'We're going to do something'  Dear WJ friends, We were all somewhere on 9/11. I was in New York City, miles from the crime scene. It was hellacious, but at least I am here to talk about it. As for Tom Burnett, he was on a westward-bound plane that day. United Flight 93. It was the place where the battle commenced to take on the terrorists who that morning attacked our nation and murdered thousands of its innocent citizens. Tom and a handful of other determined Americans — brave souls such as Mark Bingham and Jeremy Glick and Todd Beamer — led that initial counterattack. On the last of his four calls with his wife, Deena, Tom vowed with his final words: "We're going to do something." And then they did. It cost them their lives, but stopped the destruction of our Nation's Capitol, thereby saving the lives of many, maybe even some who this week embarrassed America with tactics and stratagems and spectacles unbecoming of this Republic. Tom was a subscriber to our journal. As was his dad, who sent our founder a note and a transcript of Tom's calls with his wife on that fateful Tuesday morning. Bill had it published in the "Notes & Asides" section of the May 20, 2002, edition of National Review. As the anniversary approaches, we thought it a good thing to revive. You can find it here. Do not forget, America. Not Tom. Not his fellow passengers. And not any of the others who, for us and our freedoms, took the fight back to the Islamofascists. Editorials 1. The President's campaign against his own Attorney General is shameful. From the editorial: In the meantime, the president's lack of self-control in commenting on pending investigations and prosecutions continues to harm the Justice Department's reputation for integrity as safekeeper of the rule of law. It does damage to worthy cases, which can't help but be seen as potentially driven by political pressure rather than evidence. Finally, if the president truly wants to be rid of Sessions, with whom does he believe he'll be able to replace him? The president is making an alarming record that he conceives of an attorney general as a political loyalist guided by Donald Trump's political needs and whims. Even if the Senate were not so evenly divided, it is difficult to imagine the confirmation of any nominee, however exceptional, in these circumstances. In short, nothing good can come from Trump's campaign against his own attorney general, and if he understood the role of the Justice Department — or his own long-term political interest — he'd immediately cease and desist.
2. Do you know Frank Fuster? He seems a creep. But he is also Janet Reno's last victim, rotting for decades in a Florida prison due to the contrived day-care-abuse trials that swept an America seemingly bent to mass hysteria and "recovered memories" in the 1980s and 1990s. The Sunshine State's then AG, Janet Reno, was at the center of these acts of unfathomable injustice. Rael Jean Isaac has written a major piece on Fuster's case in the current issue of National Review. And now we urge Governor Scott and Florida officials to do the right thing and undo this "gross injustice." From the editorial: Those familiar with the history of these cases will not be surprised to learn that while such theatrical and invasive abuse would have left a significant trail of physical evidence, the absence of such evidence did not prevent Fuster's conviction. Instead, Fuster was convicted on evidence of a different sort: His then-wife, 17 years old at the time of her arrest, was held in solitary confinement for months on end and abused on the orders of Janet Reno, the Florida prosecutor who went on to become Bill Clinton's attorney general. An investigator who visited her during her incarceration stated in a sworn deposition that she was covered in sores, that she reported being kept naked and put on humiliating display, that she was denied basic hygiene facilities and hosed down with cold water, and more. This went on for eleven months, during which she continued to assert her innocence and declined to agree to the confession and plea deal offered to her. A psychological consultancy bearing the dystopian name Behavior Changers, Inc., was brought in, and she put her name to a lurid confession — the contents of which she denied even as it was entered into the court record. "I am pleading guilty not because I'm guilty but because it's best for my own interests," she said. "I am innocent. I have never done any harm to any children. I have never seen any harm done. I am pleading guilty to get all of this over." The other element weighing heavily against Fuster was — as in many of these cases — "recovered" memories. There is practically no scientific evidence that the suppression and recovery of traumatic memories is an actual and authentic phenomenon. Its mere existenceis the subject of intense debate, which in itself ought to keep alleged evidence based on that theory out of criminal trials until the fact and folklore can be separated.
