Dear Weekend Jolter,

Well, it’s not the first time a political leader called for the death of children.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Such a blood lust. Who thought Albany was a portal to infernal regions?

About the “Abortion Maximalists,” Jonah Goldberg finds their moral high ground to be at the bottom of a ditch. From his new column:

Many people have trouble being 100 percent certain that a fertilized egg or a blastocyst is a human being, but vanishingly few of us dispute that a delivered baby outside the womb is a human being. And it is not a large leap in logic or morality to believe that a partially delivered viable baby is a human being. If you want to argue that the status of the baby gets murkier as you wind the clock backward, fine. But that’s a different argument. It’s not murky at 40 weeks.
In debates over the death penalty, there is one thing virtually everyone agrees upon: It’s profoundly wrong to execute the innocent. Our criminal-justice system is rightly crammed with all manner of checks to minimize the risk of a terrible mistake. Well, a viable baby is surely innocent, too. And yet, among abortion-rights maximalists, it is considered the morally sophisticated position to remove as many checks as possible from preventing infanticide. If you think it’s worth tolerating a certain number of baby killings to protect abortion rights, you should say so. But please don’t pretend the moral ground you’re standing on is very high.

Editorials

1. Events may prove this initial takeoff, but our take on the Stone arrest is that his crimes, whatever they may be and if they indeed exist, represent a “C-List Caper.” From the editorial:

After WikiLeaks began publishing hacked DNC emails on July 22, the indictment alleges that a “senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information [WikiLeaks] had regarding the Clinton campaign.” There is no indication of who did the “directing.” Stone has denied it was Donald Trump, but it is not clear he’d be in a position to know that. In any event, Stone is said thereafter to have “told the Trump campaign about potential future releases” (emphasis added). That is, the Trump campaign did not know what WikiLeaks had or would do, and the best Stone could do was surmise what it might have and might do.
We rehearse this detail to point out that, after more than two years of investigation premised on then–FBI director James Comey’s highly irregular public announcement (in congressional testimony shortly after Trump’s inauguration) that the bureau suspected Trump-campaign “coordination” in Russia’s espionage efforts, the special counsel has never alleged a conspiracy between Trump associates and the Kremlin. In fact, his indictments indicate that Russia orchestrated hacking operations on its own and passed the stolen emails to WikiLeaks, which published them. The Trump campaign obviously hoped to benefit from anti-Clinton revelations of any kind and from any source, no matter how unsavory. But the Stone indictment elucidates what Mueller’s earlier Russian indictments indicate: There is no reliable evidence of Trump-campaign complicity in Russia’s hacking, the campaign did not know what Russia stole, and it had no connection to WikiLeaks’ acquisition or publication of Democratic emails — which themselves had scant bearing on Mrs. Clinton (she is virtually absent as a participant, though it is clear that the DNC favored her over rival Bernie Sanders).
Given how suspicions over Russia connections have roiled over politics and cast a cloud over the White House, it is past time for the Justice Department to state whether it stands by the explosive suggestion in then-director Comey’s testimony, subsequently reiterated by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, of Trump–Russia coordination.

2. Americans are shocked, and Canadians are likely freaking out: Kamala Harris wants to be president of a nation with no private health insurance. From our editorial on the “tin-pot authoritarian”:

Senator Harris is — and always has been — a fundamentally unserious politician, an opportunist who will say whatever she thinks needs saying in the moment. Asked about her ideas on gun control, she proposed locking members of Congress in a room and forcing them to look at photographs of maimed children. That kind of thing may play with the witless and rage-addled hyper-partisans in Portland and Brooklyn, but it is far from being a serious proposal.
And it is not as though Harris doesn’t know how to design a robust policy program: While she was district attorney in San Francisco, she oversaw an energetic effort to arrest poor people for the misbehavior of their children. As attorney general of California, she abused her investigatory powers to harass political opponents until a federal court made her knock it off. She’s a tin-pot authoritarian when it suits her.
And apparently that’s what suits her when it comes to health care.

3. About the blood lust, which is increasingly sacramental in the Democratic party — we condemn the infanticide. From the editorial:

Killing a two-month-old infant is rightly prohibited and punished. Unborn children late in pregnancy differ from two-month-olds in no way that could plausibly justify this radical difference in treatment. To allow them to be killed, to expose them to lethal violence, to treat them as non-persons, is manifestly unjust. It is unjust to do these things even if one does not directly participate in the killing. And that injustice lays moral obligations on all of us.
Those Democrats who have taken this extreme position should reconsider it. Those who have not should repudiate it. Republicans should expose the Democrats’ indefensible position to the light. So should journalists, by reporting on the Democrats’ stance rather than simply repeating their spin. Catholic bishops should stir themselves to do real pastoral work on those Catholic politicians who have fallen into this grievous moral error, which includes reminding them that those who obstinately persist in it have broken communion with the Church.

