One of the most misunderstood creatures in this country is crotalus, a genus of venomous pit vipers most people simply call rattlesnakes. Crotalus horridus, also known as the timber rattlesnake or canebrake snake, epitomizes the deeply ambivalent relationship Americans have with this animal, which Benjamin Franklin considered a symbol of our nascent country-and which remains a symbol of freedom and defiance of unjust government-yet has been hunted to extinction or near-extinction throughout New England.

The fear and loathing with which most Americans view rattlesnakes is illustrated most vividly by events like the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, wherein thousands of rattlesnakes are captured, killed, and skinned-often in gruesome ways-as a means of promoting local tourism. This deep revulsion is exhibited towards an animal that in normal circumstances does not threaten or harm humans, who are rarely-if ever-killed when an encounter does occur. It should be noted that some of these fatalities include people who wantonly abuse snakes.

With this sort of deep misunderstanding and distrust, Ted Levin’s insightful book, America’s Snake: The Rise And Fall Of The Timber Rattlesnake, is such a welcome resource. It not only debunks some common misconceptions about this increasingly threatened species, it explores why timber rattlesnakes were able to inhabit Maine, Long Island, and even New York City, although you’ll no longer find any dens-or rattlesnakes-in these places. One of the proximate causes of the rattlesnake’s decline in the Northeast, and a key part of the puzzle Levin hopes to unlock in his book, is Ophidiomyces ophiodilcola, a fungus which can prove fatal if a snake is not rehabilitated.

Although Ophidiomyces is the immediate villain, as Levin’s story unfolds the reader realizes that the greatest threat to the survival of the timber rattlesnake in the northeast is the increasing encroachment of humans upon this species’ habitat. The disruption of the mating process through development-particularly roads which cut between snake dens-the rapacious poaching, especially of gravid females, and general indifference of society towards the welfare of this fascinating animal all imperil its continued survival in this region.

To get a better idea of what this book is about, and learn why you should be concerned about its future, I would recommend watching this video of a talk delivered by Ted Levin last year. It might give you a new perspective on a quintessentially American reptile.

Most of you will probably remember Kathleen Donohoe, an Irish-American writer and New Yorker-and full disclosure, my cousin-from previous posts on this website. This year saw the publication of her debut novel, Ashes Of Fiery Weather. The title is taken from a poem by Wallace Stevens, Our Stars Come From Ireland, which celebrates the importance of place as a facet of memory. It’s a fitting entry point to this book, which explores how geography-both in New York City and Ireland-contours our worldview. Ashes also recognizes the importance of history, both on a collective and individual level, which-as the son of a history buff-I can appreciate. From the political impact of the Irish diaspora-including within New York’s civil service-to the way feminism has shaped traditionally masculine professions, it has a panoramic view, even as it remains a deeply personal piece of literature.

This is a multi-generational novel told from the perspective of Irish and Irish-American women whose lives are defined by the actions of the past. The choices they make-and the irrevocable consequences of these decisions-is one of the overriding themes of this novel, as is the evolution of the relationships between these women over time. Like Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth, there are several time shifts involving multiple characters who are all connected through personal relationships. The complex web of intimate ties and disruptive chronology was initially daunting for me, a person who has a sieve-like memory, but I gradually embraced the intricacy of  this world, which is captivating on many different levels.

There’s the domestic drama-the enduring trauma of broken relationships and lost loved ones, the persistence of family in spite of every effort made to dissolve it-but also the impact of work in shaping the lives of these characters and those who surround them. Donohoe does a remarkable job of portraying the at times cloistered nature of what is a very public vocation, the brotherhood of firefighters, while also exploring the cataclysmic events that have molded and shaped it and the city it serves. This is brilliant work of literary fiction, and can be enjoyed even if you’re not Irish, or a New Yorker, or related to one of New York’s Bravest. It’s a great first novel which plumbs the depths of grief and joy. I recommend buying it, which is very easy to do if you happen to live in New York City-or have an Internet connection.

Even if it’s too late to buy a copy as a Christmas present, there’s always 2017.

For Beginners Books

I just hope everyone there – and all of you out in blogland – keep in mind Bryan Caplan’s Ideological Turing Test: Strive to model your opponent’s thinking as human and well-intentioned, not demonic. I always do, even though everyone is stupid.

