Enron was small potatoes. For all their imaginative corporate structures and creative accounting, Ken Lay and company only managed to soak investors for a couple hundred billion dollars—not even as much as a Kerry tax increase. Imagine if the Enron debacle had been 20 times as big and you're talking real money. Now imagine that the U.S. taxpayer has to pick up the tab and you’ve got the sort of stuff global depressions are made of.

As it turns out, we may not have to imagine much longer. A new circus of dubious management and questionable accounting threatens to make us all look back fondly on the tiny market blip that was Enron.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the largest privately owned financial institutions in the nation. Together, they own or guarantee upwards of $4 trillion (with a “t”) in home mortgages (if your house cost less than $330 grand, chances are either Fannie or Freddie holds a piece of your note). What’s more, because of their special status as “government sponsored entities,” Freddie and Fannie don't have to follow all the rules that other privately owned companies do: they don't have to register their securities with the government, their securities receive special treatment for investment purposes, they don't have to pay state income taxes and—most importantly—because of Freddie and Fannie’s government sponsorship, the markets widely assume that the federal government (read Joe and Betty Taxpayer) guarantees all of their notes. In other words, should Fannie and Freddie screw up, you and I will end up holding the bag. And just to give you an idea of how big a bag we’re talking about, as of the end of last year Freddie and Fannie carried a combined debt in the neighborhood of $2 trillion (by way of comparison, the 2005 federal budget runs about $2.3 trillion).

Screw up is increasingly what it looks like the two lending giants are doing. Last year, Freddie “discovered” that it had “misstated” its earnings to the tune of over $5 billion. As regulators investigated, Freddie Mac President David Glenn, Chief Executive and Chairman Leland Brendsel and Chief Financial Officer Vaughn Clarke all found the door rather than cooperate with investigators (though not without pausing to collect more than $20 million in severance packages). Ken Lay wishes he’d had it so good! Nor is Freddie alone in its mismanagement. Frannie has seen 15% of its value—$10 billion in market capitalization—evaporate since March 1 (in one of the hottest home buying markets in history). Just last month Fannie Mae’s chief regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, cited the company for accounting for its assets “in a way that fails to reflect losses.” Sound familiar?

Fortunately we’ve learned our lesson from Enron. No more will our leaders in Congress turn a blind eye to Enron-style accounting shenanigans. Just last week, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi trumpeted both her indignation and her resolve to settle the score:

We knew all along that Enron and the energy companies were gaming the system. The now notorious tapes, which every member of this body has an obligation to observe, of Enron traders confirm what we knew all along—Enron and the other energy companies were laughing all the way to the bank usas they stole from families and businesses of California. Enron and its kind lied, cheated, and stole, and it is long past time for Enron to pay consumers and the states back.

Surely with watchdogs like Pelosi guarding our interests, we don’t need to worry that Freddie and Fannie could brew up a new Enron disaster…or do we? Even in the wake of the accounting scandals at Enron, the attempts of federal regulators to tighten oversight of Freddie and Fannie have been thwarted in Congress. Just yesterday, Pelosi joined Barney Frank and other top Democrats in appealing to the adminstration to ease up in its efforts at regulatory reform.

What gives? How could the same Nancy Pelosi who was seemingly ready to go to work on Ken Lay with thumb screws and branding irons be so forgiving of Freddie and Fannie despite their growing accounting crises? Thomas Ryan may have the answer. Mr. Ryan has discovered that, in addition to misstating profits and providing multi-million dollar golden parachutes to disgraced management, Fannie and Freddie give piles of money to left wing causes. Lefty outfits like the Center for Policy Alternatives, the Alliance for Justice, and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition head the long list of beneficiaries of their largesse—generosity amounting, in Rainbow PUSH’s case, to the purchase of a billion dollars worth of mortgages.

As Enron collapsed, its management reached out to every contact they had in a desperate attempt to save the sinking ship. They seem to have had contacts at some level with Vice President Dick Cheney, a fact that the Democrats have urged support dire conclusions of corruption in the very highest levels of the administration—despite the fact that Cheney and the administration don’t seem to have taken the smallest action on Enron’s behalf. Now Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been caught cooking the books. The stock of both companies is falling fast, and their management aren’t just meeting with top Dems, they’re giving billions of dollars to lefty causes. Meanwhile, top congressional Democrats are asking regulators to “ease up.”

Enron was small potatoes.

Patrick Belton at Oxblog does a fine job cataloging NATO's past, present, and future deficiencies, but I think he misses the bigger picture.

Yes, it would be best if other NATO countries contributed more, if they cooperated more, if European domestic politics did not make NATO so unwieldy, etc., etc. Inasmuch as those circumstances are unlikely to change, the more relevant inquiry is whether NATO should be disbanded or preserved.

Many wise commentators, such as Victor Davis Hanson, have concluded that we should encourage NATO to wither away as quickly as possible and encourage "more European muscularity" in its place.

I disagree.

We should preserve NATO, no matter how weak and ineffectual it becomes because NATO's very existence tends to preclude the dangerous emergence of an independent European military force. The nascent version of that force is known by an appropriately bureaucratic moniker: "European Security and Defence Policy" or "ESDP." As Belton notes, "ESDP is France's baby, which it sees as the EU's alternative to NATO, without the pesky Americans."

So long as NATO exists, Europe will (correctly) assume that the United States will wield its military might to protect Europe in any genuine crisis, allowing Europe safely to remain militarily weak. But if NATO were disbanded, that proposition would become extremely less certain, and Europe would then be motivated to develop its own force, independently from the United States. That development would not be in our interests.

Though we are frustrated with NATO's dithering, that dithering serves as a distracting and valuable substitute for real military reform among the the Europeans. So long as we are not so foolish as to rely on NATO in any substantial way and do not commit to NATO any forces that we absolutely need to deploy elsewhere (two important caveats!), NATO as now constituted can do little for good or for evil that cannot be accomplished by member countries acting outside NATO. By contrast, a viable united European military, established independently from NATO, would have a power and the concomitant legitimacy that NATO does not command. And we might soon find that power and legitimacy is arrayed against our necessary interests. It would be foolhardy for the United States seriously to encourage a united Europe to arm itself. As Machiavelli says, "Whoever is the cause of someone else's becoming powerful is ruined."

As things now stand, though NATO as a whole might be unwilling to participate or support a particular military objective the U.S. wishes to pursue, individual countries within NATO remain free to assist us on a bilateral or multilateral basis outside the NATO framework. Each NATO member remains free, for all intents and purposes, to use its forces as it wishes outside of the NATO framework. Thus, in Iraq we have a majority of NATO nations participating, even though NATO itself has until recently been unwilling to support the undertaking in any meaningful way. Similarly, in Afghanistan, though the support was slow in coming, many NATO nations are now participating. As an added benefit, joint training among NATO countries facilitates the rapid integration of any willing nation's forces with the those of the United States. NATO has become, so to speak, a handy storehouse at which we can "shop" for coalition partners on an ad hoc basis as a military or (more precisely) a political need arises.

But if NATO were replaced by a united EU military, that EU structure might have command and control over a sizable portion, if not all, of the military capacity of its member countries. Bilateral arrangements between the U.S. and individual EU nations would become more difficult, if not impossible, to establish. A Poland or an Italy, as a member of a united EU force, would probably not be permitted, as they can as NATO members, to use equipment and personnel committed to the EU to support U.S. military activities without explicit EU approval. And a single EU nation might be able to veto any supportive action by every other individual EU country.

Imagine the present situation if, instead of NATO, there existed a united European military force. Instead of our efforts in Iraq being supported by a majority of European nations, our efforts might be supported by none of them, because all might be bound by any individual European nation's veto, or worse, our efforts might be actively opposed by the European group acting as a single entity. Instead of merely having to tolerate the impotent protests of a France and a Germany while enjoying the public support and actual assistance of an Italy and a Poland, we might be opposed by a united Europe, led by a France and a Germany and backed by considerable military wherewithal. Although it seems fantastical to imagine that the U.S. and a newly militarized Europe would become open antagonists any time soon, one cannot preclude that eventuality.

In any case, the emergence of a militarized Europe allied with the United States might actually tend to cause the United States to become weaker relative to any third emerging global superpower, such as China. Or the emergence of the EU as a superpower could generate a spiraling arms race between the United States and Europe on one side and the third antagonistic superpower on the other side. Here's how it might well play out: Assume that during the next twenty years both China and Europe emerge as global superpowers, with Europe militarily independent but allied with us and China a potential antagonist. The Chinese superpower would be likely to measure the sufficiency of its military might against the combined strength of the two ostensibly allied Western superpowers, i.e., the United States plus the united Europe. Similarly, each of the two Western superpowers, the United States and the united Europe, might tend individually to gauge the sufficiency its military strength by adding its ostensible ally's strength to its own.

To simplify the argument, let "x" equal a unit of military strength:

If at some point in the future the U.S. superpower possesses a military strength of 4x and the united European superpower possess a military strength of 3x, China will tend to seek to posses a military strength of 7x to balance against the cumulative strength of the Western allies. By the same token, if China achieves a military strength of 7x, while Europe possesses a military strength of 3x, then the United States--operating on the assumption it can always rely on its European ally to make up the difference between its own strength and China's strength--would tend to come to settle at a military strength of 4x. Having come to rely on the strength of its European ally, the United States might come to rest at a military strength vastly inferior to that of its primary antagonist. The danger in that calculus is obvious.

