And an old evil returns.
• The real winner, of course, is Patrick McHenry.
• Sometimes sitting fourth in line is just the right place to be. Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana became the new speaker of the House after every high- or even medium-profile candidate flamed out. He had few enemies and was not suspected of knifing any of the prior contenders. With those advantages, he made getting elected speaker look easy after weeks of chaos. Johnson, who practiced as an attorney before serving in the Louisiana legislature and getting elected to Congress in 2016, is a talented man and staunch social conservative. But his conduct after the 2020 election, when he organized his fellow Republicans to urge the Supreme Court to throw out the results, is a black mark on his record. He now has an enormous political, legislative, and fundraising challenge ahead of him, with another potential government shutdown looming and the same nihilistic forces that toppled Kevin McCarthy waiting in the wings. That said, it’s a good thing that House Republicans have ended their flagrant display of dysfunction. The speaker is dead, long live the speaker—let’s hope for longer than nine months this time.
• Mainstream media outlets beclowned themselves by parroting and then retreating from reports by Gazan officials—which is to say Hamas—that Israel had launched an air strike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, killing at least 500 patients and doctors. The New York Times’ initial headline, “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say,” became “At Least 500 Dead in Strike on Gaza Hospital, Palestinians Say,” which in turn morphed into “At Least 500 Dead in Blast at Gaza Hospital, Palestinians Say” with nary a correction note. The photo the Times used, of a destroyed building, showed a structure entirely unrelated to the hospital. The Associated Press, CNN, Reuters, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among others, also repeated the line that Israel had bombed a hospital. But it wasn’t true. Not only did Israel not strike the facility (it later emerged that a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket had caused the blast), but European intelligence reports suggest the explosion killed no more than 50. The Times eventually published an editor’s note, admitting it “should have taken more care with the initial presentation.” That was far more than Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) offered. The progressive congresswoman took the reporting and ran with it, egging on a crowd outside the Capitol—one that would soon rush into the building—by continuing to insist, despite all available information to the contrary, that Israel had attacked the hospital. When National Review’s John McCormack asked her about it in the halls of Congress, Tlaib refused to comment. She later released a statement in which she accused Israel of misleading the public and called for an “independent international investigation” into the incident. Why bother, when she’s already reached her conclusion?
• Early and absentee voting began on October 11 in Ohio. The most consequential vote is on an amendment to the state’s constitution that would enshrine abortion as a fundamental right. The amendment’s proponents present it as a way to ensure not only that abortion remains legal in the state but also that miscarriage care, for example, remains available. But the availability of miscarriage care is not in question, and the amendment’s reference to it is one of many deceptions. Others proceed from the amendment’s vague wording. It stipulates that the government may not “burden” an individual’s right to procure abortion, make “reproductive decisions,” and so on. The amendment also states that an abortion may not be prohibited, even late in pregnancy, if it is “necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.” The “burden” language threatens such long-standing features of Ohio law as waiting periods and parental notification. And the invocation of “health,” a term often interpreted nonliterally to include such things as emotional well-being, sets the stage for permitting abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Other possible outcomes could include taxpayer funding of abortion and even the removal of parental-consent and -notification for transgender surgeries, which could loosely be described as “reproductive decisions.” Ohioans who have not yet voted should vote no, and those who have should encourage their friends to do the same.
• “The soft bigotry of low expectations” aptly characterizes the attitudes of school officials who, upon confronting evidence of their failure to help students meet educational standards, abandon those standards in the belief that their students are not capable of meeting them. Rarely if ever do these grandees consider the possibility that they are to blame. So it is in Oregon, whose board of education voted last week to extend a pause on enforcing graduation standards in math, reading, and writing proficiency until at least the 2027–28 school year, on account of their allegedly discriminatory effect on “historically marginalized” students. The pause was introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, a time of widespread and extended school closures, especially in blue states. Data have since confirmed what many suspected would happen: The closures hurt student performance and increased racial gaps in learning. Oregon’s standards—for students, and for school-board members—ought to be raised.
• While politicians have been occupied with other problems—some external, such as the Middle East, and others self-imposed, such as the speakership elections—the bond market has been sounding the alarm about the federal deficit, which doubled from 2022 to 2023. The yield on a ten-year Treasury bond has increased from 3.5 percent in mid May to around 5 percent today. Higher bond yields reflect lower confidence that bondholders will be paid back in full. Bondholders are well aware that this year’s economic and political circumstances cannot possibly justify a doubling in the deficit. The economy has been growing, the unemployment rate is very low, the pandemic and its extra spending are in the past, no major new domestic programs have been created, and U.S. forces aren’t fighting any major wars. Revenue as a share of GDP is down from the record high of 2022, but it’s still high compared with the long-run average. Given those fundamentals, the bond market is worried. Fitch downgraded U.S. debt in August, citing long-run fiscal problems and Congress’s unwillingness to deal with them. When a crisis comes—and such crises almost by definition come suddenly and at a time no one predicts—politicians will find that they have to care.
• Campaigning in 2019, Joe Biden asked, “Are we a nation that embraces dictators and tyrants like Putin and Kim Jong-un?” Kim, for his part, responded by calling Biden a “fool of low IQ” and an “imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being.” This tickled President Trump, who tweeted the following: “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?” In a speech a few days ago, Trump again cited Kim: “He thinks Biden is a total—I won’t tell you the word he used, but a very bad word.” Is the former president in communication with Kim? In any case, Kim, like his father and grandfather before him, is a communist dictator, monstrous and anti-American. If you want to knock Joe Biden, you can surely join hands with someone else.