–Todd Seavey 

I love the above quote for a number of reasons, not least because, although laced with irony, it gingerly hints at a fundamental ignorance among vast swathes of the population. Not simply of economics, which, admittedly, is a seemingly abstruse, esoteric area of knowledge that routinely confuses even credentialed experts in their chosen field, but of simple cause and effect relationships. It also illustrates the acerbic wit of its author, who’s used his withering sarcasm-along with a broad-based knowledge of American history, as well as economic and political philosophy-to great effect in service of libertarianism for the better part of the past two decades.

The latter is deployed liberally throughout  Libertarianism For Beginners, which, as Mr. Seavey’s introduction to the philosophy of Spooner, Mises, and Rothbard for laymen, is available for purchase today! Although his trademark caustic humor is sublimated throughout this book in order to explain the essential philosophical underpinnings of libertarianism-and persuade you of their pertinence to human civilization-the book itself is replete with amusing anecdotes and descriptive illustrations which puncture the logical fallacies upon which collectivist ideologies are constructed.

In fact, this work is actually something of a graphic novel, with artist Nathan Smith providing the reader with visual cues to basic libertarian concepts. The tone is set prior to the introduction, when you see a cover displaying a Randian Atlas figure shouldering a globe containing a large land mass in the shape of a porcupine-the personification of the Free State Project-as he kneels before a Gadsden rattlesnake pictured in the foreground.

The whimsical nature of the cover art, slyly winking at those readers already deeply steeped in libertarian culture, is a bit of a tell. Because even as this thorough exposition of libertarianism gives the novice-or those completely unfamiliar with the precepts of libertarianism-a solid grounding in the teachings of free market economists, individualist philosophers, and anarcho-capitalist professors, often through the use of colorful analogies, it also reaffirms and solidifies the beliefs of those ideologically committed to thwarting the ever-metastasizing encroachments of the state. It reveals that the author of this work is indeed an insider, although one who is willing and eager to share the fruits of his knowledge with an audience whose thinking on this subject is muddled, to say the least. 

One of Mr. Seavey’s great achievements is to fully delineate the differences between separate strands of libertarianism, from agorism and voluntaryism to mutualism and left-libertarianism-as well as to define the fundamental difference in approach between natural rights and consequentialist libertarians-without getting bogged down in minutiae that would be of little interest to laymen. He concentrates the reader’s mind on the cornerstones of this philosophy, which include a non-negotiable opposition to any policies which condone fraud, theft, or violence, as well as a belief in the inviolability of private property, including your own body.

It is a philosophy which hinges upon the rejection of coercion as a form of public policy. Notwithstanding the negative connotations left libertarians have applied to the term, every libertarian properly understood is a propertarian. In the sense that he or she subscribes to the belief that any and all contracts are valid only through the mutual consent of the contracting parties, and that the mediating bureaucratic institutions with which we have become so familiar are wholly illegitimate, even if they are sanctioned by current law.

The other great accomplishment of the author is his simple, yet utterly persuasive, explanation of why these principles-terrifying, if not repellent, to a large segment of the population-are not only practicable, but yield outcomes superior to the collectivist approach in virtually any human social interaction. We live in a society where property rights are conditional, and rest upon the property owner’s obeisance towards an evolving set of social norms determined exclusively by the state-and which are often enacted through the lobbying pressure of interest groups who don’t realize that the only true rights are those held and exercised by individuals.

The notion that it’s not in the economic interests of a business owner to discriminate against any class of  potential customers, or that the harm inflicted by a bigoted entrepreneur upon a theoretical customer who’s denied service is vastly outweighed by the harm done through the coercive intervention of progressive government functionaries, is simply inconceivable to a modern, university-educated citizen. A person who, more often than not, views this debate exclusively through the prism of feelings rather than rights. Although by no means a comprehensive rebuttal, Libertarianism for Beginners goes a long way towards explaining why this is a short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive way of viewing things, and why consensual exchange, even if not resulting in a perfect outcome under every circumstance, is the most likely route to the maximization of happiness. Something that is of the utmost concern to a utilitarian like Seavey.