Alternatively, if the United States determined that it could not safely rely upon the strength of its putative European ally, but instead must on its own amass military strength sufficient to balance China without counting on its European ally, China would begin to feel threatened. As the US approached a strength of 7x, China would see itself opposed by the 10x combined strength of Europe plus the United States. China would then tend to seek to increase its strength to 13x to match the Western allies combined strength. In response the United States would seek to increase its military strength to 13x. Seeing the combined strength of Europe plus the U.S. at 16x, China would then seek to reach that same level. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. A spiraling arms race would ensue.

The obvious difficulty is that a tri-polar world is inherently less stable than a bi-polar world (at least that's what my manic-depressive friends tell me). The jockeying for a safe position would be constant--and constantly destabilizing.

Yes, an effective European military force within NATO is clearly "preferable" in theory, but remains clearly unrealistic in practice. Belton thinks that NATO "can be made to work again," and he puts the burden on Bush to make it happen. But Hanson knows better: Before NATO could be reformed, Europe would have to be reformed. Sadly, America's best efforts cannot reform Europe. Only Europe can reform the militaries and politics of Europe, and Europe has no incentive to reform itself so long as NATO exists. Yet the demise of NATO risks the dangerous emergence of a European superpower. There's the dilemma.

Given the reality that NATO's effectiveness will remain limited, the better remaining option is neither to abandon NATO nor seriously to rely upon NATO, but to do all we can to preserve NATO in its weak condition, so as to prevent the dangerous emergence of a united European superpower. (Incidentally, though the contributions of Poland and Italy in Iraq might seem miniscule, they serve the important purpose of confirming the present divisions within Europe, thereby further forestalling the emergence of a united European superpower. We must continue to seek these bilateral arrangements. Though in and of itself the actual materiel support we gain seems hardly worth the effort, the political advantages are of the utmost value.) A weak European military force within NATO, the present reality, is not only tolerable; it is in many respects advantageous to the United States. Yes, as Hanson explains, a militarily weak Europe is susceptible to an inferiority complex that causes "associate[d] pathologies of enablement and passive-aggressive angst" vis-a-vis the United States. However, as we shall never live in a perfect world, it is far less dangerous to administer frequent palliatives for those psychological disturbances than to confront the more palpable disturbances a militarily superior Europe would bring about. A powerful European military force outside NATO, which becomes possible only if NATO is disbanded, would create real difficulties for the United States in the short run and in the long run could be disastrous.

In his report on the transfer of sovereignty, Associated Press writer Tarek el-Tablawy includes the following quote to buttress his assertion that "the response [to the handover] in Baghdad was mixed":

"Iraqis are happy inside, but their happiness is marred by fear and melancholy," said artist Qassim al-Sabti. "Of course I feel I'm still occupied. You can't find anywhere in the world people who would accept occupation. America these days, is like death. Nobody can escape from it."

I am always suspicious of these man-on-the-street-type of quotes, which reporters too often use selectively as a device to interject their own opinions. Indeed, the above quote was the only one the AP writer used to illustrate the "mixed" reaction in Baghdad.

Don't get me wrong. I don't doubt that reaction to the handover was mixed in Baghdad, a city of millions. The issue I am exploring here is not whether opinions on the handover were "mixed," but whether the sole quote the AP writer chose to use to illustrate the presence of mixed opinions fairly represents those mixed opinions.

Being married to an artist and having had considerable experience of artists, who--on political matters generally hold opinions representative of their fellow artists and no one else--I was immediately suspicious of the implication that a quote from an artist could be representative of broader public opinion.

So I did some quick internet research on Mr. Qassim al-Sabti, the artist the AP writer presents as the sole example of Baghdad's "mixed" opinion on the transfer of sovereignty.

It turns out that for many years now the delightful Qassim al-Sabti (whose name is variously transliterated as Alsabti, al Septi, etc.) has owned and operated Hawar Gallery, widely described in Western press reports as "the best known" art gallery in Baghdad. As a pre-war report from peacenik Nathan Mauger inadvertently discloses, al-Sabti and his artsy pals did quite well under Saddam's patronage:

Saturday, Sept. 28; Baghdad

Back in Baghdad, the Voices delegation attends a dinner party given in our honor. It is in the courtyard of the house of a wealthy Iraqi art gallery owner. The art dealer, Qasim Alsabti, is incredibly articulate and enjoys hosting dinner parties. Last week there was a party for the Baghdad CNN bureau here.

We meet several prominent Iraqi artists Qasim has also invited. They speak excellent English, they're fluent in French, they have email addresses. Their drivers wait outside.

Qasim says more people were expected, but no one is going out any more because they are worried about the war.

Fish roasts over an open spit and I drink a glass of Arak, an Iraqi alcohol made from licorice. It's hard and clear, but when water is added it turns white. One of the artists raises a toast for world peace.

You might wonder how Mr. al-Sabti managed not only to survive but to flourish, yet still follow his muse as a working artist and art dealer during all those terrible years. One writer suggests al-Sabti survived and prospered under Saddam by remaining "notoriously apolitical":

Qasim is notoriously apolitical, which allowed him to run his gallery during Saddam's reign as a central meeting place for artists, collectors, diplomats (during the sanctions, UN personnel played a vital role as collectors and as a cultural lifeline to the West) and the general public. He freely admits to once painting a portrait of Saddam and says, "Look, no person was forced to do this thing, my dear. But the money! I took my friends out to dinners for weeks on the payment."

Fair enough, I suppose. One can't fault an artist if he is able, without actively doing harm, to find a way to pursue his art under an oppressive regime. More than that, al-Sabti's gallery was, so we are now told, a veritable "cultural lifeline to the West" during those tortured years. (We are heartened to learn that some of the UN muckabouts who skimmed billions from the Oil for Food Program might have put that money to good use buying art from al-Sabti.)

The problem is that al-Sabti is not so "notoriously apolitical" as his apologists claim to justify his soft collaboration with Saddam's regime:

To be sure, not everyone at the Hewar felt reborn, especially among the customers over 40, who remembered the good old days of government-sponsored awards and competitions, lucrative commissions for portraits of Father Saddam, and extra pocket money from spying for the Mukhabarat. "Under Saddam, we could do any kind of art, as long as it wasn't political; things were much better then," Septi, the owner, said nostalgically. . . .

Because of the despot's beneficence to artists -- advocates of government arts funding, take note -- support for the tyrant runs deep there. The same can't be said for the country as a whole.

And you would be wrong if you think that al-Sabti dropped his apolitical stance only after Saddam was removed from power. Before the war, al-Sabti was quoted thusly:

The conversation shifts to the impending war. Qasim says if the US attacks he will sit with his Kalashnikov and wait in his house, "because this is my home and no one will take it away from me."

To get the full flavor of al-Sabti's "apolitical" stand, read a September 2003 interview, in which he stated:

. . . We know the Americans' dirty plans. With their first steps inside Iraq, they took care of the Ministry of Oil only. I saw many American soldiers ask the looters to enter the centers of culture, the libraries and museums. The soldiers invited them with foolish smiles, allowing them to do anything inside these centers - to loot, to destroy, to burn. Believe me, this was a bad decision. Iraqis discovered a new kind of cowboy. These cowboys were taking an interest in petrol only. This is what happened during the war.

. . . . You know we need a strong man in government, especially for the police and the security. . . .

. . . .

. . . . the first thief in this world - Bush - has looted the whole country. The boss is America, you see, and it heads something like a big mafia. The Arab countries helped America destroy this country - Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait. Really, it is good to give the Americans a good lesson, to show them the truth - that Iraq is not easy. I mean that they will pay with blood from the future of America in this land, at last.

. . . . My message is love, peace and justice. But here I am talking about American politicians, not the people. Always there is distance between the people and the politicians, like Iraqis and Saddam Hussein. They said to this world that Iraq is a dangerous country and that Saddam is a terrorist - many lies. Until now, nobody can find anything dangerous, only poor people who have lost 30 years of their lives.

. . . .

Of course, I don't believe in Saddam either, in his regime. I hated that time. I am happy when I look at my boy now because I can hope that my boy will not become a soldier. I can help him to learn computer skills or do something else.

Before the war, in the Saddam regime, we as artists had freedom to do any kind of art.

Yes, this artist who thrived under Saddam is the man whom an Associated Press uses as the sole representative of "mixed" opinion in Baghdad!

Al-Sabti's most recent "apolitical" artistic venture at his Hawar Gallery is (you guessed it!) an exhibition on Abu Ghraib:

"The Americans behaved in an incredibly revolting manner," Sabti said. His exhibit shows the body of a woman under a white shroud smeared with blood between the thighs. "She was raped and murdered," he said.

In addition to being "apolitical," al Sabti's art is also subtle.

Yet contrary to what you might think from reading most press reports, some Iraqi artists do disapprove of al-Sabti and his Abu Ghraib exhibit:

. . . . "I am against it, because none of these artists did anything to show the exactions perpetrated by Saddam Hussein," said 28-year-old sculptor Haidar Wady.

"Being against the Americans has become the trendy thing. But they brought us freedom. Just imagine for one moment if they had gathered here to depict Abu Ghraib in the time of the dictator. What's more, these works are really ugly," he added.

I suspect that under Saddam's regime Haidar Wady did not fare so well as al-Sabti.

UPDATE: I'm scheduled to appear on the internet talk show "Cam & Company" at 2:40 Eastern Time today (Wednesday, June 30th) to discuss the al-Sabti piece. You can watch and listen at:

http://www.nranews.com/nra.html

Also I want to thank Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit for linking to this post. (If you happen to be one of the four people in the world who don't yet know about Instapundit, you need to surf there right now!)

