FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010 MICHAEL GERSON
about the two most important people in the world. At least to him. “Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other” recounts the arrival of his two daughters, Elise and Lina, from China, while telling the stories of other families changed by adoption.
Simon describes himself as skepti-
cal of transcendence but as taking part in a miracle. “My wife and I,” he says, “knew that Elise and Lina were our babies from the moment we received their postage-stamp portraits. Logical- ly, I know that’s not possible. But I also know that’s how my heart, mind and body . . . reacted to their pictures. . . . I would take the photo out of my wallet in the weeks before we left to get each of our girls and hold it against my lips to whisper, ‘We’re coming, baby.’ ” It is an unexpected form of human
affection — meeting an unrelated stranger and, within moments, being willing to care for her, even to die for her. The relationship results from a broken bond but creates ties as strong as genetics, stronger than race or tribe. It is a particularly generous kind of pa- rental love that embraces a life one did not give. International adoption has its crit- ics, who allege a kind of imperialism that robs children of their identity. Si- mon responds, “We have adopted real, modern little girls, not mere vessels of a culture.” Ethnicity is an abstraction —often an admirable abstraction, but not comparable to the needs of a child living in an orphanage or begging in roving bands. Adopted Chinese girls are refugees from a terrible oppres- sion — a one-child policy that Simon calls “one of the great crimes of his- tory.” Every culture or race is out- weighed when the life of a child is placed on the other side of the bal- ance. It is one of the noblest things about America that we care for children of other lands who have been cast aside. Simon recalls his encounter with an immigration officer in Chicago when bringing Elise to America: “ ‘When you cross that line,’ he said, ‘your little girl is a citizen of the United States.’ Then he put one of his huge hands gently under our daughter’s chin and smiled. ‘Welcome home, sweetheart,’
Miracles from abroad S
cott Simon — the sonorous voice of NPR’s “Weekend Edition” — has written a short, tender book
KLMNO
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CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
he told her.” This welcome to the world is one of the great achievements of his- tory. After millennia of racial and eth- nic conflict across the world, resulting in rivers of blood, America declared that bloodlines don’t matter, that dig- nity is found beneath every human disguise. There is no greater embrace of this principle than an American family that looks like the world. Instead of undermining any culture,
international adoption instructs our own. Unlike the thin, quarrelsome multiculturalism of the campus, mul- tiethnic families demonstrate the power of affection over difference. They tend to produce people who may look different from the norm of their community but see themselves as just normal, just human. Every adoption involves a strange providence, in which events and choices are random yet decisive. “Those of us who have been adopted,” says Simon, “or have adopted or want to adopt children, must believe in a world in which the tumblers of the universe can click in unfathomable ways that deliver strangers into our lives.”
When a columnist has a conflict of interest, he should disclose it. My wife, born in South Korea, was adopted by an American family at the age of 6 and welcomed into a Midwestern commu- nity. I first saw her when we were both 10, and I have never recovered. Years ago, we visited the orphanage where she lived in Inchon — orderly, cheer- ful, but still with dirt floors. The direc- tor said she remembered my wife. We were skeptical. But the woman went into a storage room and produced a slip of paper — the police record relat- ing how On Soon had been found as a newborn abandoned in the market, a note with her name pinned to her blanket.
Life is a procession of miracles, but this one stands out to me. A 6-year-old girl walks off a plane in America, speaking no English, loved by a family she had never met, destined to marry, of all people, me. A series of events that began in a Korean market created my family, my sons, my life. And now my Italian, Jewish, English, Korean boys view themselves as normal, un- exceptional Americans. Which they are.
