The American Enterprise articles from January 2005

The American Enterprise archives from January 2005

Beware of trendy "truths".(Bird's Eye)(Editorial)
January 1, 2005... We know from our mail and our surveys (latest example on facing page) that readers of The American Enterprise tend to be independent folks who resist intellectual fashions, and like to make up their own minds. A big reason they subscribe is...

Sidelights.
January 1, 2005... "This is the best election night in history."--Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe, November 2, 2004, just before 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.... 3 in 10 Democrats believe George W. Bush stole the 2004 election, according to...

The bush mandate.(Indicators)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... * In the November election, George W. Bush became the first Presidential candidate since 1988 to receive a majority of the popular vote. * The nearly 59 million votes Bush earned are an all-time record. * The percentage of the total...

Second term endorsement.(Indicators)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... * Compared to 2000, the President increased his percentage of the vote in 45 out of 50 states. * Bush raised his vote total from the previous election by more than 8 million ballots--over three times the jump Bill Clinton was able to...

A mandate in Congress.(Indicators)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... * Bush is the first U.S. President since 1924 to start a second term with House and Senate majorities. * Bush is the first U.S. President since 1936 to be re-elected while gaining seats in both the House and the Senate. Re-election...

Closing the gaps.(Indicators)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... * Bush trimmed the female gender gap to its lowest level of many years. Women voted Bush 48 percent up from 43 percent in 2000 to Kerry 51 percent. (Men, meanwhile, voted Bush 55 percent to Kerry 44 percent.) * Bush also trimmed the GOP...

The cavalry rides in.(Scan)
January 1, 2005... Following are extracts from a letter to TAE's editor from a young West Point-educated Army officer who has been at the center of intelligence operations connected to two of the trickiest and most successful combat actions carried out by the...

The electoral college wins again.(Scan)
January 1, 2005... As this magazine arrives in your home, the country doesn't have a President-elect yet. Not officially. And we're all for it. Formal voting in the Presidential election is not complete until the electors in each state cast their votes on...

With this much love for fellow Americans, why do they lose?(Scan)
January 1, 2005... For the benefit of future historians--and today's psychotherapists--we've put together a handy condensation of reactions to our latest election results from the left side of the political spectrum (home of tolerance and reason, remember?): ...

So long as they take their 527 PACS with them.
January 1, 2005... A bit of Internet humor we received recently: Since the re-election of President Bush, the flood of left-leaning Americans sneaking into Canada--out of fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray, and agree with Rush Limbaugh--has sparked...

Christians eat lions.(Scan)
January 1, 2005... Since at least the mid 1970s, the Democratic Party and its allies have devoted themselves to making life miserable for Christians. On Election Day, Christians returned the favor. Followers of Jesus--evangelical Protestants and traditional...

Democracy counts.(Scan)
January 1, 2005... Two thousand and four has been a year of rigged elections in the former Soviet Union. First came a farce in Chechnya, where all candidates not approved by the authorities were forced to withdraw. Then, in Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenka--the...

Michael Medved: once a left-wing agitator, he took a right turn toward reality, reason, and religion. Now he's one of the leading analysts of politics and popular culture in America.(Live with TAE)
January 1, 2005... Michael Medved was voted "most radical" in his Los Angeles high school class, then graduated from Yale and attended Yale Law School, where he knew Bill and Hillary Clinton. He was an antiwar protester and backer of Eugene McCarthy, after which...

The solution; here's how to end our reliance on oil-exporting despots & whack urban pollution in a single stroke (guess who's against it?).
January 1, 2005... Let's be straightforward: The world's supply of petroleum isn't going to last forever. Just when it will run low is a subject of spirited debate, but there's a growing feeling in the oil industry that it may be sooner rather than later. ...

Nuclear reactions from the green movement.
January 1, 2005... Irrational antipathy toward nuclear power is so strong among environmentalists, it even overpowers other environmental priorities. lames Lovelock, a famous British ecologist and one of the founders of the international Green movement, published...

How new designs could make nuclear power even more attractive.
January 1, 2005... Experiments are about to begin on a new form of nuclear power that even eco-warriors might tolerate--if not welcome. It is radically different from the traditional reactor designs that prompt fear and loathing: For one thing, its safety is...

Never mind the population explosion.
January 1, 2005... For at least 650 years, since the time of the Black Plague, the total number of people on Earth has headed in one direction: up. In the modern era, this has occasioned much panic. Environmentalists have insisted that more people means more...

Get used to it: suburbia's not going away, no matter what critics say or do.
January 1, 2005... For the better part of the last half century, urbanists, planners, and environmentalists have railed against suburbia, and the dreaded trend of cities to "sprawl" outward from the old city core. Yet despite many attempts to discourage such...

Why "smart growth" is dumb.
January 1, 2005... Americans love their own cars, but they're sick of everyone else's. The car is blamed for everything from global warming to the war in Iraq to the transformation of America into a land of strip malls and soulless subdivisions filled with fat,...

How to save the planet (really).
January 1, 2005... Pollution; ozone depletion; starvation; malnutrition; disease; poverty; illiteracy; wars; corruption; nuclear war.... The list of disasters looming on humanity's horizon will always be long. Sometimes true catastrophes threaten, other hazards...

Environmentalism should not be a religion.
January 1, 2005... The single most original and successful social movement of the late twentieth century was environmentalism. It arose seemingly out of nowhere, yet immediately grew into a huge majority. It swept in new legislation that effected stunning gains...

Case closed: there's no longer any way to deny it: college campuses are the most politically undiverse places in America.
January 1, 2005... Back in 1995--in the September/October issue of The American Enterprise, just my fifth installment as editor--we at TAE put together the first systematic study documenting imbalances in the political choices of American professors. We sent...

