The American Enterprise articles from March 2002

The American Enterprise archives from March 2002

The secret formula for progress. (Bird's Eye).(importance of debate)
March 1, 2002... Americans are not especially big on formal debates. We tend to be a practical and modest people, and so long as is running smoothly, most everyday citizens would her not spar over esoteric principles. Ronald Reagan reflected this when he...

Sidelights.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The online edition of the former official Soviet Communist Party paper Pravda ran an opinion piece by Patrick Buchanan. * A Pew Center poll found that 47 percent of women and 53 percent of men favor higher military spending, and that 64 percent...

Liberal parents, lost children. (Scan).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Authorities recently announced that John Walker Lindh will face a maximum of life in prison rather than a possible death penalty when he goes on trial for taking up arms against his own countrymen. TAE contributing writer Ray Wisher--a...

Diverse America. (Scan).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... A recent Zogby poll of Muslim-Americans found that 79 percent believe our foreign policy led to the September 11 attacks. Only half of all U.S. Muslims support the current war against terrorism--versus close to 90 percent of Americans as a...

Illegals among us. (Scan).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... At least three of the September 11 hijackers were illegal aliens living in the U.S. Several earlier terrorists were also illegal aliens from the Middle East, including Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, who tried to bomb the New York City subway in 1997,...

New age citizen's arrest. (Scan).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... New Age "spiritual leader" Marianne Williamson's recently offered suggestions to a Manhattan Episcopal congregation on how to deal with Osama bin Laden, reproduced in New York magazine: She entreated the audience to surround the city of New...

The Mineta mistake. (Scan).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... From Stuart Taylor's column in National Journal, criticizing U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta for "a politically correct dogmatism, rooted in liberal ideology, that exposes us all to unnecessary danger of being slaughtered every time...

The missing Eskimo fireman. (Scan).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Less than 12 hours after the two planes crash into the World Trade Center, three firemen are caught on camera hoisting the American flag amidst the devastation and horror of Ground Zero. The picture, reminiscent of the famed Iwo Jima photo,...

Japanese memory chips fall where they may. (Scan).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... In the early 1990s, an active group of magazine writers, left-wing sociologists, Washington string-pullers, nutty professors, and Santa Monica socialists--people like James Fallows, Eamonn Fingleton, Chalmers Johnson, Michael Lewis, Robert...

Capital punishment in Scandinavia. (Scan).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... A Finnish business executive was recently given a $103,000 fine for driving 15 miles per hour over the speed limit near Helsinki. In Finland, traffic fines are determined by the violator's income.

We grow weary of les pipsqueaks. (Scan).(United States' relations with France)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... As the nation mulls its next target in the war on terrorism, it's time to consider another Petri dish of ferocious anti-American hatred and terrorist activity: We've got to attack France. Having exhausted itself in a spirited fight with the...

Flynt's lock on the democrats. (Scan).(Larry Flynt)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Andrew Cuomo (son of Democratic saint Mario Cuomo) is running for governor of New York. He recently put together a fundraiser in Beverly Hills sponsored by slime pornographer Larry Flynt. Oh, did we mention? Cuomo also worked in the Clinton...

Killing childhood. (Scan).(retail marketing)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Among the items Kmart is offering in new clothing lines aimed at teenage girls: thong underwear, sheer tank tops and panties, and push-up bras. J. C. Penney is doing big teen business with cleavage-enhancing and strapless "stick-on" bras....

No excuses. (Scan).(education for the poor)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Nobody admits it, but the real dispute in public education today is whether schools full of poor kids can be excellent. A few mold-breaking institutions prove they can, but it requires a departure from the liberal orthodoxies of today's...

Guns up, harm down. (Scan).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Some recent data on guns, violence, and gun control that you may not have heard on the evening news: Between 1993 and 1997, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of homicides committed with a firearm dropped by 27...

Prosperity is their task, not ours. (Scan).(financial aid to developing nations)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... One of the new cliches of the post-Taliban age is that we must not "betray" Afghanistan by walking away after the enemy has been defeated. We should build up the nation's destroyed economy, it is said, with that ultimate cure-all: a Marshall...

