Reason Magazine - Staff

Massacre in India

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:19:00 EST

Not many details at the moment, but we do know that gunmen opened fire at various sites in Bombay in what appears to be a coordinated terrorist attack. According to BBC News, unconfirmed reports say that 80 are dead, 250 injured, and an unknown number are being held hostage in a "luxury hotel."

On Wednesday, gunmen opened fire in at least seven sites, including a train station, two five-star hotels, a hospital and a restaurant popular with tourists.

At least two blasts, suspected to be grenade attacks, were reported alongside the shootings.

Police said the gunmen had fired indiscriminately.

At least 10 people were killed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, they said.
A man shows the wounds of another man injured in a gunbattle at Mumbai's Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

"The terrorists have used automatic weapons and in some places grenades have been lobbed," said AN Roy, police commissioner of Maharashtra state.

The Times (UK) reports that the terrorists were targeting foreigners.

UPDATE: The Hindustan Times provides a mercifully smaller death toll of 16.

'The Patriarch of Liberty'

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:00:00 EST

When John Adams traveled to France in 1779 to confer with America's Revolutionary War allies, Parisians lamented that they would not be playing host to "the famous Adams." That title was reserved for the future president's cousin, the muckraking journalist turned zealous revolutionary, Samuel Adams.

So it is odd, then, that this Zelig of independence, present at virtually every revolutionary convulsion of early America, is now remembered mostly for lending his name to a popular brand of beer. As Ira Stoll observes in Samuel Adams: A Life, his engaging and hagiographic biography of this forgotten founding father, a name once synonymous with the American independence movement was "lost in the attic of history."

This is unfortunate, says Stoll, the former managing editor of The New York Sun, because it was Adams who acted as the "moral conscience of the American Revolution." Indeed, it was Adams who helped precipitate the revolutionary unrest, skillfully whipping up public sentiment against British attempts to tax his fellow colonists without allowing them parliamentary representation and, through his pseudonymous newspaper column, inflaming public passions following the Boston Massacre.

Adams was an early and unwavering supporter of separation from Britain, and totally uninterested in compromise or reconciliation with America's imperial masters. When King George III asked Thomas Hutchinson, the former colonial governor of Massachusetts, to provide intelligence on the situation in America, he singled out Adams as "the first that publically asserted the independency of the colonies." As a measure of Adams influence, Stoll points out that when England proffered a pardon for all citizens engaged in revolutionary activity in exchange for a cessation of violence, the only two Bostonians exempted from the deal were Adams and his friend John Hancock.

But Adams was not merely an agitator of mobs. The Massachusetts constitution (1779), which Adams "patiently navigated .ñ.ñ. through revision after revision, and then to ratification," enumerated the "natural, essential and unalienable rights" of "all men." And as Stoll notes, it not only provided the foundation upon which the federal constitution was built, but was later cited when state courts abolished slavery and legalized same-sex marriage.

Stoll argues that, for a man of his times, Adams possessed enlightened, if imperfect, views of slavery and religious liberty (excepting his fanatical anti-Catholicism), and understood that the foundation of a free society was the constitutional guarantee of private property rights. "Property rights, after all," Stoll writes, "were one of Adams's main arguments against taxation by the British." It was the one issue he stressed "almost as much as religious rights in arguing against Britain's treatment of the colonies."

But Christianity was the dominant theme of his writing. He argued strenuously that liberty and religion were inextricably linked, commenting that "whether America shall long preserve her freedom or not, will depend on her virtue" because once Americans "lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."

But he could also be a moral scold; at times sounding like a proto-social conservative. Adams stridently campaigned against "theatrical entertainments," inveighing against the supposedly deleterious effects of horse racing, theater-going, dancing, card playing and salty language. The curbing of such "idle amusements" was necessary, he believed, to restore virtue and to preserve revolutionary gains.

Stoll offers not only a compelling portrait of an overlooked figure, but a crisp intellectual history of the American Revolution and its main players. And he reminds readers that it was John Adams who remarked upon his cousin's death that "Without the character of Samuel Adams, the true history of the American Revolution can never be written." With Samuel Adams: A Life, Stoll has succeeded in returning the man Thomas Jefferson called "the patriarch of liberty" to his proper place in the pantheon of great revolutionaries.

Michael C. Moynihan is an associate editor at reason. This article originally appeared at The New York Post.

Left Behind

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:32:00 EST

Perhaps President-elect Obama isn't the left-wing radical so feared by the green-inkers at Newsmax and Human Events. And this is distressing some of his most vocal supporters. We are a few months away from inauguration, but impatient progressives are already fuming that Slavoj Zizek hasn't been appointed to the National Security Council. Here is The Nation's Washington correspondent, Chris Hayes, on the coming Obama betrayal:

Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care. And I don't just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left.

Hayes is being sectarian—and reductionist. God knows what it means to be "right" about health care, for instance, when The Nation's solution to America's problem (a single-payer model) hasn't been attempted. This magazine has addressed the problems of American health care at great length and has acknowledged that the current system is, in many respects, broken. Does that mean that libertarians have also been "right" about the issue, that we too should expect representation in the next administration's "team of rivals?" Does one only have to diagnose a problem to be "right," or must we also provide an effective prescription? It is amusing, though, to watch young folks like Hayes, who came of age during the George W. Bush presidency, discover that Obama will not simply ascend to the presidency, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, close Guantanamo, disassemble the NSA spying program, and create a Department of Peace, headed by Ramsey Clark. There is a reason that Obama's first term is starting to look like a third term for Bill Clinton.

Update: My indefatigable colleague Damon Root blogged Hayes earlier today. Check it out (and the hundred plus comments) here.

Secretary Clinton

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:48:00 EST

Politico confirms what we all already knew: Sen. Clinton will be America's next secretary of state.

