How do you spell “oxymoron”? My current favorite candidate is “libertarian paternalism.” That’s the phrase that Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein promulgate as an alternative to socialism in their new book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Of course, they don’t say their form of paternalism is a synonym for “socialism.” And they naturally rebel at the idea that the phrase “libertarian paternalism” is a contradiction in terms. As an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the book puts it, they view libertarian paternalism as “a corrective to the longstanding assumption of policy makers that the average person is capable of thinking like Albert Einstein, storing as much memory as IBM’s Big Blue, and exercising the willpower of Mahatma Gandhi.”

Who among policy makers, you might ask, believes that “the average person” is like Einstein, Big Blue, or Gandhi? Name just one. Take your time . . . And while you are scratching your head trying to come up with a name, ponder Sunstein’s remark that “For too long, the United States has been trapped in a debate between the laissez-faire types who believe markets will solve all our problems and the command-and-control types who believe that if there is a market failure then you need a mandate.”

According to the Chronicle, “Sunstein argues that understanding human irrationality can improve how public and private institutions shape policy by increasing the likelihood that people will make decisions that are in their own self-interest. Most important, he and Thaler insist, such nudges can be executed while protecting freedom of choice.”

Haven’t we been down this road before? The socialist experiment has never worked out as advertised. But it continually blooms afresh in the human heart–those portions of it, anyway, colonized by intellectuals, that palpitating tribe Julien Benda memorably denominated “clercs,” as in “trahison de.” But why? What is it about intellectuals that makes them so profligately susceptible to the catnip of socialism?

In a brief memoir called “My Early Beliefs,” John Maynard Keynes summed up its psychological metabolism in his description of Bertrand Russell and his Bloomsbury friends:

Bertie in particular sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that in fact human affairs were carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on rationally.

What prodigies of existential legerdemain lay compacted in that phrase “all we had to do”!

Professors Thaler and Sunstein are contemporary avatars of this sunny “all-we-have-to-do” rationalism. They speak of “nudging” people to make the right choices (i.e., the choices that Thaler and Sunstein want them to make). In a famous passage in Democracy in America, Tocqueville anatomized this form of paternalism. He called it “democratic despotism,” a less pleasing phrase than “libertarian paternalism,” perhaps, but one that has the advantage of truthfulness. Such despotism, Tocqueville wrote, would

resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. . . . It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living? . . . [This power] extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; . . . it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.

Echoing and extending Tocqueville, Friedrich Hayek argued that one of the most important effects of extensive government control was psychological, “an alteration of the character of the people.” We are the creatures as well as the creators of the institutions we inhabit. “The important point,” he concluded, “is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives.”

Thaler and Sunstein would doubtless pooh-pooh such objections. The “nudges” they propose, they assure us, are innocuous things like putting fruit at eye level in school cafeterias so that children are more likely to choose the “right” thing to eat.

Do you believe that their nudges will end there? A nudge can be close to a push. And we all know, comrade, what a push can come to.

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Perhaps the most ravishing musical experience of my life was listening to Simone Dinnerstein play Bach’s Goldberg Variations’s at the home of a friend in Manhattan last autumn. In the weeks before the performance, I had listened several times to a CD of Dinnerstein’s remarkable 2007 interpretation of the work, but hearing her en famille, as it were, in the intimate setting of a living room with a dozen friends dramatically heightened the experience.

But it was the performance as well as the setting that made the evening so special. Hitherto my gold standard for renditions of this majestic piece of music was Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording. (Gould made a second recording shortly before his death, age fifty, in the early 1980s.) I especially admired the astringent clarity and architecture of Gould’s playing. Gould burrowed deep into the structure of Bach’s music, revealing its bones and sinews. His astonishing technical command allowed him to exhibit latent conversations within the music, rhythmic and emotional exfoliations that elaborated themselves with pristine lucidity, like crystals forming and dissolving in an ice-cold, light-inflected mountain stream.

