As regular readers know, a couple of months ago, I moved to London. Unfortunately, for practical reasons — mostly involving the legal transport of our dog, Cody — my wife was not able to join me right away. Knowing that, and knowing that my new friends in London could not always be entertaining me at the pub — though several have made valiant efforts — I decided to undertake some long-intended reading.

For starters, I picked up a copy of the Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes.

At 1,022 pages and weighing about 5 pounds, it was a heavy (literally) piece of reading, but the Holmes Canon (as true Holmes experts call the collected works) was one work of literature I had long wanted to complete.

And since almost the moment of my arrival, it has been my companion. On evenings when I wanted to get out for a quiet dinner, for example, Holmes and Watson came along. They’ve been along to the pub and the coffee shop and even taken the round trip with me to Coventry and Milton Keynes.

Tonight, I finished it.

I had read some Holmes in the past. Everyone, I think, ought to be required to read Sign of Four and Hound of the Baskervilles in a literature class somewhere along their educational path. But I had never before consumed all of the tails. And certainly, I had never done so on London.

Reading Holmes so soon after coming to London turned out to be a great way to immerse myself in the London of the Victorian era. And to a great degree, the London that was built up in the time of Holmes is still very much the one that I live in today.

Even now, Thames water have only begun replacing the Victorian sewer system. My own flat is in a converted Victorian townhouse built on one of the most important and oldest streets in north London.

One day, after reading my Holmes through a cold, grey weekend morning, the sun emerged, so I went down to Baker Street and visited the Sherlock Holmes Museum. At the time Conan Doyle was first publishing the Holmes stories, 221B Baker Street was the world’s most famous false address. Today, it stands just over the road from the Baker Street tube station, and just yards from the lovely Regent Park. In Holmes’ day, it would have been further down, closer to hustle of Oxford Street. No matter. The museum was interesting. And if nothing else, I learned that Mrs. Hudson’s house and the rooms taken by the good doctor and the eccentric detective were each a good bit smaller than I had envisioned.

The Sherlock Holmes Statue at Baker Street Tube Station in London.
Credit: fede_gene88 via Flickr.

Still, I kept reading. Through all 56 short stories and 4 novels.

So much literary criticism has been penned about the Canon, that I won’t pretend to try and contribute. I will say that many of Conan Doyle’s stories are masterpieces. But as one would expect, as he got later in life, the stories became a bit more predictable and formulaic. Even so, I can’t point to a single story that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy. And there were many that were absolutely enthralling.

I think my favorite element was the characters of Holmes and Watson themselves. Conan Doyle graced them both with considerable wit and the romanticized grace of an era that was overflowing with it. Watson was especially compelling: the dogged, frustrated writer who over thirty years made his friend the most famous detective in all the world, and kept working his way through the notes in his Despatch Box at the bank near Charing Cross, right up until 1914.

I don’t know how long I’ll live in London. Perhaps for many years. But I am sure that thanks to my time spent with Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson during my first weeks here, whenever I look around, I’ll see fleeting bits of their London wherever I turn.

UPDATE: My wife tells me that two Holmes movies are in the works. I’ll do a little digging on them tomorrow when the sun comes up.

The U.S. Senate has been called “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” Over it’s history, it has conducted long, in-depth debates over complex and tumultuous issues.

Indeed, that’s just what the Founders intended. In setting Senate terms at six years, James Madison and the other framers of the Constitution wanted to create a legislative body that would be generally unaffected by the popular whims of the moment. They reasoned — correctly — that the House of Representatives would be more responsive owing to its members being compelling to stand election more frequently.

But the days of the great and thoughtful debates between men like Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun are long behind us, and the Senate of today seems to most closely resemble a daily playground fight.

This week, eminent columnist Bob Novak, who has been covering the Senate since the Kennedy presidency, turned his attention to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s use of a previously arcane procedure known as “Filling the Tree” to stymie debate. Novak could have selected a dozen other such tactics, the threat of which in years past would have forced Senators to find another solution, lest they demonstrate in public a terrible breakdown of the Senate’s historic comity.

