The American Enterprise articles from January 1997

The American Enterprise archives from January 1997

Headless conservatism attacks bottomless problems (... even the Social Security mess).(lack of supreme leader in American conservatism)
January 1, 1997... I recently had a chance to spend several days in the company of Margaret Thatcher for the first time. And as I returned to the U.S. in the final month of the '96 election it could not have been clearer that American conservatism currently...

What do we do about Medicare?(views on Medicare policy)
January 1, 1997... Michael Horowitz Republicans seem likely to reject the President's call for a bipartisan Medicare reform commission. This is a welcome decision, even if it is wholly based on politics--returning the favor to a President who...

"Live" with TAE.(Caspar Weinberger, chairman of Forbes)(Interview)
January 1, 1997... As a boy growing up in San Francisco, Caspar Weinberger read the Congressional Record for amusement Yet despite three terms as a California state assemblyman, he made his mark as an appointed, not elected, official Weinberger served as Governor...

The election of 1996: ... and our coming choice between freedom and entitlement.(election results)
January 1, 1997... The results of the 1996 elections were a relief for Republicans, who expected to lose the presidency and thought they might lose the Congress, and a disappointment for Democrats, who took a presidential victory for granted and hoped for more....

You can't beat something with nothing....(social and moral responsibility of citizens)
January 1, 1997... Washington overflows with talk of bipartisanship these days. The president has even resurrected the phrase "vital center," which Arthur Schlesinger coined 48 years ago to describe the common ground between communism and fascism. Mr....

Racial preferences just died. What comes next?(banning racial quotas)
January 1, 1997... The days of racial quotas are numbered. Every year, the absurdities multiply: the student with the expensive private-school education whose mother was born in Mexico enjoys preference over a low-income Pennsylvanian; white working-class kids...

Social security doesn't work any more.(hidden tax system)(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... The Social Security system reminds us of Machiavelli's dictum that time is the mother of truth. An unsound institution may work at first, he said, but let a few generations pass, and its flaws will eventually reveal themselves. Social Security...

Entitlements are corroding personal responsibility.(drawbacks of Medicaid and Social Security)(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... "Is the house in her name?" One of the delights of living in a small town is eavesdropping. I overheard the preceding query while getting a tire patched, and what followed was a well-informed discussion of that whole field of legal legerdemain...

Creating a new kind of Social Security.(Social Security privatization)(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... Low birth rates, increasing life spans, and slower economic growth have forced politicians around the globe to search for ways to rescue their debt-ridden government retirement systems. And instead of "nip and tuck" reforms of their old...

Will "wired workers" lead a push for privatization?(promotion of individually driven Social Security system by technology users)(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... To Americans who grew up in an era of assembly line work and unskilled drudging, Social Security may have seemed like a perfectly adequate retirement program--big, bureau-cratic, paternal. But for the new generation of workers growing up in...

Could individual retirement accounts be part of a new wave of American self-reliance?(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... On Election Day, exit pollsters asked voters this simple question: "Which comes closer to your view? `Government should do more to solve problems' or `Government is doing too many things better left to business and individuals.'?" Overall, 41...

Personal savings accounts would be good for everyday Americans.(includes related articles on social security and personal savings account)(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... How would we fare if each of us had, instead of Social Security, a personal retirement account? I'll eliminate the suspense: Almost all Americans would make out much better with a privatized plan than with the government program. To see...

Personal savings account would invigorate the nations's economy.(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... Privatizing Social Security, either in whole or part, would have a significant impact on economic growth and living standards in the U.S. Indeed the benefits could be so large that they offer a potential "free lunch" in which everyone is...

How much does social security really cost?(overhead costs)(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... Old bureaucracies die hard. Now that Americans have started to notice that they can save their own money for their own retirement, they are wondering why they need government to carry out this task for them. Defenders of the existing system...

Personal savings accounts would strengthen families.(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... Right from the beginning, the Social Security system in America has been linked to the idea of family failure. In 1933 a massive government study entitled Recent Social Trends argued that "the decline of the institutional functions of the...