Breaking: President-elect Obama is expected to name New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary on Monday or earlier. Obama is also expected to announce other members of his economic team, sources say.

Meanwhile, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) plans to accept an offer of secretary of State and resign from the Senate, a top Clinton adviser said. An announcement is expected shortly after Thanksgiving, officials said. "She knew this was the right thing to do but just needed to sit with it for a bit to make sure," the adviser said.

Geithner was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under Robert Rubin during Bill Clinton's second term. More change we can believe in.

Manufacturing Dissent

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:00 EST

Before an unfortunate encounter with his television show on Tuesday night, I had never heard of Gideon Yago. According to Wikipedia, Yago is a former correspondent for MTV News, an occasional print journalist, and an aspiring screenwriter. He dresses the part too—hipster glasses, a wispy beard, low-cut Doc Martens boots. A Wisconsin native, Yago is the Midwesterner-as-refugee, keeping it real in New York; outraged by the "corporate media," yet with a minor corporate media pedigree. When asked by The New York Times if he is cynical about the American media, Yago told the Times, "That, my friend, is the understatement of the year."

Yago is the host of The IFC Media Project, a six-part documentary series on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) arguing the anti-media brief for the "change we can believe in" crowd. According to the show's creator and producer, Meghan O'Hara, Yago will look at the "influences shaping today's media coverage including journalistic integrity, biases, corporate influence, profits, ratings, propaganda, agendas, obsessions and more." It is also the intention of these brave souls to demonstrate "how the government uses propaganda in the media to sell policy decisions to the American public." In an apparent conflation of shows like Today with actual news programs, Yago told the Times that he was tired of “news stories that were super-relevant [that] get the kibosh because Purina had bought the first hour of the morning show and they wanted to do a profile on fat cats.”

Case in point, according to the debut episode, is the media's treatment of the Israel-Palestine issue. American foreign policy, says segment host Mark LeVine, is in "lockstep" with Israel, a fact that is "difficult to discuss," the "third rail of journalism," something we Americans "don't debate," and speak of only in "hushed tones." There are critics, he concedes, but "the lobby monitors these people." It is unclear where these brave dissenters are airing their opinions, considering that the mainstream media doesn't allow them a voice, and just why "monitoring" (which, in this case, is a euphemism for criticism) is such a bad thing. In fact, isn't this what The IFC Media Project is doing?

Stressing that "the media"—which is never adequately defined—genuflects at the feet of pro-Israel hawks, Yago and Levine present a clip of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol (an opinion journalist) on Fox News. In a 2006 interview with Neil Cavuto, conducted at the start of the Lebanon war, Kristol comments that, "It's unfortunate that Lebanese get killed in the cross fire, but at the end of the day, this is really much better for Lebanon..." Cut.

But hang on. Here is, according to the Fox transcript of the exchange, Kristol's unexpurgated quote:

"It's unfortunate that Lebanese get killed in the cross fire, but at the end of the day, this is really much better for Lebanon than them being forced to tolerate Hezbollah, as they were forced to tolerate Syria for all those years, occupying their territory."

As tempting as it might be, pay no attention to the substance of Kristol's argument—it is irrelevant to the point at hand. For a television show accusing the mainstream media of selectivity and dishonesty, Yago and Levine don't seem to mind taking some liberties in the editing booth themselves.

The other "pro-Israel" clips are even more bizarre. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig proclaims that "we've got to stick with our ally" (though a comment about the Israel-U.S. relationship not actually being "down the line support" is excised), once again demonstrating that people with opinions are invited on television to express them. A brief clip of MSNBC's only conservative host, former Republican Florida Rep. Joe Scarborough, asking a question of his guest is also truncated. But on the receiving end of Scarborough's interrogation is—surprise!—the anti-Israel pundit Pat Buchanan, a frequent MSNBC guest who has managed to evade the omnipotent and omnipresent Israel lobby.

And so on.

It's hard to know what to make of all of this. One wonders if media criticism is—or has become—merely an expression of ideological frustration. If the deeply held views of the complainant are not represented on CNN's Situation Room, it's the result of a shadowy conspiracy. That IFC doesn't make a convincing case for a uniformly pro-Israel media didn't bother the Columbia Journalism Review, which enthusiastically wrote that "kudos are in order to any project that explores, as [host Gideon] Yago puts it, 'what the media gets right, what it gets wrong, and who calls the shots that influence what you actually see.'" [emphasis added]

This is, in a sense, the political version of Tipper Gore's Parents Music Respurce Center (PMRC), relying as it does on a reductionist argument that the plebians will uncritically swallow whatever the networks feed them (and like Gore, it vastly overstates the broadcast media's influence). But Yago considers himself a member of the resistance, a heroic figure to be celebrated for struggling mightily against the media "noise machine," for being a terribly clever person that watches the BBC. (Yago repeats the hipster cliché that "the foreign press [is] often far more sophisticated and far more nuanced, subtle" than the American media. Has he never heard of the Daily Mail, The Sun, or Bild?)

The IFC Media Project isn't actually engaging in any real media criticism; it's merely signaling to those who are already on his team. No one who has spent significant amounts of time on a college campus in the past 30 years will find anything new or novel in this type of kvetching. But unlike those campus activists who knew how to complain but failed to offer solutions, Yago thinks that media freedom is the problem, not the solution, telling Mediabistro that news is "a public service and for the common wealth."

Perhaps, he continued, we need the government to intervene and force us—a sort of media dictatorship of the proletariat—to watch the correct programming: "I wonder if it has to come down to the federal government coming in and re-regulating what it is that's [on during] prime time, or the way [news] budgets can be allocated, or even creating some sort of government-trusted or government-bonded or government-subsidized media outlet that doesn't have to compete in the marketplace."

