Trouble at Harvard

By Robert Samuel

Despite all their liberal output, universities are set up in a highly capitalistic way. Professors’ salaries are determined almost entirely by the free market. Their payment is decided by the value other institutions and the private sector place on the scholar. This is why the lowest-paid tenured professors at graduate business schools are paid nearly as well as the highest-paid professors in arts and sciences. Even Milton Friedman could not have come up with a more capitalistic system.

The tenure process is similarly formed. Professors must demonstrate years of achievement in scholarship and instruction before a university will guarantee lifetime employment. This is exactly how a venture capitalist would determine his or her best investments. Though political bias is often accused in evaluating the scholarship of a prospective professor, this is still not a liberal-pinko system of promotion.

But occasionally one will find a glaring example of the academy’s inability to progress past its horrid groupthink and its aversion to change its own status quo. With the forced resignation of Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, we have probably seen the supernova of these types of occurrences.

Summers is no right-wing hack. In fact, mainstream America would probably label him slightly left-of-center. Whatever he is labeled politically, one has to consider him brilliant intellectually. Summers is the youngest person to have obtained tenure at Harvard, and he presided over unprecedented economic growth as Secretary of the Treasury in the Bill Clinton Administration. He has also proven himself as one of the best university presidents in the past quarter of a century.

Summers made Harvard far more accessible to the poor, revamped undergraduate learning, and formulated a credible plan for Harvard to regain preeminence in the natural sciences. No department outside arts and sciences had strong criticism of him (most thought he was a terrific president), and student body polls showed he had three-to-one support from undergraduates.

Why then did the faculty of arts and sciences force Summers out? There was never a coherent reason for the professors’ hatred, but it all seems to stem from Summers’s lack of political correctness. A preliminary draft of last year’s faculty vote of no confidence indicted Summers for three offenses: Accusing African American studies professor Cornel West’s work of reeking of activism more than scholarship; stating that the university’s boycott on Israeli investment was “anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent;” and stating during an economics colloquium that “issues of intrinsic aptitude” may be the reason why men greatly outweigh women in faculty hires in quantitative disciplines.

Attempting to distance themselves from calling for Summers’s resignation based on merely stating an unradical opinion, professors turned to vague criticisms of Summers’s managerial style. “It’s hard for people who aren’t in these meetings to see why it’s been hard to work with him,” said one anti-Summers professor.

This argument is equally ridiculous. Summers's lack of personal warmth in faculty meetings has little to do with his ability to manage a $25 billion endowment and a faculty and student body numbering over 10,000. Universities in the West have long prided themselves on their freedom of dissent. The faculty of arts and sciences forced Summers from his job for challenging the status quo and injecting meetings with dissenting ideas. Is a university president—at Harvard nonetheless—unable to even play the devil’s advocate?

Summers's status as a renowned academic must have been quite intimidating for the rest of the faculty, especially after decades under president Derek Bok. Summers would frankly ask professors, most notably West, what services and scholarship they provided in order to be paid their rather high salaries. The professors who did not have good enough answers revolted instead of hunkering down and producing the type of scholarship that has given the university such a prestigious brand name.

The situation at Harvard is symptomatic of the problems of many contemporary organizations. Just as at General Motors right now, Harvard professors have demanded so much from the university that they have made life better for its employees, but made things worse for its consumers. General Motors is as much of a insurance company as a carmaker now, as it insures 1.1 million of its current and past employees (that’s a population larger than the city of Detroit).

The forced resignation of Summers should be extremely troubling to all of those in the 18-to-24 bracket. While university professors love to challenge the status quo in our nation’s government, and corporate and social structures, the faculty at Harvard could not take the pressure of having their own system shook up.

While the 18-to-24 bracket can look with pride at the Harvard students who protested the resignation, we must remember this moment 20 or 30 years from now when we have the power to decide who should be presidents at elite universities. University presidents should be the best and brightest among us who are unafraid to challenge the status quo. Summers should be the ideal of a university president. Instead, he is now out of a job.

As China’s and India’s respective university systems slowly grow to rival our own, this development is made even more disturbing. The 18-to-24 bracket must now disturb the Harvard faculty, and all those like them, to insure something like Summers’s forced resignation never occurs again.

Politicizing Fear

By Anthony Vitarelli

Nothing wins elections like fear.

When the Bush administration announced recently that it had approved the sale of operations of six American ports to Dubai Ports World (owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates), Congressional Democrats reacted with unmistakable and seemingly understandable outrage.

Had not two of the 9/11 hijackers been from the UAE? How could the President allow an Arab country to take over our ports? Aren’t ports one of America’s most vulnerable points of entry? The answers to these questions are: “Yes”, “Because they met every conceivable qualification and requirement”, and “Absolutely.”

As The New York Times reported Thursday, there is broad consensus among security experts that “the gaping holes in security at American ports have little to do with the nationality of who is running them.” The proposed deal will not transfer ownership of the ports, simply the management responsibilities. Dubai Ports World will control how many shipments arrive, the required staffing and capital investments needed, and other logistical concerns, such as how high to stack the containers on each boat. In contrast, the United States Department of Homeland Security (primarily the Coast Guard and Customs) still retain ultimate responsibility for the security of these facilities and the cargo that traverses them.

Unfortunately, the average voter only hears abbreviated news broadcasts and bombast from Congressional Democrats implying that this sale exposes the United States to a heightened threat of terrorism. Acting rationally (albeit not high-mindedly), Democrats have preyed upon the fears of voters to criticize the administration on its area of apparent invulnerability: the Global War on Terrorism. Moreover, their rhetoric has further reinforced the concept that no Arab nation can be a constructive partner in the fight against terrorism. If a German or Japanese company sought to acquire these port operations, Congressional Democrats would be far more concerned with how to keep Vice President Cheney’s hunting accident in the news cycle.