3. Richard DeVos, the great conservative philanthropist and AmWay founder, passed away this week. From the editorial: Paralleling the rise of the conservative movement that his philanthropy and counsel helped grow and sustain, in the early 1950s the young veteran and Calvin College graduate cofounded, with Jay Van Andel, a small vitamin company that they grew into (and which remains) the global giant, Amway (the name a mash-up of . . . American Way). Their business success was immense, and shared in profound ways: DeVos's financial help to social-conservative organizations — such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council — was fundamental, and enabled them to become major centers of influence on the culture and policy. The charity bug was picked up by the DeVos children, and their collective largesse extended far beyond the Evangelical Right: From the Heritage Foundation to the Acton Institute to the Federalist Society, if there was a worthwhile conservative or education-reform group that was not touched, profoundly, by prolonged DeVos kindness and inspiration (assistance went far beyond writing checks), it is much more the exception than the rule. The result was obvious: Because of Rich DeVos and his clan, the Buckleys and Feulners and Dobsons could do what they did.
Kavanaugh Do not forget to visit Bench Memos for the wisdom of Ed Whelan, Tom Jipping, and Carrie Severino on the drama of this week that was. Podcastapalooza 1. On the new episode of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, our intrepid host is joined by George Mason University professor Peter Boettke to discuss the ins and outs of F.A. Hayek. Get off the next exit on the Road to Serfdom and listen here. 2. How much would a Woodward wound if a Woodward's words would wound? I don't have an answer, but surely Rich, Charlie, MBD, and Reihan do on the new episode of The Editors (in which they also debate the impact of Woodward's book on the White House, discuss how the Left is losing its mind during the Kavanaugh hearings, and muse over the cause of Steve Bannon's exclusion from the New Yorker Festival). Ok now, you simply must listen to all this stuff right here. 3. Aldous Huxley and Brave New World are the subject of the new episode of The Great Books, where host John J. Miller is joined by Hillsdale professor Nathan Schlueter. Don't be a savage! Listen here. 4. On The Bookmonger, JJM interviews co-author Greg Lukianoff about his new book, The Coddling fo the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure. Listen up! RELATED: Maddy Kearns interviews Jonathan Haidt, the book's other co-author, in this piece for NRO. 5. Sinclair Broadcast Group political wise man Boris Epshteyn shows up on the new episode of The Jamie Weinstein Show, opening up about the rise of Trump, why his critics are wrong to call him a Trump administration propagandist, whether he signed a non-disclosure/non-disparagement agreement while working for the Trump campaign, the Russian collusion investigation, his influences, and much more. Every Tom, Dick, and Natasha need to catch Boris here. 6. Political Beats snags Bobby Booby Baby VerBruggen, a man who knows how to smack the heavy-metal strings, for a down-and-dirty discussion — with hosts Fifth of Scot and Jeffy Peanut Butter — of Guns and Roses. Turn up the volume and go deaf in style here. 7. I'm a one-woman man curious about whether California has become a one-woman state. That's why I am listening to the new episode of Radio Free California, where Will and David discuss Governor Brown's intention tosign a bill requiring at least one woman on every company board, and much more, including Duncan Hunter blaming Mrs. Hunter for his legal troubles, the increasingly crazy bullet train, and the last-minute blizzard of bizarre bills in Sacramento to blunt worker freedom. Hear the tomato juice, listen to the flavor, here. 8. Fore! Kevin and Charlie are in the saddle for a new Mad Dogs and Englishmen, yapping about electric cars, presidential golf, and the Kavanaugh hearings. This episode is straight down the fairway: Listen here. 9. I love the line notes for the new episode of Constitutionally Speaking: Jay and Luke begin digging into the Bill of Rights, starting with the First Amendment. Most Americans don't realize that what we know as the First Amendment was originally the Third Amendment in Madison's planned version of the Bill of Rights. The original First Amendment, which we call "Amendment A," dealt with the size of Congressional Districts. The original Second Amendment dealt with Congressional pay and, after 202 years, 7 months, and 10 days, was finally ratified as the 27th Amendment. Read with Amendment A and the 27th Amendment, the First Amendment becomes clearer as part, but not the whole, of Madison's designs for the "political Amendments" — those dealing with representation, representatives, and representing the people.