That way, the Purina Cat Chow executives and the Israel lobby can't monopolize the flow of information and obscure the truth about the Middle East.

Michael Moynihan is an associate editor of reason magazine

Reductio ad Hitlerum: It Never Goes Out of Style

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:50:00 EST

Now that Naomi Wolf's breathless tale of America's collapse into fascism has been further repudiated (unless, that is, Hitlerian countries routinely elect people like Barack Obama), perhaps it's time for the hysterics on the right to tremble in fear at the forthcoming machtergreifung. First, the psychopathic radio host and "world famous herbal expert" Michael Savage hosts former Hitler Youth member Hilmar von Campe "to discuss similarities between President-elect Obama and the rise of totalitarianism under Hitler." Not much you can say to that, except to point out that beyond the big, excited crowds, there are absolutely no similarities. And then we have 1990s relic Newt Gingrich bemoaning what he views as the thuggish behavior of those opposed to California's Prop. 8: "Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment." Gay fascism in America? Perhaps he's thinking of Austria.

After eight years of Bush, remember, it was deeply serious people like the New Yorker's Steve Coll and New York Times columnist Frank Rich that, in the final months of the 2008 election, eluded to a Weimar-like atmosphere at John McCain rallies. But their guy won. And fascism is over, if you want it. No liberal Von Hindenburg will cede power to the forces of darkness! It is early yet, though, and expect much more of this nonsense of the fringes of the right this time around.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Estonian Spy

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:20:00 EST

According to the Times of London, the Russian government received classified data on American missile defense from an Estonian defense ministry official in "what is being seen as the most serious case of espionage against Nato since the end of the Cold War." The case has rocked the former Soviet colony, which has long had (and here is the understatement of the year) a strained relationship with its neighbor to the East. It's not a particularly surprising development—Moscow's intelligence services barely skipped a beat after 1991, and are almost as aggressive now as they were in the days of Felix Dzerzhinsky—but this sentence particularly caught my eye, underlining the contiguous relationship between the KGB and its predecessor, the FSB: "[Accused spy Herman Simm] was recruited by the Russians in the late 1980s and has been charged in Estonia with supplying information to a foreign power." Further details from the Times:

"The longer they work on the case, the more obvious it becomes how big the impact of the suspected treachery really is," according to Der Spiegel magazine. A German official described the Russian penetration of Nato as a "catastrophe".

Comparisons are being drawn with the case of Aldrich Ames, the former head of the CIA counter-intelligence department who was in effect Russia's top agent in the US.

"Simm became a proper agent for the Russian government in the mid-1990s," says the Estonian deputy Jaanus Rahumaegi who heads the country's parliamentary control commission for the security services.

On the face of it, the Simm case resembles the old-fashioned Cold War spy story. He used a converted radio transmitter to set up meetings with his contact, apparently someone posing as a Spanish businessman

Full story.

Making Dearborn Independent

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:11:00 EST

Writing in the New York Times, Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon, authors of the forthcoming book Two Billion Cars: Driving Toward Sustainability, advocate saving the Detroit auto industry by further taxing those who buy their (already overpriced) products:

One way to [fund the bailout] would be to establish a price floor of $3.50 per gallon on gasoline. If the price drops below that, as it recently has, the federal government would impose a variable tax to bring the price up to $3.50. If the price goes above $3.50, then the tax disappears. The money raised by the variable tax would be used, at least in the short term, to provide loan guarantees to the auto companies. (To ease the burden of higher gasoline prices on low-income taxpayers, some of the revenue would be provided to them as tax credits or vouchers.)

Of course higher gasoline prices would burden low-income Americans in other ways too, by increasing the cost of most consumer goods. And good luck convincing those who have recently purchased a Ford or a Chrysler (there must be someone buying American cars) that an artificial price for gasoline is required, in order to give even more of your money to the selfless members of the United Auto Workers union.

Via Cato, Mark Perry, professor of economics at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan, argues that "Maybe the country would be better off in the long run if we let the Big Three fail, and in the process break the UAW labor monopoly, and then let Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen take over the U.S. auto industry, and restore realistic, competitive, market wages to the industry." He provides this helpful chart (which is further explained here; headline reference explained here):

"Hang Him By the Balls"

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:42:00 EST

Who knows if this is true—and there is plenty of reason to doubt it. After all, it was leaked by Élysée and it strongly implies that Sarko the Super Diplomat single-handedly prevented Russian troops from overrunning Tblisi. Regardless, the portrait of Vladimir Putin rings true:

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia's Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. "I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls," Mr Putin declared.
Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. "Hang him?" - he asked. "Why not?" Mr Putin replied. "The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein." Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: "Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?" Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: "Ah - you have scored a point there."

Full story from the (London) Times.

I discussed the Russian invasion of Georgia with author Andrew Meier here.

Still Not Ready for Prime Time

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:29:00 EST

Via the indispensable Jake Tapper, a wonderfully incoherent distillation of what's ailing the GOP from the winkin' maverick, Gov. Sarah Palin. From an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer:

"Sitting here in these chairs that I'm going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it's our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don't get away with that. We have to balance budgets and we're dealing with multibillion dollar budgets and tens of thousands of employees in our organizations."

But you simply must meet her. Only then will you coastal elites understand her deep intelligence and political acumen.

Ayers Emerges from the Underground, Calls the Pigs

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST

Many of those who viewed the introduction of Bill Ayers into the presidential campaign as a low, dishonest campaign tactic have now taken to the idea that the former Weather Underground leader and pretend revolutionary was himself somehow mistreated by the media. The most egregious example is perhaps New Yorker editor David Remnick, as pointed out and deconstructed by ex-New Lefty Ron Radosh. As a confirmed Ayers-hater (I actually read Fugitive Days way back when), I refrained from commenting on Ayers during the campaign not only because I thought it not only a strategically silly line of attack—a position the election results seems to have vindicated—but the McCain campaign never got around to proving that Ayers and Obama were indeed "palling around." Nevertheless, I have to agree with New Republic's Leon Wieseltier that "I would not shake the man's dirty hand."