The Washington Post's John F. Harris nails Clinton in another big lie:

In February 1998, after Hussein blocked U.N. inspectors from entering Iraq, Clinton warned: "What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act? Or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he'll use the arsenal."

In the Time interview, Clinton said "I never really thought" Hussein would use his weapons but did worry that Iraqi weapons might be sold or given away.

Was Clinton lying in 1998 when he "guaranteed" that Saddam would use his WMDs, or is he lying now when he says "never really thought" Saddam would use them?

The correct answer is Clinton was lying then, and he's still lying now. For Clinton, truth is irrelevant. If he happens to speak the truth, it is only by coincidence.

Clinton's latest lie is simply part and parcel of the never-ending process of "triangulation," the process though which Clinton constantly modifies his message to maneuver himself as close as possible to whatever point of view can encompass the largest share of popular opinion at a particular moment.

In this instance, the opinion toward which Clinton is triangulating is summed up precisely in the title of Harris's Washington Post article: "Clinton Backs Bush on Iraq War But Questions Invasion's Timing". If one believed that Saddam did intend to use WMDs, and the threat was as real and as pressing as Clinton's "guarantee" suggested, then the question of timing would be a minor quibble. But if one did not believe that Saddam intended ever to use his WMDs, which is the position Clinton now takes, then one cannot make the case that it was better to attack sooner rather than later.

This weasely triangulation entails the additional benefit of allowing Clinton to assert that, contrary to appearances, he did not lack the will to stand up to Saddam Hussein. His failure to do so was not a lack of fortitude, but a problem of timing. "I had the balls to take on Saddam, but my eight years in office ended before the time was ripe."

Maybe it really was somehow a difficulty Clinton had with timing. Clinton did earn his reputation as The Great Procrastinator. The lovely thing about procrastination is that it allows one always to have it both ways. A postponed act is neither fully chosen nor fully rejected. Even after the moment for action has passed, we can comfort ourselves with the thought of what we intended to do and excuse ourselves with the recollection of the barriers that prevented completion. If events happen to turn out well despite our failure to take matters in hand, we can congratulate ourselves for the wisdom of our restraint. If, heaven forfend, we are finally forced by events to take some action, if things don't go smoothly, we can protest that we opposed the decision.

That's what makes Clinton's triangulation so appealing to popular opinion. He positions himself to congratulate popular opinion if the war turns out well ("we all supported it"), but to relieve popular opinion of responsibility if the war turns out badly ("we all thought the timing was bad"). If we are only willing to adopt Clinton's position on the matter, we can take credit for the good and avoid responsibility for the bad.

In the meantime, while excusing his own past dilatoriness, Clinton's triangulation permits himself unlimited scope for criticizing those, like Bush, who did have the fortitude to take action, while at the same time claiming to support him. According to Clinton, Bush should not have attacked Saddam before "allowing the United Nations to complete the inspections process." Yet Clinton forgets the "inspection process" was "completed" at one time, back in 1998 when inspectors were withdrawn because Saddam made the "process" too obviously a charade. Did Clinton take action then? Well, yes, don't you remember? He bombed Iraq for four whole days, and then followed up by doing . . . exactly nothing. What was the purpose of that bombing? Was it to remove Saddam? No, Clinton avoided any claim of that purpose. Instead he justified the bombing this way:

. . . over the past year, Saddam has repeatedly sought to cripple the inspections system. Each time, through intensive diplomatic efforts backed by the threat of military action, Saddam has backed down. When he did so last month, I made it absolutely clear that if he did not give UNSCOM full cooperation this time, we would act swiftly and without further delay.

For three weeks, the inspectors tested Saddam's commitment to cooperate. They repeatedly ran into roadblocks and restrictions, some of them new. As their Chairman, Richard Butler, concluded in his report to the United Nations on Tuesday, the inspectors no longer were able to do their job. So far as I was concerned, Saddam's days of cheat and retreat were over.

Sure, Clinton claimed that the aim of the bombing was to degrade Saddam's WMD capacity, but that was an after-the-fact justification. In Clinton's eyes, Saddam's unforgivable offense was not that he was threatening the entire civilized world with WMDs, but that he was refusing to cooperate with a "process."

Yet, for Clinton, the termination of a process is no reason to abandon that process and resort to sustained action. One can always hope that a process can be revived. As Clinton said at the close of his four day bombing campaign:

we would welcome the return of UNSCOM and the International Atomic Energy Agency back into Iraq to pursue their mandate from the United Nations

The attempt to revive a process itself becomes a process. Thus, at this very hour, we read of those who want to revive the middle-east peace process, while warning Israel to avoid "actions" that might interfere with the process of reviving the peace process.

"Process" is such a reassuring word. By providing the illusion that something substantial is happening, it insulates us from actually having to commit to the messy and unpredictable business of dealing with the problems we face. Thus, twelve years into the on-again-off-again inspection process, Clinton would have waited for that process to be "completed" (and then presumably restarted, terminated, resumed, postponed, revived, etc. ad nauseam) before taking action. Procrastinators love process, and, as we have become a nation of procrastinators, Clinton's triangulation promises just the sort of comfort so many are looking for. How convenient.

The New York Times' book reveiwer Michiko Kakutani seems not to care much for Bill Clinton's memoirs:

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull--the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history.

. . . it devolves into a hodgepodge of jottings: part policy primer, part 12-step confessional, part stump speech and part presidential archive, all, it seems, hurriedly written and even more hurriedly edited.

. . . Mr. Clinton confesses that his affair with Monica Lewinsky was "immoral and foolish," but he spends far more space excoriating his nemesis, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, and the press. He writes at length about his awareness that terrorism was a growing threat, but does not grapple with the unintended consequences of his administration's decisions to pressure Sudan to expel Osama bin Laden in 1996 (driving sent the al Qaeda leader to Afghanistan, where he was harder to track) or to launch cruise missile attacks against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the embassy bombings in 1998 (an act that some terrorism experts believe fueled terrorists' conviction that the United States was an ineffectual giant that relied on low-risk high technology).

. . . Mr. Clinton tries to characterize his impeachment fight as "my last great showdown with the forces I had opposed all of my life" - with those who had defended segregation in the South, opposed the women's and gay rights movements, and who believed government should be run for the benefit of special interests. He adds that he was glad that he had had "the good fortune to stand against this latest incarnation of the forces of reaction and division."

If Kakutani's review is accurate, Clinton's book fails as a work of history, yet succeeds (albeit accidentally) in fulfilling the first and highest purpose of autobiography--to hold up a mirror to its author's character: the self-serving manipulations, the smarmy self-indulgences, the pusillanimous pseudo-confessions, and especially, most especially, the utter triviality that forms the empty core of the man:

It is only because Mr. Clinton was president of the United States that these excavations of self--a staple of celebrity and noncelebrity memoirs these days--are considered newsworthy.

. . . . And yet the former president's account of his life, read in this post-9/11 day, feels strangely like an artifact from a distant, more innocent era.

Lies about sex and real estate, partisan rancor over "character issues" (not over weapons of mass destruction or pre-emptive war), psychobabble mea culpas, and tabloid wrangles over stained dresses all seem like pressing matters from another galaxy, far, far away.

Kakutani is not quite right to say the Clinton era was "more innocent." Yes, in "this post-9/11 day," the Clinton years might have seemed more innocent, if by "innocent" one means a neglect of serious matters, as Clinton absorbed the nation's attention in struggles defending and opposing his banalities, both political and personal. Indeed, in history's indictment of the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton, Count One will be a charge of reckless triviality for eight years frittered away in self-absorption. Exhibit A will be his autobigraphy.

"Rowback!"

"Where?"

"Right there! Didn't you see it?"

"No, are you sure?"

"I think so. It sure looked like a rowback, but I'll have to go back and check the archives to make sure."

There's a good chance you've never heard about rowbacks before, but I'm almost certain that you've witnessed at least one rowback with your very own eyes, even if you weren't quite sure what it was when you saw it. Rowbacks are usually pretty small, and they can be so quick and so slick that they zip right by without you ever noticing a thing.

Well, I spotted a really fine one just the other day. For a rowback, it was huge, yet it was so quick that I would have missed it if I hadn't been watching closely when it first popped up. Right there in front of my eyes, it morphed into something else and then blended into its surroundings so well that I never would have been able to pick it out if I hadn't caught sight of it before it morphed.

That's what a rowback does. It morphs itself into something else. And after a rowback morphs, you wonder if your eyes were deceiving you about what you saw the first time around. Unless you get a good hard look at a rowback, when you do happen across one, the experience feels like deja vu, except that instead of having a vague sense that something is exactly the same as it was in the past, you have a vague sense that something has changed, but you can't put your finger on what it was. If you don't see a rowback change right in front of your eyes, you won't have much way of knowing that it really was a rowback. So like I said, I'm pretty sure you've seen one before, even if you didn't know it was a rowback.

Rowbacks aren't that uncommon. The only thing unusual about the rowback I spotted the other day was that I reported it to the New York Times. I rarely report my rowback sightings to the media because the media conspiracy doesn't want the public to know rowbacks exist. And it’s hard to nail down solid proof because rowbacks are so slick. But I reported this one to the New York Times. After all, it was their rowback, it was big one, and I figured they would want to get it under control before it morphed again.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First I need to explain more clearly what rowbacks are and why they matter.

A rowback is not some strange mythical beast. A rowback is a journalistic creation that a newspaper uses surreptitiously to correct a mistake in a previous story. A rowback comes into being when a newspaper prints

"a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error." A less charitable definition might read, "a way that a newspaper can cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed."

