September update
The Middle East
The Biden Administration’s surrender in Afghanistan will almost certainly prove that the supposed realism/idealism dichotomy in foreign policy is generally an illusion. It is in America’s national interest to have, and to deserve, the reputation of a credible defender of liberty, and it was certainly in our national interest to put every effort into preventing that country from again harboring terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda. Whatever else one might think of Afghanistan, our skedaddling undoes that work and tarnishes our reputation drastically. It can only frighten our allies, and rightly so. That’s not at all to say that “nation building” was viable there; its native government was simply too ragged and threadbare to withstand pressure—due primarily to the absence of a substantial secular cultural infrastructure. That means anything short of a wholesale takeover and colonization was unlikely to have actually put a permanent end to the threat Afghanistan poses to the world, and Americans were not willing to take that step. But it does not follow that the lesser mission, of trying to keep terrorist activity there to a low volume, was unsustainable. And that was always the mission. Notwithstanding claims to the contrary by both parties, it never was our mission to turn Afghanistan into a liberal democracy. It was our mission was to dampen and destroy as much as possible the terrorist forces of that country, something we were generally accomplishing, notwithstanding some failures, and at a relatively low cost. We’ve now erased those gains, I fear.
My view seems to differ from that of Nicholas Grossman, but I actually agree with him for the most part. One thing I disagree about, however, is his claim that Taiwan is so “dissimilar” that “worries about America losing credibility are overblown.” This, I think, misconceives how the People’s Republic of China views things. That is, it assumes the PRC is more willing to engage in the rational calculation of its own material national interest than I believe they are. I think they are ideologically committed to the takeover of Taiwan as a matter of nationalist and communist dogma, so that such calculations are effectively beside the point. What matters is image and narrative—and there we’ve drastically lost. The PRC was almost entirely successful in its recent actions against Hong Kong, which it surely sees as a dress rehearsal for annexing Taiwan. If you were the PRC, why would you not see this as the perfect moment to act? (Incidentally, we sent a large carrier group to the Taiwan area recently.)
But the real lesson of August, as I have argued before, is that wars are never “ended,” they are either won or they are lost. Among the stupidest popular political slogans is talk of “ending” a “forever war.” War is by definition “forever,” unless and until somebody wins it. War is like fighting a fire—it’s inherently of indefinite duration, because you only stop when either the fire is put out or your house burns down. You don’t fight the fire for now, and then knock off at 4 pm to watch a ball game. Likewise, wars are either won, lost, or postponed—they are never just “ended.” Of course, you can “end” a war by surrender—which is what we have done. And as for the people to whom we made promises…. Well, I fear we will soon find that “idealistic” abstractions like honor and justice have very “real” consequences. We have not “ended” the war. We have only made the next battle all the worse.
One hopes it’s not nuclear.
The best critique of the Afghanistan debacle, by the way, is Noah Rothman’s in National Review.
Litigation
A couple weeks ago, the Goldwater Institute won an important victory in the Arizona Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of Prop. 208, a massive tax increased adopted back in November. You can learn more about the case here. I also talked with talk show host James T. Harris about it, and you can listen to that here.
We also filed our opening brief in the World View lawsuit—involving Pima County’s illegal multi-million dollar subsidies to a company that’s supposed to take passengers on rides to the stratosphere in specially modified weather balloons. We call it the Balloondoggle. More info here. And I spoke with Chris DeSimone of Wake up Tucson about the case on Tuesday; you can listen here.
Podcast: The Great Antidote
In July, I spoke with Juliette Selgren of The Great Antidote podcast about the First Amendment, donor privacy, a lawsuit we’re working on at Goldwater, private property rights…and also about what my advice is for incoming college freshmen. You can listen to that podcast here.
Reading
I’ve lately been reading J. Saunders Redding, a black literary scholar whose 1950 novel Stranger and Alone Rose Wilder Lane praised for its portrayal of “the quiet but often repeated (and in sum, world-destroying) tragedy of the man who measures his own value by the opinions of others, and trades his self-respect for what others call success…. Superficially, the action of this novel might seem to place it among the nihilist fiction, but its theme is in fact an affirmation of moral standard.” By nihilistic fiction, Lane meant the so-called Proletarian Novels, particularly the work of Richard Wright. Stranger and Alone—somewhat in anticipation of Ellison’s Invisible Man—is about a black man in the 1930s who attends college, becomes a professor, and then is made the protégé of the college president. Gradually he is drawn into a sort of condescending conservatism toward other blacks—disdainful of their culture and what he sees as their doomed self-righteousness, which clashes with his own alleged pragmatism, to the point where he eventually betrays what he once stood for. It’s not a particularly new plot idea, but it’s effectively done, and the ending works well.