My global journey across the U.S.(In real life: first-person America)
January 1, 2005... IN MIDDLE AMERICA--On September 11, I was speeding through the desert toward Mecca. More accurately, it was September 11, 2002 and I was headed for Mecca, California, an isolated hamlet in the Coachella Valley populated by Latino migrant...

President Atchison?(Flashback: to know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child--Cicero)
January 1, 2005... The names of antebellum Presidents float dreamily across the mind: Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Atchison, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce.... Wait a minute. Atchison? Well, that all depends on whether or not epitaphs lie. For in the...

Bull market for republicanism?(Forward Observer)
January 1, 2005... As a financial writer at heart, marooned in Washington, I frequently find that finance provides the right context--and the right words--for understanding politics. For instance, the results of the November 2 election bring to mind two financial...

GOP bottom to top.(Politico)
January 1, 2005... The day has finally arrived: The Republican Party is now the natural governing majority party in the U.S. The November 2 election increased the Republican majority in the House from 228 to 232 and in the Senate from 51 to 55. Republicans...

All the news that fits their spin.(Beat the press: the hand that rules the press ... rules the country--Judge Learned Hand)
January 1, 2005... Fake National Guard documents. Missing explosives. The draft. During the 2004 campaign, no story that made the President look bad was too petty, too contrived, or too false to command the attention of the establishment media. Yet there was...

Pervert as hero.(Now Playing)
January 1, 2005... If you dare to question the dubious methods and findings of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, you're invariably declared naive and prudish by his defenders. What an irony, then, that you would be hard-pressed to find a more naive picture playing in...

Social security and Mexico: a travesty.(The Immigration Economist)
January 1, 2005... There has been much confusing talk about a partially completed agreement between the United States and Mexico on allowing Social Security credits for cross-border workers. Immigration expert Marti Dinerstein presents the plain facts on the...

Bite the bullet.(BackTalk)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror By Michael Ignatieff Princeton University Press, 160 pages, $22.95 Since September 11, 2001, the Western democracies have had difficulty understanding the political, religious, and...

Everyday genius.(BackTalk)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations By James Surowiecki Doubleday, 320 pages, $24.95 The wisdom of crowds" is a phrase that strikes most...

The new deal was a raw deal.(Off The Shelf)(Book Review)
January 1, 2005... Salvos Against the New Deal: Selections from the Saturday Evening Post 1933-1940 By Garet Garrett, edited by Bruce Ramsey Caxton Press, 282 pages, $12.95 Economic journalist Garet Garrett (1878-1953) was one of the most brilliant and...

Political baseball.(Politics)
January 1, 2005... Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys, "Caught Stealing: Debunking the Economic Case for D.C. Baseball" Cato Briefing Papers No. 89, October 27, 2004 (cato.org) Local politicians regularly seek to exploit the importance of sport to many...

Cell phone accidents.(Economics and Regulations)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... Robert Hahn and James Prieger, "The Impact of Driver Cell Phone Use on Accidents;' AEI Working Paper No. 106, July 2004 (aei.org) The supposed role of cell phones in distracting automobile drivers and thereby contributing directly to...

Sons of marriage.(Culture and Society)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... Karen Norberg, "Partnership Status and the Human Sex Ratio at Birth;' Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, November 22, 2004 (pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk) Way back in 1874, Charles Darwin noted that there appeared to be a lower percentage...

Public safety and public choice.(National Security)
January 1, 2005... Veronique de Rugy, "What Does Homeland Security Spending Buy?" AEI Working Paper No. 107, October 29, 2004 (aei.org) Between 2001 and 2005, the amount of federal money spent on homeland security increased by 180 percent. Total spending...

More boldness needed.(Science And Environment)
January 1, 2005... Bruce Yandle and lane Shaw, eds., Report Card 2004: Bush Administration's Environmental Policy, Property and Environment Research Center, October 21, 2004 (perc.org) At the midpoint and end of every four-year Presidential term, the...

Unlocking brain mysteries.(Science And Environment)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... Lakshmi Sandhana, "Is That a Pilot in Your Pocket?" Wired, October 23, 2004 (wired.com) Lakshmi Sandhana draws our attention to a remarkable advance in bio medical engineering: "Somewhere in Florida, 25,000 disembodied rat neurons are...

Better off out.(Other Countries)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... Ian Milne, A Cost Too Far: An Analysis of the Net Economic Costs and Benefits for the U.K. of E. U. Membership, Civitas Institute, July 2004 (civitas.org.uk) British Prime Minister Tony Blair often tells his skeptical public that 60...

Attitudes toward the Supreme Court.(Opinion Pulse)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2005... The mid-1980s were the recent high point of public confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court. Then came a dip, followed by a slow decade-long rise. Public confidence was not affected by the Court's involvement in the 2000 Presidential election. Over...

Views about the next court nominee.(Opinion Pulse)
January 1, 2005... Americans want the next Supreme Court nominee to have political views that are more conservative than liberal. They want the Court to give states more authority than the federal government. Views on whether the Constitution should be adapted to...

The mail.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2005... Karl Zinsmeister's "The Election's Over--Now Fight the War" (BIRD'S EYE, December) was an exercise in prophecy in the most Biblical sense--not as seeing into the future, but by reading the signs of the times. His was not an exposition on...

Last gap.(Comic)
January 1, 2005... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: "We don't have HBO--is it still O.K. if we participate in the conversation?" WHY YOU RARELY see A FEMALE POLYGAMIST... YOU MEAN NONE OF YOU TOOK OUT THE TRASH?... "Better watch those fingers."...