March 2005

SO IT HAS ENDED. The nightmare of judicial execution by dehydration is finally over. How could such a thing have happened? Students of law, medicine, and ethics will examine this tragedy for decades to come.

WITH THE NEWS from Iraq relegated to the back pages recently, last Friday's State Department briefing--especially since it was not devoted to Condoleezza Rice's latest fashion statements--attracted little attention. The subject: the evolving strategic partnership between the United States and…

THE TERRI SCHIAVO TRAGEDY has been seized on by long-time critics of the "religious right" to launch attack after attack on the legitimacy of political action on the basis of religious belief. This attack has ignored the inconvenient participation in the debate--on the side of resuming water and…

THE EPISODE of American Dreams that airs tonight may be the last one ever. After two-and-a-half years of good ratings, more than half of the audience has abandoned it (many of these viewers have migrated to ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition).

INFLATION IS BACK, or it isn't. The dollar is back, or it isn't. There is a dangerous housing bubble, or there isn't. The trade deficit is worrying, or it isn't. The Fed is about to become more aggressive in raising interest rates, or it isn't. The economy is headed for steady, high growth, or it…

WHEN YOU ARE UP AGAINST the most worrisome modern security threat there is--the spread of nuclear weapons--history becomes more than an academic pastime. Get it right and you avoid the errors of the past. Get it wrong and the worst of the past is almost certain to rhyme into the future.

"Creative" Writing at the Associated Press

"THE SURVIVAL OF LIBERTY in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands," President Bush declared on January 20. Yet influential opinion insists that an exception be carved out for East Asia. There, they say, freedom is optional, hierarchical "Asian values" reign, and…

Rayburn House Office Building, March 17

ON MARCH 2, 2005, Al Kamen, who writes the scoop-heavy "Inside the Loop" column in the Washington Post, addressed the "rumors" and "news reports" that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz would soon be put forward by George W. Bush as president of the World Bank.

LONGTIME ALLIES OF THE UNITED States, the Turks have been sympathetic to American values for decades. Nevertheless, a new BBC World Service poll of 21 countries shows Turkey to be the least friendly to America, especially the current administration. Eighty-two percent of Turks said they found…

IF YOU WERE A SENATE Democrat, you'd filibuster those Bush judges. Yes, you would. When it came time to vote on a targeted nominee in this new Congress, you'd know the deal. You'd know that Republicans would move for cloture to limit debate, and that if they succeeded, the nominee would get an…

CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NOMINATION AS undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Though this is a third-level State Department appointment, with an office about a half-mile away from your former prime spot in the West Wing of the White House, it is actually one of the most important jobs in the…

The Citizen-Farmer

I read the [Joseph J.] Ellis book, which is a really interesting book--His Excellency, it's called--and [David] McCullough is writing a book on George Washington as well. People are constantly . . . evaluating a president's standing in history. --George W. Bush press conference, March 16 A…

LAST YEAR AMERICANS SPENT--on consumption, investment, and government--$1.06 for every dollar we earned. We balanced our collective checkbook only by selling assets we owned and by borrowing directly from foreigners, including institutions like the People's Bank of China, to whom one might prefer…

EIGHTY YEARS AGO THIS SUMMER, the Scopes trial upheld the effort of the state of Tennessee to exclude the teaching of Darwinian evolution from Tennessee classrooms. The state claimed Darwinism contradicted orthodox religion. But times change, and recently a federal judge ruled that a three-sentence…

PRESIDENT BUSH DID NOT INITIATE the political realignment that made Republicans a majority party. But he has helped create the current moment of opportunity for Republicans to enact a far-reaching conservative agenda. Absent Bush, Republicans might not have 55 senators--which they also had in 1997,…

Books in Brief

San Francisco

FOR AWHILE, a new movie called The Upside of Anger seems like a miracle. The film simply records the actions of the movie's fierce and fascinating heroine, a well-to-do mother of four girls ranging in age from 15 to 22, as she falls to pieces. Suddenly abandoned by her husband, Terry Wolfmeyer…

In defeat, envy. Or so it goes with liberals, who lately seem to covet every asset of the conservative movement, from Rush Limbaugh to, I recently learned, right-wing student publications.

