Dear Weekend Jolter,
This week coming up we mark the 210th birthday of the Rail Splitter. Let’s celebrate with this Abie Baby ditty from Hair.
Hard to believe — or is it? — that some 154 years after he was murdered in Ford’s Theater, obtuse Democrat politicians in Richmond are still caught up in their party’s ancient bigotries. Or caught on their own modern political petards. Our Esteemed Leader, Mr. Lowry, opines in his new column:
If ever wearing blackface — even in the 1980s, as both Northam and Herring did — is a career-ender, and if we are supposed to “believe all women,” then all three of these Democrats have to go.
Virginia is an indication of an inflamed and unforgiving Democratic mood that will define the party’s battle for the 2020 presidential nomination.
Democrats are about to embark on the first “woke” primary, a gantlet of political correctness that will routinely wring abject apologies out of candidates and find fault in even the most sure-footed. The passage of time will be no defense. Nor the best of intentions. Nor anything else.
Any lapses will be interpreted through the most hostile lens, made all the more brutal by the competition of a large field of candidates vying for the approval of a radicalized base. The Democrat nomination battle might as well be fought on the campus of Oberlin College and officiated by the director of the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
By the way, Rich, author of Lincoln Unbound: How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream—And How We Can Do It Again, knows a thing or two about this week’s Birthday Boy. I recommend his 2013 NR piece, “Lincoln Defended”: It may prove worthwhile reading for you.
In Lieu of Editorials . . .
. . . of which NRO published zero this week, we present this commercial: The Sainted James L. Buckley Will Be Speaking at the NR Institute’s 2019 Ideas Summit. I think an exclamation point is probably best suited for that announcement, so . . . !
Except there Is an Editorial!
At the last moment, before this missive’s Author hit the SEND button, what should appear but —
1. We lay into the Green New Deal. Doncha think it’s green . . . from mold? Anyway, you gotta love an editorial that begins, “Speaking of bovine flatulence.” From the blast:
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was supposed to be the Democratic party’s fresh new face — so why is the honorable lady from the Bronx trafficking in ideas from the 1930s?
The Left really has only one idea: control. At the end of the Cold War, when socialism stood discredited and the memory of its atrocities and repression were fresh in the minds of people who had just watched the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and much of what it stood for, the partisans of central planning found themselves in need of a new host, and what they found was the environmental movement — another vehicle for supplanting liberalism and free markets with five-year plans and political discipline. Hence the joke about “watermelons,” the new lefty activists who were green on the outside but red on the inside. The metaphor may occasion some eye-rolling and is prone to abuse, but it speaks to an undeniable truth: Environmentalism has been since the fall of the Soviet Union the world’s most important vessel for anti-liberal and anti-market forces.
Eleven Sensational NR Articles — Do I Hear Twelve? TWELVE!
1. And no, a 6’ 3” rabbit named Harvey is not his pet: Jim Geraghty reveals 20 things you probably didn’t know about Senator Cory Booker, BFF of T-Bone. Here are Items 6 and 7 from the list:
SIX: For most of his early career, Booker strongly endorsed school choice and vouchers. From the Manhattan Institute speech:
I have always been, up until maybe four or five years ago, a strong advocate for the old-fashioned way of educating children. I supported public schools only. Even charter schools made me a little uncomfortable when I first heard about them. But after four or five years of working in inner-city Newark, I began to rethink my situation, rethink my philosophy, rethink my views on public education, simply because of the realities I saw around me. Being outcome-focused started to change my view in favor of options like charter schools, contract schools, and, yes, vouchers.
He added that “the implementation of vouchers is not a panacea. If it is used as a guise for disinvesting in education as a whole, then I will never be in favor of it. But I will support it if it is part of a larger system of education for our children.”
SEVEN: As recently as 2016, Booker spoke to the American Federation for Children, a pro-school-choice group headed up by current Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Then, he bragged that Newark was ranked the fourth-most choice-friendly city in the country and declared to the organization, “There are some people in this room who really were the difference makers as I was climbing the ladder in Newark, N.J. with a vision for transforming that city.”
2. Fred Fleitz says President Trump’s Iran Deal pullout has been a smashing success. From his analysis:
Some Trump critics predicted that any effort by the president to re-impose U.S. sanctions lifted by the JCPOA would have little effect since other parties to the agreement — in particular the EU, Germany, France, and the U.K. — would not follow suit, but numerous European companies have resisted pressure from their governments to defy re-imposed U.S. sanctions. On January 31, European leaders announced a special finance facility to help European firms skirt U.S. sanctions on Iran, but that initiative is months behind schedule and few experts believe it will work.
Instead, as a result of re-imposed U.S. sanctions, European airlines Air France, British Airways and KLM ended service to Iran last year. European companies Total, Siemens, and Volkswagen also withdrew from Iran, along with U.S. companies GE, Boeing, and Honeywell and the Russian oil firm Lukoil. In November, Germany’s Bundesbank changed its rules so it could reject an Iranian request to withdraw 300 million euros from Hamburg-based trade bank Europäische-Iranische Handelsbank, to protect the central bank’s relationships with institutions in “third countries.” That is, the United States.
