METRIC SYSTEM HARDEST HIT: Lincoln Chafee, we hardly knew ye.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO AND AMERICAN CONSERVATISM — PASTERNAK’S NOVEL PLAYED A ROLE IN SORTING OUT BIRCHERS FROM MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVES. At National Review Online, Benjamin Musachio writes:

Buckley gave his take on the Zhivago controversy in the introduction to his 1959 book, Up From Liberalism. He praised Pasternak as a “triumph of man over ideology.” Of Doctor Zhivago specifically, he later wrote in a letter to Welch that he “found in it an engrossing poetical indictment of Communism.”

Robert Welch and the more radical American Opinion, the John Birch Society’s monthly magazine, thought differently. In the February 1959 issue of American Opinion, the editors proclaimed the publication of Zhivago to be a part of the Communist conspiracy. The “damning” facts that prove the novel’s Communist character? 1) Pasternak never explicitly praises capitalism. 2) Nor does he obviously and unequivocally condemn revolutionary socialism. 3) The religious sentiments expressed in the novel are forced and “unconvincing.”

Western intellectuals’ warm reception of Zhivago, as well as its wild popularity among Western readers, was, according to American Opinion, cause for celebration in the capitals of Communism. Yes, Moscow and Tito’s Belgrade were both in on the deceit — even though the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had been at odds since 1948.

America Opinion’s staggering “revelations” triggered a stinging rebuttal from Eugene Lyons in the pages of National Review. Lyons, a seasoned warrior of the anti-Communist crusade, had a rich insider’s perspective on the Soviet state. A native speaker of Russian, Lyons had worked in Moscow for the United Press from 1928 to 1934. (He was in fact the first foreign correspondent to obtain an interview with Josef Stalin, in 1930.) Lyons regularly contributed to NR in its early years, in addition to holding down a post as a senior editor for Reader’s Digest.

In rebutting American Opinion’s accusations, Lyons reminded the readers of Buckley’s magazine that the Soviet authorities had suppressed the publication of Zhivago behind the Iron Curtain. Lyons’s polemic, which was titled “Folklore of the Right,” went on to mention that the Soviet authorities had essentially forced Pasternak to decline the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. Not only that, but Pasternak was publicly denounced by the Soviet literary establishment. Lyons claimed that these two facts undermine American Opinion’s paranoid reading.

Like Buckley, Lyons discovered an anti-Soviet message in Pasternak’s poeticized prose: “[Pasternak] exalts man above the State, life above terrestrial dogma . . . , conscience above conformity, religious insights above sociological forms.”

Regarding David Lean’s epic 1965 cinematic adaptation, after the earlier box office and critical triumph of Lawrence of Arabia, the reception of his film version of Zhivago split the opinion between the general public and film critics. Commercially, Zhivago was one of Lean’s most successful films. But critics, particularly New York critics, crudely trashed Lean for the first time in heretofore celebrated career, likely because of the strong anti-Communist message of his film and its similar role of exalting man over state. Leftist film critic Pauline Kael, who would go on to champion the crude violence of the “New Hollywood” of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, watched Zhivago and sniffed that Lean’s “method is basically primitive, admired by the same sort of people who are delighted when a stage set has running water or a painted horse looks real enough to ride.”

Thanks in part to Kael’s efforts, Hollywood would be nearly incapable of staging such a “basically primitive” movie ever again.  If you’ve only seen Zhivago late at night on a small low definition TV, watching the blu-ray version on a large HDTV set is a revelation, revealing Lean’s brilliant compositions, sweeping camera moves, and all of the multifaceted techniques he employed to recreate the scope of Russia in much the same way he depicted Lawrence’s desert.

Breitbart London notes that “Director David Lean’s legendary epic, which won five Oscars upon its release in 1965, is getting a 4K digital restoration and re-release to cinemas in the United Kingdom, courtesy of the British Film Institute, to coincide with the film’s 50th anniversary” in late November. I hope an American cinematic rerelease is also forthcoming, and if so, I’ll certainly be there to finally see it on the big screen myself.

