The Good Spy

I had never heard of Robert Ames until I received this book as a Christmas present. Yet in The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, Kai Bird tells the remarkable story of a remarkable man, made all the more so by his down-to-earth ordinariness.

Bob Ames joined the Army in 1956 after graduating from college. Four years later he was recruited by the CIA, where he worked until he was killed in the Beirut embassy bombing on April 18, 1983. His specialty was the Middle East. Put another way, Ames joined the CIA when Eisenhower was president and served the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations. And in The Good Spy, Bird elegantly captures the complexities of this highly turbulent area, and our foreign policy, in an understandable fashion.

In a moment of realization that the world is smaller than we think, Bob Ames was killed in Beirut, the same city where Kim Philby was confronted. In an even weirder twist, Bob owned a trunk that had formerly belonged to Kim's father. Yes, the world of espionage is small, and even people who belong to different eras are connected.

What Ames excelled at, and what made him such an effective spy, was his ability to make friends and understand people and cultures. Contrary to the image of the spy as a quasi-military agent, Ames used his espionage and intelligence work to promote and further peace. His detailed intelligence work, and ability to create back-channel communications to people that the US government could not publicly admit it was talking to, helped to diffuse or contain situations before they escalated to military engagements.

Peace in the Middle East may be elusive, but so far, at least for the United States, Israel/Palestine has not become another Vietnam due in part to the work of Ames and people like him. It's easy to look at conflict zones and wish they were better; more difficult, yet just as important, is realizing that they could be much worse. The Good Spy demonstrates how certain ordinary people, often acting invisibly, can bring a sense of calm to tumultuous times. Robert Ames was such a person, and his murder in 1983 was a blow to both our foreign policy and peace.

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A Spy Among Friends

For some time Ben Macintyre has been one of my favorite history authors. With books such as Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal (excerpt here), Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, and Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies (review here, excerpt here), he has written several books now on the absurdity that took place during WWII British spycraft.

His most recent book takes a step forward in history. In A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, Macintyre moves on to the Cold War. As highlighted in the previous books, British counterintelligence was so strong that they were able to capture every last German spy in the country. Yet during this same period, it was a virtual sieve for the Soviets.

Many of the British intelligence officers were in the pay of the Soviet Union both during and after the war. Most famous among them was Kim Philby, the agent who for a time served as the head of the division responsible for spying on the Soviet Union.

For decades, Philby lived a double life, deceiving even his closest friends, most notably MI6's Nicholas Elliot and the CIA's James J. Angleton. And that is the angle that Macintyre takes in this book: how Philby deceived his friends and, even more broadly, how the good old boys friend network within MI6 shielded him from suspicion.

These British operatives all grew up together. They went to school together. They knew each other's parents. They were all good British stock. Many were fools, most were alcoholics. But they were fellow aristocrats, and because of this, their trust for each other, and their continued employment, was based on cultural elements deeper than job performance. It was simply unthinkable that one of them could be a spy, so for a long time it was unthought regardless of the evidence. The very people Philby was deceiving provided his strongest shield.

This is what makes this book so different from the other three Macintyre has written about the British intelligence agencies. In Zigzag, Mincemeat, and Double Cross, the British are the sharp and intelligent heroes hilariously exploiting the cracks in the strict yet bumbling German hierarchical system where no one wants to be the bearer of bad news. Those stories are great fun, where the British keep pulling off greater and greater capers and the Germans keep falling for them.

A Spy Among Friends inverts that narrative. Here is an agency so welded to its aristocratic classism that it cannot see its own weaknesses. And although his writing is once again excellent, this book has a decidedly different tone. In contrast to the prior comedies, this story is a drawn out tragedy as again and again Philby escapes detection. Where the prior books exposed British culture's superiority to the German system, this one zeroes in on its weaknesses. One could almost say that the common theme through all these books is never underestimate the power of office culture. The very same loose camaraderie that helped win WWII proved to hamstring the agency during the Cold War. And that is what made Philby's betrayal so great--more than being a spy, he had been a friend.

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FDR's Supreme Court

In 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Herbert Hoover as President of the United States. At that time, the progressive democratic movement had hit a barrier in the Supreme Court. A number of progressive legislative initiatives had been declared unconstitutional, as were significant portions of Roosevelt's first wave of New Deal legislation. To counter that, Roosevelt sought judicial appointments who were more sympathetic to his legislative ends.

This is the story Noah Feldman, professor at Harvard Law School, addresses in his book Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices. Specifically, Feldmon focuses on four particular appointments: Hugo Black, William Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson. These four men would influence the legal system for decades--Justice Douglas served until 1975.

As Feldman shows, however, each of these four men solved the issue of disliked Supreme Court precedent in his own way--and by so doing laid the foundation for nearly the entire spectrum of what we now consider judicial philosophies. Black took an originalist route, focusing on ideas such as historical research and original intent to correct the errors that had crept into the Court's jurisprudence. Douglas ended up taking a rights-based tack, using the court to further individual rights (more liberal than libertarian, although Feldman conflates the two). Jackson (who took a break from the Court to be a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials) took a pragmatist approach, using the balance of powers as his guide in determining disputes between the governmental branches. And finally, Frankfurther took a position of deference to the legislature--a position that guaranteed liberal outcomes when a liberal legislature was in power yet ended up affirming much more conservative outcomes as the makeup of the legislature changed (allegations that he was inconsistent reveal more about the changing political landcape than his own changes in philosophy). So although they were all appointed by Roosevelt, and although during Roosevelt's administration they were all fairly reliable votes for him, after his death their various strands of jurisprudence diverged. One of the Justices' clerks referred to them as scorpions fighting in a bottle (hence FEldman's somewhat odd title.)

What was most surprising to me (well, besides the fact that neither FDR nor Jackson graduated from law school) was that although all four were deemed "liberal" in their day, in hindsight they largely encompass the entire spectrum of judicial philosophies used today, be they liberal or conservative, activist or deferential. In this sense, then, we are all "liberals" now in our thinking about judicial philosophy at all.

Yet this reveals one of the key elements missing from the book. Although Feldman does an excellent job of tracing the constitutional legacy of these Justices, and of introducing the reader to their individual histories, he does not nearly pay enough attention to any judicial philosophies that existed prior to their appointment. One is left with the impression that Black invented originalism, or that Frankfurther was the first to view judicial review through a lens of deference to the legislature. However, as the Court was over 150 years old at the time of their appointment, there were plenty of prior Justices who had also left their interpretative mark. Yet Feldman leaves the impression that (apart from Holmes and Brandeis) FDR's Justices largely stepped into a vacuum. In short, while he is quite insightful of the downstream effects of the FDR Court, he could have spent more time developing the upstream influences.