Before the U.S. withdrawal, JCPOA critics made strong arguments about the accord’s weaknesses, especially Iran’s refusal to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors access to military sites. The lone exception is the Parchin military base, self-inspected by Iranians. There the IAEA obtained evidence of covert nuclear-weapons work. There were other credible reports of Iranian cheating before the U.S. withdrawal, including several from German intelligence agencies. Senators Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and David Perdue raised Iranian noncompliance and cheating on the JCPOA in a July 2017 letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
3. Toy Story 4 has PETA peeved over Bo Peep and her shepherd’s hook. Kat Timpf shears the multicultural wooliness. From her piece:
Oh boy. A few things here. First of all, it is important to remember that Bo Peep is not real. That’s right: She’s a completely made-up, animated character. This means that, regardless of what sort of tools or accessories she’s carrying, she’s actually not going to be hurting any sheep. Why? Because, in order to hurt sheep, you have to first of all be real.
Make no mistake: Reports of animals being abused like the ones referenced in the statement are disturbing. I don’t like to hear things like that, and I completely understand why they might make someone upset. Here’s the thing, though: If there are real sheep being actually hurt out there in the world, why not focus your energy on that? Why not make that the focus of your press release? It seems like that would be a better way to change hearts and minds than attacking a beloved fictional character for her fictional shepherding tools. If anything, those kinds of attacks hurt the cause more than they help it — because they make you sound far too ridiculous to even be worth listening to.
4. Stephen Moore high-fives the President for appointing David Malpass to head the World Bank. From his article:
Malpass’s willingness to challenge the Bank’s status quo could make him a savior to poor nations as they try to jump-start growth and lift incomes. Inside the Bank headquarters, it is clear he will rattle some cages, hold Bank economists and lenders accountable, and shift the U.S. role to one based on actual performance, rather than good intentions.
The World Bank’s mission is to serve as a lender and economic adviser to poor and financially distressed countries for vital development projects. But over the past half century, the Bank has leant hundreds of billions of dollars with precious little to show for it in terms of poverty reduction.
5. But Mark Krikorian ain’t doing no high- or low-fiving for the President’s SOTU claim for increasing legal immigration. From his analysis:
Legal-good/illegal-bad is actually the default setting for mousy and irresolute Republican politicians: Demonstrate toughness to voters by demanding better enforcement, while swearing your allegiance to the continued importation of 1 million legal immigrants (and hundreds of thousands of “temporary” workers) every year, thus soothing employers looking for cheap labor and showing the New York Times how non-racist you are.
But it’s nonsense. Whether the concern is jobs, welfare, schools, or assimilation, legal and illegal aliens have similar impacts. Not necessarily identical, of course. Take welfare use. More than 60 percent of households headed by illegal immigrants use at least one federal welfare program, higher than the legal-immigrant rate of nearly 50 percent. But both groups are much more likely to use welfare than the native-born. Even legal immigrants with college degrees are twice as likely to use welfare as comparable natives.
Even the illegality of illegal aliens isn’t as important a distinguishing feature as some might think. Obviously, rampant illegal immigration undermines the rule of law; I don’t think I need to prove my bona fides in that regard. But legal and illegal immigrants are not different species — they come from the same countries, live in the same communities, often share mixed-status households, and are even the same actual people; the Public Policy Institute of California has estimated that more than 40 percent of new green-card recipients have been illegal aliens at some point. Heck, some people toggle back and forth between legal and illegal. Take Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, the Egyptian terrorist who murdered two people at the El Al counter at Los Angeles International Airport on the Fourth of July, 2002. He arrived on a tourist visa, legally, then failed to return when his permission to stay here expired, thus becoming an illegal alien. Later, he applied for asylum, becoming legal again temporarily, but again failed to leave after he was turned town, thus becoming illegal again. Finally, his wife won the Diversity Visa Lottery and he, as her spouse, also got a green card, thus becoming legal again, at least until he was shot dead by El Al security.
But what of the rationale the president offered? Do the hot economy and the low unemployment rate really justify turning away from his former “Hire American” lodestar? Only if you’re a businessman in a bubble.
6. RELATED: If President Trump plays the emergency-declaration card to fund a border wall, John Yoo says that yep, the law is on his side. From the beginning of his analysis:
It seems increasingly likely that President Trump will declare a national emergency at our southern border in order to access funds to build a wall. Last week, I had the pleasure of debating National Review’s very own David French on the legality of such a move in a Federalist Society-sponsored tele-conference. I wanted to take the opportunity to further explain my defense of Trump’s legal authority in response to David’s excellent points.
David and I agree that Congress has not placed any serious limits on the president’s power to declare an emergency and that the Supreme Court was unlikely to second-guess him. For much of our history, presidents have understood the Constitution’s grant of “the executive power” to include a power to declare national emergency. Thomas Jefferson effectively did so in response to Aaron Burr’s effort to raise a rebellion in Louisiana; Abraham Lincoln did so, with far more justification, at the start of the Civil War; FDR did so, with far less justification, at the start of his presidency in response to the Great Depression; and Harry Truman did so at the start of the Korean War.