And now Ayers is attempting to defend himself—albeit unpersuasively. Writing in In These Times, Ayers talks about all the threatening emails he received in the past few months, which forced him to contact the hated Chicago pigs (an inverse of the "Days of Rage," I suppose), and "the serial assassinations of black leaders [that] disrupted our utopian dreams" in the 1960s (he's talking about Fred Hampton, not MLK). Read the whole piece here. There is plenty of stupidity on display, but I particularly like this line, coming as it does from a supporter of the Cuban dictatorship: "In a robust and sophisticated democracy, political leaders—and all of us—ought to seek ways to talk with many people who hold dissenting, or even radical, ideas."

A Chavista at the EPA?

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:20:00 EST

According to the Washington Post, Barack Obama is "looking at possibly appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Environmental Protection Agency, according to sources familiar with the process, though he is eying several other prominent environmentalists as well." Kennedy is a well-know 2004 election conspiracy theorist who is under the impression that we are all being held hostage in fascist America. Ho-hum. So would you be surprised to learn that RFK II is also a Chavista? Of course not!

Check out the video below to watch the Kook of Camelot argue in favor of the nationalization of oil companies and argue that Chavez is the "kind of leader my father and President Kennedy were looking for" in Latin America. Yes, Bobby Kennedy, former Tailgunner Joe McCarthy staffer, and Jack Kennedy, who oversaw the invasion of Cuba, would have surely loved Hugo Chavez.

Kennedy rambles through a litany of American sins in Latin America, both real and imagined (School of the Americas, the Oligarchs, United Fruit, Chiquita banana, etc), and engages in the logical fallacy that if one side has done some horrid things—and who could deny that, for example, the United States overthrew Jacobo Árbenz—the other guys must be battling for a more democratic future.

Kennedy says that Chavez has built thousands of top-notch clinics (see here and here for a more realistic view of his health "missions"), increased literacy by one million (false: see here and here), is "helping indigenous people by giving them rights for the first time in their history" (false), is "doing real land reform" by "redistribut[ing] land that is not used" (Really?), and has overseen countless "free and fair elections," despite his coup-monger past (Has he never heard of the Tascon list? Or Henrique Capriles Radonski?) Oh, and of course the United States "engineered the coup" and "kidnapped" Chavez in 2002.

Watch the whole nutty rant below:

UPDATE: Video won't embed. You can view it here.

Gore Vidal Escapes From Home, Appears on BBC

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 18:10:00 EST

The BBC has a deep fondness for Gore Vidal, the Castro-loving octogenarian crackpot who, I am told, once wrote a few decent novels. I once appeared on a BBC World Service program with Vidal, who muttered some scripted provocations about pederasty; stuff that would have likely shocked a radio audience in the 1950s, though a routine that hadn't aged particularly well. Listeners were supposed to be shocked and impressed by this bit of theater; a rude, semi-coherent old coot says dirty things, making the Bill Grundy-like host uncomfortable.

And yet again, it appears that one of his attendants left the gate unlocked, and Vidal wondered into a BBC satellite studio to offer his analysis of the presidential election. Mercifully, the host cuts him off and, one imagines, calls the LAPD:

Obama and the Surge

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:48:00 EST

Does Europe love us again? Are America's deep cultural and racial divisions healed yet? Would there be, as the Los Angeles Times headlined, "an Obama surge on Wall Street, and beyond?" A few economic stories that caught my eye, arguing that an Obama victory might spark a rally in the stock market:

Toronto Globe & Mail:

So, if investors have woken up this morning to find Mr. Obama is president-elect, good for investors; history suggests it's a sign that things are looking up. Then again, they were probably bound to get better anyway.

The Washington Post:

Stocks staged the largest Election Day rally in history yesterday, bucking tradition and casting aside growing evidence that the country is slipping into a recession.

The end of the presidential contest between Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) eliminates some uncertainty at a time when traders are searching for an end to the recent market volatility and trying to grasp the breadth of a recession that many assume has already begun, analysts said.

CNN/Money predicted a market surge today, writing that "analysts" were confident that "stocks will likely get a boost regardless of who wins..." Andrew Young predicted that "There would be a boost of 1,000 points on the stock market the first week after he's elected." The Telegraph wondered if a "Barack Obama victory [will] boost shares."

But the Dow took a dive today, dropping 5 percent—almost 500 points—by close. The Guardian was surprised that the "historic election win failed to spark a worldwide stockmarket rally today." The Daily Mail was puzzled that the "Obama Bounce prove[d] elusive." The market slide can most assuredly not be attributed solely to the election of Barack Obama (though the Hannitys of the world will doubtless try). After all, we have been seeing this sort of market schizophrenia for the past few months. But to all of those who saw in Obama's victory some sort of economic panacea—and believe me, I have spoken to plenty of people who, like Andrew Young, believed an immediate market recovery would follow the rejection of the Republican Party—I'm here to remind you that it ain't going to be that easy.

Will We Wake Up in 1933?

