The American Enterprise articles from March 2004

The American Enterprise archives from March 2004

Let them eat precaution.(Bird's Eye)
March 1, 2004... On cue, at last fall's World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, self-anointed "Green" activists showed up to protest the use of gene modification (G.M.) technology in agriculture. A bevy of teenagers outfitted as monarch butterflies flitted...

Sidelights.
March 1, 2004... The Chicago Tribune observed that many of the people holding "African Americans for Dean" signs at a Howard Dean rally were white. California Democratic senator Barbara Boxer's re-election campaign is selling boxer shorts imprinted with her...

Missile defense: not "Star Wars" anymore.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... When tomorrow's historians write about 2003, they will no doubt devote most of their ink to the global campaign against terror and its offspring in Iraq. Yet, with long-range ballistic missiles sprouting up like wildflowers around the globe,...

Religious divide.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... According to a recent poll of religious belief reported by FOX News, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they believe in God (by eight percentage points), in heaven (by ten points), in hell (by 15 points), and the devil (by 17...

Education warrior.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... In late 2000, when President Bush nominated Rod Paige as Secretary of Education, school reformers groaned. Paige, a former high school football coach who had risen to head the Houston Independent School District, was seen as a competent...

The new first line of defense.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... National security has always depended on our ability to see our adversaries' defensive arrangements clearly, and their ability to see ours. As long as each side can see what the other is doing, neither need fear a surprise attack. Before...

Where western leftists and third world fascists meet.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... How to account for the toppling of a makeshift statue of George Bush in London during the President's recent visit? The symbolism would seem to indicate a desire for the restoration of Saddam Hussein--whose statue was earlier pulled down by...

Finish the job.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... Ken Joseph opposed going to war against Saddam Hussein. He even went to Iraq to help do what he could to "stop the war" by serving as a "human shield." Then the soft-spoken minister got what he describes as a "stark dose of reality." An...

Beware the bloat.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... A research group at Syracuse University found that the newly organized Department of Homeland Security currently employs one out of every 12 federal employees--40 percent of them as airport screeners. The fledgling bureaucracy already has at...

Perverse terror.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... Gordon Hamilton Fairley was a cancer specialist in Britain and a pioneer in the therapy of childhood leukemia. On the morning of October 23, 1975 he was walking his dog in London and happened to pass the home of a politician who had angered...

"Public Lives" of liberals.(Scan)
March 1, 2004... Conservatives have long suspected that the New York Times slants the news to favor liberals, but sometimes the paper's most insidious bias is tucked away in places you might not think to look. The Times' "Public Lives" is a regular profile of a...

Dana Gioia: poets who write in traditional forms and survive outside of academia are as scarce as lighthouse keepers. Add real business experience and a personal mission of national service to his profile and you've described George Bush's chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts--a rara avis.("Live" with TAE)
March 1, 2004... The National Endowment for the Arts, which came within a urine-soaked crucifix or two of abolition in the 1990s, is now embarked on its most outre experiment of all: a poetical chairmanship. For NEA chairman Dana Gioia is among the finest...

Technology for life: how biotech will save billions from starvation.
March 1, 2004... "To deny desperate, hungry people the means to control their futures by presuming to know what is best for them is not only paternalistic but morally wrong.... We want to have the opportunity to save the lives of millions of people and change...

Genetic kingdom: reaping the bounties of our biotech future.
March 1, 2004... Today's biotechnology includes the use of genetically modified animals in medicine; in the production of special foods, human drugs, and medical devices; in the development of animal and industrial products; and in insect-based pest and disease...

The green case for biotech: resisting the anti-science, anti-human obstructions of environmentalists.
March 1, 2004... I was raised in the tiny fishing and logging village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, where salmon spawned in the streams of the adjoining Pacific rainforest. In school I discovered ecology, and realized that through...

How much should we worry about biotech? The culture war behind the biotech battle: how irrational fear could really give us something to worry about.
March 1, 2004... When U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and U.S. Special Trade Representative Robert Zoellick announced in May 2003 that the U.S. would file a case at the World Trade Organization against the European Union's moratorium on the approval of...

Developing the biomedical century: how to get the treatment from the lab to the patient.
March 1, 2004... Many expect that history will look back on this century as the biomedical century. New medicines and medical research are transforming our lives more than ever before. There is hardly a disease that has not been touched by modern drugs. ...

Biotech ethics: modern man and the pursuit of happiness.
March 1, 2004... Following are excerpts from a recent panel discussion at AEI on the new report of the President's Council on Bioethies, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The panelists were Council chairman and AEI fellow Leon Kass,...

Europe's constitution confusion.
March 1, 2004... The European Union has been one of the most successful creations in the history of political science. For the past half century harmonization of the policies of many European countries has helped make war in Western Europe unthinkable, enhanced...

Purchase Louisiana? No thanks!(Flashback)
March 1, 2004... During last year's bicentennial hullabaloo over the Louisiana Purchase, the losing side was flushed down the memory hole. Opponents of Thomas Jefferson's French real estate steal, which doubled the American realm for a mere $15 million, have...

Wealth makes health.(Forward Observer)
March 1, 2004... Early last December, I traveled to Kenya and Uganda with a delegation of health experts to look at efforts to fight AIDS in Africa. What I saw was both depressing and inspirational: overwhelming numbers of the dying and orphaned, but impressive...