Be that as it may, it was not the emphasis of the book, and is only a side critique. Apart from that, Feldman's book makes a good guide for anyone seeking an introduction to the constitutional thought of the FDR Court and its lasting legacy. It also reveals the individual personalities of the various Justices and lets the reader see past their judicial opinions into how they thought.

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Rendezvous with Destiny

I am always surprised at how easy it is to think of the outcome of historical events as somehow foregone conclusions. Of course, the Allies won WWII. Of course, the Civil Rights movement succeeded. Of course, Abraham Lincoln held the Union together. Of course, a handful of colonists successfully threw off British rule. They happened, therefore they were inevitable.

Part of that is that we look back with clearer vision. But another part is that we determine what is significant from the outcome. Those living before the outcome, however, had no such guide.

So of course, it is tempting to say that Ronald Reagan had to beat Jimmy Carter in 1980. Carter was weak, Reagan was, well, Reagan. But to say that would be to let the outcome determine how we view the campaign.

This is where Craig Shirley is helpful. His book Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America, gives a blow-by-blow of Reagan's 1980 campaign for the White House. Shirley, a former Reagan aide and campaign worker, has done extensive research into the details of the Reagan, Carter, Bush, Kennedy, Anderson, Connally, and others' campaigns for President that year. This is his second book on a Reagan campaign, the first being Reagan's Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started It All, about Reagan's failed 1976 primary challenge to President Ford.

If detail on the politics and maneuvering of this monumental election is what you are looking for, this is probably the definitive source. Shirley captures both the high-level rhetoric and the daily grind of politicking. In fact, the level of detail is one of the greatest drawback of the book. At 600 pages, it includes so many asides and secondary stories that, at times, the overarching narrative disappears. It would have been a better book had a hundred or so pages been edited out.

Nonetheless, it is the story of what happened. The story of how an campaign that had been a toss-up all summer, and which one week before looked tilted in favor of the incumbent, ended up being a landslide the other direction. It's a story of strategies, victories, errors, and bungles on both sides. Of the confusing muddle of elections. And most of all, how little in history is a foregone conclusion. This is an important volume to add to the library of anyone seriously interested in significant historical campaigns.

In closing, I'll leave you with clips of the NBC and CBS election night coverage. Although all the networks had anticipated it being a long night, the election was called for Reagan at 8:15 p.m. EST, before the polls were even closed in the western states. Reagan went on to win the electoral college by a margin of 489 to 49. Carter only won the states of Minnesota, Georgia, West Virginia, Maryland, District of Columbia, Rhode Island, and Hawaii.

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DiLorenzo's Fake Lincoln

Some weeks back I was in an online discussion about good Lincoln biographies. The book that received the most mentions was The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, by Thomas DiLorenzo. Some brief internet searching revealed that the book is quite controversial and has been charged with gross distortion of history. Nevertheless, I was morbidly curious enough to read it myself.

DiLorenzo's stated goal is to get past the "myths" of Lincoln that he believes is all too common and reveal the truth about the man. (p. 1-2) Yet despite his claims, DiLorenzo actually fails to uncover anything particularly novel about our sixteenth president. Instead, he does the opposite, and in so doing becomes the very type of historian he decries. He presents an abridged history, selectively using events, quotes, and supporting scholars to further his thesis driven work. In fact, DiLorenzo identifies nothing about Lincoln's views of  race, southern succession, national unity, or methods of emancipation that is not addressed with greater care and context in Doris Kearns Goodwin's much superior Team of Rivals. In comparison, The Real Lincoln reminds me of a rushed college paper where all facts must be squeezed into the neatly predetermined premise and no argument should be examined too closely.

The thesis is quite simple. Too simple. Abraham Lincoln began the Civil War to further the centralized "American System," which he identifies as the combination of a protective tariff, internal improvements (subsidies, particularly for railroads), and a national bank. Addressing the issue of slavery was merely a means to that end. In fact, DiLorenzo goes so far as to conclude that subsidizing railroads "seems more and more like the sole reason the Republican Party was created in the first place." (p. 222-23)

DiLorenzo's historical errors have been addressed elsewhere and elsewhere. They could, and did, fill an entire book. Even a sympathetic reviewer concluded: "The Real Lincoln is a travesty of historical method and documentation. Exasperating, maddening, and deeply disappointing." These reviewers have quite adequately pointed out the worst errors concerning Lincoln. I want to focus on the errors concerning Lincoln's world.

First of all, DiLorenzo repeatedly accuses Lincoln of subverting or ignoring the Constitution. Yet his constitutional reasoning makes me wonder if  he has ever carefully read the document or if he simply uses the term "unconstitutional" for anything he doesn't like.For example, DiLorenzo faults Lincoln for:

ignor[ing] the economic logic of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, which--in order to guarantee free interstate commerce--made it illegal for one state to impose a tariff on goods imported from another state. If free trade among states is a good idea--and it is--it is just as good an idea with regard to international trade. This was the thinking of the framers of the idea as well. Jefferson and Washington, for example, were staunch advocates of free international commerce as well as interstate commerce. (p. 69-70)

Yet he fails to mention that tariffs on international commerce are explicitly permitted by the Constitution (Article 1, section 1, clause 1) and one of the first major acts passed by the new Congress was the Tariff Act of 1789, which was signed into law by President Washington.

Likewise, DiLorenzo labels the whole "American System" (tariffs, banking, and subsidies) "mercantilist" (p. 56) and favorably references the "constitutional arguments" made against such a system by "Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Tyler and others." (p. 234). Yet he never informs his readers that John Marshal, himself a member of the founding generation and delegate to the Virginia ratification convention, wrote a unanimous opinion for the Supreme Court finding that chartering a national bank was a proper exercise of the power to regulate interstate commerce. Instead, DiLorenzo leaves the reader with the distinct impression that both tariffs and the bank are obvious unconstitutional overreaches of federal power.

Much ink is also shed over Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, but despite that ink the reader would not know that the Constitution says: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." (Article 1, section 9, clause 2.) Nor is the reader told that despite this same phrase's appearance in the Confederate Constitution, Jefferson Davis also suspended habeas corpus and other civil liberties. Failure to even engage the constitution text does not make for a strong constitutional argument. For those truly interested in a serious discussion of the habeas corpus suspension, as well as other constitutional questions from the era, see Mark Neely's Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War.