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:52:00 EST

Obama's "restraint," says this blogger, is to be admired. He is in possession of "both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament," said conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, paraphrasing Oliver Wendell Holmes's judgment of FDR. Christopher Buckley cribbed the same line, declaring that Obama "has exhibited throughout a 'first-class temperament.'" I can't disagree with any of these assessments, and I'm all for leaders with a Rooseveltian temperament. But shouldn't we be slightly more skeptical of those in possession of a Rooseveltian vision of domestic policy? And with the McCain issue will likely off the table by tomorrow morning, with the curtain soon to be drawn on the era of Bush's big government conservatism, with no dreaded Republican to do battle with, are we ready for a president with an expansive view of government intervention into the economy? (And yes, Bush was the worst of the worst on spending, but we soon won't have Mr. Bush to kick around anmore.) Will Obama, in this time of crisis, heed the advice of those members of the liberal commentariat agitating for radical economic change; will he push for some kind of New New Deal? According to this John Heilemann story in New York magazine, some of Obama's adviser's are already looking to the ghost of FDR to guide them:

"A lot of people around Barack are reading books about FDR's first hundred days," says a member of Obama's kitchen cabinet. "It's a sign of the shift that's going on emotionally: from being on this improbable mission to believing, Hey, we're going to win."

Obama might show "restraint" (whatever that means) and be an astoundingly clever guy, but perhaps it is time for the Obamacons and the Obamatarians to face the prospect of four years of big government liberalism, to accept that American foreign policy probably won't be any less interventionist (just fronted by people lacking that Rumsfeldian bombast). Perhaps we should start thinking about a big, messy healthcare bureaucracy, the victory of card check, an attempt to reintroduce the fairness doctrine, or the establishment of a "fair" (read: protectionist) trade policy.

Oh, and be prepared for more stuff like this bizarre rant from half-witted actor John Cusack, star of the Hitler buddy pic Max ("C'mon Hitler, I'll buy you a glass of lemonade"), who declares in the Huffington Post that "the modern free market system is false but a new revelation shall come." Deep, man. After all, sayth Cusack, we have reached "the end of Milton Friedman, Reaganomics and supply-side theory" and we, as conscripted members of the new CCC, must "help Obama try to implement another New Deal..."

To Siberia, Applebaum!

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:06:00 EDT

Whether or not you agree with him (generally, or in his staunch opposition to the Palin choice), David Frum has been a great read these past few months, and this broadside is no exception. For the sin of backing Barack Obama—in a rather unconvincing semi-endorsement—Anne Applebaum, author of the terrific Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gulag, is attacked by National Review blogger Kevin Williamson for being some sort of Euro-sympathetic elitist, faux conservative. Here is Williamson:

And I find it difficult to believe for a moment that this was some sort of wrenching, soul-searching exercise for the one DC-born/Sidwell Friends-and-Yale alumnus/Europe-dwelling member of the Washington Post editorial board who was seriously thinking about going Republican this year. Spare us the opera; you're an Obama voter. Big deal.

Well, now. This is an absurd criticism on many levels, but as someone who lived in Europe for reasons similar to Applebaum—my wife is Swedish, her husband is Polish—let me remind Williamson that, rather than relaxing on the Left Bank in Paris, reading Sartre and smoking Gitanes, she is married to Radek Sikorski, the very pro-American former Polish Minister of Defense (and current Minister of Foreign Affairs). It should also be mentioned that her elitist European (boo!) husband has also contributed to National Review countless times over the years. Frum's rebuke to Williamson is here, and includes the following question: "What has happened at NR when this generation's greatest living expert on the crimes of communism can be dismissed as an unserious and dishonorable person?" Indeed.

Michael Weiss has an interesting response here, slamming those Stalinist conservatives who have tried to paint Frum as "a dandy arriviste more fond of attending D.C. cocktail parties than blindly supporting any old candidate the Republicans toss up this year," guilty of the unforgivable sin of deviationism.

Frum's latest adult intervention into the playpen that is NRO's Corner blog is to defend the excellent Ann Applebaum. A Thatcherite conservative with an independent cast of mind, Applebaum wrote a column for Slate in which she explained why she couldn't in good conscience vote for John McCain this year. She did not technically endorse Barack Obama, but just being anti-McCain was enough to tweak the epigones of William F. Buckley, some of whom were even more strongly anti-McCain when Mitt Romney was still a nationally saleable dreamboat.
[...]
Has the tradition of Burke and Chambers really degenerated into such hands? Buckley, of whom I'm a lesser admirer than most of the so-called "Obamacons," could at least keep lifelong friendships with liberals such as Murray Kempton and John Kenneth Galbraith. And Robert Conquest, I have it on excellent authority, was quite the gentleman to Susan Sontag when they were first introduced. (The author of The Great Terror, who fired a rifle on behalf of the Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, once lived in Europe, too.)
I'm under no illusion that an Obama administration will usher in a period of American "healing." The politics of polarization has always been with us, and it's in no danger of expiring in the Age of Blogorrhea. But how sad that those paid to do the hard thinking about the future of conservatism should all rush to prove that they've got the intellects of four-year-olds, and the temperaments of Comintern agents.

Williamson responds here.

Weiss's reason piece on cyberwar in Estonia is here.

Obama to Promise Free Gas, Free Houses

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:42:00 EDT

Or so supporter Peggy Joseph seems to think (via Instapundit):

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Encore

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:10:00 EDT

Though people of my regional (New England) and ethnic (Irish/Italian) background are usually inclined towards Papism, I have, but for a brief moment, never been a 'believer.' Nor do I come from a family of pious, church-going Irish Catholics. And while greatly enjoying Christopher Hitchens' philippic God is Not Great, I've found most of the recent crop of hectoring anti-deist (and anti-fideist!) books to be either boring or needlessly sanctimonious. So after disproving the existence of god, and selling a trillion books in the process, what does one do for an encore? Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling The God Delusion, tells the Daily Mail that it is time to investigate the potentially pernicious effects of wizardry:

The 67-year-old, who recently resigned from his position at Oxford University, says he intends to look at the effects of "bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards".

'I think it is anti-scientific - whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know,' he told More4 News.

'Looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research.'

However, the outspoken atheist said he hadn't even read Harry Potter and admitted he "didn't know what to think about magic and fairytales".

(via Peter Suderman)

The Disapproval Matrix

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:55:00 EDT

In this week's issue of New York magazine, the always enjoyable "Approval Matrix" places the following item in the top left corner of its axis of cool and uncool (the "Highbrow/Despicable" region): "Political repression by Hugo Chavez, as detailed in the New York Review of Books." Political repression in Chavez's Venezuela is well-documented, and goes back to his earliest days as the country's president. I'm not entirely sure if New York thinks this is a new story, but the NYRB piece, written by two members of Human Rights Watch, is indeed worth reading. A sample:

On September 18, we released a report in Caracas that shows how President Hugo Chávez has undermined human rights guarantees in Venezuela. That night, we returned to our hotel and found around twenty Venezuelan security agents, some armed and in military uniform, awaiting us outside our rooms. They were accompanied by a man who announced-with no apparent sense of irony-that he was a government "human rights" official and that we were being expelled from the country.
With government cameramen filming over his shoulder, the official did his best to act as if he were merely upholding the law. When we said we needed to gather our belongings, he calmly told us not to worry, his men had already entered our rooms and "packed" our bags.

In other Bolivarian news, Chavez has threatened to arrest opposition leader Manuel Rosales, who is running for mayor Maracaibo, in the province of Zulia:

"I am determined to put Manuel Rosales behind bars. A swine like that has to be in prison," Chavez said.
Chavez railed against Rosales at a gathering of businessmen in Zulia, urging the audience to vote against his rival for allegedly plotting to assassinate him, running crime gangs and illegally acquiring cattle ranches.
Chavez provided no specific evidence for the charges against the main leader of a fragmented opposition who has solid support in the oil-producing west of the OPEC nation.

More reason on Hugo Chavez here.

Hand Puppetry of the Penis

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:46:00 EDT

The Company You Keep

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:21:00 EDT

Over at The Corner, anti-immigration campaigner (both legal and illegal, according to the subtitle of his book) Mark Krikorian is horrified to learn that Sarah Palin isn't sufficiently hostile to the idea of "amnesty." Nothing surprising there. What's interesting, though, is that Krikorian apparently gleaned this information while reading the website of one Lawrence Auster, to whom he approvingly links and "hat tips." And who, exactly, is Lawrence Auster? Put it this way: this is a guy whose conservatism was too extreme for David Horowitz and Frontpagemag.com; the site cut ties with Auster after the Huffington Post published a piece detailing his history of, umm, racial insensitivity.

A few bons mots from Auster, who has published in the racist magazines The Occidental Quarterly and American Renaissance: "What really convinced me of an inherent, dangerous weakness in black ways of thought, however, was their widespread belief in Afrocentrism and the notion that whites were committing ‘genocide' against blacks." Blacks "seem to have much less interest in knowledge or beauty for its own sake" and they "are in fact less endowed with the qualities that make civilization possible, particularly Western civilization." Or how about this fascinating explication of whether or not women should be allowed to vote (Auster says they shouldn't, because while "Women are the natural care-givers and are naturally focused on the home and the family and its protection. But those same priorities, when expressed through the political sphere as distinct from the private sphere, inevitably lead a society in the direction of socialism.")

So a tip to Krikorian: If you don't want people to think that you support immigration restrictions because of some sort of animus towards Mexicans, you should probably avoid linking to the websites of white nationalists like Auster. (And for the record, as far as I can tell, Krikorian has never written about phrenology, eugenics, and bell curves before, though it is troubling that he seems to be a reader of Auster's site. In fairness, I peruse quite a few crackpot websites too—for the purposes of seeing what the mad fringes are reading, I promise—though I wouldn't think of "hat tipping" such nonsense, especially without adding a strenuous caveat.)

For those of you who suggest that immigrants simply "get in line," perhaps it's time to go over reason's helpful immigration flow chart. And don't miss Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia in combat with Krikorian on Bloggingheads.

UPDATE: I missed this post. After reading Krikorian's attempt to blame the collapse of WaMu on the company's affirmative action policies, Professor Bainbridge confessed that such nonsense makes him "embarrassed to be a conservative."

UPDATE II: Krikorian mails to say that I missed this post too.

The Dear Leader Gives the Children Candy!

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:15:00 EDT

Via Tina Brown's Daily Beast, an apparently irony-free video featuring a variety of pro-Obama pumpkins, courtesy of the website Yes We Carve. For some reason, I find this video even creepier than the one with those singing robot kids.

"Socialist" Is Not A Racist Smear

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Is there anything more tedious—or perhaps pernicious—than the confident, outraged, and half-educated political pundit? Thank goodness for the Drudge Report, without whom this latest manifestation of racial cryptography would have likely passed unnoticed. One Lewis Diuguid (pronounced 'Do-good,' I suspect), editorial page columnist for the Kansas City Star, is horrified to note that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has called his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a "socialist." Now let me, as a card-carrying member of the libertarian establishment, say from the outset that while the prospect of an Obama presidency and large Democratic majorities in the House and Senate stimulates my acid reflux, I am optimistic that our presumptive leader will govern more in the style of L.B.J. than Eugene Debs. Thank heaven for small mercies. So yes, I expect the next four years to be pretty grim, but those who foretell massive grain collectivization, the requisition of SUVs, a liquidation campaign against the kulaks, would be advised to take a deep breath.

But buried in these charges of socialism, Diuguid, the Star's in-house racial cryptographer, finds clear racist intent. He explains that "J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality." Indeed, "freedom fighters" like "W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization [and] Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice..."