For while the Senate has been the home of great debate, it has also been the birthplace of great compromise (like this one, for example). Senators in ages past used to forge deep friendships with one another that transcended partisan labels. When all else failed, there were always a few who could sit down quietly and look for a solution to a thorny problem.

But today’s Senators, surrounded as they are by all-too-often sycophantic staffers, lobbyists and donors, don’t have the incentive to form those relationships. Meanwhile, the pursuit of media appearances and campaign funds has dramatically limited the amount of social time that members spend with one another.

The result? A breakdown of dialogue, both official and unofficial. Leaders on both sides use the Senate’s rules to score political points rather than finding ways to shape important legislation.

But the worst part, as Novak observes, is that the rest of us are either too apathetic or too ill-information to care. Behavior that would have sparked outrage in the past barely registers a footnote in most daily newspapers.

It strikes me that this is an area where we bloggers could really help. To be sure, most bloggers are strong partisans, but surely we can hold our own party leaders to account when they behave in a way that disgraces the institution in which they serve. Because — and let’s be honest here — if the Senate is in a death spiral, as James says, there is more than enough blame to go around.

A few weeks ago, when the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright first hit the front pages, I wrote a post defending Senator Obama. I argued that it was unfair to hold the Senator responsible for what his Pastor might have said from the pulpit. Cam and Jim argued vociferously that the Senator’s failure to break from his pastor suggested bad judgment.

On Monday, as the whole world knows, Rev. Wright gave a speech and answered questions at the National Press Club, in which he repeated and defended his most bizarre and offensive utterances. He was joined by a cast of hundreds, including representatives of the Nation of Islam, anxious to get behind his delusional, racist and hateful views.

Yesterday, Cam published a powerful and personal post just below. And if you haven’t read it, you really must do so at once.

Cam’s post got me thinking and reflecting on my earlier defense of Senator Obama (one I’ve repeated, by the way, to incredulous looks from friends over the past few weeks.) For me, this is the central point of Cam’s post:

I’m starting to wonder if your comments distancing yourself from Reverend Wright are really sincere. I’m also wondering if you were really that close with him to begin with. I’m wondering a lot of things about you, but it boils down to one concern: are you lying to us now, or were you lying to us all along about Reverend Wright? Either way, it would make you the worst kind of politician. You know the stereotype: slimy, oozing with contempt for the voters, willing to say anything to get elected. The exact opposite of how you present yourself, basically.

And I don’t know how you get beyond that Senator. You’re either A) the worst judge in character the world has ever seen or B) another lying politician who just wants to get elected and thinks Americans have the intelligence of tree stumps. Either way, when it comes to the content of your character… you fail. You could have walked out of that church at any point over the past twenty years. You could have used your big speech in Philadelphia to put to rest this issue, not claim the Reverend Wright as a member of your family. Because of your failure of character, you’re now merely following the conventional political wisdom instead of exhibiting true leadership and principle.

Having reflected on this, and heard Rev. Wright’s expanded views on Monday, my own concern is actually somewhat different. I’m now wondering if Barrack Obama is a racist the way his pastor evidently is.

Let me step back for a second.

The speech that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered in Washington in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963 is justifiably one of the most famous ever given. In it, he articulates his vision for race relations in America. The central passage won’t be unfamiliar to anyone:

Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

It’s this last point that has always had the strongest, most emotional impact on me. “They will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” Dr. King said. For me, Dr. King’s ideal was simple and wonderful: that race would, someday, simply no longer be a factor. Some have called this the dream of a colorblind America.

At the time that Dr. King delivered his speech, white America had a long way to. In the speech, he focuses on the south, but the race riots of the later 1960s and 1970s revealed divisions in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Washington and almost every major city across the country.

I’d like to think that we’ve come a long way, but, to be sure, we haven’t achieved Dr. King’s dream.

For that, I increasingly point the finger at people like Dr. Wright, Al Sharpton, and others who try to channel anger and leverage hate and fear for their own personal gain. For me, they aren’t just holding back progress. They are actively contributing to a culture of racism that they claim to deplore. They aren’t after equality. And they are openly hostile to Dr. King’s dream that “little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” By implication, Dr. Wright and his ilk want to return America to the days of separation.