Dinnerstein’s Bach is a warmer, but no less lucid creature. Like Gould, Dinnerstein commands a breathtaking technical mastery. And like him, she has made the music her own. She does not simply play the Goldbergs. She inhabits them, moving through its 30 variations like the rising sun through the rooms of a palace. Each chamber is suddenly illuminated and its distinctive character gradually revealed as the light lingers in loving dialogue with the soul’s furniture. And just as each day’s light has its own discoveries and omissions, so it was with Dinnerstein’s performances of the Goldbergs. Anyone who had heard the CD of her performing the work would have instantly recognized her stamp on the performance that evening. But what was remarkable was how distinctive each rendition was: like a familiar landscape seen at noon and then again an hour before dusk.

Dinnerstein is a master of rubato–listen, for example, to the way she coaxes Variation 4 to unfold itself before us–but also she handles the presto passages with breathtaking aplomb: her joyful unpacking of Variation 14 is a case in point. Dinnerstein’s Bach is perhaps less cerebral than Gould’s, but no less intelligent. There is an amplitude to her convocations that Gould’s austerity wouldn’t countenance.

But I revisit Dinnerstein’s Goldbergs merely as a prelude to mentioning her performance yesterday at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in New York. Her late-morning concert, part of the Center’s Great Performers series, included two preludes and fugues (numbers 9 in E-major and 3 in C-sharp-major) from book II of the Well-tempered Clavier, Beethoven’s Sonata 13 in E-flat major, and Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik, a curious, amusing and bemusing work by the contemporary American composer George Crumb. As an encore, Dinnerstein played the lovely A-major intermezzo from Brahms’s opus 118 suite of piano pieces.

It was a memorable occasion. Dinnerstein’s signature combination of technical command and patient lusciousness informed every moment. Her playing is less idiosyncratic than Gould’s, but no less distinctive. Her taste–witness the Crumb–ranges widely, yet there is a clarifying purity to her playing that inoculates it against mannerism. Her personality touches and enlivens all she plays, but one always feels that the focus is on the music, not the music maker. This is true artistry, a sort of musical midwifery in which the point is not the performer but the thing performed. I hope you’ll have an opportunity to hear her (her concert schedule is posted here). You’ll certainly be hearing a lot more about her.

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If you do not know about Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism, you should. It is a cornucopia of illuminating, if mostly depressing, information about the war on terror. It is, as its website puts it, “the world’s most comprehensive data center on radical Islamic terrorist groups.”

One of the things that makes the IPT so valuable is that it provides a salutary counterweight to some other institutions that should be there in the trenches helping to keep America safe from radical Islam but have in fact contracted a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome, or maybe it is only the diplomat’s déformation professionelle: the inbred tendency to regard every enemy as a treaty or agreement just waiting to happen. Unfortunately, some enemies do not want accord: they want to compass our destruction. And to achieve that, they are perfectly happy to use whatever means are available, including the naïveté of the eager diplomat who believes that when he has struck a deal he has assured compliance.

One of the most dispiriting examples of this head-in-the-sand species of diplomatic delusion is the State Department’s and the Department of Homeland Security’s increasing reluctance to face up to reality and call things by their correct names. Remember Newspeak? That was the term George Orwell coined in 1984 for a mode of speech that would enforce a politically correct thinking by promulgating a vocabulary that gave “exact . . . expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings. . . . This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained or unorthodox meanings.”

As an example, Orwell explains that while the word “free” still existed in Newspeak, it could only be used is such statements as “This dog is free from lice.” “It could not,” he continues,

be used in its old sense of “politically free” or “intellectually free,” since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore necessarily nameless. . . . Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

Of course 1984 is a dystopian fantasy. But those agencies of our government charged with combating Islamic radicalism seem to have taken a few hints from its pages. Reports issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department are urging its employees to refrain from using such terms as “jihad,” “mujahedeen,” or even “Islam” or “Muslims,” especially in conjunction with al Qaeda. Thus we have a document dated January 2008 from the Department of Homeland Security called “Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims” and this from the State Department. While you are wondering why the Department of Homeland Security is gathering recommendations about how to combat radical Islam from American Muslims, let me mention a few more things these documents recommend.

