers, suppliers, the community at large — do not share the direct risk that shareholders do. Warren’s plan, despite its superficial leveling philosophy, may end up benefiting wealthy stakeholders at the expense of small shareholders.
15. For an institution that is millennia old, how the current Vatican bureaucracy could have forgotten the idiocy and lessons of the Concordat with the Nazi regime is shocking. George Weigel looks at the Pope’s latest diplomatic blunder — a deal with Red China that will sell out the underground Church. From his piece:
This legal-diplomatic strategy — which seems to have been based on the belief that even a totalitarian regime would honor a treaty commitment — didn’t work. The Third Reich began violating the Reichskonkordat shortly after the ink dried on the treaty. Then after some two dozen stiff diplomatic notes to Berlin (drafted by Pacelli) had not produced results, an irate Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge [With Burning Concern] in 1937, had it clandestinely printed in Germany, and ordered that it be read from all German pulpits. In the encyclical, Pius denounced an “idolatrous cult” that replaced belief in God with a “national religion” and a “myth of race and blood,” and his stress on the perennial value of the Old Testament made it quite clear what he thought of the Nazi swastika and what it represented.
It is beyond ironic, and it borders on the scandalous, that the lesson of this debacle — paper promises mean nothing to totalitarians — has not been learned in the Vatican, which now appears to be on the verge of repeating its mistake by completing a deal with the government of the People’s Republic of China, on the 85th anniversary of the Reichskonkordat.
Vatican sources are calling the deal “a historic breakthrough,” but the only thing “historic” about it is the inability of Vatican diplomacy to learn from history. To make matters worse, others in the Vatican are conceding that the deal is “not a good agreement” but then go on to suggest that it might pave the way for something better in the future. Really? Haven’t we been down that road before? Isn’t the failed Reichskonkordat a cautionary tale? Is history taught at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the Church’s graduate school for papal diplomats?
Podcastapalooza
1. The Editors finds Rich, Charlie, Reihan, and MBD dissecting the eleventh-hour ambush of the Kavanaugh nomination. Pay heed here.
2. On the new episode of The McCarthy Report, Rich and Andy try to make sense of the Kavanaugh accusations, developments in the Manafort trial, and whether or not Trump could pardon Manafort. You can’t not listen, right here.
3. Lots of news and reminiscing on the new Radio Free California episode, with Will and David discussing how, five years later, Central Valley farm workers finally get their Election Day results, plus how union-backed lawmakers are erecting more barriers to worker freedom, and the gloomy tenth anniversary of when California’s housing boom went bust — and took the world with it. Check your mortgage then strap on the headphones and listen, here.
4. Señor Nordlinger yacks it up about words, concepts, the world — including Syria, Russia, Burma, and Taiwan — sports (Tiger Woods), and music. The new episode of Jaywalking is nutrition for the old hearing glands, so listen up and enjoy, right here.
5. Jessica Hooten Wilson of John Brown University visits John J. Miller for The Great Books podcast to discuss The Moviegoer, Walker Percy’s classic. Hear here.
6. Then Thomas H. Connor joins JJM on The Bookmonger to discuss his new work, War and Remembrance: The Story of America’s Battle Monuments Commission. It’s a fascinating subject — learn more about it here.
7. Our wide-stance-ing host straddles the Mighty Mississippi to deliver a new episode of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg straight from St. Louis. Listener questions are answered and socialism flayed. You’ll find all the merriment here.
8. On the new episode of Ordered Liberty, David and Alexandra do a deep dive into the sexual-assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Listen here.
9. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel join hosts Scot “Bert” Bertram and Jeff “Ernie” Blehar on the new episode of Political Beats, to discuss the Ye Olde 70s band, King Crimson. Break out the vinyl later — right now just listen to this amazing podcast.
10. Jay Cost and Luke Thompson continue their voyage through the Constitution, and on this week’s edition of Constitutionally Speaking visit the First Amendment’s “religion clauses.” (Personally, I can’t wait until they get to the 21st Amendment.) Amend your schedule and find time to listen, right here.