Heck, I'm gonna listen! And you can too, right here. 10. Projections is back! Ross and Kyle share their takes on the summer's buzziest flicks, including Crazy Rich Asians, and get into a Commie-prompted attack on Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman. Lights! Cameras! Podcast! 11. On the new episode of Ordered Liberty, David and Alexandra discuss the sorry spectacle of the first day of Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Nike's absurd homage to Colin Kaepernick, and an unplanned discussion of Major League Baseball's marketing mistakes. Listen to it here. 12. On the new issue of Jaywalking, Brother Nordlinger talks about Bill Clinton, Louis Farrakhan, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, Theresa May, Howard Cosell, Neil Simon, and more. He ends with Don Cherry, the late singer and golfer. Grab the earphones and the putter and listen here. A Dozen and Then Some Dandy Articles to Fill the Noggin and Invigorate the Think Muscles 1. John Fund looks at the media beatification of John McCain. From his column: Yes, of course, John McCain was an American hero. But his sudden elevation to superhero status demonstrates one reason so many Americans view the media and the political establishment with skepticism. Many must have wondered whether they were getting the "real McCain" story or being fed a thinly veiled political message. As Joe Concha of The Hill newspaper asked, "If the senator had gotten along with Trump, perhaps voted for the 'skinny repeal' of Obamacare that he so famously shot down with one vote change at the 11th hour, hadn't publicly called Trump 'disgraceful,' would we see this level of reverence?" Many commenters rightly criticized President Trump's churlishness toward John McCain. But when it was revealed that Sarah Palin, his 2008 vice-presidential running mate — who has never said a negative word about McCain and indeed expressed only gratitude toward him — was being excluded from his funeral and memorial services, the same pundits were silent. Noticing the public rebuke of Palin would have interrupted the narrative of John McCain as an example of what's best and noble in our politics.
2. Anatomy of tariff consequences: Jibran Khan reveals how the Trump Administration's actions have hammered one company (Bricasti, a Massachusetts-based manufacturer of high-end audio equipment). From the piece: Some protectionists might ask why Bricasti doesn't simply source its circuit boards and similar electronic parts from the U.S. But that's not possible. For security reasons, the domestic production of such items is generally limited to military or medical applications. Because military equipment is produced in secrecy, because the relevant trade secrets are of strategic importance, manufacturers use American-made parts so that they can be sure of their provenance. Ordinary businesses cannot compete with that market, which receives heavy government subsidy. Indeed, there is more of a national-security justification for allowing more foreign imports for civilian products like this, because it allows the domestic producers to focus on such sensitive production.
3. There is indeed such a thing known as the "Cathedral of Learning," and it is located at the University of Pittsburgh. Marlo Safi visited the stunning landmark and realized that America is beauty's protector. This from her beautiful bit of writing: The Nationality Rooms are luxurious and one of a kind; Maxine Bruhns, the director of the program for 54 years, tells National Review that there isn't anything like it anywhere else in the world. My favorite room was the sumptuous, forbidden fruit, located on the first floor, only to be looked at but not touched: the Syria-Lebanon room. My first encounter with the Syria-Lebanon room was as a high-school junior touring Pitt's campus with my mother before officially applying. The hallway was dark, framing the gilded room that was protected by a glass-paneled French-style door, as though it were a precious but unexplorable relic. It was like standing too close to Monet's Rouen Cathedral paintings, with the heavy impasto whorls created with oil that could cripple with the human touch after over a century lapsed, owing to their fragility, but that overwhelms you with its seductive delicacy and color, raised just enough off the painting that it teases you with its allure. (I've actually read in an anonymous blog post that touching a Monet is like touching a smooth-pebbled plaster wall — for anyone who was curious but doesn't want to risk putting a museum on lockdown by attempting to touch one.)