THE THING IS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A GENIUS WHEN YOU’RE EFFECTIVELY UNOPPOSED: Michael McFaul: The Myth Of Putin’s Strategic Genius.

ANDREW COYNE: Anatomy of a Political Suicide: Lessons for the Right from Stephen Harper’s Canada. “The nastiness of Tory politics under Harper, the mindless partisanship, the throttling of backbench MPs, are not outgrowths of conservatism. They were born, rather, of its repudiation: of the decision to sterilize the new party of any ideological convictions, the better (it was supposed) to remove any obstacle to its electability. Politics fills a vacuum: in the absence of substantive differences with your opponents, partisanship takes its place. . . . There has been much talk of how Red Tories were made to feel unwelcome in the party. But the truth is no sort of conservative could really feel the Harper government represented them: not fiscal conservatives, $150 billion in debt later; not social conservatives, forbidden even to say the word ‘abortion’; certainly not old-time Reformers, the sort of people who went into politics to make governments and leaders more accountable, not less.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Free Speech Is Flunking Out On College Campuses. “Crippling the delivery of unpopular views is a terrible lesson to send to impressionable minds and future leaders, at Wesleyan and elsewhere. It teaches students that dissent will be punished, that rather than pipe up they should nod along. It also teaches them they might be too fragile to tolerate words that make them uncomfortable; rather than rebut, they should instead shut down, defund, shred, disinvite.”

UPDATE: Roger Kimball: The Campus Assault on Free Speech, Wesleyan edition.

Related: Cost of Attending Wesleyan University for One Year: $64,354.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 897.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Dan Rather and Robert Redford’s paradoxically-named “Truth” bombs at the box office:

The movie — starring Robert Redford as Rather and Cate Blanchett as his longtime producer Mary Mapes — has grossed a paltry $66,000 in limited release. But its prospects are dim as it goes nationwide on Oct. 30, because “Truth” will have to compete with “Suffragette,” “Burnt” and a few other new features.

However, “Truth’s” real damage will be when it’s available for essentially zero-cost streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime, and in endless repeats in the bowels of cable TV, where it will pollute the historical record in much the same way as Oliver Stone’s JFK, 20 years ago.

WAR ON BOYS: Why Are Boys Falling Behind?

The fact that men are overrepresented at the very highest echelons of American society—the U.S. Congress, Fortune 500 executive suites, faculty lounges at major universities—often obscures the fact that boys at the middle and bottom of the economic ladder are falling further and further behind girls in educational attainment. In recent years, however, a growing number of scholars and commentators have started to pay attention to the particular challenges facing boys. Hannah Rosin, for example, has speculated that girls are inherently better suited to the types of skills required in a post-industrial society, and Christina Hoff Sommers has highlighted the ways the K-12 education system fails to cater to boys’ interests and needs.

An important new study from leading economists, led by MIT’s David Autor, has added a new dimension to this discussion: the way that changes in family structure—in particular, the rise of fatherlessness homes—has done particular damage to boys’ prospects. . . .

The finding that inequality and social decay hit boys hardest poses challenges to policymakers on both sides of the aisle—to thinkers on the right who downplay the obstacles that poverty poses to mobility, and to thinkers on the left who ignore the importance of family structure and assert that the genders are essentially interchangeable.

That’s nicely evenhanded, but which group has had more influence on social and educational policy?

HOW CLOCK BOY AND HIS DAD PUNKED OBAMA: At the Weekly Standard, Lee Smith writes:

American folklore as well as our classic literature—from Herman Melville through Hammett and down to David Mamet—makes plain a simple fact: No one is ever conned against their will. Rather, the victim’s vanity is the central ingredient in the confidence scheme. And that’s why it was so easy to play the president. Did he really have to tweet an invitation to Ahmed to come to the White House before he knew the whole story? As Ricky Roma says in Glengarry Glen Ross, “you never open your mouth till you know what the shot is.” And why after Ahmed and his family met with Bashir didn’t Obama rescind the invitation? What’s this kid doing meeting with a mass murderer? Tell Ahmed he’s not at this time welcome to visit the White House.