michaelgerson@washpost.com POST PARTISAN
Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at
washingtonpost.com/postpartisan
RUTH MARCUS
What Boehner got right
I was pretty tough on House Mi-
nority Leader John Boehner the oth- er day, and I don’t regret a word, but the Ohio Republican made one im- portant suggestion that’s worth highlighting. It’s about tax expendi- tures. These are just what they sound
like — spending programs disguised as tax breaks. The annual cost is ap- proaching $1.2 trillion, according to the Center for American Progress. That is half of what the government brings in through the tax code and twice the entire budget for non- security discretionary spending. This expansion has occurred in
part because Boehner’s colleagues have been happy to embrace new tax expenditures — these are tax cuts, af- ter all, and therefore, by Republican definition, always good — that they would denounce if accomplished through direct spending. Yet tax expenditures, once em- bedded in the code, are harder to re- move because they don’t have to go through the annual appropriations process. This is government spend-
ing on auto-pilot. And because most are structured as deductions rather than as credits, tax expenditures are worth more to wealthier people, who pay higher marginal tax rates. “We need to take a long and hard
look at the undergrowth of deduc- tions, credits and special carve-outs that our tax code has become,” Boehner said in his speech Tuesday to the City Club of Cleveland. “And, yes, we need to acknowledge that what Washington sometimes calls ‘tax cuts’ are really just poorly dis- guised spending programs that ex- pand the role of government in the lives of individuals and employers.” Boehner cited the “tax extenders” bill now making its way through Congress. “There’s everything in this bill: the research and development tax credit, special expensing rules for the film industry, an extension and modification of a tax credit for steel industry fuel, the mine rescue team training tax credit, and tax incen- tives for investment in the District of Columbia,” he said. “Are they worth it? Many are. But we just go ahead and extend all of them temporarily — and usually right at the last minute — so Washington can continue pan- dering to the loudest voices instead of implementing the best ideas.” I can’t believe I’m saying this, but bravo, Mr. Leader.
The last refuge of a liberal
MARK RALSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Maria Venus Raj models her evening dress in the Miss Universe Pageant.
Steering clear of anything ‘major major’
by Alexandra Petri O
n Monday night, Miss Philippines failed to become Miss Universe. Some attribute this to the fact that
when she was asked about mistakes she’d made, she responded, “You know what, sir, in my 22 years of existence, there is nothing major major, any prob- lem, that I have done in my life, because I am very confident with my family with the love that they are giving to me.” Her remark caught fire — Major Ma- jor was trending on Twitter for days. When I first heard it, I thought it was
a reference to that character from “Catch-22.” “Good,” I thought. “Major Major de-
serves more credit.” But when I figured it out, I approved
even more. The concept of Miss Universe has al-
ways troubled me. I think it’s presump- tuous of us to declare a beauty queen “Miss Universe” before we are absolutely certain that there is no intelligent life anywhere. Miss Teen South Carolina cer- tainly did a good job indicating that about Earth in 2007, with her rambling, “like-such-as”-rich insistence that “U.S. Americans” couldn’t find things on maps because “some people out there in our nation don’t have maps.” We do, however, have our skill sets. Someone once told me that there are seven types of intelligence. I missed out on the evening-wear and talent-portion types because I was busy acquiring the type of intelligence that makes it diffi- cult for me to watch “The Tudors” with- out yelling at the screen, so I don’t have much experience with beauty pageants. But I respect those who do. Back to Miss Philippines, whose an- swer intrigued me. Miss Philippines — Maria Venus Raj — and I are the same age; she majored in journalism, and here I am at a newspaper. Our lives are practically identical. How is it that she has no regrets or major, major prob- lems? Personally, I have lots of regrets. I lie around in the evenings bent and bro- ken with remorse. Sometimes, late at night, I call strangers to apologize for nothing in particular. Maybe she knows something I don’t! The more I contemplated Raj’s re- mark, with its connections linking youth, lack of regret and familial sup- port, the more it reminded me of a re- cent New York Times Magazine article arguing that 20-somethings exist in a bi- zarre twilight zone, somewhere between dependency and adulthood, tethered to our homes and parents by an umbilical bank balance. We are confident with our families, with the love that they are giv- ing to us. So we sit around pondering deep questions such as whether or not our universe is inside a black hole and coming up with convincing reasons not