When not debunking popular misconceptions about libertarians, including the mistaken perception that opposing government redistribution of private wealth is synonymous with enmity towards the poor-when, in fact, they sincerely believe that government anti-poverty programs are simply a misallocation of resources, which ultimately eradicate more successful voluntary efforts-Seavey is describing in colorful detail the historical antecedents to contemporary libertarianism. One of the main reasons libertarian ideas are greeted with such skepticism by the general public is because most people don’t realize how recently the managerial state came into being. One of the chief conceits of government is that it is perpetual, whereas even a cursory examination of history would tell you that banking, health care, the court system, transportation, and even as vital a function as national self-defense were all once capably provided by private institutions to one degree or another in nations throughout the globe, including our own.

The deep skepticism faced by exponents of free markets and individual rights actually harkens back to the pre-Enlightenment era, when the pronouncements of the aristocracy and clergy were given precedence over human observation, discovery, and experimentation. Although the bishops and kings have been replaced by jurists, congressmen, administrative heads, and obsequious journalists (courtiers), the dynamic at work remains largely the same. That’s why Todd’s mini-biographies of classical philosophers and economists, sprinkled throughout the book, are essential to any coherent understanding of libertarianism’s evolution. The views of contemporary libertarians don’t seem so alien-like a bizarre, Dr. Frankenstein-like creation cooked up by the Koch brothers and Peter Thiel-once you discover their lineage in the writings of Locke and Burke, as well as much more recognizably libertarian thinkers such as Frederic Bastiat and Lysander Spooner.

The framers of libertarianism as a cogent political philosophy are presented, as well libertarianism’s economic forebears from the Austrian school, i.e. Böhm-Bawerk and Menger, and their intellectual heirs, Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. The monetarist school of thought is also outlined in the form of the much-maligned Milton Friedman and his anarchist son David, who’s done as good a job as anyone at explaining why privatizing the law won’t result in rival gangs of marauding mercenaries putting bullets through each other’s skulls-when they’re not murdering innocent bystanders in the lurid fantasies dreamed up by statists.

And for those intersectional feminists among you, Todd Seavey has given his readers a tantalizing primer on three titanic figures of the contemporary liberty movement: Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Ayn Rand, who-despite her various critics on the left and the right-managed to create a work of literature which remains the single most popular evisceration of egalitarianism and self-destructive altruism ever published. Lord knows why notionally  independent women believe their lives should be directed by a paternalistic-presumably non-misogynistic-overseer, but the biography of a penniless, persecuted Russian immigrant who manages to escape government oppression to find wild success and acclaim for her ideas in the land of opportunity-in an intellectual sphere dominated by men, no less-would seem to disprove this misguided theory of female empowerment.

Finally, the author gives us a brief overview of some of the issues that continue to sow discord within the movement itself, including antitrust regulations/corporate consolidation, immigration, and the morality of codifying the rights to intellectual and artistic works. One of the animating if not the central principles of libertarianism is property rights, which is contingent upon the scarcity of resources, but if intellectual property-by definition-is not scarce, does the state have a right to restrict access to it, even in a minarchist society? Libertarians believe individuals have the right to travel to and live wherever they choose, so long as they do so without encroaching upon the property or rights of others. But should people in a non-libertarian society be forced to defray the expenses of someone-or many people-who want to migrate to that society in order to elevate his standard of living? Why should the wealth of an individual be seized in order to facilitate the freedom of movement of someone else? Also, how does the fact that the newcomer can use his franchise, i.e. force, to enhance his own life at the expense of others’ property  factor into this conversation?

These are all knotty conversations that will not be easily resolved, however the fact that they are occurring is an indication that libertarianism, for all its faults, is at least a philosophy which takes ideas and their implications for humanity seriously. As Todd Seavey readily concedes throughout this volume, libertarianism does not presume to have all the answers, but it at least tries to ask some useful questions of those who would have us accept their dogmatic solutions without further examination or question.

Like the brilliant anti-prohibitionist classic Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, written by the late Peter McWilliams-who many consider to be a martyr in the horrifically misguided War on Drugs-Libertarianism for Beginners explains why the desire to control the lives of other human beings is not only morally unjustifiable, but ultimately futile. Like that book, it presents its case in a witty, lively manner-with abundant quotes and pictures-while also being intellectually potent.