4. We say good riddance to the INF Treaty. From the editorial:

In theory, the INF forbids both the U.S. and Russia to develop ground-based conventional and nuclear missiles of a certain range. In practice, the treaty constrains only one of its signatories — the United States — to our profound disadvantage. Evidence began to mount in 2008 that Russia was developing missiles that violated the INF, but the Obama administration remained silent, pushing ahead with the misbegotten New START arms-control treaty and waiting until 2011 to mention its concerns to Congress. In 2014, the administration declared for the first time that Russia was in violation of the treaty for testing a ground-launched missile. No matter: In 2017, Russia deployed that missile, the SSC-8, near Volgograd.
Obama’s embrace of more arms control and his gentle efforts to coax the Russians back into compliance failed. Trump’s break with that unsuccessful approach is welcome and, by the way, is a step that he almost certainly wouldn’t take were he secretly working to advance Russian national interests.

A Commercial, but a Darned Good One. So Buy the Product.

Every other year NR Institute hosts a biennial Ideas Summit, and 2019 is one of those aforementioned biennial years, so folks, whip out the calendars and the Bic pen, mark the dates of March 28–29, and plan to get yourself to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C., to participate in this year’s assembly of 500 fellow conservatives — including an amazing (and growing) line-up of speakers — as we focus on “The Case for the American Experiment.”

I have a funny feeling there are plenty of new Members of Congress who would be opposed to that Case. You have that same feeling? Yeah, well, the Case needs pals. So come to the Summit and be part of that band of conservative brothers and sisters making the case for restating the case.

Jazzed up by the exceptional marketing pitch, you exclaim: “I must attend!” You ask: “Where can I get more information? Where can I register?” Glad you asked: Here.

OK, before we move on, I need to say that while this Case is my favorite case, every once in a while I prefer this case.

A Dozen Gems Mined from the World’s Greatest Conservative Website

1. Ramesh Ponnuru finds the “Infanticide Craze” to be firmly anchored in the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe and Doe decisions. From his analysis:

Republicans have reacted to the New York law and the Virginia bill with justified horror. But it’s important to identify correctly what we should be horrified about. The central provisions of these laws and proposed laws do not liberalize abortion policy beyond the status quo. The Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence has for decades effectively forbidden any state from prohibiting abortion even late in pregnancy.
Roe v. Wade held that states could prohibit abortion late in pregnancy only if they made an exception for abortions meant to protect the pregnant woman’s health. Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion in that case mentioned several health harms that unwanted parenthood could cause. Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton — written by the same justice and handed down the same day — also suggested that health should be read broadly. As Blackmun put it, “the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the well-being of the patient.” An exception this broad would of course swallow any prohibition: An abortionist will always be able to say that in his professional judgment, having the child would have adverse emotional or familial consequences.*

2. Alexandra DeSanctis lambasts the indefensible morality of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, the champion of de facto infanticide and more, if he can conjure up ideas. From her piece:

This fallen son looks less like Saul and more like Judas — selling the innocent to save his political soul.
Not only did Cuomo personally lobby for the RHA for years, but he insists that the bill’s ample pro-abortion provisions still aren’t enough. He has promised to campaign for having the right to abortion, including late in pregnancy, written into the state constitution. And lest you consider him a dedicated federalist, recall that he swore to sue the federal government should Roe ever be overturned.
But Cuomo’s passion for abortion rights is still more sinister than that. On the evening that he signed the RHA, the governor announced that the spire of Freedom Tower, the building erected in lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers once stood, would be lit up in pink to celebrate the occasion, a jubilee for the unlimited right to choose death for the defenseless.
Just beside Freedom Tower, two pools mark the spot of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Around each of them are inscribed the names of every person murdered that day, and beside the names of eleven of those women the carved stone says, “and her unborn child.” Beneath Cuomo’s shrine to abortion on demand, the real story is written: These are human lives.

3. Vice President Mike Pence tears into the Left’s brazen push for de facto infanticide, and maybe not even so de facto. From his piece:

This shameless embrace of a culture of death is startling to every American who cherishes life. Not too long ago, the Democratic party’s stated position was that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” It was this widespread rejection of late-term abortion that led a large bipartisan majority in Congress to pass the partial-birth-abortion ban in 2003. But now look at how far the Democratic party has fallen.
To support, let alone cheer, late-term abortions not only marks a disturbing step backward by so-called “progressives” — it also violates every demand of human decency. As modern science has moved the point of viability ever earlier in pregnancy, most Americans have agreed that a child who can survive outside the womb deserves a chance at life. Only a handful of countries, including China and North Korea, allow late-term abortions.