MUCH TIME MAY PASS before we fully understand the political ramifications of the Terri Schiavo case. For now, though, it seems that Republicans are taking a fearful beating. Opinion polls consistently show that a large majority of Americans disapproved of the effort--bipartisan, to be sure, but led…

SEATED AT THE SAME TABLE in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York last Monday were representatives of Iran and Iraq. Their proximity was a mere artifact of alphabetical order, yet also a symbol of the organization's idealism: If leaders from contending countries--whether…

NEWS FLASH: The brand-new National Defense Strategy of the United States--that's different from either the National Security Strategy (aka the "Bush Doctrine" of 2002) or the National Military Strategy (last year's attempt by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to pretend that the insurgency in Iraq was not…

WHEN THE RUMOR ERUPTED in the press recently that Carly Fiorina, the deposed CEO of Hewlett-Packard, was being considered for the presidency of the World Bank, it prompted guffaws at the White House. President Bush was not conducting a job search for the World Bank post. There was no short list.…

NOBODY NEEDS another opinion on whether hydration and nutrition should be restored to Terri Schiavo. Hundreds of commentators have written thousands of column inches on her parents' drive to see that she is fairly represented before the courts.

THE CHIPS ARE DOWN. We have had a surfeit of due process. It is now well past time to consider the facts which process has willfully ignored. There is no reason, medical, moral, or legal, to refrain from an attempt to provide Terri Schiavo with orally administered liquids.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, hundreds of prominent politicians, experts and powerbrokers from around the globe convened in Madrid for the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security. A more eclectic yet influential gathering of people would be difficult to imagine. The participants' list…

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

NOW THAT THE SOVIET UNION is no more, there are two economic models on offer in the world--three, if you count Cuba and North Korea, which there is no reason to do since imitators are hardly lining up for that short-cut to impoverishment. The American model can broadly be described as one that…

In her article Provocative Snapshots of a Many-Layered Issue in today's New York Times, Virginia Heffernan writes:

FOR ALL THE QUESTIONING of motives in the Terri Schiavo case, it's three simple facts that make it both wise and morally necessary to have allowed the federal courts to examine the issue. And these facts suggest that Schiavo, brain damaged since a heart attack 15 years ago, should have her feeding…

LAST WEEK, the Senate voted 51-49 in favor of opening a small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to energy development. ANWR contains 5.7 to 16 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil, according to U.S. Geological Survey estimates cited by Ben Lieberman of the Heritage…

Neocon Global Conspiracy Update

WHEN CBS Evening News faded out on March 9, marking the end of Dan Rather's career as a network anchor, bubbly conservatives toasted a momentous victory in the struggle against liberal bias. I propose quite another tribute--this one to celebrate the newsman's part in championing the cause of free…

Bad News

UNTIL RECENTLY, ATTACKING ALAN Greenspan was regarded in Washington as the political equivalent of mugging Mother Teresa: not only wrong, but distinctly unwise. The Federal Reserve chairman was universally revered as a monetary policy wizard, having orchestrated the best U.S. economic performance…

On the Field of Life, On the Battlefield of Truth

ON SEPTEMBER 21, 2004, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former secretary general of the United Nations and now chairman of an outfit called the Egyptian National Human Rights Council, sat for an interview with Mihwar television in Egypt. He spoke in Arabic and, according to a translation provided by the…

JOHN KERRY EFFECTIVELY ENDED HIS political career on February 28, 2005, during a little-noticed event at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Senator Kerry was being presented with the library's "Distinguished American Award"--a bust of John Kennedy. The artist had portrayed JFK with…

PRESIDENT BUSH HAS GOTTEN A lot of bad advice lately on how to promote Social Security reform, but none worse than the recommendation he cease talking up individual retirement accounts funded by payroll taxes. Oddly enough, this advice has come from both Republicans and Democrats. Republican…