Buy this book, either for yourself or a friend tentatively exploring libertarianism for the first time, or even for that Bernie Sanders devotee who doesn’t quite understand the laws of supply and demand-perhaps packaged with Chomsky for Beginners, in order to make it more palatable.  It’s a wonderful gift in any of those cases, one which libertarians and non-libertarians alike should be grateful exists. Even if, as Mises rightly inveighed, they’re all a bunch of (crummy) socialists, it’s always good to be reminded of the exceptions to the rule.

Update: Here’s a link to a somewhat more concise review I did for Goodreads. 

One of the most common critiques of contemporary American society, and Western culture more broadly, is its purported enthrallment to the opiate of celebrity. The notion that ordinary Americans are so dumbfounded by popular entertainment that they can’t understand linear, logical thought, let alone come up with workable solutions to complex problems which require such understanding, is not new. The late Neil Postman wrote an entire book exploring the damage wrought by modern communication techniques-namely, television and advertising-to the process of information-gathering, and by extension, rational argument and inquiry. However, even Henry David Thoreau-who lived before radio had attenuated the attention spans of humans weaned on the printed word-lamented the prospect of instantaneous communication.

Even so, you can’t properly understand the term celebrity until you’ve looked at a totalitarian state which is dominated not so much by an ideological impulse or dogma as by a cult of personality. That’s why the book written by celebrity ghostwriter Michael Malice-seen above in his dashing North Korean suit-about the late despot Kim Jong-il serves as an invaluable resource.  Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il-gives a western audience the rare opportunity to peer into the mind of someone who stood at the apex of a regime in which there was only one family and one person who was to be celebrated-upon pain of imprisonment, torture, and death. 

The unique nature of the North Korean state lies not so much in its depraved sadism-although it’s difficult to argue that it doesn’t equal or exceed even the most barbarous governments on the planet in this regard-but in the fact that it has managed to extirpate any public expression of individuality. Not only has the Kim dynasty suppressed any and all political dissent for the better part of seven decades, it has succeeded in effacing the personality of 24 million Koreans. In the tropical gulag that is Cuba you will find exuberantly defiant bloggers standing up to the Castro brothers tyranny. In the despotic theocracy that is the Islamic Republic of Iran, you will find courageous resistance to the Khomenist regime and first-hand accounts of what it’s like to be incarcerated in the notorious Evin Prison.

You won’t find internal dissidents in the DPRK, because to all intents and purposes, they do not exist. To dissent is to sign your own death warrant-not only for yourself, but for three generations of your family. You won’t hear the conditions inside of kwan-li-so described, because-with a few exceptions-no one leaves these concentration camps alive, and the only way outsiders are able to view them is through satellite photographs.

The brilliance of Dear Reader is its ability to convey these horrific truths in a way which compels the reader to look at North Korea in all its unvarnished brutality. At first glance, the concept of writing a book about an ongoing holocaust which relies upon humor to any extent is controversial, if not revolting. One of the reasons that a film like Goodbye Lenin can be enjoyed by ordinary people is because they recognize that it satirizes ugly crimes perpetrated by a regime which is safely immured in the past, and which will in all likelihood never be resurrected. The atrocities being committed in the DPRK, on the other hand, show no sign of abating.

The truth is that this book is suffused with humor, but not the type of humor that most people associate with Kim Jong-il or Kim Jong-un. It’s not designed to focus on the trivial manifestations of their well-cultivated international image of eccentricity, e.g. the goodwill tour by washed-up  NBA power forward/media spectacle Dennis Rodman. It’s used as a means of illustrating a lethally serious point. Namely, that this ruling clique has successfully employed an architecture of myth-based upon fear, ignorance, anger, and the desire for vengeance-in order to not only immiserate the Koreans under their rule materially, but to also impoverish their spirit and their souls.

One of the ways the author makes this viscerally disturbing narrative digestible is by contextualizing the Kim dynasty. People today can’t comprehend how a state created out of the spoils of World War II, a vestige of the Cold War conflict between the United States and USSR, became a singularly isolated and defiant  national socialist, i.e. fascist, regime predicated upon the worship of a single individual and intense, multigenerational racialism.