4. John Allison says conservatives need to make the moral case for capitalism. Cost analyses of crazy socialist ideas just ain’t enough. From his piece:

Conservatives have opposed these socialist proposals by pointing out how much they will cost. For instance, they’ve trumpeted a Mercatus Center study estimating that Medicare-for-all would roughly double the federal budget. They have explained how high tax rates would hurt economic growth. And they’ve demonstrated how a $15 wage floor would hurt small businesses and reduce job opportunities.
These arguments are all correct. But they do not address the root of why these policy proposals are wrong. By merely citing the financial or economic challenges of implementing them, conservatives cede the moral high ground and tacitly accept the Left’s premises.
To win the battle of ideas, conservatives must fight on philosophical grounds, explaining why these policies are immoral. They must make the case based on ethics rather than economics because the latter is downstream from the former. It is only a matter of time before a purely economic or logical argument loses to a moral or emotional one.
In practice this means explaining why the fundamental principle of collectivism underlying these socialist proposals is immoral: It violates the individual rights upon which societal progress and happiness are based. Collectivism is backed by compulsion, where one side wins and the other loses, rather than voluntary trade for mutual benefit.

5. John O’Sullivan takes you on the Brexit Politics roller coaster. It would be advisable not to have eaten beforehand. Read his analysis here.

6. You know what’s a dumb idea? If you ask Jonathan Tobin, he’d say legislation to ban government shutdowns. From his column:

Yet, just as important, a shutdown ban would also accelerate the already alarming process by which the legislative branch has abandoned to executive agencies its constitutional mandate to govern the country. As awful and politically ineffective as government shutdowns might be, the threat to force one at least preserves the pretense that the federal structure is run by the people’s representatives rather than enduring due to the inertia of a spending process that mandates that the money keep flowing even when there is no legal consensus on how it may be spent. Ensuring that the legislative process can have no effect on spending means that the government runs itself rather than operating at the pleasure of those elected to govern.
For all the good intentions of those behind a shutdown ban, and with the knowledge of how destructive they are, this legislation does as much (if not more) to damage democracy as the spectacle of gridlock does, or even the suffering of unpaid government employees.

7. Honest inquiries into the causes of gender dysphoria are increasingly verboten by the lefty Thought Police. From Madeleine Kearns’ report:

On the panel, she was joined by Kara Dansky of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), Hacsi Horvath, a lecturer in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California (who identified as transgender for more than a dozen years), and Julia Beck, a lesbian writer and producer of Women’s Liberation Radio News, who was kicked off Baltimore’s “LGBTQ Commission” for stating that only females can be lesbians.
“When a child says they’re transgender, we as a society have been taught to accept and celebrate this announcement,” Chavez said. She then showed a clip of Jazz Jennings, star of the American TV series I am Jazz, as he had a “farewell to penis” party to celebrate his upcoming surgery at age 17.
“But there are many parents who are not celebrating,” Chavez said after the clip. “They are suffering in silence. They know their children were not ‘born in the wrong bodies.’”
Chavez then shared four stories, seen by National Review, from parents who wished to remain anonymous. The first was of a 13-year-old autistic child who believed herself to be transgender after watching a school presentation. Without evaluation or therapy, the mother was told by a “gender therapist” to buy her child a breast binder and put her on puberty-blocking drugs. If she didn’t comply, she was told, her child would face a high risk of suicide. She only realized later how inaccurate and baseless this clinical advice had been.

8. Colin Dueck and Congressman Mike Gallagher make the conservative case for NATO and its role in protecting U.S. national-security interests. From their analysis:

The conservative case for NATO is not that it strengthens liberal world order. Rather, the conservative case for NATO is that it bolsters American national interests. In an age of great-power competition, as identified by the Trump administration, America’s Western alliance provides the U.S. with some dramatic comparative advantages. The United States, Canada, and their European allies have a number of common interests and common challenges with regard to Beijing, Moscow, terrorism, cyberattacks, migration, nuclear weapons, and military readiness. NATO is the one formal alliance that allows for cooperation on these matters. It is also the only alliance that embodies America’s civilizational ties with Europe — a point forcefully made by President Trump when he visited Poland in 2017. Properly understood, NATO helps keeps America’s strategic competitors at bay, pushing back on Russian and Chinese influence. In all of these ways, the U.S. alliance system in Europe is a bit like oxygen. You may take it for granted, but you’ll miss it when it’s gone.
Now consider the alternative. American withdrawal from NATO would be a grave error. Not only would it surrender the above advantages and undo existing progress in Europe. It would also have negative long-term implications globally pertaining to America’s foremost long-term strategic challenge: namely, the People’s Republic of China. As Beijing extends its influence worldwide, U.S. disengagement from NATO would send the signal that the United States is an unreliable friend. America’s allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific would have to rethink the integrated security architecture we have painstakingly built since Eisenhower’s day. This is not to mention the obvious and immediate tactical and operational military advantages that would accrue to Russia in Europe, shifting the balance of power against the United States.