In an unusual twist, the initial Republican response to Democratic criticism sought to convey that the transfer of authority from British port controller to DPW would result in few actual changes other than the name on the contract, especially since the existing port controller is a foreign nation. However, as the Democratic rhetoric has ramped up, the administration has resorted to a far more cautious but firm defensive tactic. Rather than refuting the Democrats’ lack of substance, the White House has begun claiming that the deal went through all mandated channels and never even reached the President’s desk, in an apparent attempt to absolve President Bush of any potential political fallout.

Regrettably, neither the Democrats’ posturing nor the administration’s obfuscation get to the heart of the matter, which is the government’s inability to monitor effectively the cargo that enters the country through our nation’s ports. The restructuring of the Department of Homeland Security has resulted in a bloated bureaucracy that has proven unable to adequately equip America’s ports with the needed security equipment. For instance, The New York Times commented that “only one of the six ports whose fate is being debated so fiercely is equipped with a working radiation-detection system that every cargo container must pass through. Closing that gaping hole is the federal government's responsibility… and is not affected by whether the United Arab Emirates or anyone else takes over the terminals.”

Democrats understandably want to garner media attention and appear on the politically popular side of this issue, but if they really cared about securing America’s borders, they would introduce legislation to ensure dedicated appropriations for needed port security equipment. Democrats should take the high road on this issue and employ it as an opportunity to compel tightfisted Congressional Republicans to increase funding for not only port security but also the security of America’s bridges, tunnels, and airports.

Criticizing the administration at every possible opportunity scores quick political points, but only serious examination of security concerns will actually reduce America’s susceptibility to terrorism. Democrats have an exceptional opportunity to parlay this issue’s overwhelming media attention into some serious debate and consideration of America’s vulnerabilities at our ports and elsewhere. Let's hope they take the high road.

Fun With Labels

By Andrew Collins

Thought there was just liberal and conservative? Think again!

In honor of Presidents’ Day, I have compiled a handy reference guide to American political labels using appropriately representative Presidents. Some of these labels are commonly used (e.g., Wilsonian neoliberals), while others I just invented (e.g., Coolidgian conservatives). Since labels are specious and misleading, of course, this reference guide is recommended for amusement only.

With no further ado…

Jacksonian conservatives – Nationalistic, non-elite, often Southern group that favors frequent and aggressive military action. Families often supply most of the troops that fight in American wars. Named after President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) of Indian war fame and infamy. Contemporary example: Former Senator Zell Miller (D-Ga.).

Coolidgian conservatives – Advocates of laissez-faire policies and minimal government involvement. Named after President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929), whose ineffectual leadership was blamed by many for helping bring on the Great Depression. Contemporary example: Senator John Sununu (R-N.H.).

Rooseveltian liberals – Classic “big-government” liberals with a zest for government programs that boost national welfare and productivity. An orientation toward pragmatism and flexible adherence to best practices. Named after President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945). Contemporary example: Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Carterian liberals – Moralistic, sensitive liberals whose policy prescriptions often contain idealistic overtones. Named after heartfelt President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). Contemporary example: Former Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.).

Wilsonian neoliberals – This idealistic group believes lasting peace and prosperity are possible through active foreign engagement, free trade, and strong international institutions. Named after President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), the League of Nations advocate and 14 Points author. Contemporary example: political scientist Francis Fukuyama.

Bushian neoconservatives – In foreign policy, this group favors a broad interpretation of national interest and the active use of stimulation, persuasion, coercion, or force to achieve it. Named after President George W. Bush (2001-present), who, while perhaps not personally a neoconservative, has administered the Presidency as such. Contemporary example: World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.

Nixonian realists – Driven by predictive judgments about countries’ behaviors as determined by their interests and priorities. Named after President Richard Nixon (1969-1974), who coldly responded to international realities along with then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Contemporary example: Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to President George H. W. Bush.

Rooseveltian progressives – Committed to clean government, defeat of corrupt or excessively powerful enterprises, and scrupulous honesty. Named after the trust-busting former Civil Service Commissioner and President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). Contemporary example: Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Washingtonian isolationists – Favor a diminshed role for the United States on the world stage, usually meaning less immigration, less trade, and less military engagement. Named after President George Washington (1789-1797), who warned the country to avoid “entangling alliances.” Contemporary example: CNN anchor Lou Dobbs.

Trumanite interventionists – Support dabbling as needed in international affairs, with a flexible reponse ranging from military action to more subtle influence. Named after President Harry Truman (1945-1953) of Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine, Berlin Airlift, Korean War, and other interventionist-related fame. Contemporary example: Former President Bill Clinton.

Polkian imperialists – Favor a traditional quest for land, power, and riches. Named after President James K. Polk—annexer of Mexico, advocate of Manifest Destiny, fighter of the Mexican-American War, and claimant of Oregon Territory. Contemporary example: Los Angeles Times columnist Max Boot.

Monrovian protectivists – Seek to fiercely protect existing spheres of influence or control. Named after President James Monroe, who established the Monroe Doctrine barring European or other meddling in the Western Hemisphere to protect U.S. influence in the Americas. Contemporary example: Assistant Secretary of State Robert Zoellick.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: Rabbi 1, Eloquence 0

By Rob Goodman

I have to confess, though it’s a bit irrational, that in this whole Mohammed-cartoon mischegoss, with all the boycotts, riots, and violent deaths from Denmark to Afghanistan, the man at whom I most pissed off right now is Rabbi David Lipper of Akron, Oh.