One more faction whips Congress. (Scan).(National Coalition for Sexual Freedom)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... If you thought the explosion of special-interest lobbies in Washington couldn't go any further, think again. The latest group to open a D.C. office is the "National Coalition for Sexual Freedom." The group represents "members of the...

"Live" with TAE: he won six Emmy Awards as a CBS News correspondent. But when he blew the whistle on media bias, the TV establishment savaged him. Now he has a best-selling book that documents his charges.(Interview)
March 1, 2002... In 1996, Bernard Goldberg wrote a story for the Wall Street Journal arguing that TV network news coverage was tilted in a liberal direction. To most viewers of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather, this didn't come as a revelation. "I...

Booboo economics. (Forward Observer).(tax policy)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... At last, we're headed for an honest debate between two different approaches to tax policy. The question on the table: Are higher taxes good or bad for an economy that has slowed down? The battle is being joined because the Congressional...

Immigration: a cause of the clash of civilizations ... or a solution to it? Patrick Buchanan vs. Ben Wattenberg.
March 1, 2002... Patrick Buchanan: Shields up! In 1821, a newly independent Mexico invited Americans to settle in its northern province of Texas--on two conditions: Americans must embrace Roman Catholicism, and they must swear allegiance to Mexico....

C. S. Lewis vs. Sigmund Freud on good and evil.
March 1, 2002... Moral relativism (the prevailing doctrine in our culture today) argues that humans have no moral point of reference, that nothing I think can be more wrong or right than what you think. Such a worldview prompts an important question: Is there a...

Socialism vs. Religion: for many socialists, Marx is a prophet and communism is the gospel. Literally.
March 1, 2002... The two central mysteries of socialism are these: How did an idea which, whenever put into practice, showed itself to be incongruent with human nature spread faster and further than any other political philosophy? And how did an idea that...

The Plains vs. The Atlantic: is Middle America a backwater, or a reservoir?
March 1, 2002... Like an anthropologist touring deepest, darkest Africa, the writer David Brooks has courageously trekked to Middle America, studied the natives there, and reported back to readers of The Atlantic Monthly, one of the nation's toniest opinion...

Land war: an ecological optimist vs. his critics.
March 1, 2002... Bjorn Lomborg is a mild-mannered Danish statistics professor who believes in environmental protection laws, votes on the political left, avoids eating meat, and thinks that governments should redistribute wealth. In college, he belonged to...

Democracy vs. capitalism.
March 1, 2002... Democracy and free-market capitalism seem to suffer from image problems--opposite ones, as it happens. Capitalism is much better than its image; Democracy has turned out to be much worse. Although capitalism is generally given credit, even...

Living in the two Chinas. (In Real Life: first-person America).(differences between lower and middle classes in China)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... BEIJING--Going off to China to teach English early last year was one of those "I can do anything now that I'm a college graduate" decisions that took exactly 30 seconds of intense deliberation. The sensible reservations caught up with me later....

Next stop Iraq? Remarks of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a recent discussion held at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. (Terror Watch).(Brief Article)(Transcript)
March 1, 2002... President Bush declared shortly after September 11 that the United States would make no distinction between terrorists and the regimes that sponsor them. He said," If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist; if you finance terrorists, you...

Did the New Deal actually prolong the great depression? (the New Deal Economist).(Excerpt)
March 1, 2002... The Great Depression was the most important economic event in twentieth-century American history, yet we know surprisingly little about it. Though the popular impression is that Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies brought about recovery,...

Vietnam, with less angst and alienation. (Hollywood Report).(We Were Soldiers)(Review)(Excerpt)
March 1, 2002... There is a scene in the script for the upcoming Vietnam War movie We Were Soldiers in which Mel Gibson's character, preparing to depart for South: east Asia, learns that his regiment number is seven. "The Seventh?" he asks. "The same regiment...