9. Denmark, Something’s Rotten: Alarms are going off over this Jussie Smollett MAGA-attack. Kyle Smith looks at the claims. From his piece:

Surveillance video shows Smollett walking into an apartment building and past security guards without stopping to ask them for help or to tell them he had just been subjected to a vicious assault and hate crime. In this video, he was wearing a rope around his neck “like a necktie but shaped like a noose,” according to a police spokesman. At some point the police were contacted and Smollett was interviewed in a friend’s apartment at 2:42 a.m. He asked police to turn off their body cameras so the encounter would not be recorded. At this point, he was still wearing the rope around his neck, police said.
So let’s recap what Smollett says happened, together with what Chicago reporters have heard from police. Two men recognized a gay black actor from a TV show at 2 a.m. on a Chicago street during an extreme cold snap while he was on his phone. Instead of taking the phone from him, they began to shout slurs at him. The assailants happened to have a rope and an unknown liquid with them. They put a rope around his neck, but instead of strangling him with it, they just left it there and then ran away. Instead of calling the police immediately on the phone, Smollett walked into an apartment building and past security, without informing anyone about the alleged assault, and he kept the rope around his neck for some three-quarters of an hour. He neglected to tell the police about the MAGA remark in this first interview, revealing it only later in a subsequent interview. He took himself to Northwestern Memorial Hospital that morning and was released later in the morning. TMZ posted a picture of Smollett with a small scratch or cut beneath his right eye.

10. More Kyle. He goes to a comedy show to see Colin Quinn’s take on an emasculated industry. From his take:

The name of Quinn’s show is Red State Blue State, and on the surface Quinn is staking out some neutral territory between enemy camps in the culture war. But he isn’t really, because he understands who the aggressors in that war are. One side is begging to be left to its own ways, and it isn’t the side shouting “tolerance.” And when he defines red states vs. blue states, he says, “Red states, a little bit racist. Blue states, a little bit fascist.” The audience didn’t see that one coming. There was a sharp intake of breath at the Greenwich Village venue when Quinn noted that the Left hates free speech. The collective thought bubble over the audience’s head read, “Who, us? We merely want to destroy teens who wear unapproved hat messages and ban films that are critical of Hillary Clinton.” . . .
Making common-sense observations carries a tinge of radicalism these days. “1492 to 1992, I never heard a bad word about Christopher Columbus . . . Now it’s like Manson’s birthday all of a sudden.” A society that starts questioning its own holidays, he notes ruefully, has turned on itself. He need hardly state which political persuasion is driving this unfortunate trend, which side is on the attack, which side is eager to destroy.

11. The foes of due process are furious that the ability to destroy the lives of young men is stymied by new regulations. David French looks at a scalp-demanding New York Times column. From his piece:

Let’s make this very clear: When campus activists argue against the Trump administration’s due-process guidelines, they are arguing for the power of campus administrators to punish (mainly) young men for alleged acts on or off campus without cross-examination, without seeing available evidence, without a live hearing, and under definitions of the alleged offenses far broader than those that apply under relevant law.
“Wait a second,” you might be saying to yourself. “Why such an emphasis on campus courts?” Indeed, if we’re talking about actual sexual assault, actual rape, and actual sexual harassment, each of these offenses is prohibited by criminal and/or civil law. There are existing legal processes for punishing these crimes whether they occur on or off campus. A campus tribunal is hardly an alleged victim’s only recourse.
A convicted rapist doesn’t get a “coveted job.” He doesn’t attain “more power as time goes on.” Individuals found responsible for sexual harassment in courts of law not only have to pay damages, they carry with them the stain of that public record for the rest of their lives. But no conviction in criminal court or finding of liability in civil court can occur without the very due process that campus activists decry.

12. Victor Davis Hanson explains why he thinks the Latino vote may be more Trump-trending than one might think. Here is one among several reasons, explained in this Corner post:

The “new” Democratic party not only show signs of a new more insidious anti-Semitism — as we’ve seen from comments by Senator Feinstein, Harris, and Hirono, and the surreal and barbarous statements coming out of Virginia and New York on third-trimester abortion (and near infanticide). But it is now becoming anti-Catholic to a degree not seen in decades in America. Why would a devout Catholic wish to side with such bigotry? Trump is on the right side of the abortion and the religious-discrimination issues.