Akron is the latest town to offend Muslim extremists by—well, not exactly publishing more Mohammed cartoons, but rather “pictures that are obviously not of Mohammed, and that are meant to mock the inability to draw pictures of Mohammed.” The one in question, in the Akron Beacon Journal, shows a cartoon prophet with a pixellated head on CNN. “Well, no wonder Muslims are upset,” says one of the viewers. “Muhammad looks like he’s on acid.” I thought it was pretty good, at least.

Anyway, these free speech/offensiveness debates are getting really old, and I won’t bother; what interests me is a comparison of the reactions from Akron’s Muslim and Jewish leaders—which points out pretty succinctly why the liberal West is on a global losing streak.

A.R. Abdoulkarim, amir of the Akron Masjid, was spectacularly wrong, but he was sincere. In fact, he went so far as to bring the curse of God down upon the offending editorial staff: “They take the prize for being the most ill-intended, irresponsible property group. Allah curses and condemns them and every Muslim in this community should curse and condemn them.” The bigotry is palpable—but so is the basic moral seriousness. In just two sentences, Mr. Abdoulkarim gives us superlatives of bad intentions, a direct presumption about the mind of God, and a faith in the efficacy of his curses, all supported on a bedrock of communal solidarity: When he invokes “every Muslim,” it’s fair to assume he’s not bluffing.

Rabbi Lipper also didn’t like the cartoon. “It pained me to know that the Beacon Journal printed its own editorial cartoons that sought to challenge the beauty of our community by bringing hate into its pages,” he said.

And I am pissed off at him because he is a rabbi, a Jew, an heir of the greatest spiritual poetry in the whole world—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”; or “Whither thou goest, I will go; and wither thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God”; or “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth, tell me, if you have understanding, who laid its cornerstone—surely you know—when the morning stars sang together, and all the angels shouted for joy?”—and with hundreds of verses like that sitting in his study and on his desk, he is asked to render his opinion on the clash of civilizations that has come to his doorstep, and he rears himself up to the full height of his priestly dignity and declares that he is—pained.

Because the beauty of our community has been challenged.

Ouch.

You see that the issue isn’t the opinion expressed—it’s the means of expression. Right now eloquence belongs to our enemies. And the leaders of our Western religions, and of our Western governments for that matter, can only speak in the vaguest terms, like pansies, about “community” and “hate” and being “pained.” (I suspect Rabbi Lipper would make great friends with the prototypical “Anglican clergyperson who denies the Resurrection, the divinity of Christ and the reality of an afterlife but ‘believes passionately in equality.’”)

The West doesn’t need any any particular religion to win this ideological war (or any religion—I’m agnostic, for instance). But it does need eloquence: the skill to speak directly, specifically, and originally; the literacy to borrow words from our best texts and not just from advertising clichés; the ready willingness to say exalted and potentially silly things. We need to speak without wincing. If Rabbi Lipper is, as I suspect, a symbol and not an exception, we’re a long ways off.

And will be for some time. Eloquence requires a confidence that’s simply beyond most of us. “The French can reassure themselves that it is not just theirs but the whole Western model which is disintegrating,” writes Jean Baudrillard in an excellent commentary on last fall’s riots, which I suggest reading aloud in an Inspector Clouseau accent as you smoke three cloves at the same time. “The social question of immigration is only a starker illustration of the European’s exile within his own society.”

Who knows how, or if, we can return? I just know that we can mark the reprieve from the day our side starts to talk in something more than sanctified emptiness; from the day it talks less like Rabbi Lipper and more like Amir Abdoulkarim.

Or more, perhaps, like John Donne—a politician, a writer, or a clergyman who could preach a sermon like this:

Let thy Master by thy god, or thy Mistresse thy god, thy Belly be thy god, or thy Back be thy god, thy fields be thy god, or thy chests be thy god—Teribilis super omnes Deos, The Lord is terrible above all gods, and Sanctum et terribile, Holy, and reverend, Holy and terrible should his name be.

And that was just to stop people from talking in church! Imagine what he’d have to say about all of this.

But if words like that are being spoken anywhere today, with the same passion, sincerity, and seriousness, they’re coming from a man who would take the power of speech from the rest of us.

Robert Samuel is on vacation. His column will return next week.

Rob Goodman is a 2005 graduate of Duke University and is currently an English teacher in Tucson, Ariz.

Primary Rationality

By Anthony Vitarelli

Continuing on my recent theme of rationality (and lack thereof) within the electoral cycle, the same tenets can apply to the upcoming 2008 Presidential primary, especially with regard to voter participation.

Let us first assume that a voter’s preference for the ultimate nominee of their party over that of the opposition party outweighs his preference for one candidate within his party over another. Under that precept, his vote in a primary is only rational if he believes that his selection will necessarily fare better against than opposition’s nominee than any other candidate within his party. For instance, a rational voter in 1992 who preferred Paul Tsongas in the Democratic primary should have still voted for Bill Clinton in the primary if he felt that Clinton had a better chance of defeating President George H. W. Bush in the general election.

Interestingly, this theory played out quite neatly in the 2004 Democratic primary. Although Howard Dean had a remarkable organizational and funding advantage in the lead up to the Democratic primary, undecided Iowa voters ultimately supported John Kerry for his seemingly greater potential to defeat President George W. Bush.

In contrast, the looming 2008 primary does not appear to be shaping up the same way. Despite being over two years away, current polls show overwhelming support for Hillary Clinton among likely Democratic primary voters, yet the same polls demonstrate lukewarm support among likely general election voters, particularly among independents.