DiLorenzo's Constitutional double standard is further on show in his discussion of internal improvement subsidies. Somehow, after railing against the corruption that invariably accompanies internal improvement subsidies (not to mention his skepticism of their constitutionality),  DiLorenzo faults Lincoln for not adopting a method of compensated emancipation. Apart from the fact that Lincoln and the Republicans had initially pursued that avenue with no cooperation from the states, such a measure would be subject to the exact same criticisms that DiLorenzo had for other subsidy systems. Yet for DiLorenzo, no stick seems too poor to beat Lincoln. By this point, he looks less like lady justice blindly weighing the facts and more like a blindfolded child wildly waving a stick at a piñata.

Apart from his stilted view of the Constitution, DiLorenzo also repeatedly demonstrates that he has little knowledge of pre-Lincoln American history. In an odd twist, the author who claims to be giving a closer look than anyone else to one of our most famous Presidents has failed to look closely at anyone else. DiLorenzo paints the American founding as a libertarian happy place marred only by the existence of Alexander Hamilton and his ilk.  In his portrayal, all the founding fathers (except Hamilton) believed in right of succession/revolt against oppression (except for slaves), in freedom and liberty (except for slaves), in free markets (with slave labor), and in strong restrictions on the use of state authority (except for runaway slaves). Lurking in the shadows were Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, held at bay by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, and John Calhoun. Lincoln finally accomplished what Hamilton etc. could only dream about, the destruction of the federalist system.

That the loose confederation model of voluntary enforcement did not work under the Articles of Confederation is apparently an irrelevant detail. As is Jefferson's complete absence from the Constitutional Convention. As is the passage of tariffs and chartering of national bank by the very first Congress. As is the early passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts (DiLorenzo calls their "quick[]" abandonment a demonstration of how the foundation generation "jealously protected rights," (p. 131) but does does not bother to enlighten us what their initial adoption a mere 11 years after the Constitution was ratified means). Lincoln is even blamed for the ill treatment of Native Americans that took place in the wars after his death (and some during his administration), while Andrew Jackson is somehow lionized for his proper view of government with no mention made of his awful Indian policies.

Lincoln is routinely weighed against those who DiLorenzo believes are the truly great presidents, Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson, and found wanting. But it takes little more than a basic knowledge of these other presidents to realize that DiLorenzo's standard is one of convenience, not history. Madison's co-authorship of the Federalist Papers with Hamilton is hardly mentioned. Lincoln is chastised for his eagerness for war, but Madison's War of 1812 (pushed for by Calhoun) is also not mentioned. And there is not even attempt to reconcile Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase with DiLorenzo's version of Jefferson as a strict adherent to limited spending and executive power.

But the oddest historical oversight is DiLorenzo's treatment of Andrew Jackson. DiLorenzo holds up Jackson as one of the strongest supports of states rights, including the right of states to nullify federal laws and secede from the Union. Apparently, he has either never heard of or didn't think it worthwhile to mention the Nullification Crisis in 1832--the incident where Jackson was on the verge of ordering federal troops into South Carolina to enforce federal laws. Madison likewise stated during this time that South Carolina was in the wrong. In the lead up to the Civil War, Lincoln looked to Jackson for guidance on how to respond to rogue states. Jon Meacham addresses this in detail in American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. Yet ignoring all this, DiLorenzo tells his readers that "Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most articulate defender of states' rights, followed by Andrew Jackson..."(p. 261) Yet for all DiLorenzo's rhetoric, I'd put $5.01 on Lincoln in any debate between him and DiLorenzo over a proper understanding of Jackson's legacy.

Towards the end of the book, we get a fascinating glimpse of DiLorenzo's dizzying intellect, which I will quote in its entirety to avoid any accusations of tampering. He speculates that had Lincoln allowed the southern states to peacefully leave,

[a]fter a number of years, the same reasons that led the colonists to form a Union in the first place would likely have become more appealing to both sections, and the Union would probably have been reunited. 

After that, knowing that secession was a real threat, the federal government would have stuck closer to its constitutional bearings. The mere threat of peaceful secession would have had that effect on it. Its imperialistic tendencies and the large tax increases necessary to finance such adventures would have been checked. We may never have had a Spanish-American War. We may also have never had a president like Woodrow Wilson, who was so eager to involve Americans in a foreign war. Economist Han-Hermann Hoppe argues in a recent book that if America had not intervened in World War I, the European monarchies would have eventually worked out a peace agreement that was not so punishing on Germany, and that may have even precluded the rise of the Nazi Party, which itself was partly a reaction to the Versailles treaty of World War I. (p. 272-73)

Yes, DiLorenzo traces the Holocaust back to Abraham Lincoln. But why stop with Lincoln? This sort of reasoning can trace infinitely back to any person. Which only demonstrates how malleable and faulty this sort of historical analysis is.

DiLorenzo opened his book claiming that "much of what has been written about Lincoln is a myth." (p. 1) Whether true or not of others, DiLorenzo ensures that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy for his own work, not only for Lincoln but also for the Constitution, the founding generation, and Andrew Jackson. His premise is simply too neat and tidy to be considered a serious history.

Swamping My Reading List

Some time back I decided that I wanted to read a biography of each of the Presidents (I got little further than making a list). In making my list, though, I discovered that while there are many many biographies written about some Presidents (and very few about others), identifying a good biography can be a challenge. How does one know which are good and which are not before reading them? Individual reviews are helpful to a point, but are often fawning and don't give an overview of the entire field or compare one against another.

Yesterday I found what I was looking for. Blogger Stephen Floyd has taken on the momentous task of reading and reviewing not just one, but all of the major biographies of the Presidents. He started with Washington in 2012 and has gotten all the way to Hayes. Each book gets its own review and he also does a single comparison of all the books. The comprehensive reviews are one of my favorite features. And as a private pilot, he also intersperses some of his reviews with areal photographs of the locations.

His blog confirmed several books that were already on my Presidential to-read list, gave me replacements for others, and identified many more that I was unaware of. I trust it will be my first stop in considering the quality of any future biographies that catch my eye.

I encourage you to check out his blog and think that you won't be disappointed. (Intimidated, maybe, but not disappointed.)

And let me know, what were the best or worst Presidential biographies that you've read?

What About the Nazis?

It never takes long for any discussion about morality, evil, or the nature of man to turn into a discussion of Nazism. In fact, in today’s world, Nazism—from political rhetoric to dystopian imagery—is the favorite example of evil incarnate. Any person reflecting on these themes must explain, justify, or distinguish, the Nazis. It is a serious academic question, but for us it is only academic.