In 1976, Congress enacted the National Emergency Act in its burst of post-Watergate reforms designed to restrict presidential power. While the new law terminated most existing emergencies, it did not set out any definition of a national emergency or limit the president’s ability to declare one. The law only sets out the process for publication and congressional notification of the president’s declaration. So David and I agree that there are few limits on the president’s ability to declare an emergency for good reason. Indeed, every president since 1976 has used the NEA to declare a national emergency, several under circumstances far less immediate than this one, and the Supreme Court has never overturned one.
7. Trees Gotta Bend: David French sees progressivism, not environmentalism, at the core of the “Green New Deal.” From his piece:
This isn’t environmentalism, it’s intersectionality. And it’s intersectionality supplemented with a giant dose of income redistribution and economic populism. As part of the Green New Deal, the resolution laments the concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 1 percent and seeks to “guarantee a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”
Oh, and the Green New Deal also includes a pledge that the federal government will make sure that “all people of the United States” receive “high quality health care, affordable, safe, and adequate housing, [and] economic security.” The fact sheet even pledges to provide economic security for all those who are “unable or unwilling to work.” (Emphasis added.) To fight climate change, we have to make sure that Bubba never has to leave his Xbox.
8. Jonah and David play “What’s the Best Cold War Movie” on Twitter. Mr. Goldberg, fresh from White Owls binging, even pens a Corner post boasting a list of six flicks that had The Expert — and we all know who he is — all a-chuckle. Oh, silly children, go outside and play now. This, as Yours Truly by chance wrote some weeks back in The Corner, is the answer.
9. John O’Sullivan reflects on Gosnell, Cuomo, infanticide, and the President’s State of the Union speech. From his essay:
My memory of this scene was jolted when, watching the State of the Union, I saw most in the serried ranks of Democrats remain seated and still when President Trump arrived at the following passage:
Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth. These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world. And then, we had the case of the Governor of Virginia where he basically stated he would execute a baby after birth. . . . To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb. Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.
The words alone are a significant moment in America’s public life. Trump may not be the perfect mail-carrier for this message, but he delivered it. And he did it firmly, clearly, and without apology, when so many others — not excluding bishops — conceal it inside larger packages of welfare and budgetary policies designed to keep the conscience of the nation asleep. Powerful though Trump’s words were, however, they made less of an impact than the reaction of the Democrats.
Trump’s words were topical. Most of those watching at home had seen the New York Democrats cheering the state legislation that allows partial-birth abortion, and they knew about the Virginia governor’s endorsement of similar legislation before “racism” swallowed him up. They knew, therefore, that Trump wasn’t making it up or even exaggerating. He was telling it like it is. That’s important because, as regular readers of my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru know well, one of the reasons for the survival of such an extraordinarily permissive legal abortion regime as the U.S. has enjoyed since Roe v. Wade is that most people have no idea of just how permissive it is. Much effort on the Democratic side goes into keeping the public ignorant on that point, because, as the “pro-choice party,” they benefit from the voters’ unawareness of what exactly it is that they support.
10. You want to know about “Asymmetrical multiculturalism.” Yeah, you do. Eric Kaufmann has an excellent essay that is required reading. From the piece:
Hostility to the multicultural Left mattered for the Trump vote, but not as much as opposition to immigration. While political correctness looms large in elite circles, its effects weaken as one moves down the social scale and out from major metropolitan areas. By contrast, immigration’s effects are more evident to average Americans. Moreover, in comparing Trump and Brexit voters, I find that direct hostility to the politically correct Left is much less important for populism in Britain and, by extension, Europe.
The most important effects of multiculturalism’s contradictions are therefore indirect: creating political space for national populists. When liquor can’t be legally sold, bootleggers move in. So too, when no mainstream party will touch immigration, will a political entrepreneur eventually create a black market to cater to this demand.
Many on the right were only too pleased to piggyback on the Left’s narrowing of the Overton Window. The free-market Right has, quite naturally, always been keen on a motivated, low-cost labor force. Historically in the West, populist sentiment and trade unions acted as a brake on business’s desire for more immigration. The multicultural Left thus played a critical role in expanding the concept of racism to encompass immigration, removing the issue from political contestation and converting the union leadership to the cause of high inflows. This enabled an issue coalition to form between the pro-business Right and multicultural Left.
These dynamics were especially clear in the United States in the period up to 2016, when the Republican National Committee reflected the pro-immigration views of elite fiscal conservatives, religious conservatives, and neoconservatives. During the Republican primary, Trump was the only one of 17 candidates to make immigration restriction a central feature of his campaign because others were unwilling to challenge pro-immigration norms. This was the key factor helping him win the nomination. Likewise, in the presidential election, my ANES models show that immigration was the pivotal issue for both non-voters and Obama voters who switched to Trump.
Likewise in Sweden. In 2013, interior minister Tobias Billström was attacked by the media and other politicians as racist for suggesting that the country needed to set limits on the number of incoming immigrants and asylum seekers. The following year, the populist Sweden Democrats burst onto the scene with an unprecedented 12.9 percent of the vote. In Germany, the mainstream parties’ liberal consensus over the 2015 migrant crisis opened space for a new populist party, the AfD, to emerge as the country’s third largest.