BONUS: Swedish journalist Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is in Caracas, reporting on the tumult in the streets as Maduro thugs snoop, prowl, and intimidate. From the beginning of her report:

“There are colectivos on every corner.”
My bodyguard points them out to me, the seemingly inconspicuous men standing a few feet away. The men belong to the colectivos, the heavily armed Maduro-loyalist gangs policing this city, always ready to intimidate and attack anti-government protesters.
Just after he points them out, one of them walks up to me and asks for my phone and passport. I hand him a copy of my passport and show him my phone. Without even bothering to search it, he tells me to delete whatever is on there.
I do as he says while he watches me, and when I am finally allowed to go I realize he didn’t think to check my phone’s trash. So I post the videos and photos, all in succession, while my bodyguard drags me away.
It’s only my second day in Caracas but already my third run-in with the alternative law in this city. There’s a growing sense of unease in me as I realize how truly totalitarian this country has become, creating a culture of desperation and fear. You fear everyone, not just the regime, but also all those who are on its payroll, wielding weapons in the name of this twisted socialist dream.

Podcastapalooza

Your Truly has been horsewhipped, internet-style, for not providing links to our panoply of podcasts as of late. The lashes hurt. So clear out the wax and strap on the headphones:

1. On the new edition of The Editors, Rich, Charlie, MBD, and Reihan continue their discussion of the Democratic presidential candidates, condemn a heinous Virginia abortion bill, and finish up with a look at the antics of Roger Stone. Hear here!

2. Given Andrew Cuomo’s hell-bentness, it’s fitting that on The Great Books, John J. Miller and his Hillsdale colleague, Stephen Smith, are doing the deep-dive into Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, divided into separate episodes on Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Folks, if you have never read this collective galactic classic, you at the least need to listen to these amazing discussions. Also: There will be a quiz.

3. More JJM: on The Bookmonger he interviews Sohrab Ahmari about his conversion story, From Fire By Water. Listen here.

4. David French and Alexandra DeSanctis use the new episode of Ordered Liberty to discuss efforts in New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, and Vermont to slaughter late-term abortion restrictions. Powerful stuff, heard here.

5. The craze that has gripped the Golden State, where new governor Gavin Newson has declared war on Huntington Beach, fills Radio Free California hosts Will Swaim and David Bahnsen with copious commentary, shared in the new episode of their dynamic podcast, which can stroke your eardrums here.

6. On the new episode of Constitutionally Speaking, Jay Cost and Luke Thompson discuss the foreign crisis of 1793 to 1795 and its impact on the development of executive power. You don’t have to be a Constitution geek to find this discussion to be very interesting. Geek or not, listen here.

7. On the new episode of The McCarthy Report, Andy and Rich discuss the rather theatrical arrest of Roger Stone and the likely outcome of his case. You have the right to remain listening, here.

8. On the new episode of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, his Hostness and guest Kristen Soltis Anderson consider . . . Will Howard Schultz be president? . . . Is Gen Z worse than Millennials? . . . Who will win the 2020 Democratic nomination? . . . and much more. Catch it here.

9. More Schultz: On the new Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Charlie and Kevin discuss the presidential wannabes, Seattle, and the veering ever leftward Democratic party. Catch the wisdom and wisecracks here.

Lights. Cameras. Critics.

1. In his take, Armond White finds the “nostalgic noir” Serenity to be a conservative “cry for help” by filmmaker Steven Knight. From the review’s get-go:

They don’t make movies like To Have and Have Not anymore. That 1944 Humphrey Bogart thriller (best remembered as the film debut of Lauren Bacall) is deliberately evoked in the nostalgic noir Serenity, by British screenwriter-director Steven Knight. Borrowing the premise of that Bogart–Howard Hawks–William Faulkner classic for this Matthew McConaughey vehicle, Knight’s movie is not entirely comparable, but Serenity dares a moral reckoning worthy of Knight’s predecessors.
McConaughey’s Baker Dill, a haggard tuna-fisher in Plymouth, Fla., not only recalls Bogart’s expatriate boat owner, he’s also an Iraq War vet — expat from contemporary cynical America. He’s lost something and searches for it in an uncatchable ocean prey. (So he’s also Melville’s Captain Ahab and Hemingway’s Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea.) His odyssey is interrupted by a visitor from the past: ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway) in the same sultry white attire and blond tresses as Kathleen Turner in the ’80s neo-noir Body Heat. She wants Baker to kill her abusive husband (Jason Clarke), a boorish millionaire who is also cruel to Baker’s stepson Patrick (Raphael Sayegh).
These generational crosscurrents are key to Knight’s ambition as well as his failing. He attempts to fit conservative moral precepts familiar to old-fashioned film lovers into modern, immoral license appropriate to video-game culture. Sixties college kids recognized Bogart’s alienation, which made his heroes seem cool for rejecting society’s hypocritical norm — just as Baker does. Knight makes sure that Baker keeps to his moral obligations, split between manliness (sex with local Diane Lane, post-divorce chivalry with Hathaway); brotherhood (black shipmate Djimon Hounsou); and fatherhood. But these qualities oppose Ready Player One–style autistic solipsism. Conservative and progressive narrative paradigms clash.