However, at the end of World War II, it was no abstract question for Henry Gerecke and Sixtus O’Connor. These two men, the former a Lutheran pastor and the latter a Catholic priest, had served as army chaplains during the war. But their most challenging assignment was after the fighting stopped. That was when they were asked to serve as personal chaplains to the highest ranking Nazi prisoners, who were awaiting trial at Nuremburg. Their story, and particularly Gerecke’s, is told in the recent book by Tim Townsend, Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplin and the Trial of the Nazis.

Under the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war must be provided with spiritual guidance from their own theological traditions. During the war, this had been provided by captured German chaplains. But for security reasons, such an arrangement was not appropriate for such high-ranking prisoners. It needed to be Americans. And since the Nazis who still claimed any religion were either Lutheran or Catholic, a representative of each was sent.

Both men had visited the concentration camps—O’Connor was with the soldiers who liberated one—and both were aware of the horrors the committed under these men’s orders. Both had to wrestle with the question of how to counsel, minister to, share the gospel with, and, ultimately, walk to the gallows beside and pray over, some of the most despised men in the world.

Some of the Nazi leaders were sincerely repentant. Others rejected the chaplains outright. Still others—such as top leader Hermann Goering—wanted the benefits of spiritual forgiveness without belief in Christ. Through the course of the trials and convictions, Gerecke and O’Connor had to constantly distinguish between sin and sinner in their pursuit of these very lost souls.

Townsend thoroughly researches and poignantly tells this previously little known story. He is at his strongest when describing the interactions between Gerecke and the prisoners. Yet for all the strength of the story, the book itself strays at times. Its narrative is choppy. Its weakest points are when Townsend attempts to explain some of the orthodox Christian theological ideas of sin, evil and forgiveness. He gives the impression of explaining it in a detached way, but doesn’t fully realize the depth of his own content. While he thinks he is writing deeply and criticizing profoundly, he is only wading in very shallow water.

Yet even through these weaknesses, the message of the gospel shines through in the lives of Gerecke and O’Connor. They believed that Christ came to seek and save the lost. They taught that there was forgiveness of even the darkest sins. And when placed in a situation that challenged those beliefs, they stood firm in their faith and cared for the outcast, the despised, the prisoner … the Nazi leader.

And some of those souls may very well be in heaven today because of it.

And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

Three Books for Aspiring Lawyers

So you want to go to law school. You want to join the ranks of what Alexis De Tocqueville called the "American aristocracy."

Wonderful.

Now, go read the article "Should I Go To Law School" on Art of Manliness.

Still want to go?

Great. Congratulations.

Then let me recommend three books that will help you prepare, even though they will likely be neither assigned nor discussed directly in an of your law school classes. Two of these books I read prior to law school, and they helped me greatly. All three provide some basic foundation for the material you will be learning.

First is Lawrence Friedman's A History of American Law. This is by far the largest of the three books I'm recommending, but still very much worth adding to your library. Friedman begins with colonial law and traces how American law changed over the decades. He examines the large categories of law: public law, family law, commercial law, torts, property, and law and the economy. He also has several chapters on how the legal profession has developed. What makes this particularly valuable is that in law school you will run into all these concepts at various points in their development. However, while many courses require an understanding of history, they are not taught as history. Friedman provides a framework that you will find remarkably helpful sitting in a torts class, learning how a theory develops, and being able to place it within his timeline. Even if you do not read it in its entirety, it makes an excellent reference book. I might be overstating somewhat if I said that Friedman is today's equivalent of Blackstone, but he does provide the service today that Blackstone provided in the colonial era, namely, a history and summary of the current state of law.

Second is Roscoe Pound's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (also available as a free ebook).This does for legal theory what Friedman does to the American experience--provides a structural framework. In law school, I took a course on Jurisprudence (Philosophy of Law), and the first three chapters of little book has more content than that entire course. Starting with Ancient Greece, and moving through Rome and into common law and into the positivist school, Pound traces how thinking about law has changed, how it hasn't, and how each new development relates to the prior understanding, Take, for example, his observation on how the American system inverted the classical understanding of natural law: "In the United States, since the natural law of the eighteenth-century publicists had become classical, we relied largely upon an American variant of natural law. It was not that natural law expressed the nature of man. Rather it expressed the nature of government." That subtle shift of emphasis from the human soul to the purpose of government actually explains a lot of how we think about politics. The book is full of gems like that. And for beginning law students, the last three chapters turn to specific areas of law: liability (negligence), property, and contract. These will be three of your core classes, likely in your first year. Knowing a bit about them in advance, even if the material is now dated, won't hurt anything.

The first two recommendations are heavily academic. Not so the third one. Here, I recommend Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. This is at first glance the strangest one on this list, but to be honest, Agatha Christie has greatly influenced how I think about legal problems. I've been meaning to post about it for some time, and might yet expand it at a future date. Basically, though, Christie is good at showing how anyone is capable of crime, and how presuming otherwise clouds the cases. More than just clues, her detectives observe and are close students of people. And that is often the key to solving the puzzle. Never forget that each legal problem has one or more people at its heart. While I can't say more without giving away the outcome, this story, more than any other I've read, demonstrates how just a few missing facts can completely change the outcome of a case. And also that-- well, if I finished that sentence I'd give away too much. Just read the book.

Certainly there are other resources as well, and this list should not limit you. J. Budziszewski has written several excellent books on natural law theory. And the Blackstone Legal Fellowship program has a book list of its own. But these three books that I've recommended here will give you an excellent starting point.

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A Conflicted War

We Americans like our wars simple. A good side and a bad side. We win, they loose. We can see this in how we remember the American Revolution (liberty verses tyranny), the Civil War (freedom verses slavery), World War II (justice verses Nazis), and the Cold War (free capitalism verses despotic communism). And those conflicts legitimately lend themselves to such interpretations.

Of course, there are positive elements to this. We desire to ensure that we are "right" when taking such a drastic and horrible step as war. This could probably be directly tied back to the Just War Theory. And there is an idealism underlying this as well that we have been permitted to hold as a result of particular geography. We have oceans on either side, and friendly neighbors above and below. We've never faced a serious invasion by a neighboring country. We've never been truly attacked on home soil by another country since 1812 (9/11 is a category of its own, and Hawaii was a territory on December 7, 1941). So we can, to some extent, afford to hold to these ideals in a way those living in other countries may not.