11. Like all taxes, soon or later carbon taxes simply go to feeding the beast. There’s a sad Canadian tale to be told, and Peter Shawn Taylor tells it. From his piece:
On your side of the fence, the Climate Leadership Council’s plan — recently backed by 27 Nobel Prize–winning economists and other economic luminaries — calls for a nationwide tax starting at $40 a ton on carbon dioxide emissions, on efficiency grounds. (All figures in U.S. dollars.) It vows that “the majority of American families . . . will benefit financially by receiving more in ‘carbon dividends’ than they pay in increased energy prices.” A tax that pays you sure sounds appealing! But a word of caution: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Up here in Canada, we’ve been burned by the same promise.
Back in 2008, the province of British Columbia similarly proposed a carbon tax in the interests of economic efficiency and as a way to reduce greenhouse gases. The government promised that “every dollar raised will be returned to the people of B.C. in the form of lower taxes.” And for the first few years, it was true to its word. Tax revenue from the carbon tax was used to lower personal and corporate income-tax rates — and economists everywhere lauded the concept. A joint study by Duke University and the University of Ottawa declared B.C.’s plan to be “textbook policy.” Then politics happened.
After a few years, the B.C. government discovered that tiny annual cuts to personal and corporate tax rates weren’t as politically rewarding as originally thought. So, it switched to spending its carbon-tax revenues on higher-profile subsidy programs like film- and television-production tax credits. By 2013, the program ceased to be revenue neutral. And following a change in government in 2017, all carbon-tax revenue is now funneled straight into general revenues. B.C. taxpayers are thus the victims of a decade-long betrayal. Having agreed to a carbon tax based on the promise of strict revenue neutrality, they find that their so-called textbook carbon tax has become just another garden-variety government tax grab. Then again, maybe your Congress is more trustworthy than our parliaments . . .
12. Victor Davis Hanson sizes up modern Jacobins off the Democratic party, and their intentions to remodel America. From his piece:
Open borders and the elimination of ICE will also be the stuff of 2019–20 Democratic debates. But they will be “debated” only in the sense that all contenders will either agree or go well beyond both positions in order to support blanket amnesty. In other words, the problem of illegal immigration would not be 20 million or so illegal aliens who have entered and resided in the country unlawfully, but no problem at all.
Millions more could arrive as they pleased. Caravans would become not the stuff of dramatic news accounts, but rather dreary daily events as thousands of the “other” exercised their global “rights” and “migrated” to the U.S. Or as Univision’s Jorge Ramos put it, the border is “nothing more than an invention.”
The subtext would be radical demographic change designed to finish flipping the southwestern United States to blue in the Electoral College. It would also fuel the growing narrative that America requires far more recalibration of constitutional “issues” if it is ever to achieve parity for the arriving impoverished and oppressed underprivileged, who have supposedly legitimate historical racial and class grievances against neocolonialist Yanqui culture.
What is unspoken about the current illegal-immigration issue is the assumption that open-borders activists and their supporters do not just believe that Spanish speakers have a right to enter the U.S. as they please, but also that they have a far greater right than anyone else from Asia, Africa, or Europe. This is the chauvinistic and ethnically exclusive position, not the inclusive, liberal, and pro-diversity stance.
A New Issue of Ye Olde National Review Magazine Is Hot Off Ye Olde Press
And here are four selections from a smorgasbord of tasty conservative treats.
1. We publish a lengthy editorial making the case for handling the ouster of Maduro and his Cuba-backed regime of thuggery in Venezuela. From “The Week”:
The U.S. government recognized Guaidó as the sole and legitimate president of Venezuela. Since then, many other governments have followed suit: in Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere. President Trump demonstrated leader ship on the issue.
In response, Maduro cut ties with the U.S. and demanded the departure of our diplomats. He also turned to his tried-and-true populism — the stuff that won Chávez election in the first place, those years ago. “Don’t trust the gringos,” Maduro told a crowd of his supporters, gathered in their red shirts. “They don’t have friends or loyalties.” They only want to “take Venezuela’s oil, gas, and gold.” For good measure, he tweeted, “Let’s defend our sovereignty. . . . The streets belong to the people!”
The U.S. has now imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. It has promised humanitarian aid to the suffering Venezuelans. It has applied an array of diplomatic and economic pressures. This is to the good. Russia, China, and other bad actors are doing all they can to prop up the dictatorship. Guaidó and the opposition need all the help they can get.
Elliott Abrams, our old friend and contributor, has been appointed special envoy for Venezuela. This is further good news. Best known for Middle East diplomacy, Abrams is also a crack Latin Americanist. In the second Reagan term, he was assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. At this juncture, certainly, we would not recommend U.S. military intervention. For one thing, it is not necessary. The chavista regime can be shoved out by other means. And Maduro can live out his years in Havana, at least until freedom comes to Cuba, too.