Baghdad

Harvard Man

SINCE THE END OF THE Cold War, documents released from American and Soviet archives have convinced most Americans that long-disputed spy charges against Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, Lauchlin Currie, and Harry Dexter White, among others, were accurate, and that hundreds of Americans worked for Soviet…

JEFF GEDMIN LURED ME TO Berlin the other week with the prospect of good talk--specifically, an interesting exchange of views with some journalists, politicians, policymakers, Foreign Ministry planners, Britain's ambassador to Germany, and the U.S. chargé d'affaires (our old ambassador has left, and…

Jonathan Edwards

Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class by Ross Gregory Douthat (Hyperion, 288 pp., $24.95) You've finished Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, and you want more. More alcohol-soaked frat parties, more college boys and girls "hooking up," more about America's co-eds stretching…

ON FEBRUARY 21, THE Cuban exile author Guillermo Cabrera Infante died, at 75, in a London hospital. His passing was an immense loss not only for the anti-Castro diaspora, but for Spanish literature, of which he was one of the greatest recent exponents.

IN THE STATE OF WASHINGTON, it may be that a governor will serve for the next four years who was not properly elected. Voter registration rolls and election practices are sloppy enough--not just in Washington, mind you, but in many places--that in very close elections it may be impossible to know…

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia. --Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer Vancouver, British Columbia

GEORGE F. KENNAN passed away last night at the age of 101. In 1946, as American policymakers were groping for a strategy to restrain Stalin's Soviet Empire, Kennan authored the famous "Long Telegram" from his diplomatic post in Moscow. That this diplomatic cable had any effect at all on the course…

IN MANY WAYS a university president is often like an extraordinarily well-credentialed trophy wife. The ideal university president should possess a glittering résumé of accomplishments, be a socially gifted goodwill ambassador for the school, and most importantly should have a deft hand at…

LET ME BE THE FIRST to congratulate Claudia Rosett on the receipt of her 2005 Pulitzer Prize. I am uncertain in which category she will win the honor (there are at least six--public service, investigative reporting, breaking news, national reporting, international reporting, and commentary for…

TODAY SENATOR JOE BIDEN, vice chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a leading Democratic foreign policy voice in that body, voiced strong support for Paul Wolfowitz as President George W. Bush's choice to head the World Bank.

PERHAPS THE WISEST WORDS ever uttered--or attributed--to Ronald Reagan were: Don't just do something, sit there.

BILL CLINTON has always bedeviled simple ideological classification. His presidency bore this out in spades. Clinton began in 1993 by tacking left--gays in the military, a big tax hike, national health care, the assault-weapons ban (NAFTA was a key exception). Then, post-1994, he lurched rightward…

WHEN THE OPEC CARTEL convenes this week it will have to deal with demands that it rev up its capacity to supply the world with the increasing amounts of oil that America's drivers and shivering homeowners, China's industries, and even Europe's stalled economies need. The International Monetary Fund…

YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T HEAR ABOUT IT, since it received such little media coverage, but last week, by a nearly 3-1 vote, the United Nations General Assembly urged the world to "prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life."

PEOPLE WHO LOVE MUSIC HATE medleys. And people who love movies hate those "Celebrate the Movies" clip reels shown on cable TV to promote movie channels, and in theaters to promote moviegoing. As one of the diehards who sat up to watch the 77th Academy Awards, I really hated the opening clip reel,…

. . . The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That…

IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH-century medical encyclopedias, the article "The Secret Vice" was about onanism. Inevitably accompanying the article was a photograph of a practitioner, a young man, poor fellow, who looked to be in the moral equivalent of advanced leprosy.

