The American Enterprise articles from July 1997

The American Enterprise archives from July 1997

Touched by entrepreneurial angels. (entrepreneurship in America)
July 1, 1997... Jim was a house painter. After working for someone else for several years he had set up his own business, and when I crossed paths with him in later years he had built it into quite a prosperous enterprise. But at the moment I'm remembering just...

A bigger NATO? (NATO's expansion)
July 1, 1997... NATO, many have said, is history's most successful alliance. But can it survive its success? NKFO was formed for the specific purpose of countering Soviet imperialism, but the Soviet Union now rests in the dustbin of history. Why should NATO...

T.J. Rodgers. (interview with capitalist T.J. Rodgers)(with related article on T.J. Rodgers defended profits in the New York Times)(Interview)
July 1, 1997... T.J. Rodgers is a socialist's nightmare. Former Dartmouth football player, holder of a doctorate in electrical engineering, he is founder and ceo of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation in Silicon Valley. With his pointed criticisms of the slack,...

An American in Africa. ( a blackman confronts Africa)
July 1, 1997... I WATCHED THE DEAD FLOAT DOWN A RIVER IN TANZANIA. IT'S ONE OF THOSE APOCRYPHAl. STORIES YOU ALWAYS HEAR COMING OUT OF AFRICA, MEANT TO DEMONSTRATE THE SAVAGERY OF "THE NATIVES." BABIES BEING PULLED OFF THEIR MOTHERS' BACKS AND TOSSED ONTO...

The ACLU hurts poor people. (American Civil Liberties Union)
July 1, 1997... Artensa Randolph, wheelchair-bound and in her late 70s, had had enough. Each day, she and other residents of Chicago public housing faced well-organized gangs with arsenals larger than the police department's. Their high-rise buildings were...

The ACLU blocks common sense and freedom. (American Civil Liberties Union)
July 1, 1997... The fundraising letter had impressive testimonials. Chief Justice Earl Warren had said that the American Civil Liberties Union "stood foursquare against the recurring tirades of hysteria that from time to time threaten freedoms everywhere."...

Generation X does business. (new generation's business engagement)
July 1, 1997... If you want to understand the new generation, you can e-mail Robert Guldi. The co-founder of Digital House, a booming new media company based in Washington, D.C., Guldi is one step ahead of the competition and perfectly in sync with the...

Today's female passion for entrepreneurship. (with related article on women in business: the prequel)
July 1, 1997... Cancer put Kris Beard in business. She lost her right breast, her hair, and life as she knew it five years ago. When she went bra shopping, she discovered the local boutique in Toledo, California that carried prostheses didn't stock the large...

Small business, big government and American prosperity.
July 1, 1997... Last month, Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, formerly a Harvard economics professor, declared, "When it comes to cutting the estate tax, there is no case other than selfishness." Small business owners and family farmers who've worked...

How government has created a hiring hell for employers.
July 1, 1997... * The Wall Street Journal reports a boom in seminars on how to fire problem employees. The American Management Association alone holds more than 150 how-to-sack sessions a year, each drawing about seventy managers at $145 a pop. One such panel...

Business and religion: old couple or bosom buddies?
July 1, 1997... Is the Republican coalition really composed of a deeply troubled and unholy alliance between economic libertarians and social conservatives? That's certainly the conventional wisdom. The press portrays economic and social conservatives as sharply...

Business as a moral undertaking: the Matsushita story.
July 1, 1997... Born in a Japanese farming village in 1894, Konosuke Matsushita endured numerous childhood blows, including the death of six of his seven siblings, his father's speculating away all of the family's financial assets, and leaving home at the age of...

Business as calling.
July 1, 1997... I've just written a book about "business as a calling," an idea which sounds odd to people who think of business people as"money-grubbing materialists." But though they receive little affirmation for their vocations from the clergy or the...

From peon to boss: it still happens.
July 1, 1997... Andrew Carnegie started out as a $1.20 a week bobbin boy. By the end of his life he was head of the largest company in the world. Rags to riches, literally, in one working career. But that was the old, freewheeling, frontier America. Today,...

The landlord as entrepreneur.
July 1, 1997... "Dear Landlord, please don't put a price on my soul," pined that authority on property rights Bob Dylan. In literature and popular culture, the very word landlord seems to reek of feudalism, greed, and insensitivity, conjuring up a parasite class...

Business boom, business bust ... it's the culture, stupid.
July 1, 1997... Back in 1994 when Andrew Segal graduated from New York University Law School, he had a big head start toward business success - a million dollars in family money burning a hole in his pocket. Young, aggressive, and full of entrepreneurial energy,...

The risks of a growing business.
July 1, 1997... When we returned home today, my latest purchase and proudest capital improvement - a 20-year-old fork-lift - was precariously perched on the edge of the sidewalk, with one wheel no longer earthbound and the other three wheels mired in the kind of...

Lost classics resurrected.
July 1, 1997... As we started reading to our four children, my wife Amy and I became discouraged with the books we found in schools and stores. "Where are the wonderful books we read as children and our parents and grandparents read before us?" we wondered. We...

Joining the movement.
July 1, 1997... A bunch of country boys were crowding me, pushing me to join their group so I would get along in this rural town of 800 in northern Montana. ! had deliberately left behind big-city life and the left-wing causes I used to espouse; so I couldn't...

Wealth-builder beware. Make sure your legacy goes where you want.
July 1, 1997... MAKE SURE YOUR LEGACY GOES WHERE YOU WANT Take a close look at the foundations set up by pioneering businessmen and you'll find a curious paradox. The heroic entrepreneurs whose fortunes endowed America's leading charities - men like Andrew...

Jackie Robinson-pioneer destroyer.
July 1, 1997... The stubborn, arrogant, and ultimately heroic Jackie Robinson probably would have hated the summer-long wallow in sanctimony that Nike and the networks and newspaper chains have made of the 50th anniversary of his debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers....

Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS.
July 1, 1997... If you're angry about your taxes, you'll be downright furious when you've finished this book - furious at the mismanagement, illegality, and immorality of the Internal Revenue Service. In 1988, Air Force historian Shelley Davis became the...

Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race.
July 1, 1997... In light of the numerous, well-publicized celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking the color barrier in professional baseball, it may be surprising to learn that not every liberal views Robinson's achievement as a...

The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity.
July 1, 1997... Most serious Americans now believe that long-term welfare payments do more harm than good. We know that welfare demeans the people who receive it, breaks up families and keeps them broken, and is a major reason why today's ghettos are lawless,...

Impossible Nation: The Longing for Homeland in Canada and Quebec.
July 1, 1997... Ray Conlogue, long-time theater critic and now the Montreal arts correspondent for The Globe and Mail (the Toronto-based newspaper of Canadian establishment liberalism), has written a very unexpected book. Indeed, this work may come to be seen as...

Kristin Lavaransdatter.
July 1, 1997... Kristin Lavransdatter, the trilogy of 14th-century Norway that brought Sigrid Undset the 1928 Nobel Prize for literature, is drawing renewed and much-deserved attention. One sign is Liv Ullmann's recent film based on the book, which has yet to...