4. Kyle Sammin makes the conservative case for ye olde Lord Liverpool. From his review of William Hay's new biography: It is the nature of Liverpool's conservatism that most of his work is now unnoticed. As Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge would do in America a century later, Liverpool's government represented a return to normalcy after the tumult of the Napoleonic Wars. No slogans, no rallies, no great celebrations accompanied that effort, only slow, steady efforts to lower taxes, improve trade, and by the 1820s oversee a significant improvement in economic fortunes. Liverpool's was the sort of government most Britons were happy to live under, but about which few felt compelled to write.
5. Kathryn Jean Lopez looks at a grieving Catholic Church. From the conclusion of her column: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the Lord your God" is the refrain during the singing of the searing Lamentations. That's the only recourse. The Church isn't any one person. It belongs to Jesus Christ, and the baptized are called to live the Gospel. And the reform and renewal will benefit from every witness to the reality of God's grace in the face of evil — mothers, spiritual fathers, TV hosts, Uber drivers, and all.
6. Jonathan Tobin analyzes the intricacies of the Cruz–O'Rourke Senate slugfest in Texas. 7. Kyle Smith watches Hal, the new documentary about the 1970s' lionized hippie filmmaker Hal Ashby. Our critic doesn't seem to think the movie's subject is bound for any permanent glory. From his piece: None of Ashby's other films hold up as well, and his corpus seems on the brink of obscurity. One of the two films he made that were actually hits, Coming Home, was considered a landmark in 1978, given the then-startling frankness with which it depicted wounded Vietnam veterans. (It was inspired by the life story of Ron Kovic, who would later go on to be the subject of Oliver Stone's Tom Cruise vehicle Born on the Fourth of July.) Today, though, despite the Oscar-winning lead performances by Jon Voight and Jane Fonda, and its naturalistic feel, it is undone by its didactic anti-war tone (Fonda, who produced it, is seen in interviews explaining that it was conceived as such a statement) and its melodramatic love-triangle story, which culminates in a walk-into-the-sea suicide. Ashby's other big hit, Shampoo, in which Beatty's horny hairdresser beds an assortment of beautiful women as the 1968 election of Richard Nixon looms, seemed like gonzo comedy at the time but today seems quaint, even slow-footed, and it hardly contains anything worth a laugh, belonging rather to the bulging file of films about disillusioned rebels.
RELATED: Armond White also offers an opinion on Hal (yawn), as well as on the new Jennifer Garner flick, Peppermint, an "action movie that conservatives can enjoy without selling out their principles." Get Armond's takes here. 8. What has become of love and marriage? Kevin Williamson looks at history's arc, from the Psalms to more modern, silicone-molded forms of . . . gratification. From his piece: We social conservatives have spent a big part of the past two decades talking about homosexuality and its role in public life, particular when it comes to marriage. That isn't an entirely unimportant question but, in the context of what has happened to marriage since the 1960s and the overall state of our sexual culture, it is a relatively trivial one. It seems to me that very often talking about homosexuality has mainly been a way of not talking about other things that need talking about. The things that have gone along with our retreat from what historically would have been understood as marriage into what we have now — that tepid and deformed legal construct that pretends to be a substitute for the real thing — are not the cause of that separation. They are only correlates. It was not the invention of the birth-control pill, or the adoption of no-fault divorce, that hollowed out marriage: It was that we became the sort of people who desired those things. We became — Western civilization became — the kids who flunked the test in the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment, unable to resist immediate gratification and, having stripped ourselves of the cultural basis for understanding the distinction, unable to tell the difference between pleasure and happiness. Hence the sex dolls.