Obama didn’t walk away because he never does, not from Ahmed and his father and not from the Iranians over the nuclear deal. He says he’s got as much to worry about as anyone with the nuclear deal since his name is on it. And that’s precisely the issue—he doesn’t understand the cards and the chips he holds, and the chair he sits in, are not his. Rather, he is risking the interests and the prestige of the country he was elected to lead for the sake of his own vanity. Yes the president is very vain, which is what makes him such an easy mark, every time.

Read the whole thing.

Update: InstaReader Don Kilmer tweets, “Great read! It struck me that the American people’s vanity is also what allowed Obama to punk us.” Indeed.™

GAIL HERIOT: Why Aren’t There More Black Scientists? Racial Preferences In University Admissions.

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CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Indicted Texas Democrat Has Close Ties to Hillary Clinton, Julian Castro. “With a reported seven-figure referral fee on a drunk-driving case, Watts gave former Mayor (and current HUD Secretary) Julián Castro the financial security to build his political career. That windfall not only allowed Castro to loan $215,000 to his successful 2009 mayoral campaign, it gave him a monetary cushion that allowed him to comfortably live on a $4,000-a-year mayor’s salary, without needing to find outside income.”

BUT OF COURSE. THEY’RE ONLY HATE CRIMES WHEN WHITE CONSERVATIVES ARE THE PERPETRATORS: Black Lives Matter Fights Against Including Police Killings as Federal Hate Crimes.

SHOUTOUT TO KNOXVILLE’S CLINTON GLASS COMPANY, who did a great job on our shower doors. And it turns out they’re InstaPundit readers! If you live in Knoxville, I highly recommend them.

SHARYL ATTKISSON: Hillary Clinton’s public vs. private Benghazi facts. “Hillary Clinton presented one set of Benghazi facts to her own family; another to the family of the victims and the American public.”

ARTHUR MILLER — COMMUNIST: Paul Kengor does yeoman work sifting through the memory hole at the American Spectator:

Given this newfound fame and influence, by the mid-1950s, Arthur Miller was called to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His testimony on June 21, 1956 received tremendous attention. It prompted eye-catcher headlines in the New York Times, such as, “Arthur Miller Admits Helping Communist-Front Groups in ‘40s.” Or, as the Times put it in the lead: “Arthur Miller, playwright, disclosed today a past filled with Communist-front associations.”

To Congress, Miller conceded the numerous pro-communist appeals he had signed and the protests he joined by Red-backed groups. He refused to name names of those who were there with him. Likewise, he would not name people who joined him during the mere four or five times that he said he had attended Communist Party writers’ meetings. Miller also denied that he had ever been under “communist discipline” and would not answer the question of whether he had ever joined the Party.

The most dramatic moment of the hearing came when the House Committee’s lead counsel asked Miller if he once signed an application to join the Communist Party. As Miller dissembled, the counsel presented the exact five-digit application number on the Communist Party application form that contained Miller’s name and address at 18 Schermerhorn Street in New York. Congress went so far as to publish a photocopy of the application card.

That exhibit remains a striking form of evidence. A photocopy is published on page 191 of my book, Dupes. Under the banner “Victory in 1943,” the form states, “APPLICATION FOR MEMBERSHIP” and lists an “A. Miller,” with occupation of “writer” at an address that just happened to be Miller’s own Brooklyn address. The number of the application was 23345. Confronted with this rather compelling evidence, and asked if it indeed proved that he had made an “application for membership in the Communist Party,” Miller curiously told Congress, “I would not affirm that. I have no memory of such thing.”