It is certainly true that not every Muslim is a terrorist, but the sad fact is that the greatest terrorist threat in the world today is Islamic terrorism. Nevertheless, because we are supposed to be “communicating with, not confronting, our audiences,” we are advised not to “insult or confuse them with pejorative terms such as ‘Islamo-fascism.’ which are considered offensive by many Muslims.” The word “progress” is OK, but–George Orwell, where are you?–”the experts consulted” (what experts?) rejected the word “liberty” “because because many around the world would discount the tern as a buzzword for American hegemony.”

Breathtaking isn’t it? What it really means is that “many around the world understand that ‘liberty’ is a buzzword for American leadership,” but that of course sounds far too positive, so we have to say “hegemony.” It’s a discreditable, and dangerous, business. Those leading the fight against terrorism assure us that “The fact is that Islam and secular democracy are fully compatible–in fact, they can make each other stronger.” But where is the evidence of that? In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush went to a mosque and assured his audience that “Islam” meant “peace.” Perhaps that was an emollient thing to do. Unfortunately, it is not true. Islam means “total submission to the will of Allah.” As the IPT tartly noted in commenting on the recommendations made by the State Department and the DHS,

America, after serving for more than two centuries the sanctuary for huddled masses yearning to breathe free, is being asked to minimize liberty against fanatics bent on a global religious state. The memo doesn’t offer examples to show where Islam and secular democracy have reinforced each other, or explain how Shariah law, the imposition of religion into state affairs, is “fully compatible” with secular democracy.

That gets to the nub of the issue. While emissaries from the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security are making Herculean efforts not to do or say anything of “offend Muslims,” radical Muslims are busy extending the list of things they are offended by while also seeking new ways to insinuate elements of Sharia law into the West–a mode of theocratic imposition that, far from being “fully compatible” with secular democracy, is something closer to its antithesis.

A friend who emailed me about this latest chapter in the long running saga of bureaucratic capitulation invoked the famous admonitory words of Justice Robert Jackson in Terminiello v. Chicago (1949) “There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.” Worth bearing in mind, isn’t it?

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The brief answer is: Monica Lovinescu was a Romanian journalist and critic who, from her perch in Paris, was fierce and effective critic of the Romanian Communist Party from the late 1940s on. Lovinescu died on April 20, aged 85. Wikipedia has the inevitable biographical summary here, but the piece you really need to read is on the excellent web site of Radio Free Liberty. Entitled “Why Does Monica Lovinescu Matter?”, the essay, by Vladimir Tismaneanu, is a must-read for anyone interested in freedom’s triumph over Communist tyranny. “Monica Lovinescu matters,” Tismaneanu writes,

because she was one of the most important voices of the Eastern and Central European antitotalitarian thought. Her passing away is a major loss for all the friends of an open society. My personal indebtedness to her — like that of many Romanian intellectuals — is immense. As a member of the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania (which I chaired), Lovinescu participated, even during the most painful moments of physical suffering, in the condemnation of communist totalitarianism. Her solidarity was unswerving, both morally and intellectually.

Lovinescu’s crucial impact on Romania’s culture is inextricably linked to her major role as a cultural commentator for Radio Free Europe (RFE). There is no exaggeration in saying that no other RFE broadcast was more execrated, abhorred, and feared by Ceausescu and the communist nomenklatura than those undertaken by Lovinescu and her husband, Virgil Ierunca.

For decades, Lovinescu fought against terrorist collectivisms, the regimentation of the mind, and moral capitulation. Her patriotism was enlightened and generous. Thanks to her, Romanian intellectuals were able to internalize the great messages from the writings of Camus, Arendt, Kolakowski, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Koestler, Cioran, Milosz, Revel, Aron, and the list is fatally too short. A spirit totally dedicated to modernity, open to the crucial polemics of the 20th century, Lovinescu wrote poignant essays on the what American critic Lionel Trilling called “the bloody crossroads, where literature and politics meet.”

Read the whole thing here.

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Good news for London! Its next mayor is not a left-wing lunatic! Congratulations to Boris Johnson. former editor of The Spectator, who just beat “Red Ken” Livingston in the race for mayor of London. Mr. Johnson is the first conservative mayor of London in 30 years and probably the first ever who is both a classical scholar and a passable double for Bertie Wooster. Good news all around: Less Ken, more Boris! More here from the BBC.