9. No matter which side of The Pond you inhabit, there's a price to pay for the dogmatic utopianism of the elites. Yoram Hazony explains. From his essay: The alarm and trepidation with which European and American elites responded to the prospect of an independent Britain revealed something that had long been obscured from view. That simple truth is that the emerging liberal construction is incapable of respecting, much less celebrating, the deviation of nations seeking to assert a right to their own unique laws, traditions, and policies. Any such dissent is held to be vulgar and ignorant, if not evidence of a fascistic mindset. Nor is Britain the only nation to have felt the sting of this whip. America is hardly immune: Its refusal to permit the International Criminal Court to try its soldiers, its unwillingness to sign international treaties designed to protect the environment, its war in Iraq — all were met with similar outrage both at home and abroad. Such outbursts have long targeted Israel, whether for bombing Iraq's nuclear facilities or for constructing housing complexes in eastern Jerusalem. Eastern European countries, too, have been excoriated for their unwillingness to accept immigrants from the Middle East. Moreover, similar campaigns of delegitimization, in both Europe and America, have been directed against the practice of Christianity and Judaism, religions on which the old biblical political order was based, and whose free exercise has usually been protected or at least tolerated by Western national governments. We have seen attempts, especially in Europe, to ban such Jewish practices as circumcision and kosher slaughter in the name of liberal doctrines of universal rights, or to force liberal teachings on sexuality and family upon Christians and Jews in the workplace and in schools. It requires no special insight to see that this is only the beginning, and that the teaching and practice of traditional forms of Judaism and Christianity will become ever more untenable as the liberal construction advances.
10. In Journal mode, Jay Nordlinger recounts his recent trip to Syracuse. A few weeks earlier, he was in Salzburg, from where he filed delightful journals. Good luck keeping up with our globe-trotting friend. 11. Nick Searcy explains, "Why I Directed Gosnell." From his piece: I have always hated movies that preach at me, that try to manipulate me and tell me what to think about a story rather than just telling me the story. After a long period of developing a shooting script, the producers and I set out to make a movie that would inform and benefit people on both sides of this issue, no matter how passionate. I saw nothing to be gained from a film that preached or demonized one side or the other. However, this is a story about a serial murderer who was allowed to operate for 27 years. Fear of the politics of abortion is what enabled him to continue, undetected, for decades. What this monster did and how and why he was allowed to get away with it for so long are equally shocking. The politics could not be ignored, but we tried to present them objectively in an honest and compelling film.
12. Rich Lowry takes on the liberal lunacy about Old Glory, the moon, and Neil Armstrong's patriotism. From his column: The mission of Apollo 11 was, appropriately, soaked in American symbolism. The lunar module was called Eagle, and the command module Columbia. There had been some consideration to putting up a U.N. flag, but it was scotched — it would be an American flag and only an American flag. The video of Armstrong and his partner Buzz Aldrin carefully working to set up the flag — fully extend it and sink the pole firmly enough in the lunar surface to stand — after their awe-inspiring journey hasn't lost any of its power. The director of First Man, Damien Chazelle, argues that the flag planting isn't part of the movie because he wanted to focus on the inner Armstrong. But, surely, Armstrong, a former Eagle Scout, had feelings about putting the flag someplace it had never gone before?