This gap also introduces a participation phenomenon that adds to this apparent irrational behavior. Compared to general election voters, primary voters are fiercely partisan and further from the political middle than their general election counterparts. Typically, the winner of a party’s primary reflects the composition of the average primary voter, rather than the party’s most likely victor of a general election. The Democratic primaries of 1984 and 1988 reflect this trend in the nominations of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

The upcoming Republican primary has great potential to fall into this irrationality trap. According to national polls, John McCain or Rudy Giuliani would fare far better than any other Republic challenger against a general Democrat or, specifically, against Hillary Clinton. However, neither McCain nor Giuliani is favored to win the Republican primary, as most pundits have been leaning toward George Allen or Mitt Romney. Additionally, from a practical perspective, their more moderate, less evangelical tendencies will not play well with the average Republican primary voter.

Similarly, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s fundraising prowess and national name-recognition leave her as a disproportionate favorite in her party’s primary. Fortunately for Democrats, the far more electable Mark Warner has been picking up steam as similar situation to Kerry’s experience in Iowa seems to be burgeoning within the party. Regardless of its success, since Hillary Clinton may prove to be nearly unelectable in a general election, Democratic primary voters should eschew her at all costs during their primary.

Of course, this will not happen, as millions of Democratic primary voters will support her. While a victory is uncertain, undoubtedly Clinton will compete well in the 2008 primary, and undoubtedly many passive Democrats would bemoan a Clinton victory in the primary.

This phenomenon further reinforces the tragedy of American voter participation. Each general election voter that does not participate in his party’s primary inherent devalues the impact of his general election vote. While there are myriad reasons to explain low voter turnout, each individual’s decision can be reduced to a simple cost-benefit analysis for that individual. Many doubt the impact of their vote, but rarely do I imagine that they also incorporate their correspondingly lower candidate preference in general election voting.

If You Won’t Do It, Please Allow Me

By Andrew Collins

Last week in The New York Times, Senator Barack Obama joined the thousands of lesser lights who regularly complain about the state of the Democratic Party.

“I think that two-thirds of the American people think the country is going in the wrong direction,” he said. “They’re not sure yet whether Democrats can move it in the right direction…. We have been in a reactive posture for too long. I think we have been very good at saying no, but not good enough at saying yes.”

What a disappointment.

Democrats have been whinging about the state of their party since at least the 2002 midterm elections, and it has reached the point where even the party’s freshest voice is slipping into the same tired habits. Here on the cusp of the 2006 elections, with the opportunity to make inroads into the Republican Congressional majority, the time to search for direction is over. The time has come to find it.

It should not be difficult to offer a popular vision for the Democratic Party, since, as I have argued in this space before, the party generally represents the will of the national majority as well as the moderate, pragmatic, internationalist, compassionate approach that has served the United States so well since the 1930s. The problem is not substantive; the problem is communicative.

In summer 2004, Democratic strategist Paul Begala provided John Kerry’s muddled Presidential campaign with a list of about a dozen political messages. “Pick two,” he wrote. It was the same strategy of consistent, simple repetition that had worked for President Clinton’s past campaigns and was thriving for Kerry’s opponent at the time. (President Bush’s messages were “We’ll keep you safe” and “Kerry’s a flip-flopper,” in the unlikely event you need reminding). Kerry’s advisers ignored Begala.

So I will take a page out of the Begala-Rove playbook and propose a two-part communications strategy for the Democratic Party, pairing a positive vision with an inverse negative attack.

How about: “No American left behind” and “Republicans in Washington have become corrupt, cronyist, and incompetent.”

“No American left behind” immediately and correctly makes one think of education, which should be the centerpiece of the Democrats’ electoral strategy since it is universal, a great party strength, and the only issue that rivals security in importance to Americans. No Child Left Behind has been erroneously touted as a cure for our dysfunctional educational system; dispelling that myth will only be possible if education becomes a widely discussed issue again. Once that happens, Republicans will be unable to contend with the flatly superior Democratic record and commitment to education.

Running on education may seem counterintuitive because of the security issues that dominate headlines. However, a security-oriented campaign would be unwise for Democrats, because Republicans are structurally more trusted on the issue: their coalition is largely built on vets, neocons, Crusaders, and jingos. Democratic candidates should be substantively strong leaders on security—nothing is more crucial when it comes to governing—but a communications strategy like Kerry’s “Stronger at Home, More Respected in the World” is not credible and reeks of Republican Lite. Democrats should have fresh ideas and a backbone when Republicans turn the debate to security, as they inevitably will, but should proactively try to force discussion onto broader ground. While it should never be stated so baldly, there is more to government than fighting terrorism.

“No American left behind” does have a security aspect, of course, in that it may remind voters of Democratic efforts to bring troops home and Republican failings in protecting the victims of Hurricane Katrina. This aspect has the potential to be devastatingly effective; of course, Democrats would need to take care to avoid any hint of exploitation. (Then again, Republicans’ unfathomably crass exploitation of 9/11 did them no harm in 2004. Hopefully, never again.)

A final application of “No American left behind” is that it highlights Democrats’ unique commitment to Americans living in poverty. Americans have held an increasingly hostile and suspicious view of the poor since the Reagan administration fabricated “welfare queens” to distract from spending cuts. As such, this newfound national resentment owes less to American hardheartedness than to the dominance of an insidious, brilliant, nutjob Republican myth and a failure by Democrats to stand up for compassion and good policy.