2. Ramesh Ponnuru looks at why, and how, Leftists come to the defense of infanticide. From his article:
They are also swimming in a current of opinion that has become ever more favorable toward aggressive advocacy of abortion. The old Democratic mantra from the 1990s, that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” has been discarded as too defensive. That language no longer appears in the Democratic platform. Another change: A previously coded endorsement of taxpayer funding of abortion, noticeable only to activists, has become explicit.
Supporters of legal access to late-term abortion have made several related arguments in its defense in response to the unwelcome public attention to the issue. They say that late-term abortion is extremely rare and happens only in exceptional circumstances, as Governor Northam suggested. These were the same claims that supporters of partial-birth abortion made when bans on it were being debated. In that earlier debate, the claims were shown to be false, with one abortion-industry official admitting that he had “lied through [his] teeth” on national television.
In its most recent estimate, the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion think tank, reports that 1.3 percent of abortions take place after the 20th week. (We don’t have more fine-grained numbers than that.) Its most recent estimate for the number of abortions annually in our country is 926,200. Taking both numbers together implies that roughly 12,000 abortions after week 20 take place every year. That is more than the number of gun homicides reported by the FBI. A Guttmacher review of the literature in 2013 concluded that most abortions after the 20th week are not sought “for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.” Anyway, neither the
3. Deal, or No Deal? Or Fair Deal? For generations, Democrats and Leftists have used the language of war to justify their assault on our freedoms. Jonah Goldberg has the issue’s cover essay, and he looks at that language behind the push for statism. From his essay:
I have also chronicled elsewhere how — under the National Recovery Administration (NRA), run by General Hugh Johnson, the director of the draft in World War I—the New Deal militarized vast swathes of American society. The Blue Eagle was the insignia of service for businesses in this new moral equivalent of war. “In war, in the gloom of night attack, soldiers wear a bright badge on their shoulders to be sure their comrades do not fire on comrades,” FDR explained. “On that principle those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance.” Johnson sought to reorganize the American labor force as vast industrial armies of the kind that intellectuals had imagined since Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward. But he also believed mobilization begins at home: “When every American housewife understands that the Blue Eagle on everything that she permits to come into her home is a symbol of its restoration to security, may God have mercy on the man or group of men who attempt to trifle with this bird.”
The New Deal took other World War I blueprints off the shelf. The NRA was modeled on Wilson’s War Industries Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission modified the wartime Capital Issues Committee of the Federal Reserve, the Re construction Finance Corporation was a rehash of the War Finance Corporation. And so on.
It should go without saying that the New Deal has remained the ideological idée fixe of American liberalism, and from Truman’s Fair Deal to Kennedy’s New Frontier to Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty to Barack Obama’s “New Foundation” and Cold War–nostalgic rhetoric about “Sputnik moments” and “economic patriotism” to Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, American liberalism has been recycling the same motif over and over again, often without realizing it. Even the mantra of the early Obama administration, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” depends on the logic of the moral equivalent of war.
4. Ross Douthat catches up with First Reformed. From his review:
Instead let me offer some Oscar counterprogramming, with recommendations for two smaller movies, flawed and fascinating and available on your television or computer now, that should have been in the ranks of Best Picture nominees but weren’t, and that contain two of the best male performances of the year.
The first is First Reformed, which did manage to grab its writer-director, the famously complicated Paul Schrader, a Best Screenplay nomination — Schrader’s first Oscar nod ever, somewhat staggeringly, despite all his long-gone collaborations with Martin Scorsese. The official subject of the movie is climate change: It’s the story of a Protestant pastor in some wintry upstate New York setting, played by Ethan Hawke in a fantastic good looks-gone-to-seed performance, who is radicalized by his contact with a young, despairing would-be eco-terrorist (Philip Ettinger) and the young man’s pregnant wife (Amanda Seyfried) and begins to consider some kind of direct action against the local polluter who’s also a donor to his church.
Lights. Cameras. Critics.
1. Armond White has seen Brawl in Cell Block 99. His suggestion: So should you. From the review:
By lucky coincidence, I caught up with S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 the same week that pandering governors Andrew Cuomo and Ralph Northam both jumped the shark on Roe v. Wade to promote infanticide in the name of states’ rights.
Of all the violent incidents in Zahler’s grindhouse thriller, the grisliest was a gangster’s repeated threat to dismember a woman’s in utero fetus “limb by limb.” It resembled a politician’s heartless manipulation, the cunning use of law as extreme social engineering — in this particular case, to control the baby’s father, the film’s protagonist, Bradley Thomas (Vince Vaughn), a two-fisted white Southern Christian who is not just an action-movie hero but an archetype of today’s media-disenfranchised electorate.
Abortion in movies isn’t necessarily a Juno-cute part of the culture war. Consider that Zahler specializes in the grotesque, which makes him an apt, even prophetic, reporter on emotionally driven issues; his schlockmeister approach successfully challenges news-journalist sanctimony. He works in macabre genres (see, for example, the cult favorite Bone Tomahawk), but now the macabre — the horror of legalized pre- and post-natal murder, endorsed by governors — has become politically feasible.