Property owners steamrolled by highwaymen. (Flashback).(Interstate Highway System)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Candy-maker and John Birch Society founder Robert Welch was labeled nutty as a fruitcake when he suggested that Dwight Eisenhower was an "agent of the communist conspiracy." But in one area, Welch's crazy charge contained a nugget of truth. ...

Media air kisses for Jeffords. (Beat the Press).(Sen Jim Jeffords)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... I don't like Senator Jim Jeffords. I admit my bias the way a Yankees fan admits his bias against the Red Sox, the way dog people admit their bias against cat people. I just wish venerable news outfits like "60 Minutes" could admit theirs. ...

Watching Americans on the battlefield. (Now Playing).(Black Hawk Down)(Review)(Excerpt)
March 1, 2002... Rival warlords presiding over outbursts of feudal violence. Destitute civilians struggling to build a meager life in the midst of a war zone. United States Special Forces watching over the mess like a nervous cook eyeing a pot that's about to...

Letters to a Young Contrarian. (Agreeing To Disagree).(Review)(Excerpt)
March 1, 2002... Letters to a Young Contrarian By Christopher Hitchens Basic Books, 226 pages, $22 The title of this book refers to Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. But there are two problems with Christopher Hitchens' attempt to parse...

Nation of Cowards: Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control. (The Morality Behind The Second Amendment).
March 1, 2002... Nation of Cowards: Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control By Jeff Snyder Accurate Press, 174 pages, $24.95 Jeff Snyder's Nation of Cowards is a compilation of his essays on gun control published during the 1990s. That decade was one of both...

Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America. (A Little Rebellion Here And There).
March 1, 2002... Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America By Jesse Walker New York University Press, 326 pages, $24.95 Though amateurs invented broadcast radio, the amateur spirit did not long prevail. Professionalism took over. As...

Improving the WTO. (Politics).
March 1, 2002... Claude E. Barfield, Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization. AEI Press, 1150 17th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 Since its creation in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been very...

Third World: Pay Your Bills! (Politics).
March 1, 2002... William Easterly, "Debt Relief," in Foreign Policy (November/December 2001), 1779 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 Many liberal activists want international lending agencies to allow Third World countries to repudiate some...

Time To Limit Antitrust? (Economics and Business).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... David S. Evans, "Clinton's Brave New Business World," in Regulation (Fall 2001), Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001 The Justice Department is approaching a settlement with Microsoft to curb the software...

Small Business Burdened. (Economics and Business).(Review)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Mark Crain and Thomas Hopkins, Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms. U.S. Small Business Administration, 409 Third Street S.W., Washington, D.C. 20416 The burden of government regulations on business is heaviest of all, economists...

End The Teacher School Racket. (Society).(Tear Down This Wall: The Case for a Radical Overhaul of Teacher Certification)
March 1, 2002... Frederick M. Hess, Tear Down This Wall: The Case for a Radical Overhaul of Teacher Certification. Progressive Policy Institute, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue S.E. #400, Washington, D.C. 20003 American public schools are going to need several...

Toughen Divorce, Not Child Support. (Society).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Bryce Christensen, "The Strange Politics of Child Support," in Society (November/ December 2001), Rutgers University, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854 There's a consensus these days that one of the best ways to strengthen...

Working Wives, Sick Families. (Society).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Ross M. Stolzenberg, "It's About Time and Gender: Spousal Employment and Health," in American Journal of Sociology (July 2001), University of Chicago Press, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, Illinois 60637 The increasing participation of women in...

Great debates. (Opinion Pulse).
March 1, 2002... Three quarters of all Americans see the country as united and in agreement about the most important values, and large numbers believe the events of September 11 brought the country closer together. In these pages, the editors look at Americans'...

The mail.(Review)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... The root cause of the obscenity of today's so-called "art" is the fools who pay the ridiculous prices for works by such people as Andres Serrano (January/February 2002). If these aficionados refused to pay the prices asked for this art, there...

Last gasp.(Review)
March 1, 2002... "My term paper has hypertext links, full-screen video clips, animated fonts, and awesome 3D special effects. Now all I need is a topic." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "We'll issue you a W-2 when we get back." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...