• Russian war crimes in Ukraine continue apace. An AP report began, “A Russian missile attack killed a ten-year-old boy and his grandmother Friday in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.” The report went on to include a haunting detail: “Associated Press reporters saw emergency crews pulling the boy’s body from the rubble of a building after the early morning attack. He was wearing pajamas with a Spider-Man design.” The United States has now supplied Ukraine with long-range tactical ballistic missiles. “Today I express special gratitude to the United States,” said Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, adding that the missiles had already “proven themselves.” For approximately a year and a half, the United States has been aiding the Ukrainians with money and matériel. Neither American nor NATO blood has been shed. If Putin conquers Ukraine, the cost to all of us will almost certainly go up.
• Addressing the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, Secretary-General António Guterres said it was important to “recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” since “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” The comment was sandwiched between a condemnation of Hamas and a statement that Palestinian grievances “cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.” Why, then, bring those grievances up, if not to echo Hamas rhetoric that Israel had this attack coming? Guterres and his colleagues within the U.N. secretariat and the organization’s agencies have spent the past two weeks trying to cast Israel’s war against Hamas as illegitimate. They have uncritically cited casualty numbers fed to them by Hamas and covered for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which has been caught numerous times distributing textbooks that glorify jihad. In other words, then, business as usual in Turtle Bay.
• In the latest round of Argentina’s presidential election, Javier Milei, the “anarcho-libertarian” who unexpectedly came out on top in August’s presidential primaries, was (almost as unexpectedly) beaten by Sergio Massa, the minister of the collapsing economy. Inflation is accelerating past 138 percent, the currency has plummeted, and the country cannot pay its debts. Milei came in comfortably ahead of the more conventional candidate of the center-right and will face Massa in a November 19 runoff. Milei would steer Argentina, a country impoverished by its state, in the free-market direction it badly needs. He is the safer choice.
• “Why You Don’t Need to Rake Leaves,” read a headline in the New York Times. For generations, people have thought that the raking of leaves was good for the yard—necessary for the yard, in fact. Scientists now, however, say otherwise. Many of us have long chafed at the chore of raking leaves, fall after fall. Now the science has spoken, and we say: Thank you.
Israeli Security, and Ours
T he horrors visited on Israelis by Hamas terrorists are unspeakable—but they should be spoken regardless. Here is one horror: Terrorists disemboweled a pregnant woman, ripped out her baby, killed the baby in front of the still-living mother, then killed the mother. Evil people have been committing such evils since the beginning of time. There is no new trick in the bag of savagery.
There is ample video of the savagery committed by Hamas. Some of it comes from the terrorists’ body cameras; some comes from the victims’ smartphones; some comes from other sources. At a military base, the Israel Defense Forces showed such video—43 minutes of it—to foreign journalists. Understandably, some of the journalists had trouble sitting through it.
Yet there are people in the world who deny Hamas’s atrocities. There are people who deny atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. There are always deniers, always. No amount of evidence will influence them. You have to let them go, really, and speak to the reasonable.
At this writing, Hamas has released four hostages. There are about 220 remaining. How to win their release? How to rescue them? Should they be written off as fatalities of war? No one can envy the people in authority, who have to wrestle with these questions and ultimately answer them. Israeli authorities must do so. U.S. authorities must do the same, since about ten of the hostages are American.
According to press reports, President Biden is restraining the Israeli government. Also according to press reports, Prime Minister Netanyahu is restraining the Israeli government. He and his team are figuring out what to do. Israel has resisted bursts of retaliation. The coming war may be a long and wide one. It is critical to get it right.
On October 25, Biden said, “Israel has the right, and I would add, responsibility, to respond to the slaughter of her people, and we will ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against these terrorists. That’s a guarantee.” It is a good guarantee. We Americans should hold our government to it.
The analogy of the octopus is old, but it is helpful. Hamas is a tentacle. Hezbollah is a tentacle. You could easily get up to eight. But the head is in Tehran: the Iranian dictatorship. In recent days, there have been 13 attacks on American forces by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. Twenty of our people have been injured.
Thursday night, in response to the daily attacks by Iran’s proxies, the U.S. executed air strikes against two facilities in Syria used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. In a statement, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that the “narrowly tailored” air strikes were “solely” intended “to protect and defend U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria.” “They are separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas,” Austin continued, “and do not constitute a shift in our approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict.” But at the United Nations earlier this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “The United States does not seek conflict with Iran. We do not want this war to widen. But if Iran or its proxies attack U.S. personnel anywhere, make no mistake: We will defend our people, we will defend our security—swiftly and decisively.” Let’s see it, then—with emphasis on “decisively.”
Some years ago, National Review’s Jay Nordlinger asked Charles Krauthammer the awful question: “Will Israel survive?” The survival of Israel, said Krauthammer, depends on two things: the will of the people to survive and the support of the United States. The will of Israelis, said Krauthammer, had been proven in the two intifadas. And the support of the American people was solid.
It still is. But there is cause for concern. A poll taken in mid October, by a combination of Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and Harris, found that young people, ages 18 to 24, were the least likely to support Israel. Indeed, 26 percent of them said that Israel should be “ended.” “You’ve got to be carefully taught,” wrote Oscar Hammerstein (in a South Pacific song). Evidently, Americans are being taught that Israel is a colonizer—illegitimate—and Palestinians their victims.
Many of the young will outgrow their misconceptions. Nonetheless, we could use better, and more balanced, teaching.
On October 23, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, landed in Tehran. The Iranian foreign ministry said that the “Russian–Iranian partnership” was discussed “in a traditionally trusting atmosphere.” Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, and others—Venezuela, Cuba, etc.—are all lined up. They are aligned in Ukraine, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Through the decades of the Cold War, the United States shouldered the burden of defending the Free World (as some of us did not blush to call it, capital letters and all). It is a heavy burden, sometimes thankless. But the alternative, for Americans and everyone else, is worse.