One Week Closer to the Big Buckley Prize Gala
So we are now less than a month off from National Review Institute’s fifth annual William F. Buckley Jr. Prize Dinner, to be held in Chicago on Thursday, October 18th. Here’s a question, the answer to which is, “of course.” Are you coming? The affair will be held at The Cultural Center, and the expected highlight will be the bestowing of the Buckley Prize on our close friends, Edwin J. Feulner (Leadership in Political Thought) and Karen Buchwald Wright (for Leadership in Supporting Liberty). Now, especially if you live in the Midwest, we want very much for you to join us. This is a terrific way to support NRI and its great fellows, centers, and programs. Sponsorships are available, and individual tickets are $1,000. You can find complete information, and register, here. If you have any questions do contact Alexandra Zimmern Rosenberg by email (alexandra@nrinstitute.org) or phone (212-849-2858).
The Six
1. Mamma mia a lot lot lot of people are leaving California, and they tend to be earning big paychecks (and big baby-makers too!). At newgeography.com, Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox have a demographic story that is presaging a disaster for the Golden State.
One of the perennial debates about migration, particularly in California, is the nature of the outmigration. The state’s boosters, and the administration itself, like to talk as if California is simply giving itself an enema — expelling its waste — while making itself an irresistible beacon to the “best and brightest.”
The reality, however, is more complicated than that. An analysis of IRS data from 2015-16, the latest available, shows that while roughly half those leaving the state made under $50,000 annually, half made above that. Roughly one in four made over $100,000 and another quarter earned a middle-class paycheck between $50,000 and $100,000. We also lose among the wealthiest segment, the people best able to withstand California’s costs, but by much smaller percentages.
The key issue for California, however, lies with the exodus of people around child-bearing years. The largest group leaving the state — some 28 percent — is 35 to 44, the prime ages for families. Another third come from those 26 to 34 and 45 to 54, also often the age of parents.
2. A new book — The Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Vaclav Benda, 1977-1989 — is out (edited and compiled by Flagg Taylor and Barbara Day) and the brilliant conservative academic, Daniel J. Mahoney, reviews it for City Journal. From the review:
We owe a debt to Flagg Taylor and Barbara Day for making Václav Benda’s remarkable anti-totalitarian writings available to English-language readers in a handsome and accessible volume. In his thoughtful introduction, Taylor convincingly argues that the Czech belongs in that small coterie of writers, thinkers, and actors — Solzhenitsyn and Havel included — who fought totalitarianism with courage and lucidity. In their distinctive ways, these great figures illuminated “the nature of their totalitarian enemy and how their battle could be fought and won.” Benda is barely known in the Western world outside his native context. But these writings ought to make his witness and achievement much more widely recognized among all those who continue to strive to understand the tragedy of twentieth-century totalitarianism. Benda, who died before age 60, was a patriot, Christian, and lover of liberty who profoundly illuminated the nature of evil in our time. He never confused his Christian faith with a call to passivity. His writings and activities played a major role in setting the stage for the annus mirabilis of 1989, the revolutionary year when Communism behind the Iron Curtain imploded.
3. More City Journal. Economics writer Gene Epstein does a thorough trashing of liberal Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz. From his essay:
Though he has amassed a track record scarred with dubious prognostication and mistaken analysis, Stiglitz remains highly regarded among mainstream media elites, including the New York Times’s Paul Krugman, who calls him “an insanely great economist.” And Stiglitz remains influential in policy circles. In October 2017, he was named cochair of the Commission on Global Economic Transformation, teaming up with NYU professor Michael Spence, one of the economists who shared the Nobel with him in 2001. Though the Obama administration treated him like an outsider, Stiglitz could make a comeback if a Democrat wins the White House in 2020. He joined Senator Warren in criticizing Obama for supporting the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP, which Trump has since scuttled. He serves as chief economist with the Roosevelt Institute, which, according to its website, exists “to carry forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt by developing progressive ideas and bold leadership in the service of restoring America’s promise of opportunity for all.”