he last U.S. brigade combat team de- parted Iraq on Aug. 18. While Presi- dent Obama says 50,000 U.S. troops will remain there through December 2011 to train the Iraqi army, in reality the U.S. units are focused more on packing up tons of equipment. This is so, as one colo- nel explained to me this month, “we can shut the lights out and close the door be- hind us.” The State Department is now the lead
agency shaping the future of U.S.-Iraqi re- lations. “We are fully prepared to assume our responsibilities,” spokesman P.J. Crowley declared on Aug. 19. Beyond op- erating the largest U.S. embassy in the world, in Baghdad, U.S. diplomats will also open consulates in Iraqi Kurdistan and Basra. Missing in the post-occupation plan, however, is any permanent U.S. rep- resentation in Najaf, perhaps the most important city in the new Iraq. Najaf is home to two holy shrines and is the center of Shiite jurisprudence, not just in Iraq but for all Muslims. Only 10 per- cent of the world’s Muslims are Shiite, but that fraction represents more than 100 million people. Between the Mediterra-
In Najaf, our missing consulate T
by Michael Rubin
nean Sea and Iran, the proportion of Shi- ites in the Muslim population rises to 50 percent; in Iraq, because of the flight of many Sunnis after the fall of Saddam Hus- sein, the proportion approaches 70 per- cent. Not all Shiites are the same. In Najaf,
Quietist strains of Shiism dominate and advocate greater separation of mosque and state. From the Iranian city of Qom, ayatollahs promote a vision of Shiism more in line with the Islamic republic’s revolutionary ideology. Freed from Sad- dam Hussein’s yoke, religious life in Najaf is thriving. Security is no longer the prob- lem it was in 2004. And the economy is booming. After oil, religious tourism cen- tered in Najaf is Iraq’s most important in- dustry and brings in more hard currency than agriculture. A new international airport ferries pil- grims — mostly Iranian — into Najaf. There is no better place outside Iran for diplomats to interact with ordinary Irani- ans across socioeconomic divides because everyone, rich or poor, wants to make a trip once prohibited by war and politics. New hotels open constantly. Diners com- pete for seats in the city’s new restaurants. Alas, Iranian money underwrites most of the construction. Juxtaposing Najaf’s con-
to apply for jobs. We have no major ma- jor problems. We have no regrets be- cause we have never really had to, well, do anything. Raj’s remark could become the manifesto of our so-called boomer- ang generation. Maybe that’s wrong, though. After all,
we 20-somethings have a peculiar ca- pacity to do lots of things without ap- pearing to do anything. I have friends who have been holed up indoors for months doing nothing but acquiring Twitter followers. Even Jesus, when he wanted new followers, had to leave the house occasionally. These days, all you need is someone to tell people to follow you. It’s like the lemmings in front shouting to the lemmings at the back of the line. And we’re all contributing to the national discourse. (Speaking of which, follow @petridishes!) Look at Facebook groups. “Why have you been sitting inside using the Inter- net for the past 36 hours?” our parents ask. “We’re attending a protest!” we ex- plain. That’s how protests work these days. You just click something. If you’re really feeling radical, you can post an animated graphic of a burning flag on your profile page. But why go to that ex- treme? Older people are always terrified when they see Facebook groups with more than 30 members. They have this antiquated notion that if we ever got worked up enough, we might show up somewhere in person. True, we might, but only to check in on Foursquare. Somehow, I’ve always seen this as a step in the right direction. Look how much we’ve accomplished without actu- ally “doing” anything! We popularized that Cee-Lo song! We almost ironically elected Basil Marceaux! Why stop now? No regrets! Let’s push forward — or, rather, stay put! Miss Philippines’s state- ment is going to be my new creed. Of course, Raj isn’t sitting on some couch somewhere, conscientiously ob- jecting to a job in finance. She is rich enough in the seven intelligences to be the fourth runner-up to Miss Universe. She has a job working as an information assistant at the DENR Region IV, what- ever that is. But the essence of pageants revolves not around doing but around being. Exciting and fulfilling as the lives of contestants may be, these women are graded not on their apparent capacity to lay bricks or redesign electric grids but on existential qualities such as Bone Structure and Loving One’s Fellow Man With Enthusiasm. We 20-somethings get that. We’ve been applying it to our lives for years. True, we can’t all be Miss Universe — or even the fourth runner- up. But we can stop doing things. “Do- ing” actual “things” only gives you re- grets. The Major Major kind.