There is a danger here as well. Once convinced we are "right," it is easy conclude that the ends justify the means. Even these good/bad wars, which do lend themselves to such a dichotomy view, have been whitewashed to some degree. War brings out the worst in everyone, which we would rather forget. The founders, upon establishing a country based on freedom, adopted the Alien and Sedation Acts. Sherman marched to the sea. And during WWII, the United States was still segregated and we set up concentration camps for people of Japanese descent. And lets not forget that the nation that holds itself out as the epitome of liberty and justice is also the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against another.

Each of these can be defended on military grounds, and I'm not here to debate their merits, but will say that none of these on their own, whether black marks or not, invalidate the larger purpose of the wars. They simply demonstrate that wars are awful all around.

There are other wars in our history that demonstrate this complexity even starker. These are the wars we do not highlight. The Indian wars are deliberately ignored, WWI is hardly understood, Korea was forgotten, and our small wars are largely lost to history. These types of wars are more complicated than we're comfortable with.

The largest of these uncomfortable wars, however, is the one that more than any other still overshadows our current geopolitical relations: Vietnam. Which leads me to the object of this book review: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam. (Obtained through Goodreads First Reads program.)

In this book, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in History, Fredrik Logevall examines the events leading up to the United States involvement in Vietnam. Logevall begins his account with the end of WWI, and ends with the first commitment of US troops. Along the way we learn that like WWI, the Vietnam conflict had its origins in European-esque boundary disputes. Like WWII, it erupted over unresolved issues in the wake of WWI. Like the Cold War, it ended up being treated as part of the larger ideological global conflict between capitalism and communism. But underneath all those narratives, the good guys and the bad guys were difficult to distinguish.

Along the way we learn that the communist revolutionaries had their origins in Wilsonian anti-colonialism. Vietnam (French Indochina) was a French colony prior to WWI and watched many of its neighbors obtain independence in the wake of that war. The future communist leader Ho Chi Minh was actually at the Versailles Peace Conference attempting (unsuccessfully, so far as we know) to obtain an audience with President Wilson to make a case for Vietnamese independence. But France wouldn't release the colony.

Then, during WWII, the colony was overrun by the Japanese. At the end of that war, again there was the opportunity for independence, again the opportunity passed and France reacquired its former colony. Roosevelt indicated he might be willing to push back against France and in favor of independence, but his death in office brought an end to that hope. All the while the spirit of independence was growing across the country.

Rebuffed by the Americans and occupied by the French, the Vietnamese turned to the only voice that was speaking for independence. Unfortunately, it was the voice of the communists. Rebellion happened, France threw troops into the colony for a decade and then wore out, a truce was signed dividing the country, the communists got the north but violated the treaty, the United States committed troops.

It is a story of a part of the world slipping from tragedy to tragedy. Of opportunities lost combined with a lack of clear "good" choices. Of the inability to distinguish between an independence movement and a communist revolution. In short, it is a story of  human history in all its complexity. But it's a story that we should learn from more, and maybe soapbox on less.

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Future book reviews

Recently, through visits to a variety of bookstores (and maybe an Amazon order), I have come into possession of a number of books that look fascinating. Some of these I've been wanting to read for some time, others were impulse or exploratory acquisitions. I hope to be able over the next few months (or maybe years) to review each of these here. But in the meantime, here's the list.



Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. How does a nation surrender, submit to foreign occupation, and then become an economic powerhouse and close ally of the occupying nation? I hope to find out.








Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. I've been wanting to read this one since even before Lincoln (which is based on this book) came out. Needless to say, the movie only strengthened my desire to read the book. Sometimes a diversity of opinion can lead to misdirection and stalemate. It takes a particular type of leader to reap the benefits of a divisive cabinet while not falling into the pitfalls associated with one. I'm hoping to learn from Lincoln how that might be done.






American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 - 1964. To be honest, it's largely that title that attracted me to this book. Some may think that there are no more great men with Caesar's ambition. But that may not be the case. What if there are, but they are kept out of politics? MacArthur might be one such example.









Mao: The Unknown Story. By the author of the excellent Wild Swans, which tells the story of Jung Chang's family living through the communist revolution, from her grandmother (concubine to Chinese warlord), mother and father (loyal revolutionaries), and finally herself (Red Guard). She tells of a nation mislead from the perspective of a former Mao worshiper who only fully realized what had happened after she left. So when I saw that she had written a biography of Mao, it was a must read. And yes, this week's quiz came from this book.






Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. Impulse buy at a used bookstore. Should nicely follow my books on Vietnam (review coming next week), Japan, MacArthur, and the biography of Mao.









Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices. Another impulse buy, and somewhat unrelated to the others in this list. It promises to give insight into how these justices interpreted law and the Constitution, and how their views transformed our legal system. The first few chapters have already made me feel like an underachiever.








Combined these make up 11 inches of reading material. I've dipped into each, but haven't committed to any single one quite yet. So, which one do you want to see reviewed most?

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International Leadership (Blair's Lessons, part X)

From Tony Blair's autobiography, an observation that would benefit our current President.

America’s burden is that it wants to be loved, but knows it can’t be. Love is given to nations with which we sympathize; nations that are victims of tragedy, opposition or even poor governance. Powerful nations aren’t loved. They can be admired by their friends, respected by neutrals; they have to be feared by their enemies. 

This is especially so of a nation like America that is not only powerful, but aspires to lead. The leadership will be resented, sometimes actively opposed. It will also, however, be expected. 

* * * 

But America is great for a reason. It is looked up to, despite all the criticism, for a reason. There is a nobility in the American character that has been developed over the centuries, derived no doubt from the frontier spirit, from the waves of migration that form the stock, from the circumstances of independence, from the civil war, from a myriad of historical facts and coincidences But it is there. 

That nobility isn’t about being nicer, better or more successful than anyone else. It is a feeling about the country. It is a devotion to the American ideal that at a certain point transcends class, race, religion or upbringing. That ideal is about values: freedom, the rule of law, democracy. It is also about the way you achieve: on merit, by your own efforts and hard work. But it is, most of all, that in striving for and protecting that ideal, you as an individual take second place to the interests of the nation as a whole. It is what makes the country determined to overcome its challenges. It is what makes its soldiers give their lives in sacrifices. It is what brings every variety of American, from the lowest to the highest, to their feet when “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played. Of course the ideal is not always met—that is obvious. But it is always striven for.

