The Physics of Party Government

Nothing that we, the ruled, do can bring back the America they have already destroyed

by Angelo M. Codevilla

It took Woodrow Wilson a century and a quarter, and help from Harry Reid. But America now has what Wilson said we needed in 1885: government by a majority party empowered to do whatever it wants to push the country along the paths of progress – just like in Europe. Harry Reid and the Obama Democrats’ unilateral change of rules to make the US Senate run strictly on majority votes simply capped a long process of growth in partisanship that has Europeanized public life in America without changing a word in the Constitution. This is not how Wilson wanted to do it, but the unlovely results are the same.

Wilson’s signature work, Congressional Government(1885) argued that the US Constitution’s authors had bequeathed to us a vehicle with too many brakes and steering wheels, but with no driver in charge and not enough horsepower. Whereas James Madison had seen our Constitutional system of checks and balances as means to “refine and enlarge the public view,” Wilson saw it as substituting endless argument and compromise for necessary univocal action. He wrote that our Founding Fathers had done us wrong.

Wilson wanted us to have a parliamentary system with “responsible parties.” Like in Europe, the party that won a majority of seats would vote in unison and wield the power, as the British Jurist William Blackstone had said of his parliament, to do “all that is not naturally impossible” and to test the meaning of that limit as well.

But constitutions and rules were never the main reason why America did not have “responsible parties.” That reason was the diversity of American political life. From the eighteenth century until very recently, all of our political parties were loose coalitions of people who represented countless different kinds of people and interests. Moreover, none of those interests was interested in imposing a comprehensive agenda on the rest. Given that, party discipline could not have existed regardless of legislative or constitutional language.

This began to change after the Civil War, when Southerners, a substantial sector of the Democratic Party, acted in unison to protect their peculiar, embattled model of race relations as well as other interests, and thus made it necessary for the rest of the House of Representatives to observe some degree of discipline. The Senate, by contrast, remained proud of its indiscipline – until now.

Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” put America on the slope to Harry Reed’s imposition of rule by a disciplined majority party because it was the first instance in US history in which a political party tried to impose a new way of life on the whole country. That requires discipline on the part of the imposers and elicited the same from the opponents. Since that time, with few respites, the Democratic Party has presented America with ever-edgier, ever more urgent versions of the same agenda: “new freedom,” “new frontier,” “new foundation,” etc.

Each click of this ratchet required more unison on the part of those who tightened it. Why should anyone be surprised that it elicited a response from the people it squeezed? Newton’s Third Law Of Motion applies to politics as well as to physics. The US Constitution’s words count little against such forces, much less the rules of the US Senate.

Some to Misery Are Born

Life at the bottom

by Theodore Dalrymple

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born,

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight.

The first couplet of Blake’s verse seems to me a good deal more certain than the second because happiness and misery, while opposite, are not in the least symmetrical. I count myself to have had more than a usually fortunate life (except for a wretched childhood), and I think I have been in the top one percent of humanity where luck is concerned, but still I would not say that I had been born to sweet delight, even if I cannot take the credit for my good fortune. 

The problem is that sweet delight, as the Buddha knew, contains within itself the seeds of its own decay, unlike misery which has within it no inherent tendency to change into its opposite and can last a lifetime. It is impossible to remain ecstatic for very long. Anyone who says that he can and does is either lying or mad. Happiness is like the blush of a grape, and consciousness of it is like the finger that destroys that blush. But there are many people whose misery is continuous and unremitting and seems from birth to have been predestined.

I have spent quite a lot of my professional life as a doctor among such people, and recently I was asked by the courts to examine a woman charged with murder whose deed was terrible and reprehensible but whose life, it seemed to me (and I am generally no determinist), had led, if not quite inexorably to murder, at least to constant disaster.

Her father and uncle sexually abused her from the age of eight, and when she told her mother, a cocaine addict, her mother beat her for being a “dirty” girl. Her father and uncle were alcoholics. Her father invited men into the house to have sex with her mother in return for money. He was violent if she refused and sometimes if she accepted. 

Her mother soon left her father and had a succession of lovers to live in with her. All of them were drug addicts or alcoholics, and practically all were violent. She (the woman whom the courts asked me to examine) began to take drugs and drink, at her mother’s instigation and with her encouragement, at the age of twelve or thirteen. By the age of fifteen she was pregnant by one of her mother’s lovers, who more or less forced himself upon her with her mother’s consent. Her mother meanwhile had several children by different men. Suffice it to say that life did not improve for her thereafter.

