The American Enterprise articles from July 2006

The American Enterprise archives from July 2006

Swan song.(The American Enterprise)
July 1, 2006... "The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart."--Deuteronomy The central premise of this magazine, from the moment I began shaping it in 1994, has been that the instincts needed to keep America healthy and strong will...

Missing factory jobs.
July 1, 2006... Since 2000, over 4.5 million manufacturing jobs have been lost nationwide. Labor and political activists are agitated. Some wonder if the country should limit its connections to the global economy. But the country in question isn't our...

Wonderwoman.(Wafa Sultan)
July 1, 2006... Syrian-born psychiatrist Wafa Sultan has taken on the Islamic establishment, and she is formidable. Now a resident of southern California, she went verbally mano a mano with an Egyptian theologian in an interview broadcast on al-Jazeera earlier...

Beltway bigot.(American Theocracy)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... When I moved to Atlanta in 1985, I thought I was going into exile. I was a dedicated bicoastal, secular intellectual who'd moved to a giant suburb full of people who prayed before meals and drawled while doing so. How could I survive without...

Climbing Yucca Mountain.(Scan: Short news and commentary)
July 1, 2006... "As you can see, Yucca Mountain isn't really a mountain," says our guide as we near the end of an hour-long bus ride north from Las Vegas. "It's only a ridge. No one knows how it got the name 'Yucca' either. There aren't many yucca plants...

Long live the Japanese.
July 1, 2006... In Western countries we hear constantly about the longevity of the Japanese, and therefore assume that the quality of Japanese health care is very high. Living in Japan for more than 12 years brought me up close and personal with that system....

Sidelights.(Internet fraud, population in metropolitan areas)
July 1, 2006... If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness--G. K. Chesterton New York City accounts for 7 percent of the U.S. population, and is home to 23 percent of the nation's psychiatrists. * The Census Bureau reported that 18 of...

Leon Kass: when he chose his career, bioethics was a dead field. Today, it's at the heart of many of our society's most vexing controversies. And this physician-philosopher is the nation's leading voice on the subject.("Live" with TAE)(Interview)
July 1, 2006... Leon Kass is a medical doctor, biologist, ethicist, philosopher, and teacher. After decades as a professor at the University of Chicago, he accepted responsibility for chairing President Bush's Council on Bioethics, a position he held from 2001...

Education myths: debunking the fictions that obstruct school reform.(Cover story)
July 1, 2006... Myths aren't lies. They are beliefs that people adopt because they have an air of plausibility. But myths aren't true, and they often get in the way during serious problem-solving. This essay identifies seven common myths that dominate...

When unaccountable courts meet dysfunctional schools.(educational finance)
July 1, 2006... Last year, Columbia University formally abandoned intellectual neutrality and embraced political activism in a remarkable fashion. The university announced a Campaign for Educational Equity that aims, in its first year, to raise $12 million to...

A coming crisis in suburban schooling?
July 1, 2006... We are all accustomed to the idea that America faces problems in its public education systems. But mostly it's the other guy's school, in the city next door, where we think the troubles center. Suburban schools in neighborhoods with rising home...

Pictures of the professoriate: this novel made fun of campus politics before campus politics became a bloodsport.(Pictures from an Institution)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... The academic novel is a strictly Anglo-American invention, probably because only in Britain and the United States do professors live in closed communities as asphyxiating as company towns. In Western Europe, Canada, and Latin America,...

Stubborn cowboys: outdoor Americans as chronicled by a man of the prairie.(Elmer Kelton)
July 1, 2006... Elmer Kelton was voted "Great Western Writer of All Time" by the Western Writers of America, a daunting title to work under, though he bears it modestly. There is, after all, that modifying adjective: Western. Kelton, who turned 80 in...

Let's move medicine into the information age.
July 1, 2006... At a Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center just a few miles from my office in the U.S. Capitol, you can glimpse a piece of American medicine's future. Sitting at an ordinary desktop computer Dr. Ned Evans hits a few keys on the keyboard...

Amateur hour.(professional-amateur golf tournaments)
July 1, 2006... LACONNEX, SWITZERLAND---When I moved to Europe in 1991, I worked for a company that for many years sponsored a professional-amateur golf tournament for charitable causes. This grand tour, with me in tow, visited such hallowed ground as...

KZ from A to Z.(Karl Zinsmeister)
July 1, 2006... To know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child--Cicero A few things you may not know about Karl Zinsmeister, TAE's outgoing editor in chief: * Karl rowed for Yale's college champion crew team. He was...