If Democrats make a forceful, positive statement that every American has the right to food, education, health, and a decent quality of life, the debate could quickly change from “How much can we cut entitlements” to “Improve and sharpen entitlements to better save and change lives.” The across-the-board Republican cuts in discretionary spending for FY2006 and the massive proposed cuts in Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and other entitlements for FY2007 offer ample grist against which to contrast a Democratic vision of universal opportunity and an end to our neo-Gilded Age. And if you want to talk about rallying the base, this is how it is done.

The negative argument that “Republicans in Washington have become corrupt, cronyist, and incompetent” is a natural partner to the positive vision of “No American left behind.” Republicans have no qualms “going negative,” nor have politicians from Jefferson to the Roosevelts to Eisenhower to Clinton. Theodore Roosevelt in particular loved a colorful putdown, and voters respected his honesty. Democrats should not blanch at highlighting the weaknesses of their opponents; worse than joining Republicans at a base level of discourse is allowing base Republican policies to harm American lives.

The case for Republican corruption, cronyism, and incompetence is unavoidable. When are Americans left behind to the wrath of nature? When incompetent cronies like “Brownie” are in power. When are Americans left behind to powerful, greedy interests? When allegedly corrupt Republicans like Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and others profit at the expense of the people. When are Americans left behind to die in Iraq? When the government wages the war incompetently. When are the neediest Americans left behind? When Republicans axe programs like food commodities for seniors. When are all Americans left behind economically? When they pay high oil prices wrought by incompetent and corrupt Bush energy policies—wrought, in turn, by crony energy executives.

The argument works because it is true and because Democrats—while certainly imperfect—have less corruption, cronyism, and incompetence pervading their Washington contingent. This is partly a function of having been out of power, but no matter the cause; the effect is what counts, and the effects of Republican mismanagement have been deeply damaging for America.

You may disagree with my one-two punch for a Democratic Party message. If so, please engage it, debunk it, and propose your own. It is sad but telling that the three-person staff of The 18-to-24 Bracket has already come up with two very different Democratic strategies, while the best nationally elected Democrats, like Obama, are still sitting on their heels and bemoaning the lack of one.

It’s been four years now—we know there’s a lack of leadership.

So lead.

Oh No, Not the Russians Again

By Robert Samuel

In the decade-and-a-half following the collapse of the Soviet Union, pundits, politicians, and academics have lauded over the United States’s political and diplomatic triumph over history’s largest experiment with communism. Presidents and professors alike have defined the conflict’s end as a victory of freedom over tyranny.

Russia’s creation of a more market-based economy and its implementation of electoral politics marked the end of the political, economic, and military threat of communism to the Western world. Thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama have viewed this occurrence as the "end of History." According to these scholars, man had finally found the most efficient and best means of government in the form of democratic capitalism.

The rise of Islamic extremism has significantly tempered this line of thinking. While the Islamic world may be an interesting variable to test Fukuyama’s hypothesis, one needs to look no further than Russia itself to find a troublesome moment for the democratic movement.

After the celebratory 1990s and the immediacy of the threat of terrorism in the 2000s, Russia has slowly drifted into a developing enemy rather than a friendly global partner.

Russia is still technically an ally. There are only two reasons for this diplomatic status: George W. Bush’s warm personal relationship with President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s own problems with al Qaeda. Neither of these positive attributes will be enough of a crutch to maintain a healthy, long-term alliance.

Putin is not running for re-election in the coming year’s election, although he has created an emergency powers clause that will allow him to retain his hold on the presidency if the election destabilizes the country. Even if Putin remains in office indefinitely, Bush is gone as of January 2009.

Sharing the threat from al Qaeda will not unite the two nations, either. Russia’s problem with terrorism is a wholly local one. The United States’s is entirely global. Other than the contentious sovereignty issues with the state of Chechnya, al Qaeda has no interest in destabilizing Russia. The locality of this threat can be seen in Russia’s foreign policy decisions. Instead of providing significant resources to rid the root causes of terrorism, Russia has been the greatest industrial ally of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

Despite the criticism France received for its opposition of the Iraq invasion, it was Russia who openly aided Saddam Hussein’s interest in the run-up to war. There were even reports that Russia had agreed to be the locale of Saddam Hussein’s possible exile in last-ditch talks to prevent the American-led invasion.

Russia is actively aiding Iran’s nuclear development, selling much of the materials necessary to create a nuclear bomb. Russia is also the first industrialized country to invite Hamas to its capital. In line with this tradition, tyrant Hugo Chavez has already made an official visit to Putin’s office, and Fidel Castro and Muammar Qaddafi have received invitations to Moscow.

Putin now appoints governors, rolling back the democratic system that previously elected state leaders.

The Russian government poisoned Victor Yushchenko, the free-market, democratic presidential candidate for the Ukrainian presidency. Since Yushchenko’s election, Putin has attempted to coerce the Ukrainian government by threatening to eliminate natural gas exports. These threats have naturally concerned European energy security experts, as much of Europe’s energy is piped through the Ukraine.

As if this listing of anti-western behavior were not enough to arouse concern, this summer Russia conducted joint military exercises with China and did not allow the United States to officially observe them.

Russia may no longer have its superpower status, but as it has obtained the rotating presidency of the Group of Eight, it has regained much of its swagger. Russia must be viewed as a long-term threat to the United States and an immediate threat to the global democratic movement.

Senator John McCain has already proposed kicking Russia out of the G-8 for its nascent behavior. The United States must consider diplomatic punishments such as this if it is to hold Russia in check in the coming century. If we do not, America will need to bring its Sovietologists out of hibernation, as the1990s and the early 2000s will only be seen as an intermission in the Cold War.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: Stress is Necessary

By Rob Goodman

In another step to alleviate the misery of the undergraduate experience, Duke University (my alma mater) has unveiled “the Oasis”—“a room aimed at facilitating students’ general health needs.” How this is relevant to politics, I’ll show in a bit.