She was not intelligent and her school did nothing to prepare her for life in a modern economy, let alone provide her with anything recognizably like a liberal education. She could read, just about, but could not add six and seven and could not multiply five by four (though she knew, she told me proudly, her two times table). This, after a state education costing $100,000! A miracle of incompetence and dereliction of duty! Her few jobs did not last long, were unskilled, and paid very little, giving her an income no larger than that provided by the state, the latter increasing with each of her successive children (by different men, of course). In all, she had worked but a few months in her life, the rest given over to childbearing. Everyone around her lived the kind of life she had led, or to which she had been led.

Masking Totalitarianism

Because Americans still retain a large measure of liberty, tyrants must mask their agenda

By Walter E. Williams

One of the oldest notions in the history of mankind is that some people are to give orders and others are to obey. The powerful elite believe that they have wisdom superior to the masses and that they’ve been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Their agenda calls for an attack on the free market and what it implies — voluntary exchange. Tyrants do not trust that people acting voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, free markets are replaced with economic planning and regulation that is nothing less than the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by the powerful elite.

Because Americans still retain a large measure of liberty, tyrants must mask their agenda. At the university level, some professors give tyranny an intellectual quality by preaching that negative freedom is not enough. There must be positive liberty or freedoms. This idea is widespread in academia, but its most recent incarnation was a discussion by Wake Forest University professor David Coates in a Huffington Post article, titled “Negative Freedom or Positive Freedom: Time to Choose?” (11/13/2013) (http://tinyurl.com/oemfzy6). Let’s examine negative versus positive freedom.

Negative freedom or rights refers to the absence of constraint or coercion when people engage in peaceable, voluntary exchange. Some of these negative freedoms are enumerated in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights. More generally, at least in its standard historical usage, a right is something that exists simultaneously among people. As such, a right imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech is something we all possess. My right to free speech imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference. Likewise, my right to travel imposes no obligation upon another.

Positive rights is a view that people should have certain material things — such as medical care, decent housing and food — whether they can pay for them or not.

Seeing as there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy, those “rights” do impose obligations upon others. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something he did earn.

If we were to apply this bogus concept of positive rights to free speech and the right to travel freely, my free speech rights would impose financial obligations on others to supply me with an auditorium, microphone and audience. My right to travel would burden others with the obligation to purchase airplane tickets and hotel accommodations for me. Most Americans, I would imagine, would tell me, “Williams, yes, you have the right to free speech and travel rights, but I’m not obligated to pay for them!”

What the positive rights tyrants want but won’t articulate is the power to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another. After all, if one person does not have the money to purchase food, housing or medicine and if Congress provides the money, where does it get the money? It takes it from some other American, forcibly using that person to serve the purposes of another. Such a practice differs only in degree, but not kind, from slavery.

Under natural law, we all have certain unalienable rights. The rights we possess we have authority to delegate. For example, we all have a right to defend ourselves against predators. Because we possess that right, we can delegate it to government, in effect saying, “We have the right to defend ourselves, but for a more orderly society, we delegate to you the authority to defend us.” By contrast, I don’t possess the right to take your earnings to give to another. Seeing as I have no such right, I cannot delegate it.

The idea that one person should be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another has served as the foundation of mankind’s ugliest and most brutal regimes. Do we want that for America? 

Those who know, those who don’t know, and those who don’t care to know

Sheeple: Why You Should Feel Sorry For Them

by Brandon Smith

It is often said there only two kinds of people in this world: those who know, and those who don’t. I would expand on this and say that there are actually three kinds of people: those who know, those who don’t know, and those who don’t care to know. Members of the last group are the kind of people I would characterize as “sheeple.”

Sheeple are members of a culture or society who are not necessarily oblivious to the reality of their surroundings; they may have been exposed to valuable truths on numerous occasions. However, when confronted with facts contrary to their conditioned viewpoint, they become aggressive and antagonistic in their behavior, seeking to dismiss and attack the truth by attacking the messenger and denying reason.  Sheeple exist on both sides of America's false political paradigm, and they exist in all social "classes".  In fact, the "professional class" and the hierarchy of academia are rampant breeding grounds for sheeple; who I sometimes refer to as "intellectual idiots".  Doctors and lawyers, scientists and politicians are all just as prone to the sheeple plague as anyone else; the only difference is that they have a bureaucratic apparatus behind them which gives them a false sense of importance.  All they have to do is tow the establishment line, and promote the establishment view.