13. What is this thing called Resistance? Michael Brendan Dougherty looks at the infamous / anonymous New York Times op-ed, and riffs. From his essay: And so it came to pass in #TheResistance, a group of various charlatans, self-important Twitter users, and some genuinely frightened Americans who give them attention and money. Even before Election Day, they accused him of questioning the validity of his anticipated electoral defeat. Then they turned around and looked for various ways of annulling or reversing his surprise victory. They accused him of spreading conspiracy theories, and then they filled our information streams with wild rumors predicting that the Republican party would be arrested en masse as a criminal organization, or that the non-existent marshall for the Supreme Court would haul away President Trump in manacles. This spectacle was a distraction from the real work liberals might have undertaken in political opposition. And it acted as a kind of prophylactic that kept them from learning any useful lessons from the 2016 election. But this extremely obnoxious sideshow was infinitely preferable to the anonymous op-ed written for the New York Times by a "senior Administration official" this week. It seems certain that Never Trump conservatives are determined to damage to American institutions, in a quixotic effort not to learn anything from 2016.
14. There was a crooked man, who Jay Cost says may soon be the ex-senator from New Jersey, the infamous Robert Menendez. Might the GOP pick up a seat in the Garden State? From the piece: No, that is not a typo, nor is it a fever dream of a conservative deeply invested in the idea of keeping Chuck Schumer in the minority. New Jersey may very well be in play this year because the Democrats have renominated Senator Robert Menendez, easily the most crooked member of the upper chamber today, and one who must rank in the top tier through its whole history (which is really saying something!). Last year, Menendez went on trial for corruption over his cozy relationship with Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who is himself serving a lengthy sentence for defrauding Medicare to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. The specifics of Menendez's alleged crimes are too unseemly to be detailed on the e-pages of what is a family magazine. Suffice to say that he was accused of doing favors in government for Melgen in exchange for personal luxuries and kickbacks.
15. Anonymous Fallout. Cooke thinks the op-ed is a sign of a constitutional crisis. Lowry says nope, it ain't. Ponnuru agrees with El Jefe, and makes his case more fully in his Bloomberg column. The Six 1. The "New American Working Class" is the subject of an important new study of The Frontier Lab (for which Yours Truly is a humble board member), and it finds that those who enjoy work, embrace work, are more apt to, well, more apt to be reading something like the Weekend Jolt. (Those less likely — they're dubbed "Gleaners.") From the report: Wealth and the Wealthy: The New American Working Class is much less likely to express apprehension over the accumulation of wealth or support political solutions to level the "playing field" than their Gleaner counterparts. While one in three NAWC respondents was definitely concerned over the "wealth gap" between the poor and rich, nearly half of all Gleaners were. Similarly, when it came to raising taxes on those who can easily afford more, two in three in the NAWC said it could be, or is, wrong; over half of Gleaners said is never wrong to do so. As to wealth accumulation, 77 percent of the NAWC would be against any limit on the amount anyone should be able collect, while only 56 percent of Gleaners would be against it. Automation and Universal Basic Income: Another dividing line exists between the NAWC and Gleaners in how they envision the future of work in America. At the outset, both groups expressed similar concerns over the automation of jobs reducing work opportunities, with approximately three in four showing at least some concern in both groups. However, the NAWC was much less likely to support one government-centric solution to the potential problem of automation — a universal basic income. While only 26 percent of the NAWC supported a UBI, 42 percent of Gleaners did. This makes sense, given the Gleaners expressed strong support for raising taxes on those who could easily afford to pay more.