_________

Also in this series:

Reforming Political Parties (Blair's Lessons, part I)

Racing to the Common Good (Blair's Lessons, part II)

The Right Question (Blair's Lessons, part III)

Debate Prelude (Blair's Lessons, part IV)

Undermining Political Opponents (Blair's Lessons, part V)

The Politics of Immigration Reform (Blair's Lessons, part VI)

Presidential Leadership (Blair's Lessons, part VII)

Losing A Popular Issue (Blair's Lessons, part VIII)

Undemocratic Opposition (Blair's Lessons, part IX)

An Honorable Enemy

We’ve all heard the story of the kind-hearted stranger, or angel in disguise, stepping in to help someone and then disappearing, never to be heard from again. But sometimes, those stories have even more incredible turns.

Take, for instance, the events that transpired over the skies of Europe on December 20, 1943. Early that morning, a fleet of nearly five hundred bomber planes departed a foggy England, targeting an aircraft factory in the German city of Bremen. After dropping their bombs, the planes turned for home. However, one B-17, which had been fighting engine trouble the entire way, started to fall behind. One of its four engines had gone out entirely, and an anti-aircraft shell had blown a large hole in it’s nose. This was its crew, and pilot Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown’s, first bombing run.

As it fell farther behind, the B-17 became a prime target for the hovering German fighters. Eight fighters attacked, and Brown started to improvise with evasive maneuvers. Making himself as small a target as possible, he began playing chicken with the fighters. The plane’s guns, however, had frozen at the high altitude and could not return fire. One fighter got behind Brown and killed the tail gunner. A waist gunner was severely wounded. Half the rudder was shot away, and one whole rear stabilizer was entirely shot off. A fuel tank had its cap blown off, but somehow did not explode. Then, in the middle of a turn, the bomber’s oxygen supply failed, the crew fell unconscious, and the plane dove to the earth.

Miraculously, Brown awoke as the oxygen supply revived due to the lower altitude. More miraculously, he was able to pull the plane out of its dive. The German fighters were gone, but the bomber was still over enemy territory. The plane’s navigator charted a course back to England, but between them and the sea was the “Atlantic Wall” - one of the strongest German defenses in Europe.

Just at that moment, the worst possible thing happened. A solitary German fighter flew behind the bomber. However, instead of taking advantage of such an easy target, it flew up alongside the bomber. Brown was scared stiff--and kept pretending it wasn't there. But the German anti-aircraft, seeing the enemy bomber escorted by one of their own, held their fire. Once over the North Sea, the German pilot saluted and flew away. Brown and his crew landed safely a few hours later. Their plane was in shambles. Brown later said that looking at his plane after they landed was more frightening than anything that had happened in the air.

Brown, and the rest of his crew, survived the war. But they weren’t the only ones. So did the German pilot. His name was Franz Stigler, and he was a German ace. At the time of the incident, the only thing between him and the Knight’s Cross was shooting down one more bomber. In 1990, they tracked each other down and met for the first time.

When journalist Adam Markos contacted Brown and told him he wanted to write this story, Charlie responded: “If you really want to learn the whole story, learn about Franz Stigler first. He’s still alive. Find out how he was raised and how he became the man he was when we met over Europe. Better yet, go visit him. He and his wife are living up in Vancouver, Canada. When you have heard his story, come and visit me and I”ll tell you mine. In this story, I’m just a character--Franz Stigler is the real hero.”

Markos did just that, and wrote a book about it. More than a story about what happened over Germany that morning, A Higher Call is the story of honor in war. It’s the story of a highly skilled German ace who refused to shoot a defenseless enemy. And it’s the story of the German Air Force, torn between honorable patriotism and Nazism.

War often can bring out the worst. It can also surprise us.

The “Liberty” Amendments: A Review

My first introduction to Mark Levin came quite a few years ago when I picked up a copy of his Men In Black: How The Supreme Court Is Destroying America from my local library. I had heard good things about the book through various conservative circles and articles, and was intrigued.

I was not impressed. At all. I finished convinced that Levin was an intellectual lightweight, more interested in airing dirty laundry than in engaging in true political or legal discussion. What’s more, his critique of judicial review (more about that in a minute) convinced me—a lowly undergrad at the time who had merely scratched the surface of Constitutional law—that he didn’t know what he was talking about.

I ran across Levin again some few years later, when at a homeschool conference a high-school student in the booth next to mine was extolling Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto while simultaneously defending the Confederacy as not being about slavery and lambasting Abraham Lincoln. Again, I was unimpressed. And while I don’t listen to talk radio, I have heard that Levin has quite the reputation for being less than civil to his callers, elevating noise over discourse.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that my alma mater’s Chancellor (and my first Constitutional Law teacher) was joining forces with Levin in advocating calling a convention of states to amend the Constitution. My skepticism piqued, and I decided to read Levin’s most recent book: The Liberty Amendments: Restoring The American Republic.

Maybe I had underestimated Levin. After all, he has a JD, practiced as an attorney, and was Chief of Staff to President Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese. That alone makes writing him off as a legally ignorant hack more difficult.

Unfortunately—at least, unfortunately for Levin—my opinion after reading his latest bestseller remains unchanged. No, strike that. It solidified. If the book wasn’t borrowed, it would be full of scribbles (and not the friendly kind); as well as dents from when it would have gone sailing across the room.

In short, Levin is the sort of polemical hack who sounds compelling only insofar as his audience doesn’t know what he’s actually talking about. He has just enough truth, uses just enough facts, and blurs over just enough nuances, that he pulls off sounding convincing. Give me a well thought and intellectually honest liberal whom I can heartily disagree with any day. There are reasons I respect people like Nicholas Kristof and Tony Blair and will read The Atlantic over many “conservative” publications.

But anyway, back to Levin and his plan to save us all. The starting point of his book is actually based on a prior book Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America which had as its premise that we are living in a “post-Constitutional society.” “The Liberty Amendments,” then, is his grand scheme to, well, as the subtitle states it “Restore[] the American Republic.”

And this was my first red flag. Levin’s entire thesis is about restoration; about some undefined golden era in our past that needs to be be recaptured. America, he writes,  must be rescued from the “statists,” the “progressives” (likely the progressive statists), and most of all, President Obama. (I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the latter problem will disappear sometime in early 2017). Those political views are the ones that have hijacked our destiny and are preventing us from utopia/golden age/our best life now.

This is likely my own progressive side speaking, but I've noticed that time, after all moves forward. Cultures change. Local and global politics shift. Even if there were a golden age to restore (something I increasingly doubt the more I study history), such restoration would be impossible and trying to usher it in would result in a failed and painful attempt to “fundamentally transform” the nation (a phrase that terrifies this stripe of conservatives when the President used it, but which they so often secretly wish to do themselves). In short, however much I believe in learning from the past, nostalgia makes a poor political starting point.