Of course the common argument made by sheeple is that EVERYONE thinks everyone else is blind to the truth, which in their minds, somehow vindicates their behavior.  However, the characteristic that absolutely defines a sheeple is not necessarily a lack of knowledge, but an unwillingness to consider or embrace obvious logic or truth in order to protect their egos and biases from harm.  A sheeple's mindset is driven by self centered motives.

So-called mainstream media outlets go out of their way to reinforce this aggressive mindset by establishing the illusion that sheeple are the “majority” and that the majority perception (which has been constructed by the MSM) is the only correct perception.

Many liberty movement activists have noted recently that there has been a surge in media propaganda aimed at painting the survival, preparedness and liberty cultures as “fringe,” “reactionary,” “extremist,” “conspiracy-minded,” etc. National Geographic’s television show “Doomsday Preppers” appears to have been designed specifically to seek out the worst possible representatives of the movement and parade their failings like a carnival sideshow. Rarely do they give focus to the logical arguments regarding why their subjects become preppers, nor do they normally choose subjects who can explain as much in a coherent manner. This is a very similar tactic used by the establishment media at large-scale protests; they generally attempt to interview the least-eloquent and easiest-to-ridicule person present and make that person a momentary mascot for the entire group and the philosophy they hold dear.

The goal is to give sheeple comfort that they are “normal” and that anyone who steps outside the bounds of the mainstream is “abnormal” and a welcome target for the collective.

Implosion of Social Security Disability Ponzi Scheme Accelerates

Τhe Ponzi scheme is going to continue until its statistically inevitable demise

by  Bob Adelmann

Fresh data just released by the trustees of the Social Security Administration show that the number of people receiving benefits from the Disability Insurance Trust Fund has exploded over the last five years, reducing the surplus in that fund from $216 billion in 2008 to just over $100 billion in 2013. There were 7.4 million recipients in January 2009, but as of October 2013, there are nearly nine million beneficiaries, not including another two million spouses and children of disabled workers who are also receiving benefits.

Simple math illustrates the inevitable: If those receiving benefits for disability (real or faked) continues to increase, the trust fund will be bankrupt in less than three years. This is small potatoes when compared to the Medicare and Social Security programs, but illustrates the inevitability of the ending of all Ponzi schemes, large or small.

When Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) claimed on October 20 that “We have $128 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities … and another $17 trillion worth of debt,” Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post preferred to question the amount rather than the imminent failure of these schemes. He claimed that the real number was perhaps closer to $43 trillion, using numbers from the Social Security trustee themselves, or suggested that perhaps the real number was $84 trillion, relying on the National Center for Policy Analysis for that one.

Kessler finally concluded that, without mentioning the imminent implosion occurring at the Disability Trust Fund, the real number to be concerned about was only $30 trillion — equal to the entire economic output of the United States for two years. He did, however, manage to say that whatever number is correct, that it didn't really matter anyway:

After all, most of these unfunded liabilities are … benefits that this generation’s children and grandchildren will be receiving, and presumably the generation 100 years from now will be able to figure out the best course for their society in their time.

This is what passes for economic wisdom in the present time: It’s a restatement of the hoary quip: “IBD/YBD” – by that time “I’ll be dead and you’ll be dead.”

Accelerating the implosion of these welfare state programs will be new “enhancements” such as those offered by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. In an interview on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow, she said:

This is no time — this is the last time — to be talking about cutting Social Security. This is the moment when we [should] talk about expanding Social Security…

I believe fundamentally [that] we are a people who believe that anyone should be able to retire with dignity. And that’s what Social Security is about. People who work all their lives and pay into it should have a minimum level that they don’t fall beneath. That’s good economics…

Economic reality is vastly different, according to economist Daniel Stelter, author of a report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) entitled“Ending the Era of Ponzi Finance.” Wrote Stelter:

It may seem harsh or exaggerated to liken the current troubles of the developed economies to a  Ponzi scheme. I do so deliberately to emphasize the scope and seriousness of the problem.

Japan Exposing Green Hypocrisy on Nuclear

You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone

By John Holmes

Sixteen years ago, Japan hosted international climate talks and was a key driver for the Kyoto Protocol that emerged. It had been making strides toward targets set for emissions reductions when the Fukushima disaster promptly sank those plans in devastating fashion.