2. At City Journal, Bob McManus scores the short, race-obsessed tenure of New York City schools chancellor, Richard Carranza. From the piece: Carranza embraced the popular notion that New York City's public schools are the nation's most segregated, an often-repeated and tendentious point. New York's student population is 66 percent black and Hispanic, 15 percent white, 16 percent Asian, and about 3 percent "two or more races," and it's difficult to understand how one "integrates" a system with that mix. Racial imbalance in the schools is a fraught issue, given America's long and shameful history of explicit, legally mandated classroom segregation. However, de jure school segregation ended by 1920 in New York City, and more than a half-century ago across America. Demographic disparity today largely reflects poverty patterns, housing choices, and private-school options open largely to the affluent. It's a matter that demands attention, but attempts to engineer an idealized racial balance have historically meant imposing levels of political and governmental coercion that most Americans find unacceptable, and these efforts generally have failed anyway — sometimes explosively. Nevertheless, Carranza's giving it one more try. He laid out his operating philosophy during a town hall meeting in Harlem in June. "It's important that we put the real issue on the table," he announced, "and the issue on the table is this. In one of the most diverse cities in not America but the world, and in the largest school district in America, a school district that is public, are opportunities really open for all people?" But if a public school system is failing, is the preferred solution to raise performance standards across the board, enforce them in the face of bureaucratic and teachers' union blowback, and thus generally improve outcomes? Or is it better to weaken standards — functionally, to abandon them — in order "to open opportunities for all people?" Higher standards will produce unequal outcomes; nostandards will teach students nothing worth knowing in a modern economy. Yet this fact seems lost on Carranza, who has in his sights the city's competitive-entry schools and programs — including high schools like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant in Manhattan and the so-called gifted-and-talented initiatives for elementary and middle schools. Selective-entry schools tend to outperform system-wide averages, but they rarely reflect the city's racial and ethnic enrollment averages. Thus, they command Carranza's critical attention.
3. Is the money that would fix California's massive water problems being spent on . . . a train to nowhere? Writing for California Policy Center, Ed Ring seems to think that there is indeed a "grand bargain" that will end the drought of lousy solutions. From his piece: When thinking about solutions to California's water challenges, there is a philosophical question that has to be addressed. Is it necessary to persistently emphasize conservation over more supplies of water? Is it necessary to always perceive investments in more supplies of water as environmentally unacceptable, or is it possible to decouple, or mostly decouple, environmental harm from investment in more water supplies? Is it possible that the most urgent environmental priorities can be addressed by increasing the supply of water, even if investing in more water supplies also creates new, but lessor, environmental problems? This philosophical question takes on urgent relevance when considering not only the new restrictions on water withdrawals that face Californians, but also in the context of another great philosophical choice that California's policy makers have made, which is to welcome millions of new immigrants from across the world. What sort of state are we inviting these new residents to live in? How will we ensure that California's residents, eventually to number not 40 million, but 50 million, will have enough water? It is this reality — a growing population, a burgeoning agricultural economy, and compelling demands to release more water to threatened ecosystems – that makes a grand political water bargain necessary for California. A bargain that offers a great deal for everyone — more water for ecosystems, more water for farmers, more water for urban consumers — because new infrastructure will be constructed that provides not incremental increases, but millions and millions of acre feet of new water supplies.
The good news? Voters are willing to pay for it. 4. More about the Golden State choo-choo, aka "California's Stonehenge." Ralph Vartabedian reports in the Los Angeles Times that the project is currently socking taxpayers for $3.1 million a day. But that ain't nothin'. From the article: It was supposed to cost $33 billion and eventually reach from Sacramento to San Diego. Now, the route connects only San Francisco to Los Angeles, with the completion date pushed back 13 years. To be sure, the vast majority of megaprojects around the world bust their budgets, though, for a variety of technical, legal, political and financial reasons. Boston's 3.5-mile Big Dig, for example, was finished in 2007 — nine years behind schedule and at a cost of $14.6 billion, up from an initial estimate of $2.5 billion. The 11-mile East Side Access tunnel in New York City is 14 years behind schedule, and its tab has grown from $4.3 billion to $11.1 billion. The bullet train project, with its record-breaking rate of spending last year, fell 31% short of the authority's $4.5-million-a-day target. In its current fiscal year, the aim is to spend $1.8 billion, or $4.9 million a day. At its peak in fiscal 2023, spending should hit $10.7 billion — or $29 million every calendar day — according to planning documents.