This is a sort of reverse McCarthyism; the presumption that because an activist was denounced as a 'socialist' he was obviously no such thing. But here Diuguid is, whether out of luck or ignorance, partially correct. Du Bois and Robeson were most certainly not socialists—they were Stalinists.

Du Bois, who renounced his American citizenship and formally joined the American Communist Party in 1961, five years after Khrushchev's secret speech, two years after being awarded the Lenin Peace Prize, made no secret of his "socialism." Indeed, here is a representative selection from his bootlicking obituary for Josef Stalin:

"Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity...He was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been; yet he seldom lost his courtesy and balance...His judgment of men was profound...Such was the man who lies dead, still the butt of noisy jackals and of the ill-bred men of some parts of the distempered West. In life he studied under continuous and studied insult; he was forced to make bitter decisions on his lone responsibility. His reward comes as the common man stands in solemn acclaim."

A one-off mistake, perhaps? Three years later, in June 1956, tens of thousands of Poles took to the streets of Poznan demanding democratic reform. As was customary in occupied Eastern Europe, the occupation army was dispatched to quell the demonstration, leaving 60 protestors dead (some estimates put the number in the hundreds). In a letter to a friend, Du Bois admitted that "Not even the upheaval in Poland disturbs me," for the demonstrators were likely "landlords" and members of the "military clan" in the pay of the United States.

Or how about this: Confronted with Khrushchev's secret speech, in which the Soviet leader broadly revealed the institutional terror of his predecessor, Du Bois protested that the revelations were "irresponsible and muddled." In a letter to a supporter, he explained that while perhaps "probably too cruel" at times, he nevertheless "regard[ed] Stalin as one of the great men of the twentieth century." And Stalin's brutal purges of 1936-38, during which over a million class enemies were murder, he argued, were entirely justified:

From the testimony I read at the time, I believe that justice was done to these men on the whole. In the critical struggle then going on, some innocent men might have suffered, but as to the general fairness of these trials, even reliable American observers like Raymond Robbins (sic) testified.

These were, Diuguid might be interested to learn, views shared by Paul Robeson, the great campaigner for "justice," and 1952 winner of the Stalin Peace Prize. It should suffice here to briefly excerpt Robeson's eulogy for Stalin:

"Forever [Stalin's] name will be honored and beloved in all lands! In all spheres of modern life the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable."

After Robeson beseeched his fellow African-Americans not to fight against the Soviet Union, whom he argued viewed race relations through a progressive lens, boxer Sugar Ray Robinson told a reporter that if he ever crossed paths with Robeson he would "punch him in the mouth."

But there is a surface stupidity in Diuguid's piece too; the very modern usage of the phrase "racial code." Perhaps his historical illiteracy is forgivable (I was taught the same thing about Du Bois and Robeson, and my alma mater named its library after him), but does he truly believe that, in the bad old days of J. Edgar Hoover, those wished to speak ill of African Americans were forced to revert to some sort of secret language?

Michael C. Moynihan is a reason associate editor. This article originally appeared in Jewcy.

BoJo for Barack O

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:08:00 EDT

Lord Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, stalwart booster of the classic English game whiff-whaff and inveterate offender of the Papuans, has thrown his support behind Sen. Barack Obama. A big reason, Johnson says, is Obama's race, which, he figures, would have a profound effect on all of those white racists he's read about in The Guardian. A sample:

And then there is the final, additional reason, the glaring reason, and that is race. Huge numbers of voters, whether they admit it to themselves or not, will hesitate to choose Barack Obama for President because he is black. And then there are millions of white Americans who will undoubtedly vote Obama precisely because he is black, and because he stands for the change and the progress they want to see in their society.
After centuries of friction, prejudice, tension, hatred - you name it, they've had it - America is teetering on the brink of a triumph. If Obama wins, then the United States will have at last come a huge and maybe decisive step closer to achieving the dream of Martin Luther King, of a land where people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

I note that only one person has been shot by racist hooligans for wearing pro-Obama gear—and it was in the city Boris Johnson governs, not in the hillbilly USA. For a writer as consistently entertaining as Johnson, this is surprisingly weak, we-are-the-world stuff. (Also note BoJo's upbraiding of McCain for his impromptu "bomb Iran" song, which he acknowledges was a lame joke, but suspects would make the Iranians want a nuke even more if the Republicans win. Coming from Boris, whose gaffe tally is notoriously high, it's not a very convincing bit of criticism). Johnson's colleague at the Telegraph, America correspondent Toby Harden, thinks so too, arguing that the race bit is especially thin gruel.

With a seemingly straight face, Boris argues that race is a "reason" for wanting Obama to be elected, blithely stating that many white racists will vote against him because he's black while many blacks will back him because of he's one of their own. And yet - get this - an Obama victory will show that in modern America "people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character". Talk about trying to have it both ways.
Boris concludes, with a customary flourish, that Obama being elected would mean that being black would be as relevant "as being left-handed or ginger-haired". Yeah, right. Somehow I doubt we'll be reading Boris columns about the need for ginger-haired American presidents to inspire persecuted carrot tops everywhere.
If Obama wins, Old Etonian born-to-rule Boris pronounces, "black people the world over will be able to see how a gifted man has been able to smash through the ultimate glass ceiling".
Well how about a black politician being judged on his economic and foreign policies rather than his value as an inspiration to other blacks?

I have a piece on Obama and race in the current print edition of reason, to which you should really subscribe if you haven't done so already.