In the wake of the ongoing nuclear disaster, the country shut down its nuclear reactors due to safety concerns. To meet its energy needs, Japan has had to dramatically ramp up imports of liquified natural gas (LNG), which is currently far from cheap in Asia. But the nuclear shutdown hasn’t just presented logistical and economic difficulties; it has forced Japan to dial back its green commitments. The FT reports:

Cabinet members said on Friday they had agreed [on] a new target with an updated timeframe, under which Japan would seek to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 3.8 per cent by 2020 compared with their level in 2005. Nobuteru Ishihara, the environment minister, is to defend the goal next week when he joins international climate talks in Warsaw….

The new target announced on Friday represents a 3 per cent rise over the same 30-year period – a difference from the previous goal that is about equal to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of Spain.

Japan is the world’s fifth-largest emitter of CO2, which makes this announcement more than just a regional setback. But while greens are busy decrying the news, they might spare a moment to reflect on the environmental merits of nuclear power. When sited correctly, with proper safeguards and ideally not on or near major fault lines, and especially with newer generations of molten salt or thorium reactors, the benefits of nuclear are manifest. The plants provide huge amounts of consistent baseload power—something renewables will never be able to achieve barring some miraculous battery technology—and they do it without emitting greenhouse gases.

A group of climate scientists recently sent a variety of green groups a missive, urging the movement’s leadership to acknowledge nuclear’s advantages, especially over fossil fuels. Japan is proof positive of nuclear’s green chops—you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.

Bloomberg Kills Article Exposing Chinese Regime, Suspends Reporter

The only reason Chinese regime’s credibility did not sink along with Bloomberg’s is because it was already at rock bottom

by  Alex Newman

First, the controversial “media” outlet Bloomberg News, widely regarded by critics as a propaganda megaphone for the radical views of billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, reportedly censored one of its reporters by blocking publication of an article exposing cronyism and corruption among Communist China’s ruling class. Insider sources quoted in news reports said the decision to kill the story was made for “political reasons” — namely, to appease Beijing. Then, last week, award-winning investigative journalist Michael Forsythe, based in Hong Kong, was finally suspended by Bloomberg’s media empire, shattering its credibility among analysts. 

The explosive story that Bloomberg refused to run reportedly detailed the myriad hidden links between one of China’s wealthiest crony capitalists and the families of ruthless Communist Party autocrats, who rule the nation with terror and an iron fist. Less than a week after killing Forsythe’s investigative article, Bloomberg bosses also declared another major China story to be off-limits. The second blocked piece, the New York Times reported in a front-page story citing four unnamed Bloomberg employees, focused on the children of senior Communist Chinese tyrants employed by foreign banks. 

While most of the public exposure surrounding the Bloomberg scandal has been based on anonymous sources so far, a clearer picture of what happened behind the scenes is slowly starting to emerge. According to media reports, Editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler announced the decision late last month on a conference call, comparing it to self-censorship by news agencies inside National Socialist (Nazi) Germany decades ago. “He said, ‘If we run the story, we’ll be kicked out of China,’ ” one of the Bloomberg employees with knowledge of the scandal was quoted as saying by the Times. 

Social Security: The Most Successful Ponzi Scheme in History

The flower in the seed

by Gary Galles

“We paid our Social Security and Medicare taxes; we earned our benefits.” It is that belief among senior citizens that President Obama was pandering to when, in his second inaugural address, he claimed that those programs “strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers.”

If Social Security and Medicare both involved people voluntarily financing their own benefits, an argument could be made for seniors’ “earned benefits” view. But they have not. They have redistributed tens of trillions of dollars of wealth to themselves from those younger.

Social Security and Medicare have transferred those trillions because they have been partial Ponzi schemes.

After Social Security’s creation, those in or near retirement got benefits far exceeding their costs (Ida Mae Fuller, the first Social Security recipient, got 462 times what she and her employer together paid in “contributions”). Those benefits in excess of their taxes paid inherently forced future Americans to pick up the tab for the difference. And the program’s almost unthinkable unfunded liabilities are no less a burden on later generations because earlier generations financed some of their own benefits, or because the government has consistently lied that they have paid their own way.

Since its creation, Social Security has been expanded multiple times. Each expansion meant those already retired paid no added taxes, and those near retirement paid more for only a few years. But both groups received increased benefits throughout retirement, increasing the unfunded benefits whose burdens had to be borne by later generations. Thus, each such expansion started another Ponzi cycle benefiting older Americans at others’ expense.