But first, let’s just appreciate how much stress is being relieved in such a small space. The Oasis is the first on-campus facility to feature its own soothing water effects. It distributes backscratchers, free gourmet food, and “the chance to win a free foot spa.”

“It’s a place to get away from your immediate environment,” says Franca Alphin, Duke’s director of health promotion. All in all, the Oasis is a fitting addition to a university that already offers 24-hour dining, a Starbucks franchise built into a dorm, all-night game and media rooms, a golf course, and free massages during finals.

I wonder, though, if the Oasis isn’t really in the business of promoting stress. After all, it relies on the presumption that a college student is a rather excruciating thing to be.

“The Health Promotion message is that you don’t have to be sick to come to Student Health,” says the new facility’s programming director. But something does have to be wrong with you—something wrong with much of the population, much of the time—in order to justify all the money spent on making it feel right. The wrong thing we rather nebulously call “stress,” and we condition college students to expect it. Students make stress a regular part of their complaint-vocabularies, administrators launch task forces to identify its causes and likely solutions, and luxuries like the Oasis add to the mix their custom-made infantilization.

Which all seems very odd when we consider that students at elite universities in America in the 21st century are among the most privileged men and women anywhere, ever. Universities are growing more wealth-stratified, not less, and the majority of students at a school like Duke are members in good standing of Stratum Number One. So why are they cultivating sickness? Why is privilege so painful?

I believe—while recognizing that there are always real and serious cases—that most stress is an affectation. And I believe that it is affected as an escape from privilege.

Privilege is difficult. More to the point, admitting privilege is difficult. Once you concede that you’re in the elite, you have obligations; you can meet those obligations or you can actively deny them, but either way takes effort. As soon as you recognize your potential for wealth and power, you have to look in the face Luck, Inequality, Responsibility, Fairness, and a whole host of other abstract nouns unpleasant to contemplate. Privilege means guilt and work. Better to avoid it. You avoid it by denying you’re privileged. You deny it by being stressed.

And here is how this is relevant to politics. If we wonder why so much of our elite brainpower is going anywhere but public service, we have an answer in the affected victimhood at our universities.

“In the late 1960s,” writes William Zinsser, an essayist and the Master of Branford College at Yale, “the typical question that I got from students was ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world?’ or ‘How can I make a contribution?’ Today it’s ‘Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them?’” Stress turns the mind inward rather than outward; those who should be serving are asking to be served. Stress is necessary as an excuse for laziness, moral and political.

So what happened in the late 1960s and beyond to change elite academia so drastically? In large part, I think, copping to privilege became unfashionable. It’s in the 60s and beyond, after all, that we see students abandoning jackets and ties and imitating tramps instead (read Franny and Zooey for a good picture of pre-1960s elite student fashion). The larger trend is an abandonment of noblesse oblige liberalism (exemplified by President Kennedy) for liberal guilt (exemplified by the New Left).

And that’s a bad thing. I’m convinced that noblesse oblige is a superior way to organize the political efforts of the elite; here are a couple of reasons:

Liberalism had most of its great accomplishments under politicians who embodied noblesse oblige to some degree or other—both Roosevelts and both Kennedys. (Admittedly, I don’t know where to stick President Johnson.)

Positive reinforcement usually works better than negative reinforcement. Noblesse oblige casts public service as a reward for privilege; liberal guilt makes it a punishment. No wonder, then, that the latter has alienated so many students—the ones who go hide in the Oasis and then get jobs as i-bankers.

Yes, noblesse oblige has its obvious downsides, a tendency to class condescension not least among them. But it has the great strength of starting from a truth—the truth that, for all of the efforts of liberal guilt, we are still not equal. So an elite student has a choice: to hate his good fortune, to wish it away, and (inevitably) to pretend it’s not there; or to take it as a fact and go do something about it.

He can start by boycotting the Oasis.

Rob Goodman is a 2005 graduate of Duke University and is currently an English teacher in Tucson, Ariz. Anthony Vitarelli remains in the United Arab Emirates. His column will return next week.

A Cartoonish Overreaction

By Andrew Collins

In the Looney Tunes cartoons, Wile E. Coyote’s bad intentions inevitably backfired against him. When Wile E. catapulted to catch the Road Runner in some speedy armed contraption, he would careen out of control and off a cliff. When he attempted to sabotage the Road Runner with a stick of dynamite, the dynamite would somehow plop directly behind him and leave him charred.

While you have got to be careful about gleaning life lessons from a slapstick children’s cartoon series, Wile E. Coyote’s fate illustrates the fate I foresee for the violent zealotry in the Middle and Near East that was sparked by a series of satiric illustrations of Muhammed. In the case of the minority of Muslims who are overreacting with violence, they will find, sooner or later, that their malice is its own worst enemy.

It is important to remember that not all Muslims are wielding arms in response to the cartoons, one of which portrayed Muhammed with a turban of explosives. Some are deeply offended—an entirely justifiable reaction—but not marching into Danish embassies with weapons or attacking NATO troops in Afghanistan. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, while sharply criticizing the cartoons, said militant Muslims were distorting Islam’s image.

With the violence showing no signs of abating and a large-scale attack easily imaginable in the not-too-distant future, it is possible that Islam will have a moment of serious self-analysis, led by reasonable visionaries like Sistani. An internal reflection by Muslims on their fellow believers’ excesses is the best kind of reckoning; an external lecture by Karen Hughes is almost certainly more likely to backfire.