2. Seen it and loved it, as has and does Kyle Smith. We’re talking about Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old. It’s astonishing. From his review:
A line at the conclusion of They Shall Not Grow Old might be the driest closing credit I’ve ever seen at the movies: “Filmed on location on the Western Front, 1914–1918.”
And how: This monumental cinematic achievement re-creates the experience of war like no documentary I’ve ever seen. Steering clear of all political and strategic matters, Peter Jackson’s intensely moving and technically amazing documentary seeks only to answer the question, “What was it like to be a British soldier in the trenches?” It does so to a degree that will astonish you.
Jackson, the New Zealander who directed the Lord of the Rings films, owes his existence to the Battle of the Somme. His English paternal grandfather was wounded on the battle’s first day, and while home (temporarily) to recuperate, he met and married Jackson’s grandmother in 1917. He survived several other war injuries, and Jackson’s father was born three years later. Such is Jackson’s fixation on the Great War that his own personal collection of such items as uniforms and even artillery pieces proved helpful in making this matchless documentary, which began with a request from the Imperial War Museum in London to forge a narrative out of some 100 hours of filmed images and 600 hours of interviews with veterans.
3. More of Kyle liking stuff. Like . . . Never Look Away. From the review:
Today Germany stands at sufficient distance from its past to enable a new, more considered way of reckoning with it, and in addition to the luxury of time the German filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has enjoyed the benefit of living part of his life in New York and later California. Insight often accompanies distance. Donnersmarck, who won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for The Lives of Others (2006), seeks a broader, deeper, richer explanation for Germany, its self-inflicted catastrophes and their sequels. He notes, in a New Yorker profile, “Because of all the terrible suffering Germany caused in World War Two, there wasn’t a lot of focus on what the German people suffered, understandably. But many people were apolitical, and suffered the way [the painter Gerhard] Richter’s family suffered, and the way mine did.” The Lives of Others, about the moral wreckage caused by the Stasi surveillance state in East Germany, is rightly praised as one of the best films of this century. Yet his new effort, Never Look Away, which has just hit theaters after it was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (and also for Caleb Deschanel’s cinematography), is even better. It’s expansive, it’s sublime. It’s one of the very few films I’ve seen this century that I call a masterpiece.
4. And more of Armond: The praise gushes for Legend of the Demon Cat. From the beginning of the review:
The Marvel Comics Universe epitomizes how sci-fi comic-book fantasy has become an obsession unto itself. But something is missing, and that lost essence inspires Chen Kaige’s Legend of the Demon Cat, the latest proof that China’s pop filmmakers continue to outclass the MCU.
Think of it as a creative trade war, where action vs. myth, and American commercialism, having abandoned the moral tradition, is failing. But Chen’s new film is a spectacular win.
It’s a fable with modern parallels: There’s unrest in the capital Chang’an City during the Tang dynasty of the seventh century. After the mysterious death of the emperor (who has not closed his eyes for a week), aspiring poet Bai Letian (Huang Xuan) is assigned as the court scribe to chronicle the leader’s legacy and a series of strange killings that occur. A Japanese exorcist, the shaman Kukai (Shota Sometani), is brought in to assist Bai in tracking down a sinister cat. Together, they investigate the history behind the feline’s mysterious tragedies.
In other words, a political metaphor is examined for its spiritual essence. Kukai is told, “Behind the illusion is reality,” and this key line unlocks the film’s many visual, sensual wonders.
Podcastapalooza
1. This week on the new edition of The Editors, they and MBD and Charlie discuss the meltdown of Virginia Democrats, takeaways from Trump’s SoTU, immigration, and forked-tongue Elizabeth Warren (in addition to the Rich / David smackdown on the NBA). Clean out the wax, insert the buds, and listen here.
2. On The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, said Goldberg interviews Commentary’s Noah Rothman. Punditry and nerdery ensues. Get your nerd on here.
3. Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is discussed by John J. Miller and Hillsdale College’s Dedra Birzer on the new episode of The Great Books podcast. Listen here or say three Hail Marys.
4. Northam and his Gang of Virginia Democrat Cut-Ups are the topic of the new episode of Ordered Liberty, where David and Alexandra also rate the SOTU and an important SCOTUS case. Grab the headphones and lend an ear here.
5. Stephen Miller joins Big Scot and Bad Jeff on Political Beats to talk turkey — or maybe potatoes — about U2. Listen up me darlins, right here.
Breaking Podcastapalooza . . .
On an As-WJ-Goes-to-Press episode of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, our host interviews NR’s great mate: Daniel Hannan, MEP and Brexit leader. It’s a terrific episode, which you must listen to, and maybe right here.
The Six
This week, let’s focus on think-tank essays and writings. Why? Like I tell the kids — because I said so, that’s why! Wonk you very much.
1. Heritage Foundation is releasing a three-part series of papers examining the intersection of mental illness, violence, and firearms. John Malcolm and Amy Swearer are the authors. From Part One:
While a strong association between untreated serious mental illness and acts of mass public violence exists, not all public mass killers have a history of identifiable symptoms of mental illness. Some mass public killers commit acts of violence due to a set of repugnant but otherwise rationally derived beliefs. Dylann Roof, who murdered nine individuals at a predominantly African American church in Charleston, held views of extreme racism and white supremacy. While his violent and extremist ideology is sickening, there are no indications that he exhibited delusional or psychotic symptoms that caused him to believe this ideology.