For me, Senator Obama seemed like just the opposite. Even though his political record suggests that he is a conventional liberal, his rhetoric was soaring and hopeful. His stark repudiation of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s approach to campaigning — refusing to campaign as a black man and instead propounding a vision of hope for all Americans regardless of race — was and is very appealing to me.

So it is, therefore, exceedingly difficult to resolve these views which Senator professes with his decision to sit for twenty or more years in the pews in front of a man who seems so full of hate.

On this basis, Cam wonders if Senator Obama is being insincere in his views or lying about his relationship with Rev. Wright.

Let’s consider, briefly, the implications of both possibilities.

If Senator Obama is being insincere, then we can assume that he shares his pastor’s views, at least on some level, but by definition, it’s impossible to know to what degree. That leaves me in a troubling quandary, because I certainly don’t want to put a paranoid hate-monger in the White House. (And to be clear, I’m not saying that he is. Just that it might be an open question.)

If Senator Obama is lying, and he contrived the depth of his relationship with Rev. Wright as a political convenience, perhaps to ingratiate himself with the black community in Chicago, his claim to be a “different kind of candidate” is revealed to be a simple falsehood as well.

In either circumstance, I am compelled admit that my earlier defense of the Senator was a mistake.

In the practical world of politics, however, Cam might be right when he suggests with a touch of irony that “we’ll be too distracted by American Idol and the price of gasoline to remember any of this come November.”

I certainly hope not. This episode may provide our first window into the real Barrack Obama, the man who might be our President. We would do ourselves a grave injustice if we manage to overlook it.

UPDATE: The first thing Mike Huckabee has said in this campaign that I agree with:

“[Obama’s] campaign is not being derailed by his race, it’s being derailed by a person who doesn’t want him to prove that we have made great advances in this country,” Huckabee told reporters. … “Jeremiah Wright needs for Obama to lose so he can justify his anger, his hostile bitterness against the United States of America,” Huckabee said.

Well said, Governor.

For the last couple days, I attended a conference that involved a number academics. Listening to the discussion got me thinking: Has academics become to specialized?

Not too long ago, I read the excellent book, How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Among other things, it focuses on Scotland during the Enlightenment, and it reminded me how great thinkers of that era were not specialists. The most famous, of course, is Leonardo da Vinci. He was a painter, inventor, scientist and mathematician. As such, he was aware of the many other great thinkers of his age.

Like Da Vinci, famed father of modern economics, Adam Smith, was an enlightenment era academic. But he famously spent huge amount of his time in the coffee houses of Edinburgh and Glasgow exchanging ideas with the greatest minds of his age from a wide range of disciplines.

Mutli-disciplinary expertise wasn’t limited to Smith and Da Vinci. Surgeons were naturalists. Geologists were moral and natural philosophers. Lawyers were interested in physics and chemistry. (Check out this list for many more examples.)

As such, the great thinkers were constantly challenged by the best ideas from other disciplines. Myopia induced by specialization was impossible.

Over the last few days, I listened to hours of academic presentations. Only once did a speaker suggest looking to other disciplines for guidance. And his remarks, it seemed, were met with skepticism among the assembly.

Why shouldn’t the principles that underly physics or philosophy or psychology impact the theory and practice of communications? It seems to me that it should. And it seems to me that professors of all stripes could benefit from looking beyond their own fields a little more often.

I had some time to myself last evening and didn’t feel like working, so, for reasons that aren’t important here, I embarked on bit of research.

I was interested in discovering where in the UK my family last called home before crossing the Atlantic to the New World. I wasn’t terribly interested in doing a full genealogy in one evening — and didn’t really want my evening research project to become an on-going burden — so I focused on my paternal descendants, the ones responsible for my last name.

I began with enough knowledge to take me back to the American civil war. And, because my civil-war era descendant was an officer in the Confederate Army, I knew from the regimental history that he hailed from Brunswick County, VA. So, I started Googling.

I wasn’t expecting much.

But thanks to others who have made genealogy their hobby, and then published their findings online using services like ancestry.com, I quickly found a great deal of information.