When a newspaper uses a later story to "fix" a mistake in an earlier story, but fails to tell its readers about the mistake in the first story, most readers will never notice either the mistake or the "correction." If the rowback is slick enough, most readers never realize that they've just had a rowback experience.

The definition of "rowback" that I quoted above comes from a New York Times article titled "Setting the Record Straight (but Who Can Find the Record?)" by Daniel Okrent. Okrent was appointed as the Times' first ever Public Editor last autumn in response to the Jayson Blair fiasco. According to Okrent, his function as the Times Public Editor is "publicly evaluating, criticizing and otherwise commenting on the paper's integrity." (At other newspapers, the job Okrent has at the Times is titled "Omsbudsman" or "Reader Representative.") Integral to the Public Editor's function as watchdog of the paper's integrity is his role as "reader advocate." He's the one who's supposed to make sure readers' legitimate concerns, including rowback sightings, aren't ignored.

When Okrent first took on the job of Public Editor, he wrote an article introducing himself to Times readers, describing his role as reader advocate, and explaining his standards of journalistic integrity:

Journalistic misfeasance [i.e., the factual error] that results from what one might broadly consider working conditions may be explainable, but it isn't excusable. And misfeasance becomes felony when the presentation of news is corrupted by bias, willful manipulation of evidence, unacknowledged conflict of interest--or a self-protective unwillingness to admit error. That's where you and I come in. (bold emphasis added)

Under the journalistic standards Okrent espouses, a rowback--an attempt by a newspaper to "cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed"-- is a journalistic felony because "the presentation of news is corrupted . . . by a self-protective unwillingness to admit error." The rowback "corrects" the story, but doesn't tell the reader what has been corrected or even that a correction has been made. The rowback takes the place of a proper correction, but prevents the reader from easily realizing that something he read earlier was incorrect and is now being corrected. A rowback leaves it to the reader to try to figure out on his own whether the two versions were actually contradictory and, if so, which version is the correct one. Indeed, the very process of creating a rowback can bias the reporter to "correct" an erroneous story in a way that makes his error less noticeable: If the original story reported "Z," but the true fact is "A," a writer hiding behind a rowback will be biased toward producing a story that reports something that looks like "N." In his next story, he can rowback to "G," and then a couple of stories later maybe he gets around to reporting "A." Even if a rowback morphs straight from "Z" to "A," by creating two contradictory, yet unretracted, versions of the same story, the rowback confuses the record. It corrupts the news. It's a journalistic felony.

For the benefit of reporters and editors who slept through Ethics in Journalism 101, Public Editor Okrent explains that when a fact has been incorrectly reported, there are lots of easy ways to avoid doing a rowback:

Online and in archives, connect the second version of a story to the first. In print, take care to insert the words "as reported in The Times yesterday" when the cross-reference is germane. When appropriate, the insertion of "mistakenly" or "erroneously" between "as" and "reported" wouldn't be such a bad thing either.

Okrent leaves the impression that he despises rowbacks and that he considers it is his duty as Public Editor to point out rowbacks publicly when readers bring them to his attention. "That's where you and I come in," he said.

So when I spotted a rowback in a story the Times covered a couple of weeks ago, I sent Okrent the following email:

From: [Adeimantus]
To: public@nytimes.com
Subject: Why the Times Flubbed the Allawi Story
Date: Sat, 29 May 2004

Dear Mr. Orkent:

The New York Times has completely changed its story on how Allawi was tapped as interim Iraqi prime minister.

A certain NY Times article now reads:

The decision to name Dr. Allawi was made with the approval of Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, though it was unclear how enthusiastic his support was. At United Nations headquarters in New York, officials contended that they were caught unawares by the announcement but said that they endorsed the choice."

But the version of the same NY Times article earlier in the day read:

The decision to name Dr. Allawi was made by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, and the governing council was then summoned to be informed of the choice. The council more or less showed its approval, some officials said, with one member saying the decision was unanimous. But other people said a vote did not really take place, because the decision had already been made.

Simply put, the NY Times writers changed their story 180 degrees,

from:

"Brahimi chose PM, and the Governing Council acquiesced,"

to:

"the GC chose PM, and Brahimi acquiesced."

After pointing out this 180 degree rowback, my email to Mr. Okrent went on to point out the bias that I believed caused the Times reporter, Dexter Filkins, to get the story wrong the first time around:

This is all-too-typical of NY Times' recent reporting on the Iraq handover, where the desire to achieve the "right" spin seems to muck up the reportage. In this case the Times writers' "right" spin was to have Brahimi and the UN appear to be dominating the process of selecting the interim Iraqi PM, with the GC hinting displeasure at the way he was selected, and the whole thing being riven with chaos and dissent. That original spin didn't last long, because it was immediately completely contradicted by everybody under the sun, so the NY Times has rewritten the article.

The NY Times' new spin, (in the lede of the . . . newer article on the same topic) is:

After turning to the United Nations to shore up its failing effort to fashion a new government in Baghdad, the United States ended up Friday with a choice for prime minister certain to be seen more as an American candidate than one of the United Nations or the Iraqis themselves." (The italics are mine; the passive voice is Times' writers'.)

Using the passively voiced "seen as" to veil an expression of their own views and preferences, the NY Times writers posit a false dichotomy with the "bad" side being an "American candidate," which is set up in opposition to the "good" side, which is a "candidate of the UN or the Iraqis themselves." The grouping of that dichotomy further insinuates that (1) there is no difference worth noting between "a candidate of the UN" and "a candidate of the Iraqis themselves," and (2) a candidate of the Americans could not at the same time be "more" a candidate of the Iraqis themselves than he is a candidate of the Americans. But the relevant dichotomy is not "an American candidate" versus "a candidate of the UN or the Iraqis themselves," which your writers want to have us accept as the ground for analysis. The relevant dichotomy is "more a candidate of the Iraqis themselves" versus "less a candidate of the Iraqis themselves."

With the truly relevant dichotomy in mind, ask yourself who--Brahimi or the GC--is in a better position to choose a PM who would not only be "seen more as" a candidate of the Iraqis themselves, but would actually be more of a candidate of the Iraqis themselves (so far as that is possible under the present circumstances)? Why do the Times' writers want to insinuate that a man chosen by Brahimi (who is not an Iraqi himself and who was appointed by the UN Secy General, also a non-Iraqi) would have been "seen more as a candidate of the Iraqis themselves" than a man chosen unanimously by the all-Iraqi Governing Council, a body whose extraordinarily diverse membership includes at least one representative of every group with any possible standing within Iraq? Try to name one group with a halfway legitimate claim to participate in Iraqi government that is not ardently represented on the GC. You can't do it! Now name one group that is not represented by the UN's Mr. Brahimi. The Shias! The GC voted for Allawi unanimously, but your writers imply that the GC's unanimous choice will have less legitimacy with "the Iraqis themselves" than would a candidate chosen by Brahimi.

Even Brahimi seems willing to concede (albeit grudgingly) what the NY Times writers still won't concede: If the GC unanimously wants Allawi, then Brahimi is in no position to question that choice, because Brahimi knows that the GC is more representative of the "Iraqis themselves" than Brahimi ever could be!

So why do your writers spin it the way they do? Because they are disappointed that the UN does not appear to be so vitally relevant to the process. When the UN gets cut out of the process a little, it offends your writers' internationalism, even if it is the best existing representatives of the "Iraqis themselves" who are cutting the UN out. Given the choice between having the "Iraqis themselves" decide their own fate or having a UN muckabout decide the Iraqis' fate, your writers can't help but prefer the latter. But they still feel uncomfortable with that preference, so they want to make it appear that it is not the "Iraqis themselves" exercising their own choice, but that the Iraqi choice is really an American choice (or will be "seen more as" the American choice, which to them amounts to the same thing).

The revision of the Times' original article reflects how badly the Times writers bungled this story from the start. More remarkable is the extent to which the NY Times writers continue to spin the story to convince its readers that the handover process should not be "seen as" legitimate unless controlled by the UN. The real story (or a least a major part of the real story) is the story of how the GC, by the astoundingly bold and statesmanlike act of unifying around Allawi, gave both the US and the UN no choice but to accept that decision, thereby establishing Iraqi independence from both of those entities and expressing the Iraqi people's right and intention to govern themselves. That's a big story, maybe the biggest story yet of the Iraq saga, but instead of writing it, your guys opted for the predictable, conventional spin.

[Adeimantus]
Houston, Texas

I wrote that email about two weeks ago and had pretty much given up on receiving a response, when, lo and behold, the Times favored me with a reply, not from Public Editor Daniel Okrent, but from his right hand man,

From: public@nytimes.com
To: [Adeimantus]
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004
Subject: 5/29 Changing Passage in article

Dear Mr. [Adeimantus],

Thank you for your message and your patience-- I apologize for the delayed response.

Breaking news articles change during the period when they first appear on NYTimes.com, to when they appear in print the next day as a result of further reporting and more time to check up on facts and follow up on thing.

That said, I will inquire further with the foreign desk regarding your concerns.

Sincerely,
Arthur Bovino
Office of the Public Editor

Hmmm? Bovino seemed to be implying that the Times doesn't feel obliged to make public corrections of errors in "breaking news articles" when the errors "appear on NYTimes.com." In other words, rowbacks are an acceptable way to "correct" errors in a "breaking news article" the Times puts on the internet, just as long as the erroneous story never makes it into print the next day? But that didn't strike me as consistent with Okrent's description of the easy ways to avoid rowbacks in online articles: "There are ways to correct this. Online and in archives, connect the second version of a story to the first." No, the Times didn't connect (i.e., link) the second version of the Allawi story to the first. Instead, the Times removed the first story and replaced it with the second story, which was 180 degrees different than the first one. So when I clicked on the link the first time, I read about how Brahimi had selected Allawi over the Governing Council's objections. But when I clicked on the same link later that day, the story was that the Governing Council had selected Allawi and Brahimi had acquiesced in their choice.

