The American Enterprise articles from June 2002

The American Enterprise archives from June 2002

The insufferable wonder. (Bird's Eye).
June 1, 2002... While researching this issue of The American Enterprise I spent much of one day walking across the South Bronx. (Never let it be said that editor of a magazine is a cushy job; I ended up with blisters on both feet the size of quarters!) When I...

Sidelights.
June 1, 2002... A Texas high school's performance of an anti-violence play was cancelled after fighting broke out among some of the 500 students in attendance. * According to its Web site, the California branch of the radical Latino group Movimiento...

Reno's idea of a threat. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Janet Reno is the Democratic Party's nominee for governor of Florida. In this race, her order that heavily armed paramilitary agents snatch Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint from his Miami relatives may turn out to be an albatross. But there are other...

Dad gets a hip replacement. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Father's Day will be here in a trice, and there is a good chance that the nation's liberal press will take the occasion to deliver another of its periodic batterings of the nuclear family. Consider last year's offering in the New York Times....

Cloning is cloning is cloning. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... From remarks by President Bush about human cloning legislation, April 10, 2002: In the current debate over human cloning, two terms are being used: reproductive cloning and research cloning. Reproductive cloning involves creating a cloned...

Good riddance to another bit of the '60s. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... From a recent speech in New York City by TAE contributing writer Frederick Turner, a professor at the University of Texas, Dallas: After Vietnam, America brushed the uncomfortable need for warriors and warrior emotions under the carpet. Our...

The French finally attack. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... The following story, circulating on the Internet, is accurate, not true: The clean-up portion of the ground war in Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist...

What the doctor ordered. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Dr Pepper, the soft drink company, recently produced a special patriotic can sporting the Pledge of Allegiance. But company executives struck the phrase "under God" from the Pledge, in order to present a "unifying message."

Bad idea. (Scan).(school violence and education reform)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... The Education Reform Act passed recently by Congress and President Bush tripped over political correctness in its failure to fix one longstanding disaster in education law--1975's Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA's goal...

Red cross blackened. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... The Orange County, California chapter of the American Red Cross canceled the appearance of a music group at a March event honoring New York 9/11 volunteers because the group planned to perform songs that include the words "prayer" and "God."...

Assaulted by TV. (Scan).(Statistical Data Included)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... The longstanding argument over whether TV-watching can spur personal violence just got clearer. A detailed 17-year study of 707 randomly selected families found that people who watched more TV as teens and young adults showed increased rates of...

High altitude pressure. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... According to the Wall Street Journal, airlines are increasingly encountering obese passengers who cannot fit into plane seats without severely pushing into the passengers assigned to sit next to them. Traditionally, really fat customers were...

Medical clown. (Scan).(humor, medicine, and Patch Adams)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Some moviegoers will remember Patch Adams from the 1998 Robin Williams film celebrating him. A Virginia doctor who made a name by providing free care to anyone who needed it, and "connecting" with his patients by dressing as a clown, the...

Blasted. (Scan).(college drinking, death, and sex)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
June 1, 2002... According to a recently released study by the Task Force on College Drinking under the National Institutes of Health, alcohol consumption by college students contributes to 1,400 deaths, 500,000 injuries, and 70,000 sexual assaults. Also,...

China's economic facade. (Scan).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... For some time, China has claimed an annual economic growth of at least 7 percent. But real life casts doubt on these figures. Visitors see scores of rural people camped out at railroad stations or on sidewalks with nothing to do. Block after...

Thanks again NYPD and Mayor Guiliani. (Scan).
June 1, 2002... One of the great untold stories of the recent American crime drop is that our closest European "neighbor"--the United Kingdom--now surpasses us in virtually every category of crime. London currently has twice as many per capita robberies,...

After Enron. (Forward Observer).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... After any breakdown of a public institution, politicians feel the urge to "fix" things so it doesn't happen again. Often, however, the cure is worse than the disease. That's the case with the proposed remedies following the collapse of Enron....

Pat Moynihan: this lifelong New Yorker, student of urban life, servant of Presidents from Kennedy to Ford, and recently retired U.S. senator talks about Manhattan, immigration, Jews, Democrats, and the Irish. ("Live" with TAE).(Interview)
June 1, 2002... Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the most prominent politician-professor since Woodrow Wilson, grew up in the working-class neighborhoods of New York City. (His myth-makers liked to say he came of age in Hell's Kitchen, gests it was more like...

Big city in little pieces: an American in New York. (Cover Story).(Cover Story)
June 1, 2002... The enduring cinematic visage of New York City belongs not to King Kong or Woody Allen but rather to John Travolta, who in Saturday Night Fever forsook his family and home in Brooklyn to cross the bridge to Manhattan. On one side was clan,...

Ground zero for big government: special interest politics and the porkbarrel were invented in New York City. (Cover Story).(Cover Story)
June 1, 2002... Over the last century, only one mayor of New York City--Rudy Giuliani--was opposed on principle to the growth of government. And after eight years in office even Giuliani left the city with 31,000 more workers than he came in with, plus a per...