He does this in a number of ways, most interestingly perhaps by humanizing his subject, i.e. one of the most loathsome dictators of the past half-century. As off-putting as this might seem to the uninitiated, it’s a surprisingly effective means of explaining how and why the North Korean state exists, in spite of an increasingly porous web of information control. Taking traditional biographical tropes about family life and adolescent angst and transposing them into a story about Southeast Asia’s most iconic despot is an unconventional technique, but ultimately a successful one. A particularly affecting anecdote involves a young Kim Jong-il guarding the study of his father, Kim il-Sung, as he sleeps. Oddly moving, it serves as a metaphor for his guardianship of his dad’s legacy, even at the cost of the enforced starvation of over a million of his countrymen.

This highlights another aspect of North Korea’s unique regime, which is later revealed explicitly by Kim himself, when he admits that his advisors are not chosen because of any technical competence or foresight they may display, but because of their intense loyalty to Kim il-Sung, i.e. Kim Jong-il, thought. The consequent economic, social, and environmental disasters that resulted from this leadership method are, naturally, a necessary evil for preserving the sanctity of the true Korean state in the eyes of the Dear Leader.

Malice makes the sclerotic nature of this system comprehensible, which might come as a surprise to many of us who have been repeatedly told that there is no rhyme or reason to the actions taken by the DPRK’s leadership. In fact, there was a brutal internal logic and rationality to the actions of Kim Jong il, from extolling a juche philosophy that seemingly prized autarky-even while living parasitically off the extorted handouts from hostile neighbors and the United States-to an incomplete series of garish monuments exalting the only family to have ruled North Korea since its creation.

Therefore, the Agreed Framework between the United States and the DPRK was not a shameful capitulation, but a necessary expedient to preserve the Juche ideal, while also debasing both a former and current President of the United States. True to the promise on Dear Reader’s book jacket, this part is 100 percent “true,” as a perusal of Bill Clinton’s letter to Kim Jong-il at the time demonstrates. The bellicose rhetoric emanating from North Korea is not the rantings of a paranoid lunatic, but Songun diplomacy, which, regardless of its dubious morality, was extraordinarily efficacious. Kim’s explanation of an humanitarian aid package accepted five years later illustrates why:

After much grandstanding and hyperbole, the American and Korean negotiators reached a compromise. The Americans claimed that they were neither rewarding me nor condoning my violent rhetoric. That is absolutely true. They didn’t “reward” me or “condone” my rhetoric. On the other hand, they did financially compensate me because of my aggression. 

Accepting charity from the Yank devils was not a repudiation of the principles undergirding his very regime, but a brilliant strategic maneuver. And it wasn’t charity but reparations for the harm inflicted upon the DPRK for decades by the American imperialists.

This didn’t contradict the Juche principle of self-reliance one bit. I didn’t look at the package as aid so much as the repayment of a debt. The US imperialists had been threatening Korea for decades. It was entirely their fault that I’d had to expend such enormous sums on the military. 

Even actions that seem completely inscrutable to outside observers, e.g. the North Korean government’s evident pride in being lavished with praise by equally dysfunctional nation-states like the West African, Marxist backwater Burkina Faso or the South Asian dumpster fire that is Pakistan, become explicable once you understand them from the perspective of the man pulling the strings. As absurd as having Mali as one of your strategic partners might seem to us, it serves the interests of the Kim regime. Just like its arsenal of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, the International Friendship Museum is intended for domestic consumption, not for our benefit.

If there’s one thing to take away from Dear Reader, it’s that there is a calculated reason for every decision made at the upper echelons of power within North Korea. As Kim Jong-il avers himself, he was “no buffoon,” and his actions-however clownish they may have seemed to foreigners-had deadly consequences which were methodically plotted out beforehand. This is a book worth reading, if only because it illuminates the dark corners of a society whose people have suffered for too long in the shadows of their loving parents.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the latest installment in the Half King’s weekly reading series. It’s only fitting that the guest of honor that evening was the intrepid English-born, Mexico City-based journalist Ioan Grillo, since the bar is owned by renowned  journalist and documentarian Sebastian Junger. Junger  is probably best known for his reporting from war zones, specifically Afghanistan, and there is a plaque in the bar honoring his former collaborator on the film Restrepo, the late English photojournalist Tim Hetherington. Mr. Grillo was there in order to share some anecdotes and observations related to his newly released book, El Narco, an in-depth analysis of the sociological and political reasons behind the rise of what he described as a “parallel state” built upon drug-financed and cartel-derived institutions inside of Mexico. 