O.K., Social Security needs a bypass - but will our politicians allow it?(privatization of Social Security scheme)(includes related article on government policy on the elderly)(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... Three years ago, Mark Sanford, a South Carolina real estate developer and former New York investment banker who had never run for office, decided he wanted to become a congressman. He ran for the House seat being vacated by Rep. Arthur...

Why "conservative" entitlement reforms are coming, like it or not.(Social Security)(Security for the Twenty-First Century)
January 1, 1997... With even our Democratic president proclaiming that "the era of big government is over," it's obvious Washington is in the midst of a long-term shift toward more conservative politics and economics. The daily media usually point to today's new...

Get with the program: mainline churches drag their feet on welfare reform.(religious charity institutions)
January 1, 1997... Everyone's enthusiastic these days about increasing the role of private charities--especially religious charities--in helping poor families. Everyone, that is, except some religious groups themselves. Congressional supporters of welfare reform...

Money versus mentoring: wisdom for helping the poor from one century ago.(Octavia Hill's views on upliftment of poor)
January 1, 1997... Current controversies over whether our deepest poverty problems are primarily financial or behavioral rehearse earlier arguments conducted in nineteenth-century Britain. Back then, a vigorous debate over how to help the poor took place between...

We did it for welfare ... now let's put time limits on public housing.(ending housing subsidies)
January 1, 1997... The recently enacted five-year time limit on cash public assistance closes one debate but suggests another. If welfare payments are to be limited, why not enact time limits on subsidized housing as well? Such a change, already suggested...

Still depressed after all these years.(need for cash liquidity)
January 1, 1997... For many Americans, the Great Depression lasted far beyond its official end point in 1939. Despite subsequent competition from little events like World War II, it continued to be the major formative experience for millions who grew up in its...

A bad day.(experiences of police detective)
January 1, 1997... Ever want to know what drives cops crazy? Let me give you an example. This is a typical bad day. I came to work knowing my partner and I were going to be buried under a mountain of paperwork from the felonies two druggies have recently...

Beware Clinton administration regulators in a second term.(expanding government control in Republican Congress)
January 1, 1997... According to conventional wisdom, the re-election of a Republican Congress will stymie President Clinton's natural inclination to expand the size and scope of the regulatory state. Recent actions of Clinton administration regulators, however,...

The revolt against the Davis-Bacon Act.(social impacts of labor law)
January 1, 1997... When the Clinton administration cast about for experts to help defend its favorite labor law, the Davis-Bacon Act, against a legal challenge, it called upon Norman Hill, who was happy to extol the law's virtues. Hill acknowledged that...

Social Security's cassandra.(views of Senator James W. Wadsworth, Jr. on Social Security)
January 1, 1997... Nostradamus and Jeane Dixon have nothing on Senator James W. Wadsworth, Jr. After all, who couldn't predict the occasional earthquake or starlet divorce? Wadsworth, by contrast, saw from a distance of 60 years not only the current Social...

Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War.
January 1, 1997... By Jeffrey Rogers Hummel; Open Court, 421 pages, $39.95 Some years after the surrender at Appomattox, Confederate General D.H. Hill said that the infantry assaults at Malvern Hill and Gettysburg, while "grand," were "exactly the kind of...

The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson.
January 1, 1997... By Marshall Frady; Random House, 552 pages, $28.50 Marshall Frady met Jesse Jackson in the mid-1960s, when he was covering "the mighty moral drama of the civil rights movement" for Newsweek. Frady, a Southern liberal, says the encounter was...

Taking Responsibility: Self-Reliance and the Accountable Life.
January 1, 1997... By Nathaniel Branden; Simon and Schuster, 255 pages, $22 Veronica J. was fed up with the repeated infidelities of Stan, her lover of seven years, but had never seriously challenged his behavior. "Everything would be so wonderful," she mused,...

Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
January 1, 1997... By Daniel Jonah Goldhagen; Alfred A. Knopf 622 pages, $30 Daniel Goldhagen has acquired a following that includes journalist A.M. Rosenthal, Harvard associates Simon Schama, Sidney Verba, and Stanley Hoffmann, and other celebrities who have...

In the American Grain.
January 1, 1997... By William Carlos Williams; 1925 In the years after World War I, American society underwent dramatic changes. According to the 1920 census, for the first time more Americans lived in cities and towns than in rural settings. New York City's...