It makes an interesting combination with Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses: Man of the Mountain, in fact. Hurston’s novel, though flawed in its construction (it doesn’t quite tie together all its loose ends) offers a more insightful and sympathetic analysis of the “race man” than Redding’s. But Redding was, politically speaking, closer to Wright and Langston Hughes than to Hurston, who despised both of those authors. Redding particularly defended Native Son against the idea that it was nihilistic. But by the 1970s, Redding himself was regarded as too conservative for the tastes of the Black Power movement, which he denounced as superstitious, emotionalistic, and ignorant. He was particularly opposed to the idea that black literature should be viewed as separate and apart from American literature. Black literature, he insisted, was about the black American experience, and trying to regard it separately from that would not only render it incomprehensible, but would set black Americans back politically. His essay “The Black Arts Movement: A Modest Dissent” (in A Scholar’s Conscience) captures this effectively.
I also recently finished the manuscript of a new Jacob Bronowski biography, written by Stephen Moss, who runs drbronowski.com. His work is far more detailed than mine and shows a really impressive amount of research, in part thanks to his proximity to the Bronowski Archive at Jesus College, Cambridge. I hope he finds a publisher for it—Bronowski deserves to be a lot better remembered than he is. And I rounded this off with Diane Carey’s Star Trek novel The Great Starship Race. When I was younger, I read a lot of the Star Trek tie-in novels, and Carey was my favorite of the writers. This book is not as good as her others—the plot is a little implausibly designed and hard to follow—but Carey has a real skill with capturing much of the feeling of the original series in subtle ways, particularly in the dialogue. If only she would knock it off with the nautical terminology. A sailor herself, she can’t resist working sailing references into the story in ways that are not true to the original characters. (Kirk was never shown being that much of a sailing buff.)
Star Trek Convention
Speaking of which, Christina and I went to the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention—which actually wasn’t a Star Trek Convention, given that Creation Entertainment’s license with Paramount Pictures lapsed in 2019. As a result, the Convention had no Star Trek symbols anywhere, and carefully avoided using the phrase “Star Trek”—using only “trek” instead. Anyway, it was still great fun. We were again impressed by William Shatner’s energy and sense of humor. At 90, he has the energy of a man half his age. We also got a chance to have him autograph the picture we took with him on the bridge of the Enterprise a few years ago.
By the way, Christina recently set up an Instagram account for our plush alligator Fushi, who often travels with us. You can follow his adventures here.
Listening
I lately discovered Speedometer, a British funk-revival group. If you like, say, Shirley Jones and the Dap Kings or Orgone, you’ll enjoy their stuff. Check out “Make it Alright [sic]” or “No Turning Back.”
The death march
Christina is in training for the Rim-to-Rim Grand Canyon hike she’ll be taking in a little over two weeks. She recently hiked Humphrey’s Peak, which is the highest point in the state. She was almost at the very top when a storm struck, and she narrowly escaped being hit by lightning! A memorable experience, at least. But after that ordeal, she feels pretty well prepared for crossing the Grand Canyon. (I will be waiting at the hotel with my feet up and an iced tea in my hand, like a sane person.)
George Mason
I began teaching a class at George Mason’s Scalia Law School a few weeks ago, on public interest litigation. The class is being given online, which is a new experience for me. I hope students will find it helpful and inspiring, given that public interest litigation is the most interesting legal career there is.
Film recommendation
I lately got to watching The Hollow Crown, the series the BBC made in 2012-13 out of Shakespeare’s history plays. It connects Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI—which it shortens to two parts—and Richard III. It’s superb; the BBC of course knows how to do Shakespeare right, and it has some fine actors. Jeremy Irons is Henry IV. Tom Hiddleston is Henry V. Benedict Cumberbatch is Richard III. I haven’t finished Richard III yet, and I’m a little wary, since I saw Cumberbatch’s Hamlet and it was so bad I walked out halfway. But so far it’s really first-rate, and is particularly good at using various clues to help you understand the sometimes hard to follow language. Probably my only criticism is that The Hollow Crown makes Falstaff more of a tragic, than a comic character, and I think those scenes are better played as straight comedy. This makes the marvelous “Nay, I know you not” scene at the end of Henry IV Part 2 most effective. You can get The Hollow Crown on Amazon Prime.