The Week | Henry Kissinger

◼ Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are sniping at each other. It would be productive if they focused on their actual policy differences. Instead, DeSantis is pretending that Haley is soft on Israel and illegal immigration, and Haley is needling DeSantis over his choice of footwear and pretending that he is against domestic energy production. DeSantis’s fight with Disney and his clumsy positioning on Ukraine provide a more fertile field for real debate about the candidates’ competing visions. Meanwhile, both of them could use the courage to sharpen and amplify their critiques of Donald Trump, if they are not just running for second place. Haley’s endorsement by Americans for Prosperity Action led the DeSantis camp to brand her as part of a “pro-open-borders, pro-jailbreak-bill establishment.” We understand that politics isn’t beanbag, but none of this seems helpful to the cause of providing Republican voters a basis upon which to choose a new leader.

◼ Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) thinks the country could be on the verge of a sandwich monopoly. In August, Subway agreed to be purchased by private-equity firm Roark Capital. Roark also owns Inspire Brands, which includes sandwich chain Jimmy John’s, and Focus Brands, which includes McAlister’s Deli. The Federal Trade Commission, as part of its big-is-bad approach to antitrust, is looking at blocking the sale. Warren applauded the FTC, saying that if Subway were owned by the same firm that owns Jimmy John’s and McAlister’s, it could create a “sandwich-shop monopoly.” There’s hardly a more competitive industry in America than the restaurant business, as anyone with access to a smartphone and the ability to type “sandwich” into a navigation app knows. How one could even theoretically have a monopoly on making sandwiches, something anyone over the age of five can manage, is difficult to comprehend. It’s no Wonder progressives’ attempts to rewrite antitrust law continue to go a-rye: Courts rightly view the consumer-welfare standard as just about the greatest thing since sliced bread.

◼ Israel’s war against Hamas has had a clarifying effect on the American political landscape. The conflict has revealed the incompatibility of the activist Left’s views toward Israel with those of center-left institutionalists. But the war has given a stress test to the American Right, too. The Daily Wire’s Candace Owens spent the weeks following the 10/7 massacre retailing some of the most ignorant and outrageous slanders against Israel. Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has defended Owens from her critics by claiming the massacre received “disproportionate” attention at the expense of American domestic affairs; he then produced shows about Spain and Ireland. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk went so far as to indulge all-but-medieval antisemitic tropes when he observed that the “philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.” These and other right-wing commentators maintain that their devout Christianity informs their commentary. But they are neither wise as serpents nor harmless as doves.

◼ The White House observed “Transgender Day of Remembrance,” during which press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the United States grieves for the 26 transgender Americans killed so far in 2023. Others speak of a “trans genocide.” But this persecution narrative has little evidence to support it. First, there’s the issue of scale. The Williams Institute estimates that 1.6 million people identify as transgender in the United States. As political scientist Wilfred Reilly noted on our website, this implies a homicide rate that rounds up to a homicide rate of 0.9 per 100,000 people. Blacks, by contrast, have a rate higher than 30. Second, it is not at all clear that these deceased individuals were, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it, “targeted and killed for living authentically and courageously.” Among the dead was a thief shot by a security guard, an armed activist killed by police during a shootout, a trans-identifying man killed in a murder-suicide by a romantic partner, and a trans-identifying woman killed by a driver who fled the scene. No doubt people who believe they were “born in the wrong body” face all kinds of challenges. The White House is, however, engaged in a propaganda campaign to bolster one side of the culture wars.

◼ The results of the Dutch elections on November 22 were clear evidence of popular discontent with mass immigration and the multiculturalist dogma that accompanies it. The election’s winner, with 37 out of 150 seats in the perpetually fragmented Dutch parliament, was the PVV, a right-wing party headed by Geert Wilders. Owing to Islamist threats, he has lived under heavy police protection for nearly 20 years. This experience has hardened his attitudes, and not for the better. He has called for the banning of the Koran and, as is often the case with Europe’s outsider politicians, is too “understanding” of Vladimir Putin. But Wilders will need allies if he is to form a government, and that will require him to moderate some of his positions. A veteran politician who is more pragmatic than he can sometimes seem, he may be helped by the strong showings by two other insurgent parties, one of which, tellingly, was born of discontent over destructive environmental regulation (a discontent Wilders shares). But whether or not he assembles a governing coalition, The Hague’s battered political establishment would do well to reflect on the message Dutch voters are sending.

◼ Yundi Li, from China, was one of the leading pianists in the world. He had a big international career. But, starting in October 2021, he was not heard in public. Why? Chinese authorities said that he had solicited a prostitute. (They have a habit of saying this about their critics, or other politically troublesome people.) The Chinese Musicians’ Association revoked Li’s membership. Suddenly, in October 2023, he was playing again: in Australia. What had happened in the first place? Maybe we will know someday. Totalitarian parties are often mysterious about their ways. They are capricious as well as cruel. When he was a young man in New York, Eugene D. Genovese, the late historian, belonged to the Communist Party. He was kicked out at age 20. When asked why in later years, Genovese would shrug and say, “I zigged when I should have zagged.”

