The American Enterprise articles from December 2001

The American Enterprise archives from December 2001

Test of a lifetime. (Bird's Eye).(War on Terrorism)
December 1, 2001... "We cannot `deal' with terror. It will not end in a treaty. There will be no peaceful coexistence, no negotiations, no summit, no joint communique with the terrorists. The struggle can only end with their complete and permanent destruction."...

Sidelights.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... On September 10, the Amherst, Massachusetts Board of Selectmen voted four to one to restrict the flying of the American flag on Main Street utility poles to six days a year. The lone dissenter wanted the limit to be one day a year.... During a...

Fight terror: drill in America. (Scan).(U.S. oil imports from Middle East)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Not long ago, a British newspaper published an account of Osama bin Laden's upbringing. Numerous details illustrate the wealth that has rained down on Saudi Arabia's leading families--like the trip to Sweden made by young bin Laden on a private...

Don't just trust--deter and defend. (Scan).(treaty on biological weapons)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Foreign policy dreamers have always insisted the U.S. should rely on treaties to keep itself safe in a dangerous world. Liberal-minded idealists have promoted a whole parade of paper agreements as guarantors of our national security: nuclear...

We didn't make these monsters. (Scan).(Taliban)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Ever since the September 11 attacks, it's become a matter of faith on the American Left that the United States somehow created the terror-loving Taliban regime. The United States made mistakes under its last three Presidents, and it's...

Don't count on Muslim support. (Scan).(Pakistani public opinion)(Brief Article)(Polling Data)
December 1, 2001... Measuring public opinion in an open society such as ours is challenging enough. Measuring opinion in a military dictatorship where people may be reluctant to respond truthfully to interviewers is much more difficult. So some caution is in order...

What a thoughtful terrorist. (Scan).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Terror isn't only an import to America; it's worth remembering that the U.S. shelters violent extremists of its own. The day after the September 11 attacks, Daniel Burton Rose, a San Francisco-area anarchist who has been an inspiration to U.S....

Does Hollywood see the light? (Scan).(aftermath of September 11 attacks)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... "She knows, she knows" is a line uttered by Annie Sullivan in stage and film biographies of Helen Keller. Helen had been both blind and deaf since early childhood, and the teacher is jubilant when her student has a first epiphany of...

Major league priorities. (Scan).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... One impressive moment in this fall's baseball season came when Los Angeles Dodger star Shawn Green announced he would decline to play on September 26--because it was a holy day within his Jewish religion. In the process, Green sacrificed, among...

The death penalty and its alternatives. (Scan).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... President Bush has been denounced by European and American liberals for allowing the application of the death penalty. Among those whose cause was taken up by "human rights" groups abroad as well as domestically was Juan Raul Garza, a former...

Black listed. (Scan).(Ebony's most influential black Americans)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... When Ebony magazine released its list of the 100 most influential black Americans for 2001, the roster included people like Percy Miller ("who has risen from a mere rapper to a hip-hop mogul"), Samuel Brogdon, Jr. ("Sovereign Grand Chair,...

Open the space frontier. (Scan).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Mankind seems further than ever from exploring other worlds. Launching payloads into space remains prohibitively expensive, ensuring that, except for communications satellites, space remains a place shunned by private enterprise. The Cato...

Pitching in for humanity. (Scan).(Planned Parenthood of New York City)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... While other Americans donated money, time, or blood to their fellow citizens in the days after September 11, Planned Parenthood of New York City made its own special offer: Free abortions at any of its clinics in Manhattan, Brooklyn, or the...

Don't tread on me. (Scan).(bureaucracy of clearing a creek near Seattle, Washington)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Chuck Pillon knows that if you want something done right--or done at all--sometimes you just have to do it yourself. After years of trying to get King County to clear an obstructed section of May Creek on public land, Pillon and his neighbors...

We're not kidding. (Scan).(pornography offered in a nursing home in Denmark)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... The Thorupgaarden Nursing Home in Copenhagen, Denmark now offers its elderly residents erotic magazines, pornography on a videochannel, and the services of prostitutes. Overseers say they have found this has a "calming" effect on their...