If such a reflection does not happen during Cartoongate, it will eventually. This imbroglio is far from a one-time incident. It is a manifestation of globalization—an unavoidable process that is forcing all the peoples of the world to coexist with their neighbors. Just 30 years ago, the cartoons may not have found their way from Denmark to every corner of the Middle and Near East. Now, in addition to widespread exposure of the actual images, angry opinions can be shared through email, blogs and telephone calls. It is not difficult to imagine a conscious or subconscious competition among some Muslims to show the deepest anger and thereby, in their minds, demonstrate the most heartfelt loyalty to Muhammed.

As we have seen from the violent aftermath of these cartoons’ publication, the process of adjusting to globalization is often painful. It may, too, be exultant, as it was for Africans who saw their food supply dramatically increase during the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. It may be devastating, as we shall see during one of the inevitable globalization-related wars.

On balance, globalization will prove to be beneficial because of human nature, which is both fundamentally good and fundamentally self-interested. As Jordanians are introduced to Danish people and culture, for example, both sides will gradually start to view the other as less cartoonish (so to speak) and possessed of surprising similarities. In Durham, NC, where I attended college, there is a famous story of a Ku Klux Klan leader and black civil rights activist who proceeded from absolute hatred to an uneasy truce to friendship, simply because they were forced to interact about a shared community problem. Gradually and sometimes haltingly, the humanity in each person shone through. Granted, this is an extreme case, but how many times has it been replicated to varying degrees with a penpal, exchange student, internet contact, celebrity, or new friend from a foreign culture? Barriers breed hate; connectedness breeds conflict but can and must dissolve hate.

If the fundamental decency in human nature is not enough, self-interest can fill in some gaps. I cannot possibly do justice to the case for globalization in a paragraph (try Thomas L. Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree for a more thorough introduction), but in short, the pro-globalization outlook says that a militarily and economically interconnected world gives people a stake in others’ success and thereby leads to greater wealth and peace for all. Free trade makes competition collaborative, as partners’ production boosts total global wealth for all to conceivably share. Alliances spanning regions or even the globe make an attack on one an attack on many, leading to swifter rejection of tyranny and rogue states.

In the short run, the pains of globalization may seem greater than the rewards. Certainly for those whose loved ones were murdered by cartoon-deranged men, globalization is a cruel force indeed. Do not mistake it for a panacea. But in creating the conditions for an eventual Muslim self-reckoning—a process that should be replicated by all the peoples of the world, including Americans and Europeans—globalization is leading us toward the day when openness is celebrated, sacred traditions are respected, and misunderstanding never takes a human life.

How We Would Fight Iran

By Robert Samuel

The American military is overextended with its commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, the Balkans, and a handful of other security duties. All the while, a new Islamic extremist is consolidating his power in perhaps the Middle East’s greatest power. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of Israel, denied the Holocaust, and taken significant steps to develop a nuclear weapon. On Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran to the United Nations Security Council based on evidence insinuating weapons of mass destruction development.

Ahmadinejad responded to the referral with characteristic bravado. “You can issue as many resolutions as you like and have fun with it, but you cannot prevent Iran's progress,” the president was quoted as saying by IRNA, the official Iranian news agency .

“You know that you cannot do anything, because the era of bullying is over and you have to accept the realities.”

Immediately after 27 countries voted in favor, 5 abstained, and three voted against the referral, Iran announced it had ended snap IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities and stepped up its uranium enrichment program.

With the United States military and intelligence services so bogged down with al Qaeda and the Iraqi insurgency, how can the United States possibly threaten military action against this vitriolic foe to peace?

The answer is simpler than it may appear.

Iran’s geography and demographics make it a war planner’s nightmare. But this is only if the military plan called for conquest and/or regime change. There is a reason Iraq was chosen to be the beachhead for democracy in the Middle East. The nation only has 23 million inhabitants (according to pre-invasion numbers) and its landscape is conducive to tanks and traditional logistics.

Iran, meanwhile, has a population of 70 million and its terrain makes even nonhostile transportation difficult. An Iraq-style regime change in Iran would necessitate an American military draft and even more defense spending for it to be reasonably feasible. Casualties in the tens of thousands would have to be expected.

But regime change is not the goal in Iran. The United States and the rest of the West’s political goal in Iran is to prevent the Islamic republic of obtaining weapons of mass destruction and deterring Iran from meddling in the affairs of other nation. Iran is the greatest threat to the Middle East democracy experiment, and deterrence should be the strategy with Ahmadinejad. Iran already has the most pro-western population in the Middle East, and it is the most likely nation to encounter a democratic revolution without the help of the United States military. For those reasons, the United States and its allies should be far more concerned about Iran’s foreign policy than its behavior inside its borders.

It is also a myth that the entire US military is overextended. The Marines and Army have too many commitments, but the Navy and the Air Force do not. Air and cruise missile strikes from these two services are the most necessary tools for elimination of weapons of mass destruction plants. Boots on the ground are not.

The United States also has its traditional allies on its side this time. And because Iran is a Shiite land with a non-Arab, Persian population, the United States could feasibly unite the Arab world against the Hitleresque Ahmadinejad. And with Iran’s crumbling economy, Iran cannot afford to curb its oil exports to the Western world.

The United States has plenty of political and military tools to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Talk of an overextended military misinterprets the Iranian conflict and misimagines the military campaign against the country. While Iran remains America’s most perilous threat from a nation-state, the world’s only superpower has plenty of options to obtain its goals. The same could not be said for Ahmadinejad.