Within minutes, I had identified my line of anscestors back to a John Manson, who lived in York County, VA around 1700. And I was further able to determine that his father also lived in York County, VA and was a land owner who married one Elizabeth Chapman, but I wasn’t able to determine his first name.

Interestingly, I found two descendants named Thomas Manson. The first was born in 1757, and his son, Thomas James, was born in 1804. (My full name is Thomas Marshall Manson.)

Seemingly at a dead-end, I discovered that the fine folks at Virtual Jamestown have been busy putting their records online. While they don’t have court records done yet (which would have been the most helpful resources), they do have a searchable database of indentured servants who came from Britain the New World between 1654 and 1686.

I ran a search.

And I found one Thomas Manson, who came to Virginia as an indentured servant from the English port of of Bristol in 1674.

Now, Manson is Scottish name, and the Mansons were a sept, or division, of the Gunn clan. According to a couple of sites that specialize in heraldry, the Mansons come from Caithness, in extreme northern Scotland. By the census of 1881, Mansons were spread all over Scotland. Most remained in the north, but significant pockets had come south to Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s reasonable to assume that after the English civil war that drove so many Scots to the New World, Mansons were, even then, coming down from the Highlands.

In 1674, most ships to Virginia started their journeys in London. But if one wanted to get from Scotland — most likely Glasgow — to the New World, traveling to London would have been difficult and expensive. Instead, it’s far more likely that a Scot setting off for Virginia would take passage by ship down the coast to a port like Bristol.

So, given the continued use of Thomas as a first name down through the generations, it’s not an unreasonable guess that the Thomas Manson who came to Virginia in 1674 as an indentured servant was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather.

Unfortunately, even that conclusion doesn’t answer my question. I still don’t know where Thomas Manson came from. Did he come down the coast as I’ve assumed? Or did he live in Bristol or even somewhere else? And if did come down the coast from Scotland, where in Scotland did he live? And why did he leave?

Those questions will be left, I suspect, in the cloud of history. But I’ve written all of this for three reasons: First, to memorialize my research. Second, to testify, once again, to the power of the Internet. And third, to thank all of the real genealogical researchers who spent days determining their family trees and then had the generosity to publish their work online.

All in all, it was an interesting and fun way to spend a couple of hours, and I’m glad I did. Whether or not my conclusion about the first Thomas Manson is correct, I learned a lot.

I missed it yesterday, so here at On Tap, we’ll be celebrating it belated style. To wit: If we can find a paratrooper today, we’ll be buying two beers instead of one. (HT: James Joyner)

Get the details, and a great post about it, over at Blackfive.

In the past, I have expressed despair at the slow decline of the Royal Navy, the proud force that once dominated the world’s oceans, keeping them safe for commerce.

Which is why I was glad to read last week that the Royal Navy has signed contracts for two new aircraft carriers, to be christened the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales.

The carriers will come in at 65,000 tons, making them a bit smaller than the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz class flat tops, but their size will make them sufficient to operate F-35, fixed wing Joint Strike Fighter, instead of relying on VSTOL Harriers and helicopters. Their size also makes them the largest ships, by displacement, ever to wear the White Ensign.

This is a huge step forward for the Royal Navy. The only question now is whether the fleet can keep enough frigates and destroyers in service — in light of recent budget cuts — to put a respectable task force to sea.

There have been speech writers — also known as ghost writers — as long as there have been important principals who lacked the time, inclination or talent to compose their own words.

Michael Gerson and Matthew Scully, both former speech writers for President Bush and others, have demonstrated that they are among the best of their generation. Both are brilliant and insightful. And both have a gift — a divine endowment to give voice to ideas.

I haven’t had the privilege of meeting either one of them. But I have read their works with relish. Scully is the author of the phenomenal book, Dominion: The Power of Man, The Suffering of Animals, and The Call to Mercy. Gerson writes a regular column for the Washington Post and contributes to a variety of intellectual magazines. He is also soon to release a book of his own, Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America’s Ideals.

And it’s Gerson’s impending book that has brought them both to the front page of today’s Washington Post.

“Bush’s Muse Stands Accused,” the headline blares.