Social Security benefits have been dramatically increased. They doubled between 1950 and 1952. They were raised 15 percent in 1970, 10 percent in 1971, and 20 percent in 1972, in a heated competition to buy the elderly vote. Benefits were tied to a measure that effectively double-counted inflation and even now, benefits are over-indexed to inflation, raising real benefit levels over time.

Disability and dependents’ benefits were added by 1960. Medicare was added in 1966, and benefits have been expanded (e.g., Medicare Part B, only one-quarter funded by recipients, and Part D’s prescription drug benefit, only one-eighth funded by recipients).

The massive expansion of Social Security is evident from the growing tax burden since its $60 per year initial maximum (for employees and employers combined). Tax rates have risen and been applied to more earnings, with Social Security now taking a combined 12.4 percent of earnings up to $113,700 (and Medicare’s 2.9 percent combined rate applies to all earnings, plus a 0.9 percent surtax beyond $200,000 of earnings).

Historic Nuclear Agreement Reached With Iran

P5+1 and Iran Agree Landmark Nuclear Deal at Geneva Talks

By Russia Today

The P5+1 world powers and Iran have struck a historic deal on Tehran’s nuclear program at talks in Geneva on Sunday. Ministers overcame the last remaining hurdles to reach agreement, despite strong pressure from Israel and lobby groups.

Under the interim agreement, Tehran will be allowed access to $4.2 billion in funds frozen as part of the financial sanctions imposed on Iran over suspicions that its nuclear program is aimed at producing an atomic bomb.

As part of the deal Iran has committed to:

-  Halt uranium enrichment to above 5 per cent.-  Dismantle equipment required to enrich above 5 per cent.-  Refrain from further enrichment of its 3.5 per cent stockpile.-  Dilute its store of 20 per cent-enriched uranium.-  Limit the use and installation of its centrifuges.-  Cease construction on the Arak nuclear reactor.-  Provide IAEA inspectors with daily access to the Natanz and Fordo sites.

Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, called the deal a “major success” and said Tehran would expand its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

While Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced that the deal reached in Geneva shows that world powers have recognized Tehran’s “nuclear rights.”

“Constructive engagement [and] tireless efforts by negotiating teams are to open new horizons,” Rouhani said on Twitter shortly after the announcement.

In turn, the IAEA said it is ready to check that Iran keeps its commitments under the deal.

“With the agreement of the IAEA’s Board of Governors, the Agency will be ready to fulfill its role in verifying the implementation of nuclear related measures,” said Director General Yukiya Amano as cited by Reuters.

Foreign ministers from the US, Russia, UK, France, China, Germany and the EU hailed the deal as a step toward a “comprehensive solution” to the nuclear standoff between Tehran and the West. The interim deal was reached early Sunday morning in Geneva after some 18 hours of negotiation.

“While today’s announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal,” 

US President Barack Obama said in a statement at the White House. 

“For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back.”

Obama’s Surrender of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Can Clarify American Interests

There is value in leaving no doubt about reality

by Angelo M. Codevilla

Obama is making sure that nothing will stand in the way of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Veiling that with a transparently insincere claim to be “freezing” Iran’s quest, and leaving in the lurch governments and peoples that had counted on his promises, he dishonors America. Thus does he guarantee that many more governments will acquire such weapons, and consigns to history the very ideal of nuclear non-proliferation.

But let us look on the bright side: There is value in leaving no doubt about reality.

In reality, nothing was going to stop Iran’s march to nuclear weapons, and nuclear non-proliferation was always a pipe dream. Governments of Europe and of the Middle East will now have to take responsibility for their own defense. And as soon as the inevitability of a world armed with nuclear-tipped missiles dawns through of Obama’s thin smoke screen, America’s ruling class will have to get serious about missile defense – a half century after it should have.

A generation of American statesmen had dreamt of staving off Iran’s nukes. But the Clintonian Liberal Internationalists’ offers of development aid never stood a chance of derailing a project that is dear to Iranians of all political stripes. Nor did some Bushy Neocons’ talk of “regime change” or other Bushies’ empty threats of “surgical strikes” frighten the Iranians away from it any more than did the Obamians’ “smart sanctions.”

