The American Enterprise articles from January 2006

The American Enterprise archives from January 2006

Respect the limits that made the USA.(Bird's Eye)
January 1, 2006... As 2005 closes, and the next year's federal budget season opens, fiscal conservatives are up in arms. Though he talks a good line about battling government bloat, our current President has shown an eerie lackawanna when it comes to actually...

Is the war progressing?(Scan: Short news and commentary)
January 1, 2006... Last night I spoke to the parents of a soldier who had just been seriously wounded by a roadside bomb north of Baghdad, where the Army battalion I command is based. They asked me about the war's progress. (Amidst their anguish over insurgents...

Democrats' war contributions.(Scan: Short news and commentary)
January 1, 2006... John Kerry offered to make John McCain his running mate on at least seven separate occasions. He even proposed to "expand the role of Vice President to include Secretary of Defense and the overall control of foreign policy" reported Newsweek....

Gas fuming.(Scan: Short news and commentary)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Imagine that soaring demand for tofu among China's and India's rising middle classes puts pressure on soybean supplies. Prices jump. Then suppose a pair of record storms wipes out swaths of bean fields and processing plants. Would you be...

Well, they can't blame small government ...(domestic governance)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... When residents of New Orleans struggled to cope with Hurricane Katrina, politicians and media in Europe offered scores of tut-tutting commentaries saying this was the result of America's social-Darwinist ethic and underdeveloped government....

Brainwashing 201.(Scan: Short news and commentary)(Movie Review)
January 1, 2006... "Fascists have no right to speak!" yelled a left-wing protestor, stomping onto the stage at the premiere of Evan Maloney's new film, Brainwashing 201. It was a dramatic example of what Maloney's picture is all about--the lack of fairness on...

96-3.(Supreme Court justices' elections)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... As Samuel Alito awaits his Chinese water torture in the Senate, it's worth remembering that Bill Clinton's two Supreme Court nominees received 96-3 and 87-9 confirmation approvals. Not because they were judicial moderates: Ruth Ginsburg was a...

Civil liberties for students.(Scan: Short news and commentary)
January 1, 2006... Many parents and students have come to realize that left-wing professors and administrators set the tone in most of academe. But how to restore some balance to universities grown hostile to middle-class values? Enter David Horowitz, the...

Robert Kaplan: one of America's top globetrotting journalists slings strong, frank analysis of Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran, Islamic radicals, American journalists, elitism, U.S. soldiers, and the world's future hotspots.("Live" with TAE)(Interview)
January 1, 2006... Born in Brooklyn 53 years ago, Robert Kaplan was raised in a working-class section of Queens where his father was a truck driver and his mother a homemaker. Recruited as a swimmer, he attended the University of Connecticut, where he took not a...

Sidelights.
January 1, 2006... If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness--G.K. Chesterton At present, 33 billionaires live in Moscow, versus 31 in New York City. * Seventy-four percent of Europeans and 51 percent of Americans favor the promotion of...

Unlimited government: it's not Constitutional it's not effective it's not safe.(Cover Story)
January 1, 2006... It was typical summertime in Washington last July-temperature in the 90s, humidity in the 80s--yet the living was anything but easy. President Bush announced on prime-time television his nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court,...

Ideological Hurricane Katrina tore the lid of a virtual Superdome of liberal illussions about how cities prosper. Are we ready to try real urban reform?
January 1, 2006... Last September's tragedy in New Orleans revealed, in the starkest manner, the soft underbelly of America's cities. After all the 1990s rhetoric insisting that "Cities are back!" we got a glimpse behind the facades of a major urban center and...

A tale of two cities.(comparison of New Orleans and Houston)
January 1, 2006... Houston and New Orleans are places united by geography, climate, and history--and divided on virtually everything else. The two cities represent contrasting ways of coping with the urban experience. New Orleans was for much of its history...

Rediscovering the underclass.
January 1, 2006... In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we have rediscovered the underclass.... The better parts of town haven't dealt with the underclass for many years, having successfully erected screens that keep them from troubling us. Most important, we...

Tax reform in 2006: both politically and economically, it could be a winner, while decreasing the burden of government.
January 1, 2006... Americans spend about $150 billion every year just doing their taxes. Only about 13 percent of U.S. taxpayers tile without the aid of tax software or tax professionals, and literally a majority of Americans now have to pay someone else to...

A 2005 rollick: our house humorist review an off year.
January 1, 2006... Behold: 2005 was the most important year in human history. Okay, maybe not. There have been better years, and worse ones. The Goths did not sack New York City. No plague. Asteroids didn't deform the globe. The center held, and if some rough...