He has been hailed as the best White House speechwriter since Kennedy’s Theodore Sorensen, the muse behind President Bush’s most famous phrases, the moral conscience of the West Wing. But now Michael J. Gerson is accused by a former colleague of taking credit for words he did not write.

According to Matthew Scully, who worked with him for five years, Gerson is not the bard of Bushworld but rather a “self-publicizing” glory hog guilty of “foolish vanity,” “sheer pettiness” and “credit hounding.” In Scully’s account, Gerson did not come up with the language that made him famous. “Few lines of note were written by Mike,” Scully says, “and none at all that come to mind from the post-9/11 addresses — not even ‘axis of evil.’ “

Boil it all down, and Scully and Gerson seem to arguing over whether this phrase was Scully’s or that expression was Gerson’s.

But in so doing, they’re forgotten the first rule of ghost-writing. After the words leave your typewriter, PC or legal pad, they are no longer your words. They are your principal’s words, and his (or hers) alone, for all eternity.

It is the ghost writer’s curse to be close to power, even to influence the course of events as a result of that proximity, and yet, to always remain in the background. And in this too, Scully and Gerson have forgotten the next cardinal rule: never, ever become the story. For if you do, you are undermining your principal, and in so doing, the very reason that you are writing.

I wish Scully and Gerson both much success. They are both intelligent and immensely talented. They deserve to emerge from the shadows and make their own mark in whatever way they wish.

But not this way. This sort of sniping is beneath both of them.

For more, read Scully’s original piece in Atlantic Monthly — stupidly hidden by editors behind their subscription firewall. Peter Wehner, who worked with both, comments in National Review. And Timothy Noah ads snarky commentary at Slate.

UPDATE: Jonathan Rick e-mails this outstanding inventory of background info on the players in this self-made drama.

Being a barbecue snob is a little like being a wine snob. Either you get it or don’t. Either you feel passionately about such issues as beef versus pork and vinegar versus rub, or you think those who do are a little bit silly. (And if you think that you have a “barbecue” sitting in your backyard which you use for cooking burgers and steaks, you can stop reading this post right now.)

But no question about it: I’m a barbecue snob.

Barbecue is the ultimate regional American cuisine. I grew up in Virginia, and while there used to be a discernible Virginia style, it’s getting harder and harder to find, so on all of the great questions of barbecue, I find myself gravitating towards North Carolina style.

That means pork. Period. And, broadly speaking, it means a vinegar-based sauce.

It also means that I don’t understand people who like beef barbecue. I mean, I go to Texas, and I’ve had it, and if you had to, you could live on it. But given the choice between beef and pork, I just don’t understand how a person with taste buds could, you know, choose to eat beef barbecue.

Okay, I’m kidding.

Don’t tell anyone, but I actually really like Texas-style barbecue. And I’m especially into the delicious sausages that good barbecue joints in Texas make by hand. I also like Memphis-style, although I’ll never understand why folks in Memphis insist on slathering a perfectly wonderful pile of pulled pork with that thick tomato sauce. I can’t get into Kansas City style — which basically means beef ribs — because I just don’t like the mess. But that’s the point. There are about as many styles of great barbecue as there are little towns with smoky joints that have been there for decades.

Heck, even in North Carolina, there’s a schism between east and west. In the eastern part of the state, the sauce is pure vinegar with the chef’s inevitably secret mix of spices. In the western part of the state, they add a little tomato paste to the party and give the sauce a little thickness. Put me in the eastern camp, but as long as it’s vinegar, I can be happy with either.

Then there’s the cooking method. The best places smoke the whole hog over wood or charcoal. But many places — including my personal favorite joint, King’s barbecue in Petersburg, Virginia — just cook the shoulder or Boston butt.

Finally, there’s the presentation. Some people seem to like to eat their barbecue on a hamburger bun. I can’t abide this nonsense. Why would you want to fill yourself up on a nasty, tasteless, puffy bun when you could eat more barbecue? Then there are the folks who want their pork sliced. These people are usually from up north and just can’t be expected to know any better. But for the record, it’s the worst way to eat barbecue. There’s just no good way to slice pork. It ends up tough and dry, no matter how many hours the pit master has spent smoking it to tender, juicy perfection. Don’t go there. Instead, go with pulled or minced. Your barbecue will be moist and delicious. Trust me on this one.