His talk was particularly timely, given a report just published in the Los Angeles Times which examines the connection between international banking institutions and  those seeking to launder money from illicit sources within Mexico. The systemic nature of the narco problem, its global scope, and the duration of the fight against its symptoms-if not causes-was vividly illustrated by Grillo, who in an hour-long discussion ranged from the impact of drugs on his birthplace of Brighton, England, to the wholly ineffectual attempt to impound heroin being trafficked over the Mexican-American border through Operation Intercept, to the thirteen individuals that were intimately involved in this book, including five who contributed materially to its creation who were killed during or after the writing of El Narco.

Although the industry of trafficking drugs into the United States from Mexico has existed since Congress effectively prohibited the distribution and production of a wide range of heretofore legal opiates with the Harrison Act, the transformation of this somewhat lucrative trade in contraband into an over thirty billion dollar per annum “insurgencia,” a noun fraught with meaning, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has learned, is a story that requires a more holistic explanation, which Ioan Grillo attempts to provide in El Narco. Rather than focusing simply upon the horrific, heart-rending atrocities that we associate with Mexico from American media reports, Grillo digs deeper into what he describes as the “machinery of murder” by interviewing those who participate in it directly. He traces the arc of the “low intensity war” that has erupted in the decade since he’s been reporting from Mexico and which escalated with the 2006 decision by President Felipe Calderon to wage war against the cartels, a decision which has led to the loss of over 45,000 lives in the ensuing years.

Some of the more interesting things that the author discussed included the intimate link between Colombia, where much of the drugs that come into this country are produced, and Mexico, through which most of our illegal narcotics are smuggled. Not only is there practical cooperation between narcos in both countries, there has also been a wholesale Mexicanization of the most conspicuous aspects of the Colombian narco culture; from the endemic corruption of political parties on the take of cartels, to the ostentatious display of wealth by drug barons, to the advent of the sicario-a Colombian derivation of a Latin word for assassin that Mexicans know all too well-to the development of paramilitary wings of cartels posing as vigilantes, such as Matas Zetas, i.e. the “Zetas killers.”

The day-to-day lives of journalists in Mexico-and what they do and do not report-was another interesting subject that was addressed at some length. While the cartels have no problem with Grillo reporting on the idosyncracies of cartel members-such as the young assassin who also loves his Sony Playstation-identifying those responsible for specific murders is verboten and often punished by death, which is why domestic journalists often ommit the names of the cartels culpable for specific crimes-even when their identities are widely known.

The recommendations Grillo makes seem sensible enough, especially the concept of reconsidering the unrealistic nature of current interdiction efforts, exemplified by the unironic motto of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: A Drug-Free World. He also recommended a consolidation of the currently fragmented federal police system, which includes over 2,000 different-and often rivalrous-police forces by his estimation. Whatever the solutions are, I think Ioan Grillo’s book-which includes some startling photographs of the real victims of El Narco-is a good place to start the conversation.

Tuesday night I had the pleasure of attending a discussion held at New York City’s Penn Club, sponsored by the Center for Immigration Studies, which featured one of my favorite journalists/media critics, William McGowan. The author of Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America, Mr. McGowan delivered a speech outlining the largely negative contribution New York’s “newspaper of record” has had on the immigration debate, both in the past and during the current nationwide battle over controversial measures such as amnesty and the DREAM Act.