(I should mention that I was not the only blogger to notice the Times' rowback of the Allawi story. Several other, including Josh Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo have been wondering what the heck the Times was doing with the Allawi story.)

This kind of internet rowback is actually worse than a print rowback. When a printed story gets rowbacked in the next day's paper, you can go back and read yesterday's paper. But when an internet story gets replaced by a rowbacked version, the first version disappears altogether. In this instance, although the Times deleted the erroneous story and replaced it with a rowbacked version tied to the same link, I was able to track it down on the Lexington Herald-Leader, which picked up the story off the Times wire service before the Times rowbacked it. And that brings up another reason that a paper like the Times that runs a wire service should scrupulously avoid rowbacks: The poor Lexington Herald-Leader is still running the Times original version as gospel truth because the Times never informed them [or us] that it was inaccurate.

Anyway, I figured Bovino's unsatisfactory reply would be all I would get out of my disappointing correspondence with the office of the Times Public Editor. But, lo and behold, two days ago I received another email from Bovino:

From: public@nytimes.com
To: [Adeimantus]
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004
Subject: 5/29 Changing Passage in article 6/10 Bronner

Dear Mr. [Adeimantus],

I raised your concern with Mr. Okrent and Mr. Bronner, deputy editor of the foreign desk.

Mr. Okrent instructed me to provide you with Mr. Bronner's response below:

When ever a story is breaking, early versions tend to prove false and get updated. Think of the first dispatches out of Madrid when the trains blew up in March -- Reuters said ETA had done it. As you get it right, you move forward.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,
Arthur Bovino
Office of the Public Editor

Wow! This was getting interesting. You have to understand that I have sent countless letters for publication in the Times Letter's section, and never once have they printed a single word I've written. (Okay, maybe my letters are too damn long!) But now little ol' me had commanded the attention of not just Daniel Okrent's right hand man Arthur Bovino, but of the Times' Public Editor himself. And not just the Public Editor, but also the Times' "deputy editor of the foreign desk." Three big shots at the Times worrying about what I think!

In a flight of truly pathetic megalomania, I imagined Bovino, Okrent, and Bronner had spent two whole weeks meeting late at the office worrying about how to respond to my brilliant critique. Flattered by the attention, I began to think that the New York Times really did want to be a shining beacon of truth for the Western world.

But then I noticed that the Times foreign editor was trying to excuse the rowback by pointing out an even more glaring error Reuters had made. Pardon me for saying so, but my momma taught me that it is craven chickensh*t to try to avoid responsibility for a screwup by pointing your finger at someone who's an even bigger screwup. Besides which, no self-respecting news organization would ever, ever, ever compare itself with Reuters.

And then I noticed that the Times foreign editor never clearly admitted that its first story was wildly mistaken. Instead he dismissively fell back on a generic statement that, "early versions tend to prove false." Starting tomorrow, the Times should print a disclaimer in bold above its nameplate.



I'm sure that would cement the Times' reputation.

And then I realized that the upshot of the foreign editor's response was an implication that rowback is an acceptable journalistic technique, not just for breaking internet stories, but for all breaking stories. The main thing is, just get something into print. It can always be "updated" later. And after it's "updated," don't bother with a correction. Just "move forward" to the next "update."

So now I've written the Public Editor's office another email about this Allawi story, this time a short one:

From: [Adeimantus]
To: public@nytimes.com
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004
Subject: Re: 5/29 Changing Passage in article 6/10 Bronner

Dear Mr. Bovino,

Thanks for your reply relaying Mr. Bronner's explanation for The Times' erroneous reporting on the story of how Allawi was chosen as the interim Iraqi PM. Yet I'm still wondering, did the Times "move forward," or did the Times "rowback?"

. . . a classic example of the rowback. The one definition I could find for this ancient technique, from journalism educator Melvin Mencher, describes a rowback as "a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error." A less charitable definition might read, "a way that a newspaper can cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed." (Daniel Okrent, New York Times, March 14, 2004)

[Adeimantus]
Houston, Texas

I'll let you know if I hear back from him.

UPDATE (June 23, 2004, 2:15 p.m.):

Okrent has honored me with a response to my last email:

From: public@nytimes.com
To: [Adeimantus]
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 11:57 AM
Subject: Changing Passage in article 6/10 Bronner

Dear Mr. [Adeimantus],

This is not a rowback -- stories get updated from edition to edition all the time, and I'm glad they do. It's the final edition that is the official one and that stays in the archives.

Yours sincerely,
Daniel Okrent
Public Editor

Impressed by the quantity of hooey Okrent packed into such a brief message, I emailed him back:

From: [Adeimantus]
To: Public
Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 7:10 PM
Subject: Re: Changing Passage in article 6/10 Bronner

Dear Mr. Okrent,

Thanks for your reply explaining that the second version of the Allawi story was not a "rowback," but was merely an "update."

Let me see if I've got this straight:

1. If a factual error appears in an early edition of the Times, but does not make it into the final edition, the error is not considered official.

2. Unless an error becomes official, there is no need to make any sort of explicit public correction.

3. In such cases, a rowback is an acceptable journalistic technique for dealing with an unofficial error, and is in fact not truly a rowback, but is more properly classified as an update.

But now it occurs to me that consistency in terminology suggests that an update, when employed surreptitiously to correct an unofficial error, should more precisely be termed an unofficial rowback. On the other hand, I can see how the use of the term unofficial rowback would tend to engender even more confusion inasmuch as all rowbacks are, by their very nature, unofficial.

Alas, it's so hard to know just what is the right name to call things. Contemplating your distinction between official and unofficial, I sense the misty presence of one of those "obfuscating cloud formations that befog modern journalism."

[Adeimantus]

That poetic phrase ("obfuscating cloud formations that befog modern journalism") comes straight from a column Okrent himself wrote. How aptly that metaphor describes the substance of Okrent's email! To avoid acknowledging that the Times did a rowback of the undeniably obvious error in the first Allawi story, Okrent relies on a distinction between an official final edition and an unofficial earlier edition. But that distinction is completely irrelevant to the question of whether the factual error in the first Allwai story needed a proper (i.e., conspicuous) correction. The words from a different piece of Okrent's own writings dispel the fog:

"Because its voice is loud and far-reaching," the paper's stylebook says, "The Times recognizes an ethical responsibility to correct all its factual errors, large and small (even misspellings of names), promptly and in a prominent reserved space in the paper."

I'll let you know if Okrent honors me with a further response.

Victor Davis Hanson has another fine article on the strange "paradoxes" of the West's confrontation with Islamofascism:

. . . bin Ladenism trumpets contempt for bourgeois Western society. . . . indolent infidels, channel surfers who eat, screw, and talk too much amid worthless gadgetry, godless skyscrapers . . .

. . . .

It was hard for the Islamic fascists to find ideological support in the West, given their agenda of gender apartheid, homophobia, religious persecution, racial hatred, fundamentalism, polygamy, and primordial barbarism. But they sensed that there has always been a current of self-loathing among the comfortable Western elite, a perennial search for victims of racism, economic oppression, colonialism, and Christianity. Bin Laden's followers weren't white; they were sometimes poor; they inhabited of former British and French colonies; and they weren't exactly followers of the no-nonsense Pope or Jerry Falwell. If anyone doubts the nexus between right-wing Middle Eastern fascism and left-wing academic faddishness, go to booths in the Free Speech area at Berkeley or see what European elites have said and done for Hamas. Middle Eastern fascist killers enshrined as victims alongside our own oppressed? That has been gospel in our universities for the last three decades. . . .

. . . .

Nearly three years after 9/11 we are in the strangest of all paradoxes: a war against fascists that we can easily win but are clearly not ready to fully wage. We have the best 500,000 soldiers in the history of civilization, a resolute president, and an informed citizenry that has already received a terrible preemptive blow that killed thousands.

Yet what a human comedy it has now all become.

The billionaire capitalist George Soros — who grew fabulously wealthy through cold and calculating currency speculation, helping to break many a bank and its poor depositors — now makes the moral equation between 9/11 and Abu Ghraib. For this ethicist and meticulous accountant, 3,000 murdered in a time of peace are the same as some prisoners abused by renegade soldiers in a time of war.

Recently in the New York Times I read two articles about the supposedly new irrational insensitivity toward Muslims and saw an ad for a book detailing how the West "constructed" and exaggerated the Islamic menace — even as the same paper ran a quieter story about a state-sponsored cleric in Saudi Arabia's carefully expounding on the conditions under which Muslims can desecrate the bodies of murdered infidels.

Aristocratic and very wealthy Democrats — Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and John Kerry — employ the language of conspiracy to assure us that we had no reason to fight Saddam Hussein. "Lies," "worst," and " betrayed" are the vocabulary of their daily attacks. A jester in stripes like Michael Moore, who cannot tell the truth, is now an artistic icon — precisely and only because of his own hatred of the president and the inconvenient idea that we are really at war. Our diplomats court the Arab League, which snores when Russians and Sudanese kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims but shrieks when we remove those who kill even more of their own. And a depopulating, entitlement-expanding Europe believes an American president, not bin Laden, is the greatest threat to world peace. Russia, the slayer of tens of thousands of Muslim Chechans and a big-time profiteer from Baathist loot, lectures the United States on its insensitivity to the new democracy in Baghdad.