2. Jonah Goldberg gets out the review manual (a couple of years back he guest-programmed on Turner Classic Movies!) and weighs in on Glass, which likes (but doesn’t love). Here’s why.

3. Armond sees Miss Bala. He doesn’t totally trash it. From his review:

The new action movie Miss Bala is steeped in three kinds of sentiment that all generate contemporary political interest: Mexican-immigrant controversy, feminist distress, and Hollywood patronization.
Miss Bala’s story of an American Latina make-up artist, Gloria Fuentes (Gina Rodriguez), who visits a beauty-contestant friend in Mexico and then gets abducted by a drug cartel, copies a Mexican film of the same name by Gerardo Naranjo that was a 2011 Oscar submission. This remake is the sort of claptrap that used to be called a B-movie, or a straight-to-video release, yet its half-seriousness falls just short of nonsense.
Director Catherine Hardwicke (best known for Twilight, the only watchable entry in the teenage-vampire franchise) inadvertently reveals some of the myths behind purely emotional arguments about the border.
Gloria is told “You weren’t hired to think” by a prissy fashionista, but below-the-border misfortune requires that she drop her American-girl naïveté and fight for her life and personal identity.

4. Kyle Smith reflects on the Michael Jackson documentary, Leaving Neverland, and how it corroborates the claims that the King of Pop was a serial child molester. From his piece:

To some extent, we as a society have set aside the many horrific and entirely credible claims against Jackson simply because we want them not to be true; for the same reason, Bill Cosby got a pass for a surprisingly long time. Jackson’s unfortunate early demise, his apparent closeted homosexuality, and his wounded, childlike nature have made fans fiercely protective of him, with the media largely sidestepping the issue since he died in 2009. What punishment can be visited upon him posthumously? Should he be erased from the culture the way Cosby has been? Should radio stations and deejays stop playing his many great records the way broadcasters have stopped airing The Cosby Show? I’m not sure they should. But the label of serial child molester must be forever attached to Michael Jackson’s name. It should be reiterated constantly like an anti-honorific, the way we take care to refer to President Carter or General MacArthur.

5. More Kyle. He’s not to thrilled about the new Netflix flick, Velvet Buzzsaw. From his review:

As it is no longer 1987, you tend not to come across many goofy Stephen King movies about people being terrorized by inanimate objects anymore. If such a script made its way to the Hollywood studios, it’d be unlikely to attract Oscar-level talent such as Jake Gyllenhaal, John Malkovich, and cinematographer Robert Elswit. So why are all three of these people participants in the new Netflix movie Velvet Buzzsaw, a cheesy thriller about vengeful paintings coming alive and murdering people who exploit the dead artist who painted them? I have a theory.
Velvet Buzzsaw is on the surface a satire about the silliness of the contemporary art world, but that realm is pretty much beyond the reach of parody. Only news writers can adequately capture the comedic content of today’s art. What 21st-century Swift or Voltaire could compete with the following 2001 news item from the New York Times: “An installation that the popular and pricey British artist Damien Hirst assembled in the window of a Mayfair gallery on Tuesday was dismantled and discarded the same night by a cleaning man who said he thought it was garbage.”

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The Six

1. At The Spectator (UK), John Keiger explains how French president Emmanuel Macron is dix pouces in his fight against Euro-populists. From his analysis:

In France, discontent has been brewing for years. Emmanuel Macron managed to set it alight by embarking on a series of reforms that sparked the gilet jaunes movement. In Europe it has been brewing too, and now Macron seems to be repeating the trick. Here the antipathy is from populist governments opposed to his ideas, not only on a future Europe but also his lesson-giving in how those countries should govern themselves. International politics are following a similar pattern to national politics. Macron sweeps onto the international stage with new ideas for reforming Europe, he accompanies that with acerbic throw-away quips on the competence and morality of particular leaders, they riposte and, gradually, individual protests coalesce into an axis of angry opposition to the French president.