McGowan’s talk divided the journalistic crimes of the New York Times into two major categories: sins of omission and sins of commission. The Times is replete with examples of both, the former found in its steadfast refusal to cover the 2007 case of a Mexican illegal alien who murdered a woman after being released by police in Denver, despite a long rap sheet. Despite the obvious newsworthiness of this horrific crime, and the fact that it was covered by both local dailies at the time, it did not merit the attention of anyone at the Times, which had a bureau in the city. An example of the latter is the concerted effort by the paper to affirm archaic, barbaric cultural and religious customs imported from the third world as valid alternatives to mainstream American culture. McGowan cited as evidence of this editorial practice the paper’s benign treatment of West African immigrants who practice polygamy in their adopted country.

In many cases, however, the two methods of promoting mass immigration and cultural fragmentation are found within the same story, as the Times attempts to both minimize the readily apparent drawbacks of this country’s skewed immigration policies while at the same time promoting the very policies that it had previously claimed had little to no impact on American society. A prime example of this double-edged assault is a story that examined the illegal alien sanctuary known as Maywood. The 2006 article focused on a group of illegal aliens who marched in support of amnesty, however it neglected to point out the fact that many of them trampled upon the American flag while at the same time calling for the Reconquista of the southwestern United States by Mexican nationals. And even as the Times produced laudatory coverage of the initiative to provide illegal aliens with official documentation in New Haven, Connecticut, it studiously avoided any mention of the crimes committed by the undocumented then living in New Haven.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Mr. McGowan’s talk was his recapitulation of the New York Times’s past coverage of immigration issues, which is an often overlooked chapter in the paper’s history. I found particularly fascinating his portrayal of its coverage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which is a watershed law that inalterably redefined both the scope and nature of immigration into the United States. Although I had an inkling of how the Times treated immigration in years past, I was astonished at some of the vivid details that the author provided about how the paper had soft-pedaled what turned out to be the most transformational piece of domestic legislation signed into law during the 20th century.

As it turns out, one of the main reporters on the 1965 immigration bill had been a trusted member of the Kennedy camp, which at any other reputable journalistic institution would have raised alarms since the original impetus behind the bill had come from President Kennedy. After JFK’s assassination, his younger brother Teddy had squired the bill through a distracted Congress and onto Lyndon Baines Johnson’s desk, using much of the same divisive rhetoric supporters of the bill at the Times would employ. The New York Times’s coverage of the hearings leading up to eventual passage were equally slanted, devoting numerous column spaces to those testifying on behalf of the bill while it’s most eloquent critic-a woman representing a patriot organization from the state of New Jersey-was given short shrift.

Unfortunately, its coverage of immigration issues has not improved in the ensuing decades; in fact, it could be argued that it’s grown inexorably more biased and shrill since that seminal piece of immigration legislation was enacted. A compounding factor, naturally, is the explosive growth in Islamic immigration to the United States, which the Times has treated as an unalloyed good. McGowan made several trenchant points about the remarkable solicitude the Old Gray Lady has shown towards the world’s second-largest religion, including the observation that after the September 11th massacres in 2001-an issue whose coverage earned the New York Times several Pulitzer prizes-the paper went into overdrive trying to assure its readers that Islam was an anodyne alternative to America’s traditional, Judeo-Christian heritage. From its indulgent tone towards Muslim students who disclaimed their American identity-and condemned the country their parents immigrated to-to the madrassa created by radical Islamist Debbie Almontaser in the heart of Brooklyn, the Times has consistently neglected to ask the tough questions so many Americans wanted answers to in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

This deference to Muslim sensibilities dovetails nicely with what William McGowan describes as an institutional effort by the paper’s editors to create not a melting pot, nor even a mosaic, but a nation of collective victims. Or in this case, a distinct subculture of victims who have been unfairly treated by American society due to their customs-which include female genital mutiliation and honor killing-and religious beliefs, which can include a call to murder and/or convert anyone who does not subscribe to the shahada.The rampant victimology enunciated by the editorial staff at the New York times has gradually expanded to include numerous ethnic minorities, and the renewed interest in the seamier side of Islam has given the paper a perfect opportunity to expand this philosophy to include America’s newest-and from the perspective of Times editors, most besieged-minority, Muslims living in the United States.

I came away from this lecture greatly impressed by Mr. McGowan’s thorough deconstruction of what was once a prestigious media lodestar. Even though I might not agree with his assertion that the New York Times is salvageable, I do respect the eloquence with which he articulated his position. Keep your eyes open for an exclusive interview with the author of Gray Lady Down in the coming days.

