The American Enterprise articles from January 2000

The American Enterprise archives from January 2000

Centralism Sickens a Century.
January 1, 2000... "The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately." --Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson's statement above expresses the central ideal of American...

Sidelights.
January 1, 2000... Deluxe dog kennels now offer color cable TV with VCR, weight-reduction programs, speaker telephones for owners' calls, and de-stressing doggie-massage.... Peppermint Pets of California offers dogs and their owners matching aromatherapy...

THE REAL SCIENCE SCANDAL.(teaching evolution)
January 1, 2000... The Kansas Board of Education's recent decision on science instruction--which, contrary to reports, didn't outlaw the teaching of evolution but simply left the decision to local school districts--has activists vowing to protect Darwin at any...

SOCIALIST MAGIC.(35-hour work week in France)
January 1, 2000... The Socialist-led government in France recently passed a law forbidding workers from laboring more than 35 hours per week. Companies may not reduce workers' pay under the new rules; so employees will magically get the same money for less work....

MASS ILLNESS.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Remember Hillary-care? Well, Alan Sager, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, thinks he's pinpointed its problem: "Clinton's plan relied on price competition and a free market." With the chances for nationalized health...

A DANGEROUS RELIGIOUS-RIGHT KINDERGARTNER.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... A kindergartner named Antonio Peck, living in the Baldwinsville school district outside Syracuse, New York, was given a fashionable assignment a few months ago. He was told to create a poster about the environment. Antonio, who is being...

WHAT IS A HATE CRIME?(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... On August 10, a deranged gunman opened fire at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, wounding several people. On September 15, a similarly deranged criminal murdered seven people at a Baptist church in Fort Worth. Local...

THEIR BODIES, OUR SELVES.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... DATELINE WASHINGTON, 2001--The Food and Drug Administration today announced the approval of the latest French abortion pill, RU2B9, for sale in the United States. The new pill represents a major step forward in abortion technology, permitting...

A TALE OF TWO STATES.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... When Congress enacted welfare reform legislation that President Clinton finally signed in 1996, it abolished the federal welfare entitlement to cash benefits. Recognizing the incredibly destructive consequences that this entitlement program had...

TOO QUICK ON THE TRIGGER, TOO LOOSE WITH THE FACTS.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... In recent years U.S. military forces have been selectively used to intervene in hot spots around the globe. But with no rational, consistent standards to govern where we involve ourselves, each adventure becomes an exercise in presidential...

COLORFUL COMMUNISM.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The North Korean news agency has a daily news page on the Web (www.kcna.co.jp). I go whenever I need a laugh, for every visit proves that Communist lunacies live on. Any trifle involving the supreme leader gets fawning treatment. "General...

DO EXACTLY AS I SAY (NOT AS I DO).(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... This summer, regular TAE contributor Michael Barone analyzed Hillary Clinton's political record and declared her a classic elitist centralizer (U.S. News July 12, 1999). Some excerpts: In her years on campus, 1965-74, crime and welfare...

LAST WORDS ON ELEPHANT DUNG.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Radical art historian Camille Paglia recently blasted the notion that only philistines would object to the Brooklyn Museum's controversial "Sensation" show. "I'm just as sick of `Catholic bashing' as [Mayor] Giuliani," she wrote in Salon. "I...

Indicators.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... WORKING FOR UNCLE Is our federal government, centered in Washington, D.C., getting bigger or smaller? Back in 1996 when President Clinton declared the era of big government over, he bragged that the number of federal employees was...

Moving from Healthy to Wealthy.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Over the past couple of decades, the U.S. economy has been a raging success at boosting incomes and creating jobs. The average American now has 50 percent more purchasing power after taxes than in 1980, and unemployment, at 4.1 percent, is the...

"Live" with TAE.(Interview)
January 1, 2000... HAVING JUST RETURNED TO PRIVATE LIFE, INDEPENDENT COUNSEL KEN STARR REVIEWS, IN HIS REMARKABLY GINGERLY WAY, THE WHIRLWIND HE PASSED THROUGH OVER THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS. Kenneth W. Starr, 54, grew up in San Antonio, where his father was a...

Students do better in Small Schools so why have we been making schools bigger?
January 1, 2000... One of the most dubious educational campaigns of modern times was the long-running effort to consolidate many small schools into centralized large schools. I know because I attended a small school that was wiped away by consolidation fever. I...

TYRANNY in Bricks & Mortar.
January 1, 2000... The Swiss-born French essayist, painter, architect, and planner Charles-Edouard Jeanneret--better known by his professional name, Le Corbusier--was a twentieth-century architect and planner of planetary ambitions. At one time or another he...

The Rise and Fall of the Big, Bureaucratic Corporation.
January 1, 2000... In an old industrial building in lower Manhattan, Jon Kamen and his workers are creating a future urban economy that relies on the entrepreneurial ethos of the past. The walls and doors in this spartan 1930s factory are black steel and tin, and...

government in the MACHINE AGE.
January 1, 2000... Something about the machinery and factories of the Industrial Age encouraged the belief that society's problems could be addressed more efficiently if political power were centralized. In taking people out of their homes and putting them into...

the DEATH of Soviet Control.
January 1, 2000... When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in 1985 he announced the Soviet Union had "achieved big successes in all areas of the societal life," and had "a powerful, comprehensively developed economy." All that was needed was to modernize the...

Control Freaks.(Interview)
January 1, 2000... Robert Conquest traces the history of power plays Robert Conquest is one of the century's leading commentators on Soviet communism, in such pathbreaking books as The Great Terror (a 1968 account of Stalin's purges) and Harvest of Sorrow...