Hanson is accurate when he points to the current of self-loathing among the comfortable Western elite that enervates the West's capacity to respond to the Islamofascist challenge. At its core, our battle with Islamofacism is a battle of the principles of Western liberal democracy against the principles of religious fascism. We have the physical means to win--the technology, the armaments, the manpower. But do we have the will to win? Do we think we deserve to win? The "current of self-loathing" inspires within Western societies doubts about ourselves. As to whether we are more deserving of victory than our enemies, the cultural relativists answer openly, "No, we cannot be better or more deserving than our enemies because no culture can be said to be superior to any other." Then, paradoxically, the relativists go on to proclaim that not only are we no better than the Islamofascists, we are actually worse than them because we are powerful. In the relativists’ cosmos (which is not a "cosmos," but a "chaos" in which nothing can be judged as morally different from anything else), where no one can be judged as better than anyone else, one exception is made in the case of “the powerful,” who are always, unquestionably, and oppressively evil. That is the core of their logic: We are powerful; therefore, so we are evil. But at their emotional core is the paradox of a complacent self-loathing.

Yet the deeper paradox is that Hanson himself, and those who think as he does, are now part of the paradox in that they, too, participate in Western self-loathing. When, for example, Hanson writes that the West long-ignored the terrorist threat so that "we could go from Dallas to Extreme Makeover and Madonna to Britney without too much distraction or inconvenience," the loathing that he expresses for Western moral laxity differs little from that expressed by a bin Laden. Indeed, moral laxity is somehow the cause of self-loathing among those on both the right and the left. The shapers of opinion on the left embrace the contemporary moral laxity, which allows them openly and freely to pursue and enjoy the personal and financial fruits of debauchery while ridiculing their critics as "judgmental moralistic bigots." Yet at some deep level they feel ashamed of themselves and this shame manifests itself in self-loathing. Those on the left, lacking steadfastness of moral principles of their own, find something attractive in the steadfastness of the moral clarity the Islamofascists claim for themselves. Thus, twenty-five years ago the political and intellectual leaders of the Western left made their pilgrimages to Paris to sit cross-legged at the feet of Ayatollah Khomeni. In domestic economic matters, this phenomenon of leftist self-loathing has long been correctly identified as "limousine liberalism." They sense that, morally speaking, we are all going to hell in handcarts. But the ride is too pleasant to resist, so they assuage their guilt by fretting over whether the upholstery of some handcarts is too plush compared to some others.

On the right, the self-loathing is perhaps not so personally self-directed, but aims more at the whole of Western culture, as when a Victor Davis Hanson complains about what the "postmodern West" has become. Hanson ostensibly targets his critique only at "the comfortable Western elite," but when he uses bin Laden's voice to mock the "channel surfers who eat, screw, and talk too much amid worthless gadgetry," we know it is really Hanson himself talking about the lot of us. When we conservatives in the West ridicule the flacid Europeans, we are somehow ridiculing ourselves because we are children of the same father. Yet such criticism of the West's moral decline feeds the enervating doubts no less than the leftist's self-loathing, and perhaps more so because the criticism is all too valid. Hanson’s criticism, true enough as to the West’s present condition, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of the West’s future prospects. It seems that Hanson-like railing cannot succeed and, therefore, seems only to contribute to the West’s internal doubts and divisions.

And there's the dilemma: To sustain ourselves for what will be a very long fight against the Islamofascists, we in the West must first reform ourselves morally, but it seems that the precondition of that reform is a Hanson-like self-criticism which only increases our self-loathing and undermines our will to maintain the struggle.

What is the way out of the dilemma of the post-modern paradox? I do not know. I do know that for a few brief moments after 9/11, the more immediate concern for survival made most of us, even many of those on the left, give up the indulgence of self-loathing. That makes me fear that the threat to survival would have to be much worse--much more obviously, intensely, and prolongedly worse--before we could summon and sustain the will necessary to overcome our enemies. But, as Hanson points out, our enemies are too clever to make us to live with the sense that our culture is being pushed to the brink of extinction; theirs is a strategy of "threaten, hit, pause, wait; threaten, hit, pause, wait." When they hit us hard, we all want to fight back at first, but then we settle into our old habits. Then they hit us again. At the end of each cycle, we find ourselves moved closer to the abyss, we become more confused and disgusted with ourselves, and the abyss becomes alluring.

What's needed now is a Reagan-like figure to save us from the abyss of self-negation, someone who can lead to what we can become without making us feel quite so dispirited about what we are.

From a Weekly Standard interview with Natan Sharansky, a Soveit dissident who spent thirteen years in a Siberian gulag:

Were there any particular Reagan moments that you can recall being sources of strength or encouragement to you and your colleagues?

I have to laugh. People who take freedom for granted, Ronald Reagan for granted, always ask such questions. Of course! It was the great brilliant moment when we learned that Ronald Reagan had proclaimed the Soviet Union an Evil Empire before the entire world. There was a long list of all the Western leaders who had lined up to condemn the evil Reagan for daring to call the great Soviet Union an evil empire right next to the front-page story about this dangerous, terrible man who wanted to take the world back to the dark days of the Cold War. This was the moment. It was the brightest, most glorious day. Finally a spade had been called a spade. Finally, Orwell's Newspeak was dead. President Reagan had from that moment made it impossible for anyone in the West to continue closing their eyes to the real nature of the Soviet Union.

It was one of the most important, freedom-affirming declarations, and we all instantly knew it. For us, that was the moment that really marked the end for them, and the beginning for us. The lie had been exposed and could never, ever be untold now. This was the end of Lenin's "Great October Bolshevik Revolution" and the beginning of a new revolution, a freedom revolution--Reagan's Revolution.

We were all in and out of punishment cells so often--me more than most--that we developed our own tapping language to communicate with each other between the walls. A secret code. We had to develop new communication methods to pass on this great, impossible news. We even used the toilets to tap on.

Sharansky reminds us that when Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire, "a long list of all the Western leaders . . . lined up to condemn the evil Reagan." (Reagan's critics also called him a "unilateralist" and complained that neocons were infesting his administration.) So when Bush called Iraq, Iran, and North Korea "the axis of evil," many of our "allies" fell into their familiar places in the same old line of appeasement. The names and the faces change, but the story remains the same. Orwell's Newspeak is not dead. But we'll win this one, too, and in ten or twenty years, you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone bragging about how they opposed "Bush's illegal war in Iraq."

Among the more graceless left-wing sentiments expressed on the passing of Ronald Reagan were those complaining that conservatives would "cynically exploit Reagan's death for destructive political purposes":

The neo-con neo-fascists in the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. junta are wildly out-of-control again ... In Iraq??? ... Well, Yes -- But on another issue too, from which they can cynically exploit Reagan's death for destructive political purposes ... It is shameless!!! ... This time, with a bizarre sort of canonization of Ronald Reagan which is an attempt to create another 1000 Year Nazi-style Reich ... Jeez ... Contact Congress and demand a stop to this insanity and folly ... Next they will be asking us to say prayers morning, mid-day and at night to Saint Ronny!!! ... Jeez ...

In a post titled "and so the exploitation begins," another lefty blogger worries that:

. . . somewhere in DC today, a team of Republicans are trying to figure out how to exploit Reagan's death and the attacks of 9/11 at the same time, particularly at the GOP convention. It's not easy to pull off, but I'm sure they'll think of something.

As I said in an earlier post, our commemoration of Ronald Reagan's life would be but a shallow sentimental exercise, unless in the course of our recollections we learn the lessons of his works. To draw such lessons, we must recollect not only Reagan's philosophy and accomplishments, but also the philosophies of those who opposed his efforts. For example, it is a useful historical lesson to remember that John Kerry vehemently opposed the Reagan military build-up that brought the Soviet Union to its knees. Mr. Kerry and his supporters should not object to our recollection of this historical fact, unless they are now ashamed of their former opinions. We would graciously accept their admission that they were wrong and say every honest word that might mitigate their embarrassment. However, they cannot acknowledge the error of their former opinions because, inasmuch as their opinions have not changed, the admission would apply to their present opinions as well. Thus, to those on the left any recollection of Reagan's life and work, unless purged of its valid historical lessons, appears to be an "exploitation."

While many lefties fret about exploitation of Reagan's death, John Kerry is actually doing something about it. For him, the occasion of the former president's death with Alzheimer's disease presented the opportunity to extract a few cheap political points out of the ten years of misery Nancy endured as her husband was overtaken by the disease:

John Kerry challenged the Bush administration Saturday to relax restrictions on stem cell research to pursue the potential of finding cures for conditions such as Alzheimer's.

. . . .

Kerry, the Democrats' presumed candidate to face President Bush in November, cited Nancy Reagan's efforts to help find a cure for Alzheimer's disease, which debilitated her husband, former President Reagan, for at least a decade before his death last weekend.

"She told the world that Alzheimer's had taken her own husband to a distant place, and then she stood up to help find a breakthrough that someday will spare other husbands, wives, children and parents from the same kind of heartache,'' Kerry said in the Democrats' weekly radio address."

He spoke after an emotionally stirring week during which the nation honored and buried former the former president.

Kerry's suggestion that the Bush administration's very mild limits on stem cell research are blocking a cure for Alzheimer's disease is not only crassly opportunistic, it is also patently disingenuous:

. . . the infrequently voiced reality, stem cell experts confess, is that, of all the diseases that may someday be cured by embryonic stem cell treatments, Alzheimer's is among the least likely to benefit.