Documenting the lives of immigrants is an enduring aspect of American literature, which befits a nation that has been shaped to such a large extent by successive waves of migration from distant lands. One of the most important novels published in the first half of the 20th century, Christ in Concrete, was written by the son of Italian immigrants who sought to portray the plight of his community by fictionalizing the story of his and his parents’ lives.

The book’s protagonist, Paul, is loosely modeled on Pietro Donato, whose father was crushed to death as he was working on a construction site. In the novel, Paul is compelled to curtail his education and become an apprentice brick layer at the callow age of 12 in order to support his large Italian-American family. The figure of Paul’s deceased father Geremio casts a pall over the entire work, especially after the death of his caretaker/godfather, a man by the name of Nazone, who serves as both a mentor and protege of Paul as the novel progresses.

While the novel revolves around the daily struggles of these Italian immigrants, as well as a Russian-Jewish family that Paul develops a friendship with over time, and the ethnic community in which they reside, the focus of the author seems to encompass a much broader, almost universal critique of what he viewed as the inherent deficiencies of both American capitalism and the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, this novel is replete with religious imagery and symbolism. From the protagonist-who’s the namesake of Paul the Apostle-to the repeated invocations of God during times of misfortune, e.g. Anunziata’s pleas for mercy after the death of her husband, Geremio, Christ in Concrete is a biblical allegory, albeit not in the traditional sense of that phrase.

One of the techniques Donato deftly employs throughout the narrative is personification. The most glaring example of this strategy can be found in Job, the impersonal, dehumanizing force that can offer either salvation or damnation to the construction workers who labor under its inscrutable rules and deceitful interlocutors. That the construction sites Paul looks to for sustenance after his father’s arbitrarily cruel death constitute an actual character-and are referred to in this vein-demonstrates the centrality of work to this tale. It is the glue that bonds these men together even more than a common heritage, language, or culture. It is also a consistently dark and foreboding force that menaces Paul and his co-workers, as well as a vengeful god that takes away his father, amputates his uncle Luigi’s leg, and ultimately sends his godfather Nazone plunging to his doom.

Through Paul’s eventual embrace of atheism-a process accelerated by talks with his Russian neighbor, as well as the sinister actions of the men who control the building trades upon which his livelihood depends-Pietro Donato establishes a didactic prose that permeates the novel. Despite its polemical style, there is a natural dramatic tension that I think most readers will enjoy, although I think comparisons to The Grapes of the Wrath-another novel of social conscience released in the same year-are overwrought. The highly stylized speech of both the main and peripheral characters-most of whom are illiterate, first generation Italian immigrants-is off-putting at first, but like other patois used in conceptual fiction, e.g. A Clockwork Orange, Pygmy, you eventually adjust to its rhythms and cadences.

The book gives you an inkling of how precarious certain industries that rely upon immigrant labor are, especially during severe economic hardships-such as the Great Depression-which displace millions of workers. But I think it also gives you an idea of how difficult it is to assimilate great masses of people who come from a different culture, were nurtured to speak another tongue, and who have to adjust to a completely different way of life. As I noted in my summary of the Intelligence Squared debate I attended, one of the main issues was the difficulty of assimilation, a point of contention between the two opposing sides. The fact is that previous waves of immigrants were given the space, both temporal and in terms of distance, to adapt to their dramatically changed circumstances and raise their children as full-blooded American citizens.

The danger lies in our current policy of unfettered, mass immigration in perpetuity, which prevents the assimilation and adaptation necessary for this country-and its newcomers-to thrive. One of the great lessons from Christ in Concrete is that immigrants-even first generation immigrants-can assimilate the values of their adopted country, which in Paul’s case means independence from the seemingly intractable beliefs of his mother. However, that process does not occur in a vacuum, and contrary to the dogma of people like Tamar Jacoby and her fellow open-borders apologists, it needs to be expedited by a society intent on retaining its core cultural and national identity. E pluribus Unum is not simply a quaint motto; it is the means by which people who come to America become Americans, and it is something that we can’t afford to lose as a nation.