Similarly, Major Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 and wounded 32 during a violent attack at Fort Hood, Texas, may have been exceptionally angered by his perceived concerns over Muslim soldiers being deployed to fight other Muslims, and subscribed increasingly to radical jihadist beliefs. And Rizwan Farook and his wife Tasheen Malik were also motivated not by mental illness but by ideology when they murdered 14 and wounded 24 in San Bernardino, California, in 2015. Like Roof, however, Hassan, Farook, and Malik had no discernable history or signs of mental illness.
A number of mass killers could also reasonably be described as “irrationally disgruntled and full of rage” but may not have been suffering from a diagnosable mental disorder. For example, in 2010, Omar Thornton shot and killed eight co-workers at Hartford Distributors in Manchester, Connecticut, before committing suicide. On the day of the incident, Thornton had been forced to resign after he was caught on a surveillance video stealing beer from a warehouse and was implicated in the theft of empty beer kegs. After being escorted off the premises, he returned with two handguns and opened fire on his former co-workers. Thornton called 911 and informed the operator that his shooting was motivated by racism he experienced in the workplace. There are no indications he suffered from a mental illness.
A similar incident occurred in 1986 in Edmond, Oklahoma. Postal worker Patrick Sherrill was facing possible dismissal due to management concerns over his job performance and reprimands for irritable behavior. One day after being verbally disciplined by his supervisors, Sherrill arrived at work with three handguns, shooting and killing 14 co-workers before killing himself. Like Thornton, there is little evidence Sherrill was mentally ill in any clinical sense, and official reports on the shooting concluded it was likely the result of job-related frustrations.
2. At Cato Institute, Brandon Valeriano and Benjamin Jensen take on “The Myth of Cyber Offense.” From the paper:
Great-power competition in the 21st century increasingly involves the use of cyber operations between rival states. But do cyber operations achieve their stated objectives? What are the escalation risks? Under what conditions could increasingly frequent and sophisticated cyber operations result in inadvertent escalation and the use of military force? The answers to these questions should inform U.S. cybersecurity policy and strategy.
In the context of recent shifts in cybersecurity policy in the United States, this paper examines the character of cyber conflict through time. Data on cyber actions from 2000 to 2016 demonstrate evidence of a restrained domain with few aggressive attacks that seek a dramatic, decisive impact. Attacks do not beget attacks, nor do they deter them. But if few operations are effective in compelling the enemy and fewer still lead to responses in the domain, why would a policy of offensive operations to deter rival states be useful in cyberspace?
We demonstrate that, while cyber operations to date have not been escalatory or particularly effective in achieving decisive outcomes, recent policy changes and strategy pronouncements by the Trump administration increase the risk of escalation while doing nothing to make cyber operations more effective. These changes revolve around a dangerous myth: offense is an effective and easy way to stop rival states from hacking America. New policies for authorizing preemptive offensive cyber strategies risk crossing a threshold and changing the rules of the game.
3. Copyright laws have been rocked in recent decades by firms (Disney!) seeking to protect works that were heading for the public domain. At American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rosen reports that the extensions are expiring, and wonders about the fate of the famous Mouse named Mickey. From the essay:
Fast forward half a century to 1976, when Walt Disney’s copyright on Mickey was just a few years from expiring, and Congress enacted a new statute that did away with renewals altogether and extended copyright protection to 50 years after the death of the author or, when a company owns the rights to a work, 75 years from its creation. This bought Disney another 19 years of protection and effectively prevented any work published after 1922 from entering the public domain.
But sure enough, in 1998, with the 2003 expiration of the Mickey rights looming, Congress again extended the term, this time to 70 years following the author’s death and to 95 years for corporate creations.
Each extension followed vigorous lobbying from Hollywood and other content creators eager to prevent lucrative properties from falling into the public domain. Critics argued that maintaining copyright protection 70 years after the death of the artist badly upended the careful balance that copyright provides in inspiring and incenting creativity while vindicating the rights of the public.
4. My old amigo Hadley Arkes, bossman of the James Wilson Institute, penned a Natural Law Manifesto, which I encourage all to read. Here’s how it commences:
We want to proclaim again the case for natural law, and offer a kind of Natural Law Manifesto. We announce here nothing new to the world, much in the way that James Wilson, at the origin of the Constitution, proclaimed that we were not, under this Constitution, inventing new rights. The object of the Constitution, he said, was “to acquire a new security for the possession or the recovery of those rights” we already possess by nature. The great Blackstone had famously said that, on entering civil society, we give up those unqualified rights we had in the State of Nature, including the liberty of “doing mischief.” To which James Wilson asked, in a Talmudic question, “Is it part of natural liberty to do mischief to anyone?” In other words, as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Aquinas had it, we never had a “right to do a wrong.” Even in the state of nature we did not have a right to murder or rape, and therefore as we entered civil society, the laws that barred people from murdering and raping never barred them from anything they ever had a rightful liberty to do. And so, what rights did we give up on entering civil society? The answer given by Wilson and Alexander Hamilton was: none. As Hamilton said in Federalist 84, “Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing.” Hence there was something not quite right in the notion of a Bill of Rights reserving to people rights they hadn’t surrendered to the state, for that implied that they had indeed surrendered the body of their rights to the state and that they were holding back now a few they hadn’t surrendered. The very purpose of the Constitution — the purpose that directed all branches of the government, not merely the courts — was the securing of those “natural rights.” One could deny that point, as Hamilton said, only by slipping into the teaching of Thomas Hobbes and supposing that there were no rights before the advent of a government, no morality antecedent to civil society. As Hamilton pointed out, in Hobbes’s view morality was all conventional. We could not expect anyone to accept any moral restraints on his conduct, for until there were laws, he could have no assurance that there were moral truths out there that anyone would respect.