Ready to eat? Ready to really eat?

Great. It’s time for a road trip. USA Today reports that the state of North Carolina has just launched its Historic Barbecue Trail. It’s “the brainchild of Jim Early, an attorney by profession and barbecue nut by avocation. The author of The Best Tar Heel Barbecue: Manteo to Murphy crisscrossed 22,000 miles of North Carolina blacktop researching his book. He at in 228 barbecue joints, 140 of which made it into print. But the trail pays homage to just 25 establishments that prepare ‘cue the old-fashioned way. They cook over open-pit fires, make their own sauce, offer sit-down dining, have been in business at least 15 years and, as Early puts it, ‘have the esteem of their community’.”

First of all, this Jim Early sounds like my kind of guy.

But kudos to North Carolina for pulling together this trail. It’ll be a great road map for people looking for the best. And it’s a great nod to the states culinary heritage.

As food becomes more and more homogeneous with the proliferation of chain dining, I hope more states and localities will follow the Tar Heel state’s lead, calling out and celebrating regional food traditions. In Virginia, that could mean everything from barbecue to ham to peanuts. Not to mention Brunswick stew. (Which originated in Brunswick County, Virginia — not the eponymous county in Georgia.) But there are similar local distinctions in every corner of the nation. Burgoo in Kentucky. Grits in the tidewater of South Carolina. Chili in west Texas. The list is as long as it is varied.

And then, the burden is on us. When we eat out, we ought to make an effort to eat in the local joints that are owned and operated by our neighbors, not some commercial conglomerate. And when we travel, seek out the local places and avoid the boring chains that you can visit in every city and town in America.

And if you’re in the south, and you look hard enough, there’s a great place to enjoy barbecue in almost every town.

Jim: I’m not quite the fanatic/pro that Marshall is, but I’ll just throw in that I’ve always liked Old Glory’s method of providing six variations of barbecue sauce at the table. Because once you’ve tried them all, you do begin to understand the variety and regional tastes…

Cam: I’m not a big fan of barbeque (I absolutely hate getting messy while I eat, unless my hands are getting covered with lobster juices), and North Carolina-style has been a hard sell for me. Growing up in Oklahoma City, you typically get either Kansas City or Memphis-style barbeque. The vinegar-based barbeque just takes some getting used to, and I haven’t eaten enough of it to aquire the taste.

Yesterday, officials in two countries arrested suspects in connection with an alleged plot to set off a series of bombs at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. I have two thoughts.

First, I am incredibly impressed with our intelligence and law enforcement community for breaking this plot before the plotters could get anywhere near the execution phase. Two thumbs up to th FBI and any other agency that was involved for catching this early. Two thumbs up, too, for the foreign intelligence services and law enforcement agencies that no doubt cooperated in running this plot down. It’s worth noting that this is the second such plot that’s been broken up in consecutive months. Last month, the FBI broke up a plan to bomb Fort Dix in New Jersey.

Which brings me to my second thought. In spite of all of the successes that the FBI, CIA, NSA and others have had in protecting us from terrorists, it seems that the threat is both growing and becoming more geographically diverse. I don’t know enough about Muslim extremism to understand whether it is expanding and if so, whether that’s the cause. However, there’s no denying that we’ve seen an increased threat from both inside our borders as well as non-traditional locales like, say, Trinidad.

Does that suggest that we need to employ additional approaches in our effort to stop terrorism? Probably. And I introduce that small modicum of doubt only because I suspect that so-called hearts and minds efforts are underway, and I’m just simply unaware of them. In any case, if they are, I hope they can be made more effective. And if they are not, I hope we can figure out a way to communicate better with people who might be made to hate us.

I remember a professor of mine in college. He was an expert on Russia and the Soviet Union. At the time I took his Russian history course, the Berlin wall had recently come down and it was clear Soviet communism was dead. He suggested that our commercialism and culture were just as important as our military efforts in winning the Cold War. I’m not sure I buy the idea that shipping more Levis to Iran will ultimately overcome the scourage of Islamic extremism, but it can’t hurt, can it?