The writer is a member of the editorial page staff. Her e-mail address is
petria@washpost.com.
iberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their re- calcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal as- cendancy (James Carville) into a full re- treat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” peo- ple, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” That’s a polite way of saying: clinging
L
to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary re- act to an obstreperous citizenry that in- sists on incorrect thinking. Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president. Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb il- legal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism. Opposition to the most radical redef- inition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in Califor- nia? Homophobia. Opposition to a 15-story Islamic cen- ter and mosque near Ground Zero? Is- lamophobia. Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s ex- cuse for the Democrats’ failure of gov- ernance: Who can possibly govern a na- tion of racist, nativist, homophobic Is- lamophobes? Note what connects these issues. In
every one, liberals have lost the argu- ment in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social- democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero. What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the
bigotry charge, the trump that pre- empts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the con- trary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spon- taneous, leaderless and perfectly natu- ral (and traditionally American) reac- tion to the vast expansion of govern- ment intrinsic to the president’s proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos dis- guising their antipathy to a black presi- dent by cleverly speaking in economic terms. Then came Arizona and S.B. 1070. It seems impossible for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that: (a) illegal immigration should be illegal, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform, i.e., amnesty, (c) every country has the right to determine the composition of its im- migrant population. As for Proposition 8, is it so hard to
see why people might believe that a sin- gle judge overturning the will of 7 mil- lion voters is an affront to democracy? And that seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fun- damental of all social institutions is something other than an alleged hatred of gays — particularly since the opposite-gender requirement has char- acterized virtually every society in all the millennia until just a few years ago? And now the mosque near Ground
struction boom with the lack of construc- tion cranes over Baghdad’s skyline says as much about Iraq’s future as it does about the failure of both U.S. assistance and Iraq’s central government. As both an American official in 2004 — when I served as a political adviser in the coalition provisional government— and an American visitor in 2010, I was wel- comed in the Shrine of Imam Ali, Najaf’s holiest. In January, I visited one grand ayatollah and the offices of two others. Each said he welcomed dialogue with Americans. Indeed, Adnan Zurfi, the elected governor of Najaf, spent his exile years in Dearborn, Mich. Nevertheless, Shiites remain uncertain about American intentions. During a Feb- ruary 1991 campaign stop, President George H.W. Bush famously called on “the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dic- tator, to step aside.” The Shiites listened and rose up, but Bush had second thoughts and remained aloof as Hussein’s tanks and helicopter gunships crushed the revolt. Thousands of Shiites were cast into mass graves. Perception means more than reality. In every Shiite seminary, cler- gy and students asked specifically why they should ever again trust the United
States after the 1991 abandonment. They accuse the White House, the State Depart- ment and the Defense Department of per- sistent bias. This narrative, encouraged by Iran, is not fair to the thousands of Americans who sacrificed life and limb to give Najaf freedom in 2003 and again the following year, when U.S. troops helped rid the city of Iranian-backed militias. But the free- dom enjoyed in Najaf will not matter if the United States has no diplomats per- manently in Shiite Islam’s Vatican City, ready to make Washington’s case; Amer- ica’s enemies will define our legacy. In his address to Muslims from Cairo last summer, Obama declared that he seeks “a new beginning between the Unit- ed States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” and that the United States “will support a secure and united Iraq as a part- ner, and never as a patron.” To more than half of Iraq’s population, and 90 percent of Iran’s population, the president’s words will remain empty unless we sustain a continued outreach to the Shiite world.
The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Zero. The intelligentsia is near unani- mous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two- thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of con- nection between Islam and radical Is- lam, a proposition that dovetails per- fectly with the Obama administration’s pretense that we are at war with noth- ing more than “violent extremists” of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief. Those who reject this as both ri- diculous and politically correct (an ad- mitted redundancy) are declared Is- lamophobes, the ad hominem du jour. It is a measure of the corruption of
liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a color- ful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork- wielding mobs brimming with “antipa- thy toward people who aren’t like them” — blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims — a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, “just downright mean”? The Democrats are going to get beat- en badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just be- cause Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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