A NEW VARIATION ON THE "strange new respect" award is needed--in fact, is being developed--for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. The worst of Ronald Reagan's appointees to the Court, Kennedy delivered the 5-4 decision on March 1 in Roper v. Simmons, holding that killers who kill before they…

IN 1993 THE SOCIOLOGIST AND critic Edward Shils wrote an essay entitled "Do We Still Need Academic Freedom?" Shils's answer: No, we don't--at least not in its current incarnation. The good professor passed away in 1995, but if he were still with us, he might have found in last Tuesday's Washington…

Doug Brinkley's Latest Triumph

John Jay

Where We Have Hope

Stockholm Syndrome

Beirut

Moukhtara, Lebanon

THIS YEAR MARKS THE CENTENNIAL of John O'Hara's birth. He was born on January 31, 1905, married my mother, Katharine Barnes Bryan, on January 31, 1955, and died in his sleep in their Princeton home on April 11, 1970. I was a freshman at Yale when he married "Sister," as my mother was known; and by…

"WE ASK ALMIGHTY GOD to divide Syria into hundreds of pieces so that the world at large may rest in peace." So prayed a Lebanese military officer quoted in the Voice of Hope, the mouthpiece of the pro-Israeli Southern Lebanese Army, on July 30, 1980.

Selma, California

BOOKS IN BRIEF

THE SUPREME COURT OUGHT TO uphold the several displays of the Ten Commandments on government property whose constitutionality it considered last week. But how might it do that?

"IT'S A DEMOCRATIC ELECTRIC shock," proclaimed Karam Gabr, an editor of Rose al-Yousuf, a weekly political magazine in Egypt. The jolt came in a speech given by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on February 26.

HAVE THE IRAQI ELECTIONS PRODUCED a democratic earthquake that has changed forever the fundamental political dynamics in the Muslim Middle East? Only the culturally deaf, dumb, and blind--for example, Michigan's Democratic senator Carl Levin--can't see what George W. Bush's war against Saddam…

WHEN CBS ANNOUNCED THAT IT will smile through the pain of Dan Rather's dying credibility with an hour-long retirement tribute in early March, the network released an image of a young Rather posing in front of the Texas School Book Depository, looking gravely into the distance. While a little…

THE CAMPAIGN-FINANCE SCANDALS of Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection left a bitter aftertaste. Having secured his reelection, Clinton resorted to the favorite stratagem of presidents in need of political cover--the appointment of a bipartisan commission. The bipartisan commission was to study the reform…

ON TUESDAY, March 15, the U.S. State Department faces a deadline: as previously mandated by State itself, the bureaucrats must show that they have taken action in accord with last year's designation of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a "country of particular concern" because of its flagrant…

IMAGINE WHAT A FILM about the fall of Berlin would look like if it were produced by Roland Emmerich (Godzilla) and directed by Michael Bay (Armageddon). Maybe Liv Tyler could play the secretary, Traudl Junge. Ben Affleck could be SS doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck, trying to save the lives of hundreds…

FEAR NOT: this isn't another column about Hillary Clinton fashioning herself into a pragmatic, centrist force to be reckoned with in 2008, or how America always loves a good makeover--be it a toned-down junior senator from New York, a slimmed-down homemaker currently under house arrest, or a "big…

A FRONT PAGE STORY in the March 1, 2005 Los Angeles Times was headlined "North Korea, Without the Rancor." The author, Barbara Demick, met with a North Korean businessman in a North Korean-owned karaoke bar in Beijing. The article presented this "businessman's" view of the world. His views were…

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

IT ISN'T EASY to know where you are going when you don't even know where you have been. That's the problem facing economists as they try to guess where the U.S. economy is headed. A month ago the government reported that the growth in productivity in the fourth quarter had plummeted to the puny…

LAST THURSDAY the Boston Globe published an editorial regarding Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. It was, not surprisingly, far from complimentary: Romney is a conservative Republican and the Globe's opinion pages, are, in the words of their own ombudsperson Christine Chinlund, "liberal leaning."…

MAKOTO FUJIMURA'S PAINTINGS ARE A joyful gusher from a well that had long run dry--or so the world assumed. Abstract expressionism has yielded little that is new in recent years. Granted, some distinguished abstract painters who made their mark in the 1950s and 1960s continued to paint in the new…

HISTORY IS BEST VIEWED IN the rear-view mirror. It's hard to grasp the significance of events as they happen. It's even harder to forecast their meaning when they're only scheduled to happen. And once they occur, it's usually the case that possible historical turning points, tipping points,…

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Argumentum Ad Upperwestsidum

IT WAS A GOOD DAY for Eliot Spitzer--the New York state attorney general, gubernatorial candidate, and rising star in the national Democratic party--and it is safe to assume, from the tight, thin smile firmly planted on his face, that Spitzer was enjoying every minute of it.