5. Trés trés on the dommage: The French culture is crumbling, says Guillaume de Thieulloy, writing for Law & Liberty. From his piece: The largest part of European elites is still dreaming of an everlasting peace and of a world that has gotten rid of crises, indeed of politics altogether. But history, war, and tragedy are back, and the return of tragedy to a pacified Europe is the great issue of Gilles Kepel's excellent new book, Terror in France: The Rise of Jihad in the West. The causes of the rise of jihadism in the West are well known, but they are seldom gathered and studied: the geopolitical context (especially the war in Iraq, but also the never-ending conflict between Israelis and Palestinians), the economic crisis in Western Europe, the cultural question, and the memory of colonization. To these causes Kepel could have added the question of immigration. France has the greatest number of Muslims of any European country, between six million and 10 million of a total French population of 67 million. This means that many hundreds of thousands are radical Islamists and many thousands—to say the least—are potential jihadists. The most interesting aspect of Kepel's book is its portraits of jihadist figures and trends among their followers, ranging from banditry or so-called "small delinquency," to radical Islamism, to violent jihadism. We all know that French jails are perhaps the most radical "mosques," where many young delinquents become true jihadists. But it's striking to see it concretely, in the real life of some "French" jihadists. I put quotation marks around "French" because, of course, generally speaking, the jihadists are only French citizens by their passport, not with their heart. Most were born abroad or are the children of recent immigrant parents. They have no clear commitment to French culture or history. In fact they hate France, which in their understanding is the country of the Crusaders.
6. Just what has the West given the world? At The Imaginative Conservative, Bradley Birzer explains. From his essay: When I was a student in college, back in the late 1980s, the Western canon was under attack. Of course, it had been under attack for nearly a century at that point, but it came blatantly under attack in the late 1980s by the newly-tenured radicals (those who came of age in the 1960s) who called for "inclusivity" in the canon of the West. They did not argue against studying Plato, but they wanted to know about Plato's wife or if Plato had been influenced by central African philosophy. Frankly, every not quite "in-group" — at least as they saw themselves — wanted representation in the canon. Perhaps the most memorable and influential book at the time was, appropriately enough, named Black Athena (1987). In the late 1980s, each side saw the other as intractable and somewhat insidious. How naïve we all were then, presuming the debate would simply continue about inclusivity. And, how I long for those days when at least we debated what should be in the canon. As we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, no canon can be stated with any certainty to exist. Not in the minds of academics and, most certainly, not in the minds of the average citizen of Western civilization. At least in 1989 and 1990, we still presumed a canon existed. Today, few even know that the word "canon" exists.
BONUS: You must read the powerful Minding the Campus essay by Phillip Carl Salzman on "What Your Sons and Daughters Will Learn at University." It's what you feared, and even more. Here's but one thing that will be crammed into their skulls: Only the West Was Imperialist and Colonialist: This ahistorical approach of postcolonialism ignores the hundreds of empires and their colonies throughout history, as well as ignoring contemporary empires, such as the Arab Muslim Empire that conquered all of the central Middle East, North Africa, southern Europe, Persia, Central Asia, and northern India, and occupied them minimally for hundreds of years, but 1400 years in the central Middle East and North Africa, and occupy them today. China, once the Communists took power, invaded Inner Mongolia to the north, Chinese Turkestan to the west, and Tibet to the south. Once in control, the government flooded these colonies with Han Chinese, in effect ethnically cleansing them. Postcolonialists have nothing to say about any of this; they wish to condemn exclusively the West. Your children will learn to reject history and comparisons with other societies, lest the claimed unique sins of the West be challenged.
Baseballery The National Pastime took on September 11th. God bless you George Bush, for history's greatest first pitch. You can find the acclaimed ESPN "30 for 30" documentary here. Louisa Thomas of Grantland writes about "The Pitch" here. A Dios Please pray for the souls of those who died on September 11th; who died trying to save those attacked; and who died fighting our enemies, sworn to hate the freedoms we hold as God-given. May they rest in peace. God, bless, Jack Fowler You can email me at jfowler@nationalreview.com. You can reserve a cruise cabin at www.nrcruise.com. You can subscribe to NRPLUS here. | 
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