Time to think small? To remain a business capital, New York City needs more humility. (Cover Story).(Interview)
June 1, 2002... John Shaw sits in the very midst of the beating heart of New York City, on the busy trading floor of a midtown financial firm. President of Jefferies and Company, a Wall Street trading business, he's a prototypical New Yorker--fast-talking,...

A view from the South: how New York City looks from way, way outside Manhattan. (Cover Story).
June 1, 2002... In the days after September 11, when Americans were watching a lot of television, many of us heard a Texas man-in-the-street tell a network interviewer something like, "Being a Texan or New Yorker just isn't very important right now. We're all...

State of the nation ... part II: in our last issue, we presented nine articles that used results from the 2000 census, and other hard data, to paint pictures of where our nation is heading demographically. Below are four essays that complete the collection.(Polling Data)
June 1, 2002... The Last Decade From A to Z By Karlyn Bowman A. From 1990 to 2001, the proportion of Americans telling Gallup interviewers that abortion should be legal under any circumstances fell from 31 to 26 percent. Those stating it should be...

South America's drug-terror link. (Terror Watch).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... While our nation remains focused on terror threats and oil stoppages from the Middle East, both of those threats have recently emerged much closer to home, in South America. After the September 11 attacks, Reuters news agency obtained a...

New York's opera house brawl. (Flashback).(rivalry between American actor Edwin Forrest and English actor William C. Macready)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... "Riot," as punk rocker Chaz Ruffino once observed, is at the heart of "patriotism." Which is apparently why the B'hoys, the legendary nineteenth-century New York City gang of the Bowery, tore up the city's toniest opera house 153 years ago in a...

Good, clean, and fun (so what are you waiting for?) (Now Playing).(movie The Rookie)
June 1, 2002... Have you taken your family to see The Rookie yet? If not, you're missing out on what's pretty much an endangered species at the movies: a G-rated family film that's light on sap, heavy on warmth, humor, and common sense, and doesn't...

The decline and fall of TV network news. (Beat the Press).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Television news has had a pretty rough 2002 so far. The "Nightline" brush with death at the hands of Dave Letterman didn't exactly make me want to slap a "Save Ted Koppel's $8-Million-a-Year Job" bumper sticker on my car. Koppel can...

ANWR oil: an alternative to war over oil. (the Energy Economist).(Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska)(adapted from 'Crisis in the Commons: The Alaska Solution')
June 1, 2002... The Senate Democrats have stubbornly refused to allow any oil exploration along the rim of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. Despite this latest vote, however, the issue is not going to go away. Given our continuing...

Stopping history in New York.(Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party)
June 1, 2002... Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party By George Marlin St. Augustine's Press, 434 pages, $28 If the idea of a Conservative Party in New York, of all places, strikes you as a gutsy-but-futile attempt at...

Making sense of the Chinese.(book on Chinese rebels)
June 1, 2002... Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing By Ian Buruma Random House, 432 pages, $27.95 There is an idea, mostly propagated by Chinese authoritarian leaders, that China is unfit for democracy. Supposedly, the poor,...

Shades of truth.(book evaluating the influence of multiculturalism on journalism)
June 1, 2002... Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism By William McGowan Encounter Books, 278 pages, $25.95 William McGowan's Coloring the News opens with the tale of Dr. Patrick Chavis, an affirmative-action...

Needing a win. (In Real Life).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... SYRACUSE, NEBRASKA--We drove the 60 miles home with tears of frustration running down Ben's face. He'd just lost two wrestling matches, and he was mad, and disappointed, and embarrassed. Ben is 15, a high school freshman, and a delightful kid,...

New York City: a nice place to visit, but ... (Opinion Pulse).(Polling Data)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... In 1939, a near majority of Americans told pollsters that New York City was a good place to visit, but they wouldn't want to live or work there. Interest in visiting dipped to 34 percent in the crime-ridden late 1970s. More recently, the...

Views on national service. (Opinion Pulse).(Brief Article)(Polling Data)
June 1, 2002... In his State of the Union message, President George W. Bush called on every American to serve the country for two years, or 4,000 hours, over the course of a lifetime. Around 60 percent of the public favor a service requirement for young men....

Reforming welfare. (Opinion Pulse).(Brief Article)(Polling Data)
June 1, 2002... Pollsters are exploring the public's view of the sweeping welfare law enacted in 1996. Not surprisingly, most people haven't followed it closely, but there seems to be a strong general impression that the system is working better. The most...

The mail.(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2002... Congratulations to Dinesh D'Souza for his article "What's So Great About America" (April/May). It was comprehensive and insightful. There is one niche worth filling in, however. Mr. D'Souza marvels how Irish Catholics, Jews, British...

Pharmaceutical profits and the discovery of new medicines. (Pfizer forum).(adapted from Health Affairs, September/October 2001)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Since the late 1950s, when the Kefauver Committee investigated the business practices of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, representatives of that sector have argued that its profits are an important stimulus to, and source of funding for,...