On the Right.

Partnering with The Saudis

NEW YORK, AUGUST 1

U.S.-saudi relations aren't easily parsed. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that the two countries have information about each other that they don't want publicized. In the exchange early in the week, the Saudis seemed to trump the Americans. Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said it was perfectly okay by him to release the 28 pages from the congressional investigation into the September 11 strike. It was President Bush who declined to authorize the release of those pages.

Why?

Because, he said, there's stuff in there that we don't want in general circulation because that would jeopardize our channels of communication -- perhaps some of the people who give us information, perhaps some of the methods we use to get information. The Saudi government was clearly teasing the Bush administration, with its show of we-have-nothing-to- hide. But its role is not all that easy, because the government does not want to give us back Omar al-Bayoumi. On this matter the Saudis are saying that we had extensive opportunity to interrogate Bayoumi and to prosecute him, if he had been in any way implicated in the September 11 attack. We let him go, he is back home, why should we want him yet again?

But Saudi openhandedness doesn't quite do it all. There is one datum that can't be made to go away: Fifteen of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the four airplanes on 9/11 were Saudis. From this dominating fact we quite naturally want to know what we can about the terrorists. How were they infected, how trained, how financed, how protected? What about fellow terrorists who didn't die on that mission in America? Where are they? Who is sheltering them?

The official explanation, of course, is that they were agents of Osama bin Laden, terrorists in the ongoing al-Qaeda enterprise. What the congressional investigation told us was that the intelligence community didn't have any way to predict exactly what would happen on September 11.

How to prepare ourselves? Is there a further precaution to take, beyond removing our shoes at airports?

That question brings us back to Saudi Arabia. Whatever the detours taken, it was Saudi money that financed the terrorists of 9/11, and we continue to learn that Saudi money is circulating through U.S. foundations and charities, financing mischievous activity. The Saudis had, in the attack on Riyadh in May, a taste of terrorism on their own soil. There are reports that Saudi officials are cracking down on security risks.

But Saudi Arabia is a mess. They're good at chopping the heads off people clearly guilty of high treason, but not so good at diligent measures to abort the gestation of such people. For all its wealth, Saudi Arabia is an incompetent, backward, bureaucratic, strategically illiterate rich lump. Tiny Qatar continues to sponsor al-Jazeera, the Goebbels of the Middle East. On Thursday, it broadcast one more message by Saddam Hussein urging -- more activity by al-Qaeda. More killing. What do the Saudis need to stanch that nosebleed?

Other Things About Marriage

NEW YORK, AUGUST 8

In the every-two-minutes bulletins on the sex/marriage/gay/religion wars, we detect wisps of mockery directed at conventional marriage with conventional aims. Those who are bent on introducing a little fun into the analyses tend almost always to use the word "procreation" with a faint sense of disdain. They tend to make the whole human life process sound rather like hard labor, which is appropriate to describe only one of the two episodes in the beginning of life: birth, but not conception. Hard labor faithfully describes one part of the third act, which is rearing the child. But attitudes can be skeptical, and derisive, as when a correspondent of AndrewSullivan.com introduces recondite bits of Vatican lore having to do with marriage and impotence, and asks such questions as, Is marriage continuingly sacred after the onset of impotence? etc., etc.

The dismissal of marriage as nothing more than that which is supposed to happen before children eventuate is sociology -- the taboo-lifting license given to newlyweds who have formalized mating arrangements. Although we don't think very much about it, the breeding of children is of course required for the perpetuation of the race. Mocking Swedish emphases on unburdened sex and birth control and free abortion, the late Malcolm Muggeridge quipped to a friend, "Just think of the good side of it. By the year 2050 there will be zero Swedes left!" That was high mockery, but in its own way a reminder that if the world is to go on, so also do people need to be generated to inhabit it. If there is nobody living, who will be left to inveigh against the neglect of the environment?

What more is wanted is attention devoted to the extra-biological uses of marriage:

-- When a child is born, something notoriously happens to the mother primarily, but also to the father. The romance of maternal love is suddenly there. The mother feels love for the child and exerts herself, in behalf of the child, to protect him/her. These qualities are of enormous importance in catalyzing, in the mother, faculties emotional, and spiritual.