Preventing Iran from going nuclear would require war. War, not bombing, which would merely delay the inevitable, but war – meaning above all a total, deadly secondary trade boycott backed by a blockade. Any military operations would be aimed at crushing (easily) any Iranian attempt to interfere with Persian Gulf shipping. The war’s objective would be the imposition of a more tractable regime. Anyhow, nobody in power ever gave this a second thought. Too hard.

Iran's Nuclear Triumph

Tehran can continue to enrich uranium at 10,000 working centrifuges

By Paul Gigot

President Obama is hailing a weekend accord that he says has "halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program," and we devoutly wish this were true. The reality is that the agreement in Geneva with five Western nations takes Iran a giant step closer to becoming a de facto nuclear power.

Start with the fact that this "interim" accord fails to meet the terms of several United Nations resolutions, which specify no sanctions relief until Iran suspends all uranium enrichment. Under this deal Iran gets sanctions relief, but it does not have to give up its centrifuges that enrich uranium, does not have to stop enriching, does not have to transfer control of its enrichment stockpiles, and does not have to shut down its plutonium reactor at Arak.

Mr. Obama's weekend statement glossed over these canyon-sized holes. He said Iran "cannot install or start up new centrifuges," but it already has about 10,000 operational centrifuges that it can continue to spin for at least another six months. Why does Tehran need so many centrifuges if not to make a bomb at the time it pleases?

The President also said that "Iran has committed to halting certain levels of enrichment and neutralizing part of its stockpiles." He is referring to an Iranian pledge to oxidize its 20% enriched uranium stockpile. But this too is less than reassuring because the process can be reversed and Iran retains a capability to enrich to 5%, which used to be a threshold we didn't accept because it can easily be reconverted to 20%.

Mr. Obama said "Iran will halt work at its plutonium reactor," but Iran has only promised not to fuel the reactor even as it can continue other work at the site. That is far from dismantling what is nothing more than a bomb factory. North Korea made similar promises in a similar deal with Condoleezza Rice during the final Bush years, but it quickly returned to bomb-making.

As for inspections, Mr. Obama hailed "extensive access" that will "allow the international community to verify whether Iran is keeping its commitments." One problem is that Iran hasn't ratified the additional protocol to its International Atomic Energy Agency agreement that would allow inspections on demand at such sites as Parchin, which remain off limits. Iran can also oust U.N. inspectors at any time, much as North Korea did.

Then there is the sanctions relief, which Mr. Obama says is only "modest" but which reverses years of U.S. diplomacy to tighten and enforce them. The message is that the sanctions era is over. The loosening of the oil regime is especially pernicious, inviting China, India and Germany to get back to business with Iran.

We are told that all of these issues will be negotiated as part of a "final" accord in the next six months, but that is not how arms control works. It is far more likely that this accord will set a precedent for a series of temporary deals in which the West will gradually ease more sanctions in return for fewer Iranian concessions.

Allies Fear a U.S. Pullback in Mideast

Latest Evidence War-Weary U.S. Seeks to Close Books on Region's Long-Term Problems

By GERALD F. SEIB

America's allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia view the new nuclear agreement with Iran with a mixture of unease and alarm. But for some in the skeptics' camp, the broader concern extends well beyond the preliminary nuclear deal.

Their underlying worry is that the negotiations with Iran represent just the latest evidence that a war-weary U.S. is slowly seeking to close the books on a series of nettlesome long-term problems, allowing Washington to pull back from its longtime commitment to the Middle East.

In this view, the attempt to bring the nuclear dispute with Iran to a close without military action is of a piece with other steps the Obama administration has taken: withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, in each case amid doubts whether much of an American presence will remain; an agreement on Syria that leaves Bashar al-Assad in power, without his chemical weapons but also without being subjected to a U.S. military strike; even an effort to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that could finally close the book on Secretary of State John Kerry's renewed effort to resolve

Though each of those steps can be seen as a logical policy evolution, America's friends worry that the administration's moves, when taken together, indicate the U.S. has simply lost its appetite for continued entanglements in a region that has been at the center of American foreign policy since at least the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular worry that a deal that accepts even a diminished or constrained Iranian nuclear program will result in a region in which Tehran plays a bigger role and America, freed of the need to suppress Iran's nuclear ambitions, a smaller one.