2. And similar targeting of Euro weenies and their French poster boy, Bernard-Henri Lévy — who is trying to rally the elites to attack national populist movements — comes from Scott McConnell, writing for The American Conservative. From his essay:

A wiser political strategy for the neoliberal Merkelist and Macronist parties would be to downplay their ideological distinctions and present their candidates, however disingenuously, as unexceptional center-left and center-right patriots. Macron has been attempting this, with some success, in his own battle against the gilet jaunes. He now appears on TV with a French national flag prominently at his side, and seeks to woo audiences with flattering patriotic references to France’s “uniqueness.”
But here comes Lévy, organizing a public letter signed by 30 writers and intellectuals throwing down the ideological gauntlet in the coming elections. “The idea of Europe is in peril,” Lévy and his co-signers intone. It is being attacked by “false prophets drunk on resentment and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight.” France’s elections in May, say Lévy and his signatories, “promise to be the most calamitous we have known.” He summons Europeans to “a new battle for civilization.” Urgently they “sound the alarm” against “these arsonists of soul and spirit who want to make a bonfire of our freedoms.” And Lévy isn’t stopping at a mere public letter. He promises a tour of two dozen European cities beginning in March. At 70, he bids to become the continent-wide face of resistance to the Euroskeptic parties. . . .
So now this aging and very rich philosophe will be a most prominent public face of the campaign to save Europe from the Euroskeptic parties. The election debate in general is likely to be fascinating and without precedent. The right-wing and nationalist parties have, in general, a nuanced view of Europe—their nationalism, such as it is, is directed not against other Europeans, but against mass immigration from beyond Europe’s shores. Their views are roughly those held by Charles de Gaulle: that a Europe of nation states is more likely to sustain and nurture the creative aspects of European civilization than a Europe dominated by bureaucrats who have elevated freedom of movement and universal human rights into an ersatz religion. But much remains much to be worked out in practice.

3. Our old NR pal Tracy Lee Simmons writes a wonderful piece for The Catholic Thing on listening to the recorded talks of the famous Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. From his piece:

These talks open a clear window on Merton the teacher. And one thing we see is that, however edgy and occasionally heterodox Merton might have made himself in some of his published writings, when he spoke to the monks of high and consequential things, he hugged the shore a good deal more than might be supposed by his critics. He relished detail — names, dates, ideas fleshed out. He preferred that the monks know something and not be satisfied with a few scraps of minimal information on any one topic.
Nonetheless, anybody should be warned that these talks, even when strung together by themes — a series on the Latin Fathers or the Twelve Degrees of Humility or poetry or Faulkner, for instance — aren’t “courses” in any systematic sense. Merton was too digressive, too ready to amble up interesting by-ways on route to a larger point. But that’s what makes the talks valuable and, more often than not, pleasantly diverting. Some people are interesting simply when holding forth about anything.
One nicely surprising discovery for me was prompted by a passing remark of Br. Paul who revealed a point once made by Fr. Louis (as Merton was known within the monastery) during those heady days when the Vatican II was still meeting in Rome. St. Thomas Aquinas, Merton said, was a theologian read by almost no one anymore, so far had he fallen out of favor — which fact, Merton said, gave the monks a splendid reason for reading him.

4. And you thought “grooming gangs” was just a British perversion, silly. At Gatestone Institute, David Brown reports on how the practice can be found in places as remote as tiny town in Finland. From his piece:

What hits hardest in the little town of Oulu in Finland is a disturbing sense that history is repeating itself here and nothing has been learned from the well-documented lessons of the past. Instead there seems to be a hope that with a few overdue statements this problem will go back underground and the noise will go away.
Initial reports suggest that the abused girls and their parents were not necessarily believed; the police responded only after the strong intervention of the father and step-father of one victim, who set a trap for one of the groomers online. It was this intervention that led a local councilman to uncover the fact that in a two-day period, “a total of 8 men with migrant names had been incarcerated for child sexual abuse, aggravated child sexual abuse and aggravated rape.”
Only after this information became public did the local police finally issue a warning to parents about the threat faced by their children:
“Recently, in the Oulu region, cases have emerged that foreign-born, often non-Finnish men have attracted minors to get in contact with them. At worst, contacts have led to serious sexual offences.”
The Oulu police say they have recently been informed of dozens of cases where adult men tried to lure young girls online. “That’s the reason for our warning,” said Detective Superintendent Markus Kiiskinen.
All of this uproar comes at a politically awkward time for Finnish politicians, just three months before parliamentary elections scheduled for April 14. Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, who maintained a firm silence on the matter during all of December 2018, has now changed course to appear concerned and action-oriented.