In praise of Gridlock.
January 1, 2000... How U.S. "special interest" politics will block further government centralization Will big government get bigger? Certainly the federal government has undergone enormous growth in the twentieth century. In 1901, federal spending was less...

The Decline (and Return?) of Localism.
January 1, 2000... Last summer, at an academic conference on the beautiful campus of Washington and Lee University, I listened to a historian criticize that institution's co-namesake, Robert E. Lee, for holding some retrograde views--like those expressed in this...

Hayek Rings the Alarm Against Central Planning.
January 1, 2000... Some books change history. The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek is one. It was written by the Austrian-born economist during World War II, while he was teaching in England, because he feared that the then-growing popularity of central...

A Red-tape Curtain Descends Across Europe.
January 1, 2000... On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill warned a crowd of listeners gathered in Fulton, Missouri, that an Iron Curtain had descended across the continent of Europe. Churchill recognized that the radical philosophical differences between the Soviet...

The Monster from the GOP Lagoon.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... For lack of courage, the GOP Congress's tax-cutting strategy crashed on take-off this year. The $792 billion tax reduction that President Clinton vetoed last September 23 didn't deliver a dramatic, Reaganesque tomahawk chop to marginal tax...

JFK, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Gerald Ford Did What?(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Pat Buchanan's praise of the America First Committee (AFC) of 1940-41, whose 800,000 members made it the largest antiwar organization in American history, has won him the sort of press usually reserved for the grislier serial killers. The AFC's...

The Untold Waco Story.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Michael McNulty proves you don't have to live in Beverly Hills to be nominated for an Academy Award. From Fort Collins, Colorado (pop. 12,500), McNulty has captured entertainment accolades, set the agenda for major news organizations, and...

Why Can Gadflies Only Flit Left?(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... I'm thinking of a journalist who works alone, without editors, accountable to no one. Many feel he has an ax to grind, but he is read furtively by government workers and journalists. Often, he levels wild accusations against public officials of...

Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By Martin Russ Fromm, 464 pages, $26 "Courage is not common," wrote Lord Moran in The Anatomy of Courage. Martin Russ, USMC, Korean War combat veteran, teaches the same lesson. In Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950, rare...

Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By Gregory L. Schneider New York University Press, 182 pages, $40 One thing many conservatives between the ages of 40 and 65 have in common is past membership in the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), which helped shape two generations of...

France on the Brink: A Great Civilization Faces the New Century.(Review)
January 1, 2000... By Jonathan Fenby Arcade, 465 pages, $27.95 Intellectuals usually either love or hate France. In France on the Brink, Jonathan Fenby takes the wiser course--he both loves and hates France. Much of what we think we know about France...

Unsung Shipping Revolution.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Unsung Shipping Revolution Stewart Taggart, "The 20-ton Packet," in Wired (October 1999), 520 3rd Street, 3rd floor, San Francisco, California 94107. The technological revolution has lowered business costs, especially shipping. In the past...

The Reactionary Progressives.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... The Reactionary Progressives Mary Eberstadt, "The Schools They Deserve," in Policy Review (October-November 1999), Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002. Twentieth-century education has been a battle...

Making Sense of the Census.(Review)
January 1, 2000... Making Sense of the Census Unkept Promise: Statistical Adjustment Fails to Eliminate Local Undercounts, as Revealed by Evaluation of Severely Undercounted Blocks from the 1990 Census Plan. CMBC 59-512. U.S. Census Monitoring Board:...

Private Property Protects Nature.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Private Property Protects Nature Karl Hess Jr. and Tom Wolf, "Treasure of La Sierra," in Reason (October 1999), 3415 South Sepulveda Boulevard #400, Los Angeles, California 90034. Thoreau Institute senior associates Hess and Wolf examine...

Saving the Swamps.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Saving the Swamps Jonathan H. Adler, "Swamp Rules: The End of Federal Wetlands Regulation?" in Regulation (No. 2, 1999), Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. For over two decades, federal regulators have...

Armed and Dangerous Extortion.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Armed and Dangerous Extortion Nicholas Eberstadt, "The Most Dangerous Country," in The National Interest (Fall 1999), 1112 16th Street N.W. #530, Washington, D.C. 20036. North Korea is a failure, and 1998 probably marks the ninth straight...

Europe Is No Model.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Europe Is No Model Pietro S. Nivola, "Are Europe's Cities Better?" in The Public Interest (Fall 1999), 1112 16th Street N.W. #540, Washington, D.C. 20036. Activists opposed to "urban sprawl" look to European cities as models for Americans...

CENTRALIZATION FROM THE ROOSEVELT ERA ...(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... During the New Deal, pollster Elmo Roper asked Americans how much a government should do. The chart at the left shows people's responses. At the end of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, Americans were divided (38 to 37 percent) about whether...

TO TODAY.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... When Gallup asked in 1965 about the biggest threat to the country in the future, 35 percent said big government, 29 percent big labor, and 17 percent big business. When they repeated the question in August 1999, 65 percent said big government,...

Looking to the Feds.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Despite concerns about big government, Americans want the federal government to play a substantial role in many areas. The questions at the right are designed to gauge support for a middle ground between government and the private sector....

the Mail.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2000... Citing data showing that over 20- or 30-year holding periods stocks are no more risky than bonds, Kevin Hassett and James Glassman attack the equity premium puzzle: Why should stocks produce returns that are so much higher if they are no more...