The second main problem is Levin’s approach to the Constitution. And while he is not alone in this failing, it very much comes to the forefront in his book. Levin views the Constitution as predominantly a policy guide instead of a set structure that contains policy debates.

However, this is not fundamentally what the Constitution does, nor is it what it was intended to do. While it does have some outright prohibitions on uses of powers, and the Bill of Rights certainly adds to this element, at its heart the Constitution is about allocating powers vertically (federal/state) and horizontally (three branches). Whether those powers would be used for good or ill by their respective branches is something left to the political process itself. As Franklin famously quipped, they’d given the people a republic “if they could keep it.”

Consequently, the Constitution is not and ought not to be used as the end of political discussion. Plenty of bad policies are constitutional, and I’d even dare to suggest that a number of good policies may be unconstitutional. If it is a liberal failing to shoehorn every policy preference into the constitution, it is an equally damaging conservative failing to categorically label every disliked policy “unconstitutional.” Neither treats the Constitution properly, which is to view it as laying out the fundamental rules of the game while allowing the various actors to play it out.

Levin’s proposals largely fall into this trap. He disagrees, for example, with the budget process, so he seeks to chain it down more—reclassifying debt from simply bad policy to unconstitutional. To correct perceived overreach, he guts the commerce clause. He writes the specifics of tax code—down to the filing date and percentage of GDP that can be spent—into the Constitution. He would add a constitutional requirement for photo-ID for voting, as well as a constitutional prohibition on using “Electronic or other technology-based voting systems … unless a reliable identification and secure voting regimen is established by the state legislature.” In all, Levin proposes eleven amendments, which constitute 50 sections and over 1,950 words. The original Constitution has only about 4,500 words and 24 sections. Including the Bill of Rights, we’ve since added 27 amendments constituting 49 sections and just over 3,000 words. In short, Levin’s proposal equates to nearly 50% of the original Constitution and rivals the sum total of 226 years of Constitutional amendment. Calling them "amendments" in this context may be an understatement.

The result of these amendments is not to restore the Constitution to its true form, but instead to write specific policy positions into the Constitution instead of leaving them up to the legislative process. Chief Justice Marshall, himself of the founding generation and a member of the Virginia delegation that ratified the Constitution, specifically criticized this approach in McCullogh v. Maryland:

A Constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That this idea was entertained by the framers of the American Constitution is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from the language.

Seeking to change the rules by writing detailed policy into the Constitution signals an inability to win electorally, and there is actually something fundamentally undemocratic about it. It's a surrender of the policy realm. In effect, Levin’s proposals stem from the presumption that the Framers’ vision failed. “We the People” cannot be trusted to elect good representatives, republican democracy doesn’t work, politics is ineffective, and what is needed is a structure that mechanically works regardless of who is elected. That’s a valid position to take, but it’s intellectually dishonest to say that such a position is something the Founders would agree with.

Furthermore, state constitutions have already tried using their constitutions as policy manuals with less than appealing results. G. Alan Tarr, in his book Understanding State Constitutions, devotes the entire first chapter to this distinction between the federal Constitution and state constitutions.  He notes: “Relatively few provisions of the federal Constitution directly address public policy issues, although the Constitution’s grants of power can be interpreted as suggesting the purposes for which national power is to be exercised. State constitutions, in contrast, deal directly with matters of public policy, sometimes in considerable detail.” He then goes to note that state constitutions are considerably less stable than their federal counterpart. While the federal constitution has been amended less than once per decade since the Bill of Rights:

[T]he American states have regularly revised and amended their constitutions. Only nineteen states still retain their original constitutions, and a majority of states have established three or more. Louisiana’s current constitution is the state’s eleventh, and Georgia its tenth. The level of constitutional amendment likewise underscores the states’ willingness to initiate formal constitutional change. As of 1996, over 9,500 amendments had been proposed to the states’ current constitutions and over 5,900 adopted—an average of almost 120 amendments per state. The Alabama Constitution of 1901 has been amended over 580 times, and the California Convention of 1879 almost 500 times. Even these figures, impressive as they are, substantially underestimate the states’ propensity for constitutional tinkering, because they omit amendments and proposed amendments to the states’ earlier constitutions. For example, in 1980, three years before adopting a new constitution, Georgia submitted to its voters 137 proposed amendments—16 general amendments and 121 local amendments; and Louisiana’s constitution of 1921 was amended 536 times before its replacement in 1974.

I think these two developments are related. While elevating every policy question to a constitutional plane may appear to solidify the position, in reality it drags the constitution down to the level of policy arguments, lessening its authority and lasting influence, and making it much more difficult to understand. If we treat the Constitution as the tax code, it will soon look like the tax code. Try reading your own state constitution if you doubt this.

Third and finally, is Levin’s confusion about both the source of the problem and how it relates to the separation of powers. This is particularly evident in his discussion of the Judiciary. And if you thought my second point was involved, trust me, I’m holding back here.

Take the example of Legislative delegation of power to the Executive to craft regulations. Yes, Congress is irresponsible when it does this. But again more often than not the Executive action is a symptom of Legislative dereliction. Someone, after all, needs to administer the laws, and the Legislatures’ poor drafting doesn’t excuse the Executive from his duty to enforce. If the Legislature can’t or won’t draft the law clearly the first time and can’t or won’t rouse itself to amend the law (and thereby supercede all regulatory rules stemming from the obsolete law)—both of which are exercises of preexistent powers—why should I believe that it would properly exercise this new power to invalidate regulations? Giving more power to the very branch that, according to the book’s premise, can’t be trusted with the power it has, is simply inconsistent. But it’s what happens when one fails to identify the problem and instead relies on partisan talking points.

On the other hand, there are times when the Legislature is over eager to exercise powers it doesn’t have. Levin identifies some of these. Yet in an odd twist, Levin still somehow fails to lay the blame with the Legislature and instead claims it belongs with the Judiciary.

But first let me first explain judicial review, which is the idea that a court can declare a law unconstitutional and void. Hamilton sums up the rationale for this doctrine well in Federalist 78:

The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. 

Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental.

This is why the powers are separated, to minimize Legislative influence on the Judiciary's review. This is the same reasoning adopted by Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, which was the first time the Supreme Court addressed this question. Levin specifically attacks the Marbury decision, as he did in his prior book "Men in Black," writing that it “claim[ed] authority not specifically granted in the Constitution,” “altered and extended the Court’s limited authority,” and “snatched the authority” to interpret the Constitution.