For a man that the left still hails as nothing short of unsurpassable genius—with the word “brilliant” a standard description—this was a notable and lamentable memory crash.

Read the whole thing, which calls to mind Mark Steyn’s take on one of Miller’s contemporaries, novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. When an off-Broadway play originally starring Nathan Lane a decade ago attempted to whitewash Trumbo’s legacy, Steyn responded, “Although the play won’t tell you the answer to that famous question—‘Are you now or have you ever … ?’—the truth is: yes, he was. The more interesting question is: How do you feel about getting one of the great moral questions of the century wrong?”

PRIORITIES: Hillary: I Never Gave Christopher Stevens My E-Mail Address (But Sidney Blumenthal Had It!).

I’M BEGINNING TO QUESTION WHETHER HIGHER EDUCATION ACTUALLY CONTRIBUTES TO A FREE SOCIETY: Student newspaper just fine with false accusations.

In yet more evidence that students accused of campus sexual assault face an uphill battle in defending themselves, one New England university’s student newspaper wrote that it would rather see false accusations than accusers not come forward.

Editors for the student newspaper of Boston University, the Daily Free Press, in an editorial about educating students on “affirmative consent,” or “yes means yes,” consent policies, suggested false accusations are acceptable.

“We would rather see someone falsely accused than see someone avoid coming forward for fear of retribution for wrongly accusing someone,” the editors wrote.

The editors went on to suggest that bias against accused students might not be real.

So, basically, they’re fascists who are also completely out of touch with reality. The editorial is unsigned, but the Editorial Board’s names are:

Mike DeSocio — Editor-in-Chief
Joe Incollingo — Managing Editor

J.D. Capelouto — Campus Editor
Mina Corpuz — City Editor
Katie Aramento — Editorial Page Editor
Justin Pallenik — Sports Editor
Olivia Nadel — Photo Editor
Samantha Gross — Multimedia Editor
Sonia Rao — Features Editor
DeeDee Hughes — Blog Editor
Katelyn Pilley — Layout Editor

I don’t know if they all approved this editorial, of course. But they should all be deeply ashamed of this piece.

RUBIO COUNTERS TRUMP: BLAME BILL CLINTON, NOT GEORGE W. BUSH, FOR FAILING TO PREVENT 9/11.

As CBS’s 60 Minutes noted, President Clinton didn’t kill Bin Laden when he had the chance, a fact that ABC has worked very hard to toss down the memory hole.

CALVINBALL: California begins to reward residents who cut water use with rate increase to make up for lower water use.

As a famous California movie production put it, “You f***ed up — you trusted us!”, which sums up the state’s historic relationship with its would-be political masters rather nicely.

THE BOSTON HERALD’S TAKE:

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Secret Service Retaliation Against Chaffetz Prompts Hearing.

The Secret Service is under congressional fire next week for retaliation against Rep. Jason Chaffetz and the Utah Republican’s tough questioning of the agency.

Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy will appear before a joint hearing on Oct. 27 to answer questions about the findings of an OIG report, which determined 45 Secret Service employees accessed the House Oversight and Government Reform chairman’s personal information a total of 60 times, with some leaking information to the media.

The report also found that 18 senior Secret Service officials failed to notify Clancy or end the activity.

Hearings, but no firings. Suboptimal.

THIS IS CNN: “Palestinians shot boarding kids’ bus.”

TWO BEZOS IN ONE!

● “Bezos Leaps to Third-Richest in U.S. as Amazon Shares Jump.”

—Headline at Bloomberg Business, yesterday.

● “If you thought income inequality was bad, get a load of wealth inequality.”

—Headline at the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, May 21st. The article’s URL, which likely reflects its originally intended headline, is “The Top 10 [percent] of Americans Own 76 [percent] of [all] the Stuff and it’s Dragging Our Economy Down.”

Wow, the Post’s journalists must really hate their boss, eh?