San Francisco
I read several piles of magazines that
waited for me while I was in Tokyo. I will cover the issue of
Commentary that impressed me in later blogs.
The pile of New Republic's had only one commendable issue, June 27th. One op-ed and one article were appealing. Marty Peretz, the editor in chief is a uniquely gifted mind who is completely out of step with his magazine, for reasons that are unknown to me. Let him talk for himself:
“Impolitic 
by Martin Peretz
“It's a terrible risk in my environment to write anything positive about George W. Bush. When I do, my wife treats me as if I am a bit ill. My children (grown) are reluctant to introduce me to their pals. The phone stops ringing, except when there are nasty people on the other line. I get snubbed at dinner parties, or don't get invited at all. Some friends are less vindictive than others. These are the ones who humor me, apparently hoping that this is just a phase--"Rather like," said a professor of law at the University of Texas, "when you went off the deep end and supported aid to the Contras." I didn't remind her that the Sandinistas actually lost an internationally supervised election that was part of the formula for ending the Nicaraguan civil war.”
Marty, I know how you feel. I have frequently blasted at Lefty people: “Don't you know that Daniel Ortega has run for President of Nicaragua three times in fair elections and each time his defeat is greater?”
In the same issue of New Republic there is a good review by Thomas
Nagel of Law Without Nations?: Why Constitutional Government
Requires Sovereign States by Jeremy A. Rabkin. Nagel does a
brilliant job of explaining why an international court is an absurd
idea and why the WTO works. The former requires a consensus of moral
and social values as well as an agreement by the governed to be
governed. Nations can't do that for their people and certainly the
absurd group of nations in the UN doesn't represent anything. As
Nagel points out: if the UN headquarters were moved to Lagos,
Nigeria... no one would come. The UN has no meaning and no
constituency.
On the other hand, the WTO is an agreement that allows nations to act as a group to enforce a decision on one of its members after all members have agreed to the highly specific due process mechanisms of the WTO.