In May 2015, Senator Warren and Mayor de Blasio, two ambitious Democrats, joined Stiglitz at a press conference to release the Roosevelt Institute report “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.” The report — which proposes to “make health care affordable and universal by opening Medicare to all” and to “create a public option for the supply of mortgages” — was aimed at influencing Hillary Clinton, then seen as the next president. Perhaps Warren will succeed where Clinton did not. Stiglitz may then have a final shot at shaping U.S. economic policy. If he becomes chairman of President Warren’s Council of Economic Advisers in early 2021, he’ll be 78. Alan Greenspan did not step down from the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve until age 80, and Paul Volcker was well past 80 when he served as advisor to President Obama. Stiglitz’s worst may be yet to come.
4. At Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern explains how Sweden’s anti-immigration party has become the country’s political kingmaker. Read his report here.
5. At The American Conservative, Hollywood’s child-abuse epidemic gets a spotlight shined on it by Ben SixSmith. From his commentary:
Critics of “Me Too” often accuse the movement of abandoning due process in favor of trial by social media. There is something to this. Especially where famous people are concerned, making false accusations of abuse can be a good means of acquiring attention or money, and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can spawn a kind of febrile mob mentality. Where children are concerned, it is especially important that the courts, and not anonymous rumormongers, determine guilt and innocence. Yet rumors flourish when institutions are closed, corrupt, and unaccountable. Decades of abuse and impenetrable institutional silence have fostered a desire for a full and verifiable reform of organizational attitudes towards child performers and adult abusers. Hollywood, which thrives on telling other people’s stories, has to be more open about its own.
6. The Imaginative Conservative republishes Joseph Mussomeli’s essay on “Redefining American Exceptionalism.” From his piece:
First, use the label sparingly and prudently. Admittedly this will feel akin to amputating a leg or tearing out one’s own heart. A passionate belief in our Exceptionalism is something we all were handfed since we were infants and accepting that we are something less than unique and special will be painful. But like every other extremist “ism” we denounce and distrust and have sought to destroy, American Exceptionalism can sometimes embody a threat to Republican principles. Imbued with a strong sense of Exceptionalism, our leaders sometimes justify policies and practices that we would generally find loathsome. Just as Marxism and Fascism and Islamic Extremism enable their followers to commit deplorable acts for some greater future good, so too American Exceptionalism — despite all the good and inspiring aspects of it — has made it easier for us to do similarly appalling acts. Embracing American Exceptionalism with thoughtful humility rather than boastful pride would be salutary.
Second, be consistent. From the very outset post-World War II interventionism has suffered from a notable hypocrisy of purpose. We unabashedly rail against the tyrannies in Syria and Iran, but continue to ignore the equally tyrannical and arguably more dangerous governments in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere. At one time this approach, while never morally defensible, made some sense from a practical perspective. It was arguably practical because we needed certain resources such as oil from the Middle East, and it was also practical because we were waging a decades-long cold war, so we cleverly delineated between totalitarian regimes (our enemies) and mere authoritarian regimes (our friends) despite there being little difference in how they ran their governments and mistreated their citizens.
WHAT THE HECK, LET’S THROW IN ANOTHER: Well, too bad for Saint Junipero Serra that he founded the California mission system. That’s now a reason to blackball him from any structures on the Stanford University campus. The PCeaucrats have ruled! And Graham Piro of The College Fix has the story.
Baseballery
I’m just satisfying my love here for pitchers who hit (WJ also has a thing for hitters who pitch). Today’s subject is Dodgers pitcher (and hitter!) Don Drysdale, who was considered as ferocious a competitor as they come. At 6 foot, 5 inches, he was a workhorse and intimidating as heck, leading the NL in strikeouts across three seasons, winning the Cy Young Award in 1962, and posting a lifetime 209 – 166 record in 14 seasons, in five of which his Bums played in the World Series. He tossed six consecutive shutouts in 1968 (damn!) and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1984. “Big D” died too young, in 1993 at the age of 56.
Drysdale has one of the MLB’s best career records for home runs by a pitcher — he slammed 29 before he hung up his cleats in 1969, with seven coming in each of the 1958 and 1965 seasons. There was that one game in 1958 (August 23rd, at the LA Memorial Coliseum against the World Champion Milwaukee Braves) though, when DD had a particularly great performance at the plate: In the 4th he smacked a three-run homer off of a young Juan Pizarro (who would end his long career in 1974 with the Pittsburgh Pirates), and then in his next at-bat in the 6th knocked a solo shot, also off Pizarro. Of course Drysdale pitched a complete game victory, winning 10 – 1.