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Yesterday must have been disappointing for the doomsayers. Newly released government figures showed that there was real GDP growth for the first quarter of 2008 of .6 percent: not hot-rod territory, to be sure. But weren’t we supposed to be barreling into a recession? Apparently Reuters wants you to think so. A headline today informed readers that: White House hopefuls leap on weak job picture. Oh dear, Oh dear. “White House hopefuls,” quoth the newswire,

seized on a weak U.S. jobs picture on Friday to promote their cures for the ailing economy amid bickering over a proposal to suspend the federal gasoline tax.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain quickly reacted to a Labor Department report that said U.S. employers cut 20,000 jobs in April, the fourth straight month of job losses and a new sign that the economy is flirting with a recession.

Flirting, eh? As in “a quick wink from across the room”? Anyway, if Reuters is to be believed, we’re in for a rocky ride.

But wait: is Reuters to be believed? They’re the news service, you remember, that doesn’t believe in terrorists. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Steven Jukes, Reuters’ global head of news, sent around an internal memo that sniffed: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. . . . Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist.” How . . . principled, Mr. Jukes.

Similarly, one man’s economic revitalization is another man’s economic downturn.

For Reuters, the U.S. economy is cozying up to recession while over at The Washington Post that same government report inspires sober enthusiasm: “Employers Cut Fewer Jobs Than Expected” ran the Post’s headline, followed by this exposition

The U.S. economy shed jobs in April for the fourth consecutive month, but at a slower-than-expected pace that helped improve the unemployment rate, the federal government reported today.

At the same time, a jump in factory orders and new action by the Federal Reserve helped buoy U.S. stock markets, which appeared headed for a second day of gains.

Employers eliminated 240,000 jobs over the first three months of the year, and analysts had expected a comparable drop of perhaps 80,000 positions for April.

But new data from the Labor Department showed that total employment was down just 20,000 for the month, as health-and education-related businesses and others in the service sector continued their steady expansion of payrolls. The unemployment rate fell to 5 percent, from 5.1 percent the month before.

OK: there were some job losses, but only a quarter as many as had been expected. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate decline from a low 5.1 percent to an even lower 5 percent. Not only that, factory orders were up, the Fed was showing some leadership, and the stock market was up. What part of the phrase “good news” don’t you understand? As Instapundit put it: “DUDE , WHERE’S MY RECESSION?”

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I’ve written about the phenomenon of “libel tourism” here before. It wasn’t invented by Islamic jihadists–what, when you come right down to it, have they invented? But the noisome use, or threat, of litigation to silence legitimate criticism has become a specialité de la maison musulmane. If you’re a rich Saudi and you don’t like what someone says, threaten to sue. It’s amazing what an aposiopetic effect it has. And there’s the carrot as well as the stick: Cambridge University Press goes through their usual scholarly process with a book called Alms for Jihad. It is vetted by outsiders. It is edited. It is published. But Kalhid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker living in London, doesn’t like what it says about some of the charities he’s involved with, so he has his lawyers threaten Cambridge with a suit. Cambridge instantly, and cravenly, capitulates, pulps the book, writes to libraries that have bought the book asking them to remove it from their shelves, and issues a public apology that, inter alia, defames the authors of the book. Some months later, Cambridge gets £8 million from a Saudi prince for an Islamic Studies Center. Post hoc or propter hoc? You decide.

Anyway, there have lately been a few good rumblings about free speech, at least on this side of the pond. Two days ago, Governor Patterson in New York signed into law the The Libel Terrorism Protection Act, which, I hasten to explain, aims not to protect libel terrorism but to protect agaisnt it. As a story in Publishers’ Weekly notes, the act

the enforcement of a foreign libel judgment unless a New York court determines that it satisfies the free speech and free press protections guaranteed by the First Amendment and the New York State Constitution. It also allows New York courts, under certain circumstances, to exercise jurisdiction over non-residents who obtain foreign libel judgments against New Yorkers.

Good stuff. And I am happy to say that kindred federal legislation has been proposed by Pete King. Glimmerings of hope. Intimations of backbone. Let’s hope it continues.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of counter-tendencies as well: e.g., this from Andy McCarthy, or this from Robert Spencer, or . . . well, it’s a long list.

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