The Rise of Disaster Socialism

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:00:00 EDT

In Naomi Klein's schizophrenic indictment of economist Milton Friedman, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, it is argued that in times of great social and economic upheaval sinister free market advocates push their ideas of limited government and minimal state interference in the economy upon the vulnerable and the unsuspecting. The major points upon which this argument rests are dubious, if not outright false, and have forced her critics to ignore a more remedial point: Why is it considered sinister that, upon the spectacular failure of Marxism-Leninism, for example, it would be suggested that it was time to give classical liberalism a try? Indeed, why not encourage a scofflaw and killer like Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (or the brutal thugs of the Chinese Politburo) to liberalize the economy? And it hardly merits repeating that both Chile and China today have significantly higher standards of living than Cuba, an authoritarian regime Klein finds little time to condemn.

So it's equally unsurprising that we are now seeing Naomi Klein's thesis in reverse—the rise, amongst many in the pundit class, of "disaster socialism." As markets tumble and the world economy convulses, market-unfriendly ideologues are rushing in, seizing an opportunity to argue that they were right after all; to argue in favor of a rollback of "extreme" capitalism; and to suggest further government regulation and control of the economy. The gravediggers are leaning on their shovels, waiting for capitalism to expire, despite conflicting diagnoses on a patient very much alive.

So here, as an example of the recent dying-capitalism meme, is a front page story from The Washington Post, under an ominous (or is it triumphant?) headline presaging the "end of capitalism." The story begins with a bold, if entirely unverifiable, claim: "The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is claiming another casualty: American-style capitalism." Now, it's anyone's guess what exactly this means, or just what qualifies as particularly American capitalism, as the effects of the crisis ricochet around the globe, and no data is offered to substantiate the claim. Wishful thinking, perhaps. A Reuters columnist was equally categorical, proclaiming "Capitalism as we used to know it is on its deathbed" and celebrating the turgid "scientific socialism" of Karl Marx, "whose thinking on banks seems oddly contemporary these days." Noted novelist and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi sees a fulfillment of Marxian prophesy—the need for total capitalism in order to reach the first stages of revolution. "Marx always said that capitalism would rise and then collapse, and this would be a continual process, it was built on that, and this is what's happened. And what can you do but laugh?"

Or take this bit of wisdom from Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, gleefully sounding the death knell for "unregulated capitalism." Two weeks previous, Meyerson bemoaned the "ideology of unregulated capitalism—of Reaganism" and predicted that the current economic crisis "may ensure that the GOP itself becomes one more casualty in the collapse of laissez faire." Both columns are laced with a series of little idiocies that, if true, would surely spell doom for the American economy. Meyerson, a former leading light in the Democratic Socialists of America, flatly states that "laissez faire" is in collapse, that financial markets were operating without regulation or oversight, and that Reaganomics and Bushonomics are analogous. (And as David Boaz points out, there is a certain perversity in Meyerson's comparison of free market advocates and those who stood four-square behind Stalinism.)

Nor are such sentiments isolated to the American debate. It is unsurprising that both the Mini-Mullah of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the unstable revolutionary of Caracas, Hugo Chavez, both declared "the end of capitalism." Australia's Labour Prime Minister Rudd added a modifier, stating that we were now seeing that "comprehensive failure of extreme capitalism." Par for the course from a Labour government. But it was with some surprise that I read that Swedish parliamentarian Rolf K. Nilsson, a member of the right-wing Moderat party, had declared that all was lost, because it was time to admit that "Capitalism is a bloodsucker system and a threat to the civilized world."

As most economists sort through the rubble, most pundits are trying to seize upon a narrative that, evidence be damned, will help advance a particular economic cause. (Meyerson has long played this game, telling the Baltimore Sun in 1994 that American capitalism and "globalization of markets" has "turn[ed] us into a nation of temps.") In his invocation of Reaganism, Meyerson is, of course, making a partisan point that has echoed across the blogosphere: We are witnessing the last gasp of Reaganomics. But when the 1987 stock market crash failed to provoke a depression, and when capitalism not only refused to die but appeared to have suffered little lasting damage, it was, liberal economics expert Paul A. Samuelson said, because Reaganomics wasn't "pure capitalism": "The 1929 panic was no greater than the 1987 panic. Black October 1929 was followed by a great depression because we lived under pure capitalism in those days. Laissez faire economics allowed 8,000 banks to fail." Not so with the regulatin' Reagan. John Heimann, vice chairman of Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, told an audience the same year that, "It may well be that historians, looking back at the '80s, will pronounce it an era in which a peak of government economic intervention was reached..."

But political hacks, like Robert Kuttner, were waiting in line, ready to blame unfettered markets and to dance on capitalism's grave. A week after the 1987 crash, future American Prospect co-founder Kuttner wrote in the Los Angeles Times that, "The stock market has signaled a warning: If they continue the economics of fiscal fantasy and extreme laissez faire, depression will follow market crash as surely as it did last time." Twenty years ago yesterday, economist Ravi Batra's paranoid treatise Surviving the Great Depression of 1990 ranked fifth on The New York Times bestseller list.

The point here is simple: Trust no one who declares an end to a system as complex and successful as capitalism, or who sees the current crisis as the long-awaited fulfillment of Marx's voodoo economics. It was The Guardian's Simon Jenkins—yes, that Guardian—who first noted that the current meltdown was immediately followed by "journalistic wish-fulfillment and glee," and observed that his fellow "Guardian writers and Labour politicians have been drooling all week over what they call the ‘collapse of the free market model.'" Now that globalization has brought unprecedented wealth to developing countries, and has lifted millions out of poverty, it's time, say the "disaster socialists," to try it our way.

But capitalism, globalization, and the free market aren't going anywhere. Yes, unemployment is still only 6 percent—it will most certainly rise—and the stock market isn't quite in full collapse, but is suffering from periodic seizures. And indeed, we are most certainly heading towards a severe recession. But capitalism is durable, and has sustained itself in far worse situations. So ignore the disaster socialists: They are, after all, only taking advantage of the current crisis to try a little shock therapy of their own. And who could blame them?

Michael C. Moynihan is a reason associate editor.