Better late than never. (Scan).(patriotism after the September 11 terrorist attacks)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... "Last week, Lee Weiner, a 1960s radical, did something he's never done before. He hung an American flag outside his home." So reported the Wall Street Journal on September 19, continuing: "Many card-carrying members of the American Left...

Zero common sense. (Scan).(zero tolerance of guns or illegal drugs on school campuses)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... A policy of "zero tolerance"--a fitting response to young hoodlums toting guns or illegal drugs--has over the last few years become a blanket standard in school districts across the country. Too often, school administrators apply it in ways...

An American alternative to enviro-gloom. (Forward Observer).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... For the third time in a year, representatives of about 170 nations have gathered--this time in exotic Marrakesh, Morocco in late October and early November--to decide what to do about the earth's climate. Again, the subject is the Kyoto...

Time to bring back the draft? The war on terror, and earlier problems in filling military positions, yield intriguing practical arguments over whether a new form of conscription should be considered. Is it ... (two Views).
December 1, 2001... If there was any upside to the terrible events of September 11, 2001, it was the perception of Americans coming together. The press highlighted the patriotic upsurge all across our country. There was, however, no increase in young people...

Josiah Bunting: he's both a soldier and a scholar. A gentleman and a democrat. An admirer of high achievement and a critic of credentialism. A proponent of boxing and piano playing. Meet a sterling educator. ("Live" with TAE).(Interview)
December 1, 2001... In 1957, Josiah Bunting enlisted in the Marine Corps. "It was the kind of thing you would do if you had something to prove to yourself," Bunting once remarked. After the proof was in, he enrolled at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in...

We'll win this war.(War on Terrorism)
December 1, 2001... The conventional mantra is that today's war on terrorism is a new kind of war, unlike those we have fought in the past. But that's not true. We are currently waging a very old kind of war, and, as luck would have it, one that fits our...

Why they hate us.(Editorial)
December 1, 2001... It's a Moral Clash By Karina Rollins In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis sketches the existence of universally accepted notions of right and wrong--the moral laws of nature. Regardless of differing cultures, eras, and creeds, he argues,...

Citizen soldiers: what the U.S. can learn from Israel about fighting terror.
December 1, 2001... A cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, Israel Police spokesman Gil Kleiman pulls a secure police pager from his belt and begins reading the day's news bulletins. It's October 4, 2001. A little after 9:00 a.m. two men entered a house...

Reviving the assassination option.
December 1, 2001... As Friday morning dawned on January 5, 1996, the inhabitants of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip went about their morning business, plying the muddy roads and pedestrian passages between run-down homes made of concrete blocks and...

Suicide soldiering: through the ages.(Statistical Data Included)
December 1, 2001... On the heights of the Gallipoli peninsula ill 1915, a Turkish colonel, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, rushed reinforcements to the front with the immortal words: "I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die." Allied...

Tighten America's borders.
December 1, 2001... All 19 perpetrators of the horrific attacks of September 11 were foreign citizens who had entered the United States as students, business travelers, or tourists. Clearly, changes in our immigration procedures, including temporary and permanent...

Walking the tightrope: don't bloat our government to thwart overseas enemies.
December 1, 2001... A French stuntman once traversed a tightrope between the two World Trade Center Towers. Now Uncle Sam must conduct his own tightrope walk. He must avenge the September 11 massacre and prevent another assault from ever happening again. Yet he...

Hunting for manhood. (In Real Life: first-person America).
December 1, 2001... CAPE CORAL, FLORIDA--Brett's a good boy. But he lives in a confusing and tempting world of sick music, bad morals, poor schools, and rampant drugs. And like many 14-year-olds, he was unfocused, rebellious, and trying to figure out life when I...

Frank and Nat. (Flashback: to know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child--Cicero).
December 1, 2001... In the summer of 1821, two young men met on a stagecoach bound for Bowdoin College and struck up a fast friendship that would last throughout their lives. Fourteen-year-old Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may have impressed his classmates as...

Where are free speech zealots when we need them? (Beat the press: the hand that rules the press ... rules the country--Judge Learned Hand).
December 1, 2001... Censorship in Israel is draconian by American standards. Journalists can be jailed for defying military censors, and publications have occasionally been shut down (temporarily) for defying the rules that require approval of articles on security...