A Dios
Do we really pray? Even those who believe in prayer’s power — do you? Let me suggest you do (pray) for our Republic. It is a great thing in the history of mankind, but it is not a certain thing. Given the chaos inflicted upon us by the enemies of conservatism and the friends of all things “progressive” and leftist, we could use the kind of Wisdom and those Graces that only the Almighty can bestow. Nasty days face us. Please God, bestow!
Ancient of Days, bless us as we gird our loins,
Jack Fowler
jfowler@nationalreview.com . . . is to whom you write for any complaints about this missive or any other matter, except for the lateness of Metro North trains, as I am already all over that.
P.S.: OK as I said up above (and I cannot believe you have hung in all the way to the caboose) I have a theory to share about the attacks on Judge Kavanaugh. It’s not so original, and may have more holes than a block of Swiss cheese, but here goes: You don’t have to be a movie junkie to know about the Eighties’ go-to Bad Teen — his name is William Zabka, famous for his roles as Ralph Macchio’s cocky nemesis Johnny Lawrence in The Karate Kid, and as the privileged, joe-cool, smug, condescending classmate of the son of Thornton Mellon (all hail Rodney Dangerfield!) in Back to School (treat: this is the scene that is Hollywood’s greatest-ever lesson in reality).
But I digress.
This fictional character of Johnny Lawrence — athletic, cocky, good-looking, probably just the type who went to some elite high school — is a Millennial hyper-memorable who has earned primo status on the Movie Hate Scale. Who doesn’t yearn for him getting a Very Big Comeuppance?
My theory is that at The George Soros Memorial Leftist Headquarters, they have found a stand-in, namely Judge Kavanaugh, who they will try to portray as Everyone’s Favorite 80s A**hat. Like with this Slate piece on “elite impunity” which pontificates:
Brett Kavanaugh has little personally in common with Donald Trump. He has taken pains, at his nomination announcement and during his confirmation hearings, to assert his woman-friendly bona fides. Nonetheless, he is a perfect nominee for the moment. He embodies the driving themes of the Trump era, albeit in more genteel, traditional form than the president himself. Themes of elite impunity in the face of open transgression; of redemption without recompense for those in authority; and of a society that extends endless opportunity for some and deploys unyielding punishment for others. He is both the product of a political movement devoted to the protection of existing hierarchies of race, gender, and wealth, and a representative of the power structure that sits at the top of those hierarchies.
So what do they want Middle America to think? “Hey, yeah, I kinda knew a guy like that . . .” (of course you do, if the guy was a movie character). After all, Kavanaugh went to a Catholic all-boys high school. He was athletic. Good-looking (so ladies of whom I have questioned say). Assaulting a woman, why, it’s in the DNA! Isn’t it? Getting away with it . . . It’s S.O.P.!
And so goes this Great Experiment. Now duck because that guy over there is about to toss a beer mug at you!
WAIT! After I wrote this drivel I saw that the great Heather Wilhelm take off on the same theme – except she wrote about it clearly. From her piece:
Life, however, comes at you fast: “That it happened or not, I have no idea,” the classmate told NPR within a day. “I can’t say that it did or didn’t.” Wait. What? Here’s more: “In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did” happen, she continued. “I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.”
Oh. Well, never mind. It’s a good thing we’re dealing with an abstract mental mock-up of a “privileged” preppy white man who represents all of our pent-up resentments and issues, rather than with a serious, potentially career-destroying accusation against a real human being with a family and a job and a soul!
“I was empowered”: It’s interesting phrasing, is it not? What does it mean? I’d be willing to bet it means “swept up in the therapy mob.” At this point, we still don’t really know what, if anything, happened between Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. The accusations are certainly serious, and should be treated accordingly — but strangely, to many, finding the facts just doesn’t seem to matter anymore. For a certain segment of the population, this story isn’t about truth or justice. It’s about a bizarre national therapy session. In the end, it’s all about them.