5. More from The Catholic Thing: Professor Anthony Esolen is keeping score of the sins committed against the Covington Catholic High School kids. They are prejudice, vindictiveness, calumny, cowardice, contumacy, sacrilege, detraction, obscenity, malice, and violence. Wow. From his piece:

A lot of people began to have second thoughts. Others roamed over the Internet to find something, anything, that would cast the school in a bad light. Some said that the boy did not himself write his sometimes ungrammatical apologia, explaining what happened. They had, of course, no evidence for their accusation.
This was the sin of CALUMNY. By this time, people knew quite well that the boys had not sought out any confrontation, and that they had been already abused by grown men aplenty.
To abuse the weak — children, women, youths — is at least a sin of COWARDICE, and to call them “faggots” and “incest kids” compounded the abuse with the sin of OBSCENITY. To withhold the truth about the context of the incident, truth that would mitigate any guilt, or exonerate entirely, is to commit the sin of DETRACTION.
The Indian with the drum and his group showed up at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception the next evening, attempting to disrupt the Mass. This was a sin of SACRILEGE, against the holy place and the worship of innocent people; in the context of what they had already done, it was the sin of CONTUMACY, and of SOWING DISCORD.

6. In City Journal, Lance Morrow finds that the Left’s fixation on adolescent behavior reflects a stunted moral intelligence. From his piece:

It is as if progressives in the era of Donald Trump are stuck in what physicists call a “metastable state,” an adolescent condition of mind — and a ridiculous place to have one’s thoughts detained. Is it not odd for a society to argue crucial moral issues on the basis of the behavior of teenagers, debating great matters by trying to read the smile of a 16-year-old on Facebook? Do progressives understand that adolescence (volatile, experimental, mostly ignorant, and naturally running to extremes) should not be the territory on which to thrash out these issues? At work here — besides a massive failure of adult responsibility — is the cynical manipulation, for political gain, of shallow adolescent emotions.
Twenty-first-century American middle-class society indulges adolescents well into their twenties and beyond. Masses of young people move back in with their parents, deferring adult life in favor of a sort of liminal, embryonic state. Yet here we see progressives placing adolescents at the center of their moral imaginations, as if the moods of teenagers were the mirror of their most consequential thoughts.

Good-bye Peter

A National Review contribution arrived from a man in San Francisco. His name was Peter Magowan. That Peter Magowan? The one who owned the San Francisco Giants? The same. So traveling out thataway, Yours Truly petitioned if I could pay a visit, and he said yes, and we visited, and for close to two hours at that meeting, the first of several, we talked about our love for the National Pastime, and in particular about his once-upon-a-time love, as a New York City boy, for the team that used to play at the Polo Grounds.

The reason there is a Giants team still in San Francisco is that Peter — who had moved there decades ago and had spent years running Safeway Corp. — stepped up, cobbled together a group of investors, and bought the franchise, which looked like it was headed for Florida, fleeing the shabby and windy Candlestick Park. As the managing partner, he led the efforts to build a new stadium (now named Oracle Park) — privately funded and considered one of the Major League’s best ballfields.

Peter was a sponsor of NRI’s 2016 Buckley Prize Dinner and of our 2018 Buckley Legacy events. He introduced many people to this institution. A delightful man, of happy temperament and serious conservative beliefs, he battled cancer and the troubling aftermath of a liver transplant. He was put through the ringer relentlessly. This week the cancer won out. To his wife Debby, another delightful soul, and his family, we pray that Peter rest in deserved peace, enjoying the intimate company of Christy Mathewson, Willie McCovey, Bobby Thompson, Mel Ott, and Fred Snodgrass.

Baseballery

The Philadelphia As were one of baseball’s great teams (winning nine AL pennants and five World Serieses between 1901 to 1931) before a strapped Connie Mack busted up his talented squad after the 1932 season. It was one of those clubs that marked the 1950s as a decade of franchise moving – in 1955 the As were sold and headed to Kansas City (where they were just awful for their 13-year tenure).

The Philadelphia As played their final game not in the City of Brotherly Love, but on a Sunday afternoon in late September in The Bronx, the 50-103 cellar dwellers facing the second-place Bombers, who came into the game with a mirror-image record of 103-50. In the bottom of the sixth, the As leading, the Yanks threatening, the 5-11 Marion Fricano took the mound in relief of Art Ditmar (who later pitched a couple of decent years for the Yanks, but got shellacked in his two starts against the Pirates in the 1960 World Series). Fricano would be the last man ever to pitch for the historic Philadelphia team. In 3.2 innings, he held the Yankees to four hits and one earned run, picking up the save. (The journeyman infielder and player / manager, Eddie Joost, got the As last hit, a single, in the ninth).

After a dismal few performances in Kansas City the following year, Fricano was sent to the minors, taking his 15-23 career record with him. Fricano never pitched again in the majors. But he did his franchise proud one night in The Bronx.

A Dios

By the time you read this, Punxsutawney Phil will likely have already seen his shadow in Gobbler’s Knob. Make of it what you will. Be aware that 31 Days of Oscar are upon us. And in your spare moments, consider the souls in Purgatorio — there may be one who gets sprung courtesy of your sole heartfelt Hail Mary.

God bless you and all those you hold dear,

Jack Fowler

Who can be contacted this side of Purgatory at [email protected].