Swedish surprise. (Now Playing).(Swedish film about parenting)(Review)
December 1, 2001... "All adults are idiots." That's the pronouncement made by Eva, a 13-year-old girl in 1975 Sweden, in the humorous and humane new film import Together. Most kids come to this conclusion sooner or later, but Eva has a particularly good...

Air terror saves Amtrak? (Enterprising: business as an act of creation).
December 1, 2001... When Amtrak was founded in 1971 and charged with taking over America's passenger rail service, its proponents claimed the new corporation would be self-sufficient within three years. This summer Amtrak celebrated its 30th birthday and blew out...

The World is Not for Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food. (Globaloney for Anti-Capitalists).(Review)
December 1, 2001... The World is Not for Sale: Farmers Against Junk Food By Jose Bove and Francois Dufour Verso, 240 pages, $25 Jose Bove is a radical who became a farmer. His farming career began as a protest against a proposed expansion of a French military...

Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market. (Stock Markets Grow Up).(Review)
December 1, 2001... Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market By B. Mark Smith Farrar Straus & Giroux, 342 pages, $25 Let's skip to the punch line: Toward Rational Exuberance is the best history of the stock market that I have ever...

Omon Ra. (Red Star).(Review)
December 1, 2001... Omon Ra By Victor Pelevin, translated by Andrew Bromfield, 1992 There's a rich strain of the absurd in Russian literature--which is appropriate, given the host of absurdities the Russian people have had to endure. What makes that nation's...

Will Latinos Always Be Democrats? (Politics).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Will Latinos Always Be Democrats? James Gimpel and Karen Kauffmann, Impossible Dream or Distant Reality? Republican Efforts to Attract Latino Voters. Center for Immigration Studies, 1522 K Street N.W. #820, Washington, D.C. 20005 ...

Do-It-Yourself Defense. (Politics).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Do-It-Yourself Defense Robert M. Jiobu and Timothy J. Curry, "Lack of Confidence in the Federal Government and the Ownership of Firearms," in Social Science Quarterly (March 2001), Blackwell Publishers, 350 Main Street, Malden, Massachusetts...

Chaining Entrepreneurs. (Economics And Business).
December 1, 2001... Chaining Entrepreneurs James DeLong, "Old Law vs. the New Economy," in Reason (August/September 2001), 3415 South Sepulveda Boulevard #400, Los Angeles, California 90034 In 1997, a gentleman named T. Trahan of the CSC Credit Service wrote...

Merit Pay Gets a Test. (Society).
December 1, 2001... Merit Pay Gets a Test Steven Malanga, "Why Merit Pay Will Improve Teaching" in City Journal (Summer 2001), Manhattan Institute, 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, New York 10017 One of the long-running debates in education is how teachers...

Property Owners Clean Up. (Science And Environment).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... Property Owners Clean Up Roger Bate, Saving Our Streams: The Role of the Anglers' Conservation Association in Protecting English and Welsh Rivers. Institute of Economic Affairs, 2 Lord North Street, London SW1P 3LB, England What's the best...

El Castrocito. (Other Countries).(Brief Article)
December 1, 2001... El Castrocito Mark Falcoff, "Viva Chavez!" in The International Economy (May/June 2001), 1133 Connecticut Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 In the 1990s, democracy seemed to be thriving in Latin America. But now the pendulum is shifting...

The World Reacts. (Opinion Pulse).(Statistical Data Included)
December 1, 2001... Gallup International interviewers found that many people around the world knew of the terrorist attacks in the United States within three hours of their occurrence. With the exception of Israel and India, all nations surveyed preferred to...

The mail.
December 1, 2001... The horrific terrorist strikes on our financial and military centers instantly transformed these symbols of power into metaphors for our anachronistic military structure. New York's Twin Towers were like two of our current Army divisions,...

Last gasp.
December 1, 2001... I just want to say, I'm a great admirer of your work. "The Nasdaq is down 50 points. That's 350 in dog points!" "It's time to face the facts, dear. Not everyone is meant to work out of their homes." JUST OUR LUCK. A SHARK ON A...