Real American friends.(Karl Zinsmeister)
July 1, 2006... TARKIO, MISSOURI -- Several years ago, I found myself in a maximum-security women's prison interviewing a convicted murderer, and the discussion turned to her lesbian lover. At about that point, I asked myself the existential question shared by...

How oil lubricates our enemies.
July 1, 2006... Diplomacy is the police in grand costume--Napoleon With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxism was discredited as an unworkable--and often murderous--alternative to consumer capitalism. Eastern Europe was freed and began to prosper in a...

The quiet entrenchment of our investment class.
July 1, 2006... On a glorious day in mid May on the South Lawn of the White House, President Bush signed a bill that extended two of his tax initiatives from 2008 into 2010. That may appear a small thing, but it was a manifestation of a much larger political,...

Al Gore Saves the universe.(Albert Gore Jr.)('An Inconvenient Truth')
July 1, 2006... Al Gore certainly looks like a man who is running for President in An Inconvenient Truth, a shamelessly propagandistic documentary that has all the artistry and subtlety of a campaign ad. Even those who agree with Gore's environmental...

An ode to the ad.
July 1, 2006... Television... that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night--Ray Bradbury When we first got VCRs, we all captured our favorite shows for future viewings, certain we'd want to see that primo "Miami Vice" episode a dozen...

Snow storm.(press and politics)
July 1, 2006... The hand that rules the press... rules the country--Judge Learned Hand When new White House press secretary Tony Snow whirled through the revolving door that separates the mass media from Washington officialdom, there was shock in some...

Do doctors discriminate by race?
July 1, 2006... Two 50-year-old men arrive at an emergency room with acute chest pain. One is white and the other black. Will they receive the same quality of treatment and have the same chance of recovery? Many experts today insist that bias in the doctor's...

Stoic women.(Voices of the Silent Generation: Strong Women Tell Their Stories)(Book review)
July 1, 2006... Words may be deeds--Aesop Voices of the Silent Generation: Strong Women Tell Their Stories Barbara Baillet Moran Avisson Press, 389 pages, $29.95 To hear feminists tell it, American women who came of age in the 1950s were only slightly...

Literant.(men's clothing)
July 1, 2006... There's not much to do while sitting in an airport, waiting for your connection. You can munch on overpriced food from an in-terminal vendor, or try to read a book if all the noise and commotion around you isn't too much of a distraction. Of...

Unprofitable ideas on energy.(excess profits tax)
July 1, 2006... Sterling Burnett and Christa Bieker, "Taxing Profits, Draining Energy," National Center for Policy Analysis, March 2006 (ncpa.org) Recent surges in the cost of, oil, coupled with the oil industry s record profits, have led some politicians...

Children, with marriage.(childbirth, teenage pregnancy)(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... Andrea Kane and Daniel Lichter, "Reducing Unwed Childbearing;' The Brookings Institution, April 2006 (brook.edu) A record 1.5 million babies were born to unmarried women in the U.S. in 2004. Recognizing the negative aspects of this trend,...

War myths.(Iraq War 2003)
July 1, 2006... Frederick Kagan, "Myths of the Current War," AEI National Security Outlook, March 2006 (aei.org) Debate about American policy in Iraq has been needlessly distorted by several myths about the war, argues AEI resident scholar Frederick...

The tax-free economy.(tax law)
July 1, 2006... Scott Hodge, "Who Really Benefits from the Extended Tax Cut?" The Tax Foundation, May 2006 (taxfoundation.org) In the wake of the latest tax bill signed by President Bush, the media have focused on the alleged regressive nature of his tax...

Chemical checklist.(Brief article)
July 1, 2006... James Carafano, "Congressional Checklist for Chemical Security," Heritage Foundation Executive Memorandum, May 2006 (heritage.org) Congress is considering legislation to secure America's chemical infrastructure against terrorism. To be...

Alternate schooling.
July 1, 2006... Alternate Schooling Though they aren't ready to give up on the public school system, most Americans believe private schools provide a better education. About six in ten parents with school-age children send them to public schools, but...

Terror from Tehran.
July 1, 2006... Nearly nine in ten Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Iran, and in most recent polls, Iran is named as the greatest danger to the United States. Roughly two thirds of Americans see a nuclear Iran as a major threat to the United States,...

The mail.(Letter to the editor)
July 1, 2006... Your article on sprawl ("How Sprawl Got a Bad Name," June) is so, so right and a pleasure to read. I have been a local councilman in Nottinghamshire, England for 40 years--40 years of hearing bawling opposition to any building anywhere. I have...