◼ The Catholic website the Pillar confirmed an Associated Press report that Pope Francis has ordered the punishment of Cardinal Raymond Burke by evicting him from his Vatican apartment and withholding his stipend. Burke has been outspoken in criticizing some of Francis’s decisions. The pope has reacted by telling confidants that Burke has been a source of “disunity” in the church. The pope’s punitive measures against the highly respected Burke have caused dismay in many quarters. Why should Burke be so publicly punished for advocating orthodoxy and doctrinal continuity while the German bishops openly defy Pope Francis by backing the blessings of same-sex relationships and yet incur no penalty? The pope is right to treasure the unity of his flock; he should consider whether he himself is disturbing it.

◼ Bulletin from the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Urban Bird Division: It has come to our attention (thank you, New York Times) that birds are favoring certain urban areas because of the “structural racism” and “colonial perspective” of American society. Looking for an explanation for why warblers are more likely to be found in parks where trees are located than on streets where buildings predominate? It’s “the links between structural racism, pernicious landscape features such as urban heat islands, and impacts to biodiversity.” A UC Berkeley ecologist spoke to the Times of “oppression, residential segregation, gentrification and displacement, unjust zoning laws, [and] homelessness.” Whenever “a highway or rail line ripped through a community,” we have seen segregation between common yellowthroats and golden-crowned kinglets. We stand with all marginalized birds. Avian justice is environmental justice is social justice. #NoMoreJimCrow3.0 #BlackbirdLivesMatter

◼ In 1946, almost-19-year-old Eleanor Rosalynn Smith married Midshipman Jimmy Carter. Their relationship would propel her, after naval life and agribusiness, into local, then national politics. Mrs. Carter—she went by her middle name, first syllable pronounced “rose”—was a precedent-setting first lady. Unfortunately her precedent was questionable. There have been political first ladies since Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison. But even Eleanor Roosevelt did not presume to sit in on cabinet meetings as Rosalynn Carter did. This forwardness was a symptom of the praetorianization of the presidency, spreading the office’s manna to family and advisers. She should be remembered rather for her share in an exemplary marriage, advising her husband in private ways that were appropriate, and taking part in their activities during a long retirement. She died, age 96, with Jimmy, age 99, holding her hand. R.I.P.

◼ Charlie Munger was Warren Buffett’s deputy and closest confidant for over four decades. A native of Omaha, Neb., he dropped out of college to join the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. Later he would be graduated with honors from Harvard Law School after convincing the dean to let him in without an undergraduate degree. Munger was a successful investor in his own right before he joined forces with Buffett in the 1970s. Buffett credits Munger’s influence with modifying his investing style from merely trying to hunt for bargains to looking for stellar businesses with long-term value that could be had for fair prices. Munger was an admirer of Benjamin Franklin and was known for his own ability to pop off one-liners, e.g., “People calculate too much and think too little.” Buffett is outwardly cheerful and optimistic, while Munger was curmudgeonly—and while Munger was a Republican, Buffett is a Democrat. Their deep intellectual bond nevertheless led to one of the most successful and enduring partnerships in the history of American business. Dead at 99. R.I.P.

On the faculty at Harvard, the perch to which his brains and industry brought him, Kissinger was a Cold War liberal, of a “realist” bent (his doctoral dissertation had been on Metternich). But he also invited WFB to address his classes. This was from respect for WFB’s talents and, soon, gratitude for his friendship. But it was also astute politics: One never knew when a friend on the right might be useful. WFB indeed helped introduce Kissinger to Richard Nixon’s circle.

His record as Nixon’s national-security adviser, then as secretary of state, is the foreign-policy record of the Nixon administration. Nixon, intelligent and experienced, set his own course. But Kissinger approved, implemented, and, in professorial media turns, publicized it. The tilt to Pakistan, the opening to China, the Yom Kippur War and shuttle diplomacy, toppling Allende, Vietnam peace talks—all bore Kissinger’s fingerprints. Kissinger’s reading of the Cold War’s power balance and of America’s capabilities was meliorist and struck conservatives as defeatist. (WFB’s NR columns on Nixon’s trip to China were savage.) Kissinger thought he was doing the best in a bad world.

Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy in the GOP changed the party’s attitude, and the country’s. Reagan’s view of the Cold War, as he told an associate early on, was “We win and they lose.” But Kissinger kept his hand in, as an adviser and commentator—in Washington lingo, a wise man. One of his latest pieces of advice was among his least wise: He was a lifelong advocate of engagement with Communist China. He profited as a consultant, but the more important motive was pride: He could not bear to see his historic opening becoming a dead end. That was a tragedy he could not face.

When WFB retired as editor in chief of NR, Kissinger offered to throw him a dinner at his East Side river-view apartment. You make the guest list, he said. WFB invited all his youngest colleagues to hear the wise man’s tour d’horizon. Two affectionate gestures, two of many.

Dead at 100. R.I.P.