Taliban days.(Now Playing)
March 1, 2004... Some movies exist to bear witness--to document an event or way of life that otherwise might be overlooked. Since the United States toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan, plenty of news reports have shed light on what the Afghan people suffered...

Media cop out.(Beat the Press)
March 1, 2004... Nothing spices up the 6 o'clock news better than flailing rubber clubs. Every time I see a grainy videotape of some cops whuppin' up on somebody with riot batons--it's almost an iconic image at this point--I want to scream, "Hey! Back up the...

Cornered rats fight hard.(Politico)
March 1, 2004... There are many good reasons to expect President George W. Bush to win re-election on November 2, 2004. And there is one good reason to believe a Democrat, any Democrat, will defeat him. The list of Bush strengths begins with the economy, up...

Saving lives in boarding schools?(the Welfare Economist)
March 1, 2004... For most of the last century, children who have been removed from their families have been placed in foster care. Today, there are about 600,000 such children, and the system is beset by problems--a shortage of competent staff, children who...

Feeding frenzy.(Enterprising: business as an act of creation)
March 1, 2004... The cost of a college education continues to climb, despite--or, more likely, because of--skyrocketing subsidies. According to the College Board, tuition and fees for the 2003-04 academic year at private, four-year institutions reached...

Why FOX News beat the mainstream media.(Transcript: words worth repeating)
March 1, 2004... Excerpted from the Autumn 2003 City Journal article, "We're Not Losing the Culture Wars Anymore," by Brian Anderson. Since its 1996 launch, Rupert Murdoch's FOX News Channel has provided what its visionary CEO Roger Aries calls a "haven"...

Education tragedies.
March 1, 2004... No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning By Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, $26 Few Americans today would disagree that people of all races should have an equal chance to succeed in our society and...

Music to so many ears.
March 1, 2004... Beethoven's Ninth: A Political History By Esteban Bach; translated by Richard Miller University of Chicago Press, 344 pages, $27.50 Early in his study of the most famous segment of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Esteban Buch explains: "The...

Diary of discovery.
March 1, 2004... The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery By Meriwether Lewis and William Clark; edited and with an introduction by Gary E. Moulton University of Nebraska Press, 413 pages, $29.95 Modern men and women live in fear...

Security at what price?(Politics)
March 1, 2004... John Yoo and Eric Posner, "The Patriot Act under Fire," AEI on the Issues, December 2003 (aei.org) Ever since its inception in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the USA Patriot Act has been a magnet for criticism of the Bush...

Unneeded protections.(Economics And Regulation)
March 1, 2004... Claude Barfield, High-Tech Protectionism: The Irrationality of Antidumping Laws, AEI Press, 2003 (aei.org) Under the World Trade Organization regime that currently governs trade among most major countries, nations can stem the flow of goods...

Labor moves rightward?(Economics And Regulation)
March 1, 2004... Various labor union staff members, "Multi-Union Growth Partnership," New Unity Partnership, 2003 (rankfile.net) Ever since the 1950s, a combination of a less-friendly legal environment, internal corruption, economic change, and growing...

No more Mr. Nice Regulator.(Society)
March 1, 2004... Frederick Hess, "The Case For Being Mean," AEI on the Issues, December 2003 (aei.org) Since the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, student performance testing has become a national mandate in American schools. Frederick Hess, an AEI scholar,...

Card carrying Americans.(National Security)
March 1, 2004... Amitai Etzioni et al., "Reliable Identification for Homeland Protection and Collateral Gains," in Creating a Trusted Network for Homeland Security, The Markle Foundation, December 2003 (markle.org) Since 9/11, many Americans have worried...

Fear of a new weapon.(National Security)
March 1, 2004... Michael Abrams, "Dawn of the E-Bomb," IEEE Spectrum, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, November 2003 (spectrum.ieee.org) During Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S. military used a high-power microwave (HPM) weapon to knock...

DDT fight.(Science And Environment)
March 1, 2004... John Pollock, "Dying to be Politically Correct," Acumen: A Journal of the Life Sciences, September/October 2003 (acumenjournal.com) Governments and public health experts in the middle of the twentieth century hailed the pesticide DDT as a...

A biotechnology barometer.(Opinion Pulse)
March 1, 2004... Only 10 percent of Americans say they have seen, read, or heard a great deal about the use of biotechnology in food production. At the other end of the spectrum, 54 percent say they don't have much or any information at all about it. Still, a...

Gay marriage.(Opinion Pulse)
March 1, 2004... Over the past three decades, many Americans have changed their minds about the morality of homosexuality. In 1973, 80 percent said sexual relations between two adults of the same sex were always or almost always wrong. In 2002, 58 percent gave...

The mail.(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2004... While Christopher DeMuth makes some interesting arguments in "Governors (and Generals) Rule" (January/February), it is absolutely ludicrous that he justifies his viewpoint with the statement that of the three Presidents who came from...

Last gasp.
March 1, 2004... It's such a nice day. You should be outside compiling information. "He's emotionally unavailable at the moment. Can I take a message?" "Of course it doesn't have any blades. The Swiss are neutral." "WHAT'S THE POINT OF PLAYING IF...