Beginning this week and continuing indefinitely, Robert Samuel will appear Mondays and Andrew Collins will appear Wednesdays. Anthony Vitarelli will remain at Fridays when he returns from the UAE.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR: My Longing After Damsens

By Rob Goodman

The cereal advertisements that so often alleviated the drudgery of my childhood will be going off the air soon, if the Center for Science in the Public Interest has its way. Filing a lawsuit in Massachusetts along with the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, CPSI would like Viacom to pay $25 “at a minimum” every time a kid sees one of its cartoon characters endorsing a “nutritionally poor” food product, or when an ad for such a product airs on Nickelodeon. Kellogg would also be liable every time one of its ads runs. So “an Apple Jacks commercial on Nickelodeon is worth $50 per viewer every time it airs.”

“Nutritionally poor” will perhaps be a familiar phrase to most of our readers. Under the same banner, my high school’s vending machine has been state-mandated to stock nothing but granola and corn nuts, my alma mater’s dining services have been attacked for being less than forthcoming with cafeteria fat contents, and national fast food chains have rewritten their menus and ad copy to forestall lawsuits of their own. But it seems to me that the nutritional argument is, if not exactly spurious, hiding CPSI’s real motive.

I was eating an orange yesterday when I recalled a really fascinating document: It’s the diary of Samuel Ward. Rev. Ward was a Puritan minister, royal chaplain, and translator of the King James Bible; and his diary, written in the late 1590s, survives from his days as a Cambridge undergraduate. Some samples from late summer, 1595:

August 8: My longing after damsens. when I made the vow not to eat in the orchard. Oh that I could long so after Godes graces.

August 13: My intemperate eating of damzens. also my intemperate eating of cheese after supper.

September 15: My crapula [surfeit] of eating peares in a morning.

Rev. Ward also ate too many raisins on July 19. A “damsen,” by the way, is a plum.

Plums, pears, and raisins: several months of anguished guilt over what we today would consider health food. They weren’t making Rev. Ward fatter. In fact, they were probably making him healthier. But in 1595, there was no processed sugar—a plum was literally the sweetest, most delicious food available.

And that, I think, suggests something. We can cite as strictures against our gluttony “nutritional poverty,” “the children,” or “Godes graces.” But I think we always cite them after the fact, soldered onto prohibition’s real scaffolding. Something in human psychology equates pleasure and guilt. If a food gives us pleasure, whether it’s a bowl of Frosted Flakes, a Whopper, or a damsen, we will find a reason why it shouldn’t. The reason will be entirely secondary.

That’s not to discount those secondary arguments: Obesity does kill; plums and pears probably were distracting Rev. Ward from his prayers. But if we could agree on the tacked-on nature of those arguments, the whole debate over public morality—over porn, weed, indoor tanning, and cereal advertisements—might turn a little more civil. CPSI might make its arguments with more reason and less vehemence; it might pursue its goals in the legislature, not the courts.

At the very least, it might learn a little something from Rev. Ward’s example. He, after all, was only lamenting his own gluttony. CPSI, on the other hand, is coming after your children.

Rob Goodman is a 2005 graduate of Duke University and is currently an English teacher in Tucson, Ariz. Anthony Vitarelli is in the United Arab Emirates. His column will return Feb. 17.

Bush and the Historians

By Robert Samuel

In a Jan. 28 New York Times op-ed, Joseph Ellis uses his significant prestige as a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian to argue that 9/11 has received an exaggerated role in American history.

In his article “Finding a Place for 9/11 in American History,” he writes, “Where does Sept. 11 rank in the grand sweep of American history as a threat to national security? By my calculations it does not make the top tier of the list, which requires the threat to pose a serious challenge to the survival of the American republic.

“Here is my version of the top tier: the War for Independence, where defeat meant no United States of America; the War of 1812, when the national capital was burned to the ground; the Civil War, which threatened the survival of the Union; World War II, which represented a totalitarian threat to democracy and capitalism; the cold war, most specifically the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which made nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.”

Ellis’s analysis is absurd and ridiculous. It is clear Ellis’s skills in evaluating the past are lost in the context of contemporary events. Ellis argues that the significant response to 9/11—the invasion of Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, the covert actions in the Philippines and Pakistan, the wiretapping of domestic-to-international calls, and the highly controversial invasion of Iraq—were in response to a threat that never truly threatened the existence of America as we know it.

Ellis, in fact, has things completely backward. It is only because the response to this truly existential threat was so enormous that today the threat today appears so reduced. Just imagine for a moment that the Bush administration took the more “complacent” approach that Ellis endorses. If there were just three terrorist attacks anywhere near the scale of 9/11 since that horrific 2001 day, America would drastically change.

First, our economy would be greatly stymied. The free markets that allow such high levels of growth would be far less open. The additional security costs both in the private and public sectors would create significant lags on commerce and services. And the fear the terrorism would create would reduce the creativity and innovation that is so unique to the United States.

The pressure to remove our interests in the Middle East to pacify the terrorists’ rage would be significant. If we did retreat, the price of gasoline would make Katrina-era pump prices seem like a bargain.

If catastrophic attacks occurred more often, measures like the current Patriot Act and the National Security Agency wiretapping would seem remarkably tame. Security would so impede on our freedoms on a daily basis. Instead of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, our nation would be reduced to less life, less liberty, and the retreat from terror.

Nothing about the prosperity we’ve seen since 9/11 was inevitable. Ellis’s lack of imagination is frightening because nothing about the future years in the War on Terror is inevitable, either.

Complacency is not an option in this war. President Bush’s continued aggression in the fight against terrorism will be received well by future historians. Current historians' lack of sound judgment about current events will certainly not be.