The Way It's Never Been Done Before

Milwaukee

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY IS adamant about not running for president in 2008. Asked by host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if he might change his mind, Cheney answered with a firm no. "I've got my plans laid out," he said. "I'm going to serve this president for the next four years, and then I'm…

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH HINTED LAST week that he might be willing to raise the payroll tax cap to "pay for" Social Security reform, he opened the door to the largest federal tax increase endorsed by a Republican since George Bush Sr.'s "read my lips" debacle 15 years ago.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Sizing up the Sufis

H.P. Lovecraft

DURING HIS RECENT TRIP TO Europe, President Bush sent mixed signals about U.S. policy with regard to Iran's development of nuclear weapons. At one point he dismissed the prospect of military action as ridiculous; immediately after, he emphasized all options were on the table; then at another point…

CONSERVATIVES FROM ALL OVER DESCENDED upon the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on the evening of February 16 to witness a gala celebration marking the second annual Bradley prizes. As it happened, only a few weeks before, the newspaper Crain's Chicago Business published an eye-opening report on…

Books in Brief

IN THE PAST FEW WEEKS, Kuwait has been waging its own war on terror at home. The police have engaged in five fierce and bloody gun battles with extremists since January 10, as reported by the Associated Press. Five policemen have been killed in these encounters, along with four security men and two…

HERE'S A CURIOUS THOUGHT. Maybe the single most important person in the 20th century's long struggle against communism wasn't Ronald Reagan. Maybe it wasn't Karol Wojtyla or Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa or Václav Havel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn or Mikhail Gorbachev. Maybe it wasn't anyone whose…

I FEEL LIKE I'VE KNOWN Hunter S. Thompson for most of my life. I first encountered him in 1981, when I was 12. A family friend had moved out after a long stay in the guest room, and I decided to find out what he'd left behind. On the nightstand I found a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I…

ON MARCH 1, 2005, in a case titled Roper v. Simmons, the United States Supreme Court held, by a five to four majority, that the Eighth Amendment's proscription of "cruel and unusual punishments" bars imposition of the death penalty on those aged between 15 and 17 years at the time they commit a…

WHEN DEMOCRATIC SENATOR ROBERT BYRD rose on the floor Tuesday to compare the tactics of his Republican colleagues in the battles over judicial nominees to those employed by Hitler in building the Reich, you knew two things.

FOR MONTHS, a behind-the-scenes, seldom-mentioned debate has raged in the West, over the origins of the "foreign fighters" attacking the U.S., coalition, and local anti-jihadist forces in Iraq. Some, including Saudi dissidents like Ali al-Ahmed of the Saudi Institute and myself, have suspected…

LAST MONTH marked the silver anniversary of hockey's shining moment, the 1980 Olympic semifinal game in which a bunch of fresh-faced American collegians beat the Soviets. But few National Hockey League players--or fans--saw cause to celebrate. February 2005 may go down as the blackest month in NHL…

A CURIOUS CAST OF CHARACTERS has made its way to Moscow in recent months. Since November of last year, leaders from Iran, Syria, and Venezuela have all paid visits. Each has sought military and economic assistance from the Russian Bear; none of them has been turned down. Russia's conspicuous choice…

SOMEWHERE ON A STREET NEAR YOU, one or both of our major political parties will soon have a ward committee meeting. Ward committee members are the people in your community who think an ideal weekend is spent stuffing envelopes or manning a phone bank on behalf of their pet cause. They are noble…

IF ACADEMY AWARDS were given for the greatest lost opportunity, Million Dollar Baby would have won them, too.

HAPPENINGS IN THE TWO GLOBAL MARKETS that do not conform to Adam Smith's model frequently roil free-market economies such as America's. The foreign exchange market is dominated by central banks that manipulate the value of national currencies for reasons unrelated to what we think of as natural…