This is hardly what the administration says it is up to, of course. President Barack Obama, in announcing the preliminary nuclear accord with Iran over the weekend, specifically sought to reassure America's partners in the region. "As we go forward," he said, "the resolve of the United States will remain firm, as will our commitments to our friends and allies—particularly Israel and our Gulf partners, who have good reason to be skeptical about Iran's intentions."

Moreover, senior U.S. officials insist that, even if the preliminary nuclear accord works and leads to a permanent understanding on Iran's nuclear program, that won't magically produce some broader rapprochement with Iran and the clerical regime that rules the country.

Iran Pact Faces Stiff Opposition

Israel and Some U.S. Lawmakers Blast Interim Deal to Curb Nuclear Program, Ease Sanctions

By JAY SOLOMON

A groundbreaking deal to curb Iran's nuclear program faces towering obstacles at home and abroad to becoming a permanent agreement, starting with the U.S. Congress and two of America's closest allies.

The leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties are threatening to break with President Barack Obama's policy and enact new punitive sanctions on Iran, arguing that the interim deal reached in Geneva on Sunday yields too much to the Islamist regime while asking too little.

"The disproportionality of this agreement makes it more likely that Democrats and Republicans will join together and pass additional sanctions when we return in December," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), an influential member of the

Such a move could kill the nascent nuclear accord, U.S. and Iranian officials agree, and add to more recent political embarrassments for the White House.

Reaching a comprehensive deal with Iran also faces formidable diplomatic and technical challenges, said U.S. and European officials. Washington wants to eventually dismantle much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, including a heavy water reactor and enrichment facilities, steps Tehran has so far refused to take.

The White House has signaled it would defend the agreement by directly appealing to lawmakers and to foreign leaders. Mr. Obama on Sunday spoke by telephone to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has campaigned against the pact. The U.S. leader said he wanted to consult with Israelis on talks, and agreed Mr. Netanyahu "has good reason to be skeptical about Iran's intentions."

Iran celebrated the deal on Sunday as a political victory for President Hasan Rouhani and a step toward economic relief.

A final agreement could underpin broader American efforts to stabilize the Middle East and end conflicts in Syria and between Israel and the Palestinians, where Tehran actively supports militant groups, these officials said.

Senior U.S. officials said Sunday that a successful conclusion of an Iran accord could redefine the U.S.-Iran relationship, which has been marked by open hostilities since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Tehran.

"I think this is potentially a significant moment, but I'm not going to stand here in some triumphal moment and suggest to you that this is an end unto itself," Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday, following two days of exhaustive negotiations.

As a side benefit, experts expect to see the easing of tensions with Iran lead to a reduction in world oil prices, although the effects will depend in part on how much Iranian oil returns to the market.

Despite the lures of a permanent deal, the Obama administration's outreach to Tehran carries great risks, said U.S. and Mideast officials. Key American allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, are publicly challenging the U.S. policy, claiming it directly threatens their security.

Camus and Monod - Courage and Genious

The story of two men whose lives embodied resistance, humanism and intellectual inspiration

By ALEXANDER ADAMS

When Albert Camus died in a car accident in 1960, the Nobel Laureate was mourned not only as a creative artist but also as a moral philosopher. Camus championed moderation, dialogue and the inalienable dignity of the individual at a time when – in France – partisan loyalty to nation and party often led people to advocate and defend acts of barbarity. Camus refrained from becoming too publicly involved in the debate over Algeria, first in the grip of civil unrest then wracked by civil war, but instead worked to influence events behind the scenes. Acutely sensitive to the suffering of fellow Algerians, he knew his pleas for clemency from the French government and moderation from FLN insurgents would draw condemnation from both ends of the political spectrum.

Even Sartre, Camus’s ally-turned-opponent, admitted he was ‘an admirable conjunction of a person, an action, and a work’.

One of those most deeply touched by Camus’ death was Jacques Monod, a leading microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute. The two shared an outlook on life and had both been members of the wartime resistance movement - Monod as a military commander and Camus as a journalist and printer for the newspaper Combat. They epitomised existentialist man, free thinkers who had the courage to act independently of the shackles of religious and political doctrine, even at the risk of their lives. And death was never far away during the dark days of occupation between 1940 and 1944. Page after page of Brave Genius – Sean B Caroll’s new account of Camus’ and Monod’s friendship – documents fellow resistance workers who were imprisoned, tortured and executed. Camus and Monod came very close to arrest and death on several occasions. 

