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    Volume CCXXXII, Number 17        January, 2002

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From the man who advocated auctioning off unwanted babies to the highest bidder (older boys could be sold directly to Fr. Geoghan), comes the latest brainstorm: rating the 500 most public intellectuals through the omnipraecipient lens of "law and economics", in other words, slapping a thin (but shiny) veneer of quantitative analysis on one's own reactionary prejudices.

Apparently, Posner chooses to vent his spleen on academics who discourse on subjects that they know nothing about. For example, a narrow-minded law-and-economics academic should never hold forth on international law, because the academic will end up sounding like a horse's ass. Unless of course you are Richard Posner writing in Sunday's Glob, in which case you do, on both counts. (By the way, Dick, whether a treaty is self-executing or not has nothing to do with the question of whether the United States is breaching its freely-assumed obligations under an international convention.)

Posner fears that the marketplace of ideas does not sufficiently weed out the drivel. Look for his latest on remainder racks everywhere and decide for yourself.

Remember those glorious days when King Ronald Reagan and his Characters ruled the land? Peggy Noonan does, and what a bunch of characters they were! Who could forget Casper Weinberger and Elliot Abrams – that would be unpardonable! Or fun-loving Marine Oliver North? What about maleficient spook Bill Casey? He was all character, and no indictments.

It takes a lot of imagination, or of advances, to stuff the empty husk of Ronald Reagan with character. It took character to boldly fight for the richest and most powerful in our land. It took character to ignore Congress's express prohibition on fomenting war and atrocity in Nicaragua -- and then to claim he forgot the whole thing. It took character to propose nutty Tom Swift fantasies as real answers to nuclear anxiety.

Yep, ol' Ron was quite a character. We'll never forget him. We'll never forget too how he sent 243 American troops to their death because someone told him that Beirut was about to fall to the Red Menace. As for those fellows in the boxes in the photo, just back from Lebanon, they probably don't remember a thing.

How does Pat "Luv those Nazis" Buchanan keep churning out these tomes? There's only one explanation: it's a triumph of the will. Pat is now blaming our current woes on too many Mexican pool cleaners. These ungrateful wretches clog our public schools with their miserable children, laboring, as they do, under the impression that those who toil in Lynda Chavez's garden are entitled to a better life for their children. Sometime they even demand to be paid the minimum wage. What's up with that?

But the Book Review Department at the Spy is nothing [Agreed -- Ed.] if not fair minded. Those in favor of immigration as a source of strength, wisdom and diversity should ask themselves what might have happened if the 19th Century Irish had been left to starve in Ireland rather than flood our shores. Pat Buchanan wouldn't even exist. Case closed.