Movie Messiah: could the lion behind the new Narnia movie bring a springtime to Hollywood?
January 1, 2006... At the start of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, we find C. S. Lewis's mythical world of talking animals, satyrs, fauns, centaurs, and dwarves trapped in the Hundred Year Winter--a time where evil reigns and creativity has given way to...

Men without scruples: one prescient author measured the terrorist mind a full century ago.
January 1, 2006... It took an act unprecedented in all history--the ramming of passenger planes into national landmarks--to awaken Americans to the reality of international terrorism. Long protected by geography and circumstance from a contagion that has for a...

Out in the cold.
January 1, 2006... New York--My teenage son and I put in a lot of hours together in Boy Scouts. Then girls came along and he quit just short of his Eagle. It's a sore point. But he'll still camp with me--including winter camping in New York state's...

Iraq and moral distortion.(morality of war against Iraq)
January 1, 2006... The war that began on September 11, 2001 has unfortunately pushed international moral relativism and anti-Americanism back onto the front burner. Ugly paradoxes abound: * European and American journalists agonized over a purportedly...

Corporate social responsibility.(Politics meets economics)
January 1, 2006... "Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society" wrote Milton Friedman 43 years ago, "as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders...

They only know one way to tell a war story.(Beat the Press)
January 1, 2006... There are few spectacles that delight the establishment media more than a good old-fashioned protest march--and none more than a war protest. It's a feast for their senses in particular: the metronomic slogan chants, the sparkle of the tie-dye,...

Andy Warhol's Moralist.(Flashback)(Paul Morrissey)
January 1, 2006... Catholic reactionaries are not unknown in the world of motion pictures: there is Mel Gibson, of course, and director Eric Rohmer, whose The Lady and the Duke is the most unflattering depiction of the French Revolution ever committed to film....

Toeing the Hollywood line on Johnny.(Now Playing: film reviews diamonds to dross)(Johnny Cash)
January 1, 2006... Like public squares at Christmas time, movies today are under pressure to be purged of any hint of religious faith. How else to explain Walk the Line, a musically rousing but factually ignorant movie biography of Johnny Cash? This...

A new way to find "Lost".(analysis of television programs )
January 1, 2006... "Gather round, younguns, and listen to how it was before everyone with two dimes t' rub together had a dinner plate up on the roof chatterin' away at some satellite. We had three channels. Then PBS came along, and we still had three channels,...

The southern way of death.
January 1, 2006... Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral By Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays Miramax Books, 243 pages, $19.95 At least since 1976, when Jimmy Carter came out of nowhere to win the...

Literant.(Criticism and interpretation Greatness: Reagan, Churchill, and the Making of Extraordinary Leaders)
January 1, 2006... Books about Ronald Reagan tend to inspire a Pavlovian reaction among conservative readers. So do books about Winston Churchill. So in writing a book about both Reagan and Churchill, Steven Hay-ward is guaranteed to make the salivary glands of...

Criminals take drugs.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Jennifer Karberg and Doris James, "Substance Dependence, Abuse and Treatment of Jail Inmates, 2002," Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2005 (ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs) Over two thirds of local jail inmates are alcohol or drug abusers, and fully...

Europe divides U.K., U.S.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)
January 1, 2006... Richard North, "The Wrong Side of the Hill: The Secret Realignment of U.K. Defense Policy with the E.U." Centre for Policy Studies, October 2005 (cps.org.uk) While moves to unify Europe politically have eased the transfer of goods and...

Taxing family life.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Rebecca O'Neill, "Fiscal Policy and the Family: How the Family Fares in France, Germany and the U.K.," Civitas, August 2005 (civitas.org.uk) It's conventional wisdom among Europeans that tax policy should promote equality between rich and...

Cast away the LOST.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)(Law of the Sea Treaty)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Doug Bandow, "LOST at Sea: Don't Resurrect the Law of the Sea Treaty" Policy Analysis, Cato Institute, October 13, 2005 (cato.org) After rejecting it under President Reagan in 1982, the United States has steadfastly refused to become a...

Cold water on storm theories.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... R. A. Pielke, et al.,"Hurricanes and Global Warming," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, December 2005 (sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus) In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, media commentators have pushed...

The year in review.(Psychological aspects of americans)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Since 1959, the Gallup Organization has asked Americans to imagine a ladder with ten rungs and then to tell interviewers where the country was on that ladder five years ago, where it is today, and where they expect it to be five years from now....

Election returns.(reports of election results)
January 1, 2006... Most election results are known very shortly after an election. But others take time to unearth. Rhodes Cook, one of Washington's best political analysts, has looked at county-level data and has come up with some fascinating results. Resort...

The mail.(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2006... If I had started midway through the third paragraph of Karl Zinsmeister's "Europe Learns the Wrong Lessons" (October-December), I would have assumed that he was talking about the USA. "Unaccountable bureaucracies and elites commandeer the most...