The men got to know each other socially only after the war. It was the Lysenko affair that brought them closely together in 1948. Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko claimed that he had proof that acquired characteristics of plants could be passed on, thereby overturning evolutionary science. Biological life was not inherited in a Darwinian fashion but was actually Marxian in character – through circumstance and will, lifeforms could transform themselves and exercise self-determination. Established genetic science was condemned by the USSR as ‘bourgeois genetics’ and all dissent against the Lysenko doctrine was banned.

The World of English Freedoms

It's no accident that the English-speaking nations are the ones most devoted to law and individual rights

By DANIEL HANNAN

Asked, early in his presidency, whether he believed in American exceptionalism, Barack Obama gave a telling reply. "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

The first part of that answer is fascinating (we'll come back to the Greeks in a bit). Most Brits do indeed believe in British exceptionalism. But here's the thing: They define it in almost exactly the same way that Americans do. British exceptionalism, like its American cousin, has traditionally been held to reside in a series of values and institutions: personal liberty, free contract, jury trials, uncensored newspapers, regular elections, habeas corpus, open competition, secure property, religious pluralism.

The conceit of our era is to assume that these ideals are somehow the natural condition of an advanced society—that all nations will get around to them once they become rich enough and educated enough. In fact, these ideals were developed overwhelmingly in the language in which you are reading these words. You don't have to go back very far to find a time when freedom under the law was more or less confined to the Anglosphere: the community of English-speaking democracies.

In August 1941, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met on the deck of HMS Prince of Wales off Newfoundland, no one believed that there was anything inevitable about the triumph of what the Nazis and Communists both called "decadent Anglo-Saxon capitalism." They called it "decadent" for a reason. Across the Eurasian landmass, freedom and democracy had retreated before authoritarianism, then thought to be the coming force. Though a small number of European countries had had their parliamentary systems overthrown by invaders, many more had turned to autocracy on their own, without needing to be occupied: Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain.

Churchill, of all people, knew that the affinity between the United States and the rest of the English-speaking world rested on more than a congruence of parliamentary systems, and he was determined to display that cultural affinity to maximum advantage when he met FDR.

It was a Sunday morning, and the British and American crewmen were paraded jointly on the decks of HMS Prince of Wales for a religious service. The prime minister was determined that "every detail be perfect," and the readings and hymns were meticulously chosen. The sailors listened as a chaplain read from Joshua 1 in the language of the King James Bible, revered in both nations: "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage."

Lee Harvey Oswald Was My Friend

History can be altered by small players as well

By PAUL GREGORY

It was 7 a.m. on Sunday when the single phone at the bottom of the stairs echoed through my parents’ red-brick house, right off Monticello Park in Fort Worth. “Mr. Gregory,” a woman said as my father picked up, “I need your help.” Who are you? he asked in his Texas-Russian accent, still half-asleep.

The caller said only that she had been a student in his Russian language course at our local library, and that he knew her son. In that instant, my father, Pete Gregory, linked the voice to a nurse who sat in the back of his class and had once identified herself as “Oswald.” Until this phone call, he hadn’t realized that she was the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union only to return two and a half years later with a Russian wife and a 4-month-old daughter. My father helped Lee and his young family get settled in Fort Worth a year earlier. The Oswalds had been my friends.

My father now understood that the woman on the other end of the line, Marguerite Oswald, must have taken his class to communicate with her daughter-in-law, Marina, who spoke little English. It was also clear why she needed his help. Two days earlier, Marguerite’s son shot the president of the United States. While Lee Harvey Oswald was sitting in a Dallas jail cell, his wife and mother and two young daughters were hiding out at the Executive Inn, a commuter hotel near the airport, where they were taken and then abandoned by a team of Life magazine staff members. Marina Oswald had become the most wanted witness in America. She needed a translator fast.

Hours after the Kennedy assassination, my parents and I experienced the shared horror of realizing that the Lee Oswald we knew, the one who had been in our house and sat at our dinner table, was the same man who had just been accused of killing the president. The Secret Service first knocked on my parents’ door at 3 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 23, 1963. The following day, just 45 minutes after my father hung up with Marguerite, an agent named Mike Howard picked him up and drove him to a Howard Johnson’s on the Fort Worth-Dallas Turnpike, where they met Robert Oswald, Lee’s brother. As the family’s translator of choice, my father was now part of the plan to get the Oswald women out of the dingy hotel room and into a safe house that Robert had arranged at his in-law’s farm, north of the city, so Marina could be questioned.