5. At Competitive Enterprise Institute, Angela Logomasini rashes the attack on plastic bans. From the article:
This year, several states are considering statewide plastic shopping bag bans, including New York, Washington, and New Hampshire. But before imposing bans, politicians should stop and think about why consumers like plastic bags. They are lightweight, easy to carry, sanitary, and don’t fall apart if they get wet. These attributes are particularly valuable for commuters — especially for senior citizens and disabled people who might find themselves hauling groceries home on a rainy day.
Plastic bags are also inexpensive compared to alternatives because plastic products require far fewer resources over their lifecycles — from energy to water to storage and disposal space — than the alternatives. According to researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, if we banned all plastic packaging and replaced it with glass and metals, global energy consumption would double.
6. At the Mises Institute, Robert Murphy sees the economic argument for a carbon tax is a great idea — for a work of fiction. From the end of his analysis:
Dozens of heavy-hitting economists have sent a letter to the WSJ, praising a bipartisan revenue-neutral carbon tax that halts climate change, eliminates inefficient government regulations, and makes most families richer. It would be more fitting for Nobel laureates in literature to pen such a plea, because it’s based entirely in fiction.
As many of these same economists recognize in their other work, there are institutional reasons that government wastes money and produces counterproductive regulations. The only way the “border adjustments” and rebate checks will actually limit the economic fallout from a new carbon tax, is if the scheme fails in its ostensible purpose of sharply curtailing emissions. The simple fact is that rapidly reducing U.S. emissions through a massive new tax is going to have huge economic consequences. If some economists think that this cost is worth it, they should make the case plainly to the public and policymakers, rather than engaging in misleading talk about dividend checks.
Baseballery
The longest game in baseball history should be better known as the contest in which two opposing pitchers hurled complete games. Of 26 innings. By current practices, an ace in any bullpen might rack up that number over four or five games. But on the cloudy and drizzly afternoon of May 1, 1920, at Braves Field in Boston, the home team and the Brooklyn Robins played to a 1–1 tie in a nearly four-hour game called for darkness after the final out was made in the 26th inning. On the mound for the final out was the Robins’ Leon Cadore, a 68–72 career pitcher who spent most of his ten years hurling for Brooklyn. Registering the first and final of the Robins’ 78 outs was Braves’ hurler Joe Oeschger, an 82–116 career pitcher who also threw for the Giants, Phillies, and Robins before he hung up the spikes in 1925.
The previous year, while pitching for the Phillies, Oeschger tossed a 20-inning complete-game tie against the same Robins (Hall-of-Famer Burleigh Grimes, the opposing pitcher in that 9–9 battle, also went the distance).
Some interesting extras about the 26-inning contest: Two future Hall of Famers — the Braves’ Rabbit Maranville and Brooklyn’s Zack Wheat — played the entire game; the Braves’ second baseman, Charlie Pick, was hitless in 11 at bats (still an MLB record); and both Oeschger and Cadore pitched no-hit ball for the final six frames.
Goodbye, Frank: Rookie of the Year, MVP in both leagues, Triple Crown winner, Hall of Fame member, last manager of the Montreal Expos, and first manager of the Washington Nationals (ok, same thing) Frank Robinson passed away this week. R.I.P. Here’s his Cooperstown speech. And at NRO, Dan McLaughlin, a.k.a. “Baseball Crank,” writes this very fitting tribute.
One Last Commercial!
Folks of the Right: There is new conservative fiction being published. Jerry Welch, subscriber and reader of these WJ missives, is the author of the popular arse-kickin’-action Legacy series, which he launched several years back with Warren Murphy (known for founding the Destroyer series and as screenwriter for Lethal Weapon 2 and The Eiger Sanction). Legacy #7 — titled 100 Proof — came out a few months back: Check it out, and the series’ six prior numbers, at Amazon. A compendium of these will be out soon.
A Dios
Have a delightful week and do remember to get a card and a box of chocolates sooner than later. Turner Classic Movies is showing Brief Encounter to mark Saint Valentine’s Day — if you’ve yet to see this classic, now’s your chance.
God bless you and all those who hold a place in your heart,
Jack Fowler
Who can be bombarded with accusation and snits at jfowler@nationalreview.com.