"I think the chance of doing repairs to Alzheimer's brains by putting in stem cells is small," said stem cell researcher Michael Shelanski, co-director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, echoing many other experts. "I personally think we're going to get other therapies for Alzheimer's a lot sooner."

. . . .

In part as a result of her friendship with Hollywood personalities Doug Wick, Lucy Fisher, and Jerry and Janet Zucker -- all of whom have become stem cell activists because they have children with diabetes -- Nancy Reagan became interested in stem cells and their oft-cited, if largely theoretical, potential for treating Alzheimer's. Over the years, she has become more vocal on the issue.

On May 8, with her husband's brain ravaged by Alzheimer's disease, Nancy Reagan addressed a biomedical research fundraiser in Los Angeles and spoke out forcefully.

"I just don't see how we can turn our backs on this," she said, in an oblique cut at Bush, who placed tight limits on the field in August 2001 to protect, he said, the earliest stages of life.

. . . .

. . . in contrast to Parkinson's, diabetes and spinal injuries, Alzheimer's disease involves the loss of huge numbers and varieties of the brain's 100 billion nerve cells -- and countless connections, or synapses, among them.

"The complex architecture of the brain, the fact that it's a diffuse disease with neuronal loss in numerous places and with synaptic loss, all this is a problem" for any strategy involving cell replacement, said Huntington Potter, a brain researcher at the University of South Florida in Tampa and chief executive of the Johnnie B. Byrd Institute for Alzheimer's Research.

. . . .

It is not clear whether the recent wave of stem cell support will persist as it becomes clearer that cures remain far off -- and, in the case of Alzheimer's, unlikely.

Stem cell research holds forth a distant promise for generating treatments that might be effective for many illnesses and injuries. However, Alzheimer's disease is not among them. Reasonable people can certainly debate and disagree as to how the promise of stem cell research for curing other diseases should be balanced against its moral hazards. And it is certainly understandable that Nancy Reagan, after ten long years of grief and suffering, would embrace the false hope that stem cells might hold a cure for Alzheimer's. But John Kerry has no such excuse for pandering that "fairly tale".

After the wall-to-wall coverage of the past few days, I thought I already felt too emotionally worn out to be moved by today's service at the National Cathedral. But when former-president Bush's voice broke as he said, "I learned more from Ronald Reagan than from anybody else. I learned courage. I learned kindness," well, then the tears started streaming down my face again.

The service was all just exactly right. Instead of trying to dominate the event, President Bush gave a speech that was respectfully understated, and he left the best stories and the best lines to be said by the "old guys and gals," the ones who knew Reagan best. The tribute from the Iron Lady was one for the history books, and proved that she herself deserves every honor she recognized in Ronald Reagan. Rev. Danforth spoke movingingly and unashamedly of the important role of faith in the American polity.

Among those in attendance, with the Iron Lady Thatcher were Blair and the British Crown Prince, Italy's Berlusconi, and Germany's Schroeder. Notably absent, or should I say "unilaterally absent," was Mr. Chirac. To me that speaks volumes about the small-minded historical myopia of a certain kind of European whom the French president so well represents. Was Al Gore there? I didn't see him. Perhaps he was consoling Mr. Chirac. And is it my jaded eye, or did the Clintons seem to be feigning boredom? (Has that man ever felt a genuine emotion?) But enough of such negativity. The Gipper wouldn't have paid them more than a moment's notice, nor should I.

Better to notice the gratitude of the great-souled ones, such as Lech Walensa, who proudly credit Ronald Reagan for their freedom:

When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.

Fred Kaplan presents a reasonably balanced view of Reagan's contribution to the West winning the Cold War, but still gives too much admiring credit to Gorbachev:

The Gorbachev factor—too often overlooked in this week of Reagan-hagiography—was crucial. If Yuri Andropov's kidneys hadn't given out, or if Konstantin Chernenko had lived a few years longer, Reagan's bluster and passion would have come to naught; the Cold War would probably have raged on for years; indeed, Reagan's rhetoric and actions might have aggravated tensions.

. . . .

In the end, Reagan and Gorbachev needed each other. Gorbachev needed to move swiftly if his reforms were to take hold. Reagan exerted the pressure that forced him to move swiftly and offered the rewards that made his foes and skeptics in the Politburo think the cutbacks might be worth it.

Gorbachev wasn't the only decisive presence. If Reagan hadn't been president—if Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale had defeated him or if Reagan had died and George H.W. Bush taken his place—Gorbachev almost certainly would not have received the push or reinforcement that he needed. Those other politicians would have been too traditional, too cautious, to push such radical proposals (zero nukes and SDI) or to take Gorbachev's radicalism at face value.

Kaplan's assessment is misleading in that it wants to leave the impression that Gorbachev "reformed" the Soviet Union into a democracy.

The historical fact, which was reaffirmed by Gorbachev himself even after the Wall fell, was that he intended his reforms not to end communism, but to save it. Reagan certainly did not intend to "reform" communism. He intended to defeat it. Gorbachev failed. Reagan succeeded. The Soviet Union was not "reformed." It collapsed in defeat.

Reagan "needed" Gorbachev? Well, I guess you could say Sitting Bull needed Custer, too.

The Kerry camp has released its official Statement from Senator John Kerry on the Death of Ronald Reagan, which closes with the words:

Americans will bow their heads in prayer and gratitude that President Reagan left such an indelible stamp on the nation he loved.

I agree with that sentiment and don't want to seem ungracious about Kerry's remarks, but reading the full text of Kerry's official statement, you would think that Reagan's greatest accomplishment was his ability to "swap jokes" with Tip O'Neill. The failure of Kerry's statement to acknowledge Reagan's real and great accomplishments (e.g., the fall of the Soviet Union) suggests to me that Kerry is blind to the lessons of history or fears that acknowledgement of Reagan's historical achievements in the battle against communism would inevitably inspire unfavorable recollections of where Kerry himself stood in that fight.

To Kerry's credit, in a speech today, he noted that:

Free men and women everywhere will forever remember and honor President Reagan's role in ending the Cold War. . . . He really did believe that communism could be ended in his lifetime, and he helped to make it happen. Perhaps President Reagan's greatest monument isn't any building or any structure that bears his name, but it is the absence of the Berlin Wall.

Well, that's an improvement on the "official" statement, but still I wonder why some reference to Reagan's role in bringing down the Wall was not included in Kerry's official statement.

Kerry has also announced today that, in honor of the late president, he is suspending campaigning through Friday. Again, I appreciate the gesture (though I expect any minute to hear the Kerry camp complaining that conservatives are "politicizing" Reagan's death), but for Kerry's own sake it is wise that he should maintain a very low profile while the nation honors the Gipper. Like I said, nothing could be more damaging to Kerry's presidential aspirations than for the nation to see or to hear him while recollecting the great life of Ronald Reagan.

Well, I don't care how low a profile Kerry keeps this week, I'm not going to let him off the hook that easily. As we recall Ronald Reagan's life, let us also recall those who opposed the greatest works of his life. Let us recall the position John Kerry took when he ran for the senate in 1984. That year Kerry's senate campaign released a statement calling for the military budget to be slashed by some $50 billion:

We are continuing a defense buidup that is consuming our resources with weapons systems that we don't need and can't use.

The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the Soviet miliarty and presumed "window of vulnerability," which we now know not to exist.

And Congress, rather than having the moral courage to challenge the Reagan Administration, has given Ronald Reagan almost every military request he has made, no matter how wasteful, no matter how useless, no matter how dangerous.

The biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense. Americans feel more threatened by the prospect of war, not less so. And our national priorities become more and more distorted as the share of our country's resources devoted to human needs diminishes.

JOHN KERRY HAS A DIFFERENT APPROACH.
John Kerry believes that the time has come to take a close look at what our defense needs are and to plan for them rather than to assume we must spend indiscriminately on new weapons systems.

John Kerry believes that we can cut from $45 to $53 billion from the Reagan Defense budget this year.

The Kerry 1984 Senate campaign statement goes on to list a breath-taking array of weapons Kerry wanted cut, or cancelled altogether, including systems that are now recognized as crucial to our national defense: B-1 Bomber (cancel!), Tomahawk Missile (cut 50%), Aegis Air Defense Cruiser (cancel!), F-15 Fighter (cancel!).

(Historical Note: In 1984, Kerry also wanted to cancel the Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI, also known as "Star Wars"]. If Kerry had succeeded in that effort, the United States would have unilaterally given up the bargaining chip that was to prove so crucial at Reagan's 1986 summit with Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland. At that summit, Gorbachev walked away without coming to terms on a new disarmament treaty when he couldn't bluff Reagan into giving up on SDI, which terrified the Soviets because they knew they would never be able to match our anti-missile technology. Seeing his bluff had been called, Gorbachev soon returned to the bargaining table and within two years, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty, agreeing for the first time ever to eliminate an entire class of nuclear missiles.)

Especially notewothy in Kerry's 1984 senate campaign statement is the claim that Reagan had "no rational plan for our military" and that, because of Reagan, we were not more safe, but were "more threatened by the prospect of war." Twenty years later, with literally hundreds of millions of souls in Eastern and Central Europe freed from communist tyranny, with our own nation safe from the nuclear threat of the "evil empire," history has confirmed the wisdom of Reagan's plan and the short-sightedness of Kerry's opposition to it:

Russians recalled Reagan's tough rhetoric and how he launched a withering arms race with his "Star Wars" program that precipitated the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which Reagan had famously dubbed an "evil empire."

"Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal," said Gennady Gerasimov, who was the top spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry during the 1980s.

Former Soviet republics and other ex-East Bloc nations remembered Reagan as the American president who stared down Moscow and won, clearing the way for their independence and the 1991 Soviet collapse.

"President Ronald Reagan will be remembered in the hearts of all Latvians as a fighter for freedom, liberty and justice worldwide," Latvian Pesident Vaira Vike-Freiberga said.

Yet still today, with millions of souls freed from tyranny in Iraq and Afghanistan, with our own nation safe from the threat of Saddam's WMD programs, Kerry is wearing out his same old complaints about a sitting president, that he has not made us safer and that his "plan" can't succeed. After all these years, Kerry has learned nothing. He is still campaigning on the wrong side of history and remains impervious to its lessons.

Among Ronald Reagan's many fine qualities, not the least was his great sense of timing, in both large and small matters. In smaller matters, we recall how, with that twinkle in his eye, he would perfectly time his one-liners to disarm his critics, such as in the 1984 debate with Mondale, when he put to rest the issue of his age: "I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." In larger matters, his 1964 GOP convention speech didn't seem like such great timing until at least 16 years later, but in hindsight we see how that speech, delivered when the GOP was about to fall to its modern nadir, established Reagan as the founder of a conservative resurgence that continues to this day. Another example of his great timing in very large matters was his 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall when he predicted that "this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom." That prediction seemed unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon, if ever. Just a few years later, the wall came down.

It would be an overstatement to say that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War single-handedly. That victory was won only after fifty years of struggle, and Reagan didn't do it alone. But he secured the victory, when victory had seemed unlikely, because he stood firm while almost all of our European allies and much the American public itself had lost spirit for the fight. When he went to Europe to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Europeans were in the streets protesting against his policies. Yet he stood firm . . . and the Wall came down.

It has been said that the Civil War, by extending and establishing once and for all the true principles of freedom and equality in the American polity, completed the unfinished business of the Revolutionary War. In a similar way, World War II did not truly end until the West's victory in the Cold War completed Europe's liberation from tyranny. So there is kind of poetic symmetry that Ronald Reagan would depart this life as we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. His death at this very moment causes us to reflect more deeply upon how the D-Day invasion, and the end of the Cold War some fifty years later, were part of a single war of freedom against tyranny, connected in history through difficult and frustrating struggles in Korea, Cuba, Viet Nam, Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere. That fifty-year struggle puts into perspective what brief spans of time are the fifteen years since the First Gulf War and the year and a half since our second invasion of Iraq. Reagan's death at this very moment connects all these events together to remind us that the march of freedom is a long one.

Ronald Reagan died today. In the coming weeks, much will be said about his life, but nothing anyone says about him can surpass the words he spoke at the Brandenburg Gate on June 12, 1987. To my mind, that speech--delivered in the very shadow of the Berlin Wall-- was the culmination and the highest moment of his public life: the courage of vision, the nobility of soul, and the love of freedom that was Ronald Reagan. Here's the full text:

Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, ladies and gentlemen: Twenty-four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world at the City Hall. Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. And today I, myself, make my second visit to your city.

We come to Berlin, we American presidents, because it's our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom. But I must confess, we're drawn here by other things as well: by the feeling of history in this city, more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Grunewald and the Tiergarten; most of all, by your courage and determination. Perhaps the composer Paul Lincke understood something about American presidents. You see, like so many presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin. [I still have a suitcase in Berlin.]

Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.]

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same--still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.

President von Weizsacker has said, "The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed." Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph.

In this season of spring in 1945, the people of Berlin emerged from their air-raid shelters to find devastation. Thousands of miles away, the people of the United States reached out to help. And in 1947 Secretary of State--as you've been told--George Marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the Marshall Plan. Speaking precisely 40 years ago this month, he said: "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos."

In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall Plan. I was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: "The Marshall Plan is helping here to strengthen the free world." A strong, free world in the West, that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium--virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.

In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty--that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.

Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany--busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city's culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there's abundance--food, clothing, automobiles--the wonderful goods of the Ku'damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth. The Soviets may have had other plans. But my friends, there were a few things the Soviets didn't count on--Berliner Herz, Berliner Humor, ja, und Berliner Schnauze. [Berliner heart, Berliner humor, yes, and a Berliner Schnauze.]

In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind--too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent-- and I pledge to you my country's efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So we must maintain defenses of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides.

Beginning 10 years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new threat, hundreds of new and more deadly SS-20 nuclear missiles, capable of striking every capital in Europe. The Western alliance responded by committing itself to a counter-deployment unless the Soviets agreed to negotiate a better solution; namely, the elimination of such weapons on both sides. For many months, the Soviets refused to bargain in earnestness. As the alliance, in turn, prepared to go forward with its counter-deployment, there were difficult days--days of protests like those during my 1982 visit to this city--and the Soviets later walked away from the table.

But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then-- I invite those who protest today--to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table. And because we remained strong, today we have within reach the possibility, not merely of limiting the growth of arms, but of eliminating, for the first time, an entire class of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

As I speak, NATO ministers are meeting in Iceland to review the progress of our proposals for eliminating these weapons. At the talks in Geneva, we have also proposed deep cuts in strategic offensive weapons. And the Western allies have likewise made far-reaching proposals to reduce the danger of conventional war and to place a total ban on chemical weapons.

While we pursue these arms reductions, I pledge to you that we will maintain the capacity to deter Soviet aggression at any level at which it might occur. And in cooperation with many of our allies, the United States is pursuing the Strategic Defense Initiative--research to base deterrence not on the threat of offensive retaliation, but on defenses that truly defend; on systems, in short, that will not target populations, but shield them. By these means we seek to increase the safety of Europe and all the world. But we must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty. When President Kennedy spoke at the City Hall those 24 years ago, freedom was encircled, Berlin was under siege. And today, despite all the pressures upon this city, Berlin stands secure in its liberty. And freedom itself is transforming the globe.

In the Philippines, in South and Central America, democracy has been given a rebirth. Throughout the Pacific, free markets are working miracle after miracle of economic growth. In the industrialized nations, a technological revolution is taking place--a revolution marked by rapid, dramatic advances in computers and telecommunications.

In Europe, only one nation and those it controls refuse to join the community of freedom. Yet in this age of redoubled economic growth, of information and innovation, the Soviet Union faces a choice: It must make fundamental changes, or it will become obsolete.

Today thus represents a moment of hope. We in the West stand ready to cooperate with the East to promote true openness, to break down barriers that separate people, to create a safe, freer world. And surely there is no better place than Berlin, the meeting place of East and West, to make a start. Free people of Berlin: Today, as in the past, the United States stands for the strict observance and full implementation of all parts of the Four Power Agreement of 1971. Let us use this occasion, the 750th anniversary of this city, to usher in a new era, to seek a still fuller, richer life for the Berlin of the future. Together, let us maintain and develop the ties between the Federal Republic and the Western sectors of Berlin, which is permitted by the 1971 agreement.

And I invite Mr. Gorbachev: Let us work to bring the Eastern and Western parts of the city closer together, so that all the inhabitants of all Berlin can enjoy the benefits that come with life in one of the great cities of the world.

To open Berlin still further to all Europe, East and West, let us expand the vital air access to this city, finding ways of making commercial air service to Berlin more convenient, more comfortable, and more economical. We look to the day when West Berlin can become one of the chief aviation hubs in all central Europe.

With our French and British partners, the United States is prepared to help bring international meetings to Berlin. It would be only fitting for Berlin to serve as the site of United Nations meetings, or world conferences on human rights and arms control or other issues that call for international cooperation.

There is no better way to establish hope for the future than to enlighten young minds, and we would be honored to sponsor summer youth exchanges, cultural events, and other programs for young Berliners from the East. Our French and British friends, I'm certain, will do the same. And it's my hope that an authority can be found in East Berlin to sponsor visits from young people of the Western sectors.

One final proposal, one close to my heart: Sport represents a source of enjoyment and ennoblement, and you may have noted that the Republic of Korea--South Korea--has offered to permit certain events of the 1988 Olympics to take place in the North. International sports competitions of all kinds could take place in both parts of this city. And what better way to demonstrate to the world the openness of this city than to offer in some future year to hold the Olympic games here in Berlin, East and West? In these four decades, as I have said, you Berliners have built a great city. You've done so in spite of threats--the Soviet attempts to impose the East-mark, the blockade. Today the city thrives in spite of the challenges implicit in the very presence of this wall. What keeps you here? Certainly there's a great deal to be said for your fortitude, for your defiant courage. But I believe there's something deeper, something that involves Berlin's whole look and feel and way of life--not mere sentiment. No one could live long in Berlin without being completely disabused of illusions. Something instead, that has seen the difficulties of life in Berlin but chose to accept them, that continues to build this good and proud city in contrast to a surrounding totalitarian presence that refuses to release human energies or aspirations. Something that speaks with a powerful voice of affirmation, that says yes to this city, yes to the future, yes to freedom. In a word, I would submit that what keeps you in Berlin is love--love both profound and abiding.

Perhaps this gets to the root of the matter, to the most fundamental distinction of all between East and West. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower's one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere--that sphere that towers over all Berlin--the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: "This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality." Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

And I would like, before I close, to say one word. I have read, and I have been questioned since I've been here about certain demonstrations against my coming. And I would like to say just one thing, and to those who demonstrate so. I wonder if they have ever asked themselves that if they should have the kind of government they apparently seek, no one would ever be able to do what they're doing again.

Thank you and God bless you all.