-- Both the father and the mother undertake intuitively to acknowledge a sense of obligation. This begins with teaching the child to keep clean, and, if the child's interest in hygiene should lead to an interest in medicine, could extend to helping the child earn a medical degree. It is vital to discern here that such help and devotion as are given to the child are neither entirely "interested" nor "disinterested." Yes, one motive in sacrificing in order to send the child to medical school might be self-concern -- maybe when retirement happens, the affluent son or daughter might be able to help out. But the sweeping, unexamined, unheralded motive for helping the child is a sense of duty. The father and the mother show feelings of love and responsibility that are not equivalently evoked by any other relationship.

Yes, we love and venerate our parents, we try to help our friends, to love the poor, to give to the Red Cross. But it's not quite the same thing, is it? And one is permitted to wonder: What would society lose if the total sum of that care and love that are engendered by having children were lost to civilization?

If the above is true, is it also self-evident? We know that the composite impact of single-parent homes on children is huge. The poverty rate in single-parent homes is 400 percent of that for two- parent homes. Among long-term prison inmates, 70 percent grew up without a father in residence. There are comparable figures for illiteracy and drug use. The social problems we concern ourselves with in our mammoth federal programs would substantially end with the reconstitution of traditional family life.

There are always the exceptions. Gay couples who adopt children can show exemplary concern for them. But people who talk about marriage, and dismiss it with nothing more than perfunctory acknowledgment of the procreational arrangement, are not seeing through to the heart of the question.

Arnold's Hour?

NEW YORK, AUGUST 22

The scene of Arnold Schwarzenegger with Milton Friedman (no less) figuratively on his right, and George Shultz (no less) on his left, declaring his intention to run for governor of California, is heady conservative endorsement. For one thing, the contrast was vivid. The first announcement was done under the auspices of Jay Leno.

There was the distracting presence of Warren Buffett, sitting next to Mr. Shultz. Mr. Buffett is richer even than Arabian sheiks, but to the conservative community he is noticeable mostly for having endorsed high death taxes and capital-gains taxes. The fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is endorsed by the richest man in the world tells us very little about what Californians can hope to accomplish after Mr. Davis is ousted. But Friedman-Shultz is another matter. Mr. Friedman is the prime figure in the conservative pantheon in matters that have to do with economic growth and statist continence. Mr. Shultz is, after Henry Kissinger, the senior alumnus of conservative statecraft.

But why Schwarzenegger (hereinafter, Arnold, for convenience)? California conservatives have correctly dismissed any argument that he has gained his eminence by toiling in the vineyards of political thought. Comparisons with Ronald Reagan are mindless -- Reagan spent ten years developing his political thought before seeking the governorship. Arnold and Ronald have in common only that they were theatrical celebrities, their names and faces instantly recognized by the voters.

But Arnold is out of step with conservative thinking on social policies, most particularly the question of the rights of the unborn child. He is vigorously in favor of abortion, and it pays to remind oneself that neither Friedman nor Shultz is active in social conservatism. Richard Nixon once told a friend that he had learned from his own experience running for governor of California in 1962 that you can't win merely by appealing to conservatives. "But you can't win unless you do appeal to conservatives."

So what does Arnold have to offer to California conservatives?

He has primarily to offer his clean notoriety. He is the man who made it as an immigrant, radiates a pumped-iron health, made his urbane way into the Kennedy clan without taking vows of eternal servility, made and enhanced a considerable fortune by exploiting his physique and investing prudently -- and he nicely accommodates the fantasy that to survive the greyness of California life, you need a touch of Cinderella. The awful conundrums of California economics and political demography welcome a Hollywood ending. But to get that, you need to come up through the ranks of the initiated. If you hope for theatrical recovery, you can't achieve it by voting for Bustamante.

Everyone in the United States, it seems, has commented on the California scene. The insight of Jerry Brown warrants attention. Mr. Brown is a little screwy, but very bright, and did two terms as governor. To skeptics he said, "It's obvious Schwarzenegger is qualified. I mean, what does it take to become a governor? I've been there, I've known all the governors since Earl Warren's time. And basically, if you have above-average intelligence, you have common sense, and you can speak in front of a camera and to a crowd, you can govern the state. I mean, after all, the governing process includes the legislature, a very competent civil service, and all sorts of rules and regulations that guide the state on its way. The whole thing about experience is a canard."

There are the special difficulties of October. There will be no primary. And there is only one visible Democratic candidate, competing against three substantial Republicans. What force will bring unity? A proposal: All three Republican candidates who trail the leader in the polls two weeks before October 7 should agree to withdraw, in favor of the leader.

-- Universal Press Syndicate