Oddly enough, President Obama seemed to channel Levin’s very argument just prior to the Obamacare decision when he stated “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Needless to say, the President was roundly criticized for those statements in conservative press, the same press that seems to overlook Levin’s argument coming to the same conclusion.

In short, Levin’s critique of the Court is twofold: First, he condemns the court for seizing power that it doesn’t have under the Constitution (judicial review). Second, he then condemns the Court for not exercising the very power that it in his view unconstitutionally seized, with the New Deal and Obamacare cases being his primary examples. The two critiques simply cannot both be true under the Constitution, yet Levin never even recognizes the conflict.

His confusion comes from a failure to understand the Judicial branch. Yes, the Supreme Court has failed to hold the Legislative branch’s expansion of its own powers in check. But the origin of that problem lies with the Legislature, not the Court. Had the Legislature determined that Obamacare were unconstitutional and accordingly not passed it, the Court would have never been involved. As it was, insofar as there was a Constitutional violation, the Court can only be blamed for failure to correct, not for the source. The power claimed was invented not by the Court, but by the Legislature.

But Levin’s solution demonstrates that he doesn’t grasp this. He proposes solving for judicial overreach (demonstrated, remember, primarily by judicial inaction) by giving the same Legislative branch that invented the unconstitutional power the additional power of overturning the Court’s decisions. Applied to the Obamacare for example, the Legislature could overturn the decision under this proposal. Which, in effect, would mean that the Legislature would determine that the Court was wrong in declaring that the Legislature was permitted to do what the Legislature did. Not only is it nonsense, but with a three-fifth vote requirement, is is actually harder than doing the straightforward thing and repealing the law at issue because the Legislature deems it unconstitutional. Levin is effectively asserting that the solution for ineffective guards is to let the inmates run the asylum. Neither the critique, nor the solution, actually makes much sense.

Levin's proposal that the states likewise have a Constitutional override runs into the same problem, where the states would be permitted in continue to act unconstitutionally if enough of them agree. History may show that the Court isn't always the best keeper of the Constitution; but it also shows that the States and Legislature are no better. In fact, since every unconstitutional act reviewed originates in a legislative body, I'm inclined to say that the Legislature and states have a demonstrated history of being worse keepers of the Constitution than the courts.

But believe it or not, it gets better. Because Levin’s solution to our political problems is his nearly 2,000 word restoration to the Constitution, dictating in detail such policy matters as voting requirements, budget cap in relation to GDP, dollar amounts for regulations that must be approved by the Legislature, Legislative and party makeup of regulation review committee, and level of regulation that becomes a property taking. If the Congress or the Executive thumb their noses at these new requirements, or even interpret them differently than Levin thinks they mean, what will he do?

Well, he doesn't say. But I can imagine he (or someone else) would file suit to ensure their proper enforcement.

Yes, he’ll appeal to the very branch that properly (although he disputes this) has the authority to enforce these provisions. He’ll do it after laying most of the blame for our constitutional troubles at their feet and denying that they have the authority to do what he asks them to do.

And if he prevails, he’d better pray really hard that three-fifths of the Legislature doesn’t think otherwise.

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The Hero's Guide

Ok, time for a little quiz. How many of these characters can you name?

Not difficult? I thought so.

Now for the hard part. How many of these characters can you name (and I mean real first names, not titles)?

Let's see, Shang, Flynn, humm, ummm, Prince..., Charming?, well..., I think..., Ha! Aladdin, and John Smith.

Exactly.

These guys go through life collectively known as "Charming." In fact, things have gotten so bad that no one knows their real names anymore. (Disney Wiki says they are, from left to right, Shang, Flynn, Adam, Eric, Ferdinand, Charming, Phillip, Naveen, Aladdin, & John Smith.) They are simply flat, interchangeable characters. They are called heroes, but, well, honestly, what heroics have they actually accomplished?

They need some help. They need to perform some real heroics.

Fortunately, unlike the lousy bards responsible for most of the above stories (and who forgot to even name the princes), Christopher Healy has written the "happily ever after" from their perspective. It's aptly called The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom.

In it, you'll meet the self-assured Prince Liam, the foppish Prince Frederic, the absent-minded Prince Duncan, and the muscular but insecure Prince Gustav (he has sixteen older brothers, each more muscular than he), as well as their respective princesses Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel. This group has not only names, but also distinct personalities.

Unfortunately, what the princes don't have at this beginning of happily ever after, is princesses. You see, after the initial thrill of being in a fairy tale wore off, all the princesses discovered that their princes were rather, well, immature. So, by means of various happenstances, all four princes end up together, lamenting their troubles with their princesses.

Which is when danger strikes. And, as the title would suggest, they need to rise above their slights and save their kingdom (with the help, of course, of their princesses). Along the way they learn the importance of heroism and bravery, their princesses learn that they may have misjudged their princes to quickly, and we learn that not all the princesses were accurately portrayed either in the common tellings.

Not that this is a moralizing tale, however. It is tongue-in-cheek fairy tale in one of the best senses (right alongside Dealing with Dragons), and is full of giants, bandits, ruffians, witches, and kingdoms that need saving. And, as would be expected, this is only the beginning of their adventures. Because once the kingdom has been saved, we're ready for The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle.

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The Strictest School in the World

Writing about Flavia de Luce’s adventures last week reminded me of another YA fiction book I read awhile back.

But when I sat down to write this review, I realized that the subtitle told you practically everything you needed to know.

After all, a title such as: The Strictest School in the World: Being the Tale of a Clever Girl, a Rubber Boy and a Collection of Flying Machines, Mostly Broken doesn’t leave all that much out.

(Except the pterodactyls. They somehow didn’t make it into the subtitle.)

Of course, should that not prove exciting enough, there’s always the (not quite as good but still intriguing) sequel.

Ready for it?

The Faceless Fiend: Being the Tale of a Criminal Mastermind, His Masked Minions and a Princess with a Butter Knife, Involving Explosives and a Certain Amount of Pushing and Shoving

And the third (which I must admit to not reading, as it was not yet published when I read the first two).

Island of Mad Scientists, The: Being an Excursion to the Wilds of Scotland, Involving Many Marvels of Experimental Invention, Pirates, a Heroic Cat, a Mechanical Man and a Monkey

So there you have it. Yet another set of madcap adventures.

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