The American Enterprise articles from May 2006

The American Enterprise archives from May 2006

Faithful community life.(Bird's Eye)
May 1, 2006... Over the last generation, many historians, politicians, and journalists have labored to downplay the significance of religion in making American society what it is. That's not easily accomplished, though. There's just too much concrete evidence...

Public faith.(Scan: Short news and commentary)
May 1, 2006... Zach's first-grade teacher gave him the big news: "Tomorrow you're going to read in front of the whole class for the first time. Your reward is that you get to read from your favorite book." So the next morning Zach brought in his favorite...

Blunt is beautiful.(Scan: Short news and commentary)
May 1, 2006... Did you know that the term "secretary" is being replaced by the awkward phrase "administrative support staff"? Some committee decided that secretaries would be enriched by becoming ASSes. Think of all the ripple effects. On National Secretary's...

Please spray the IGN and MTV buildings first.(Scan: Short news and commentary)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... California's IGN Entertainment and an "urban designer" named Marc Ecko have recently produced a video game that celebrates graffiti "artists" for vandalizing buildings, trains, and walls with their "tags." Last summer, New York City mayor...

Year of the senator?(Scan: Short news and commentary)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Senators have typically made weak candidates for President (see "Governors and Generals Rule" by Christopher DeMuth in TAE's January/February 2004 issue). So 2008 could turn out to be an unusual election. If, say, John McCain, George Allen, or...

Motown blues.(automobile workers' compensation)
May 1, 2006... Time for a quiz about car manufacturing in America. True or false? * Far fewer cars are made in America today than in the 1960s, the heyday of American auto production. * Pay at Japanese-owned car plants in America is a small fraction...

A deadly peace.(Scan: Short news and commentary)
May 1, 2006... In response to the killing of thousands of Christians in Darfur by a genocidal Islamic regime, the United Nations acted as only the U.N. can. The Security Council passed five resolutions in less than two years--sending inspectors, imposing...

Pragmatic idealism.(Scan: Short news and commentary)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... From remarks by journalist Robert Kaplan at the American Enterprise Institute: I think the moral purpose of our current foreign policy should be to extend the boundaries of civil society, wherever and however it can, on a moderate basis,...

Hope beyond the hatred.
May 1, 2006... In the little town of Jedwabne, nestled in the heart of Poland, all the Jewish inhabitants--mainly old people, women, and children--were rounded up and burned alive by a group of German policemen and Polish townsfolk on July 10, 1941. No one...

They could always go into education.(Scan: Short news and commentary)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Over half of students graduating from four-year colleges in the U.S. lack the literacy to deal with such "real-life" tasks as understanding newspaper editorials, comparing credit-card offers, or summarizing the results of a survey. Nor do they...

Sidelights.(American's behavior)
May 1, 2006... If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness--G. K. Chesterton A survey of college students found that the ones most likely to cheat were journalism majors. According to the Center for Academic Integrity, 27 percent of...

Church schools.(Indicators: Numbers, etc.)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Until the 1970s, the vast majority of U.S. students who attended private schools were in Catholic institutions (more than 80 percent). But enrollments in Catholic schools fell from their mid-1960s peak of 5.5 million to 2.6 million today....

Eating high on the dollar.(Indicators: Numbers, etc.)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Going organic may be the green thing to do in more ways than one. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a bunch of carrots that would normally go for $1.01 will cost you $1.58, on average, if they're organic. For sweet potatoes, it's...

New Christians.(Indicators: Numbers, etc.)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Future growth in Christianity, at least in sheer numbers of worshipers, will come in new and perhaps unexpected places. In Africa, Christianity is rapidly gaining ground among formerly unchurched citizens. This, in combination with the...

John Shelton Reed: America's most idiosyncratic yet iconic region--the South--has no interpreter who is more knowledgeable (or entertaining) than this Republican academic.("Live" with TAE)(Interview)
May 1, 2006... He has been called "beyond doubt the most accomplished and influential living sociologist of the U.S. South." Born in Manhattan, bred in East Tennessee, and for 31 years a professor at the University of North Carolina, Reed is the irreverent...

A civil religion: how Christianity created free and prosperous societies.
May 1, 2006... When Europeans first began to explore the globe, their greatest surprise was not the existence of the Western hemisphere, but the extent of their own technological superiority over the rest of the world. Not only were the proud Mayan, Aztec,...

Washington's faith and the birth of America.(George Washington )
May 1, 2006... Almost everything about George Washington was hard-earned, and his faith was no exception. Although he ended up owning a library of nearly 1,000 books, some 40 or so concerning religious questions, his preferred teacher was experience. In his...

Puritanism lives.
May 1, 2006... Americanism is profoundly Christian in its inspiration and worldview. It is profoundly Biblical.' We are the children of Abraham," a seventeenth-century American Puritan reminded his fellow citizens. Understanding the strongly Puritan and...

Small town religion: how megachurches create micro-intimacy.
May 1, 2006... On Super Bowl Sunday, shortly after eight in the morning, a couple thousand people found their way to a Richmond auditorium and sat down in front of a large stage with two huge fiat-screen TVs built into the walls at either side. A live band...

A community of faith: America has a growing string of countercultural towns where religion, traditional culture, and family life are taken very seriously. Welcome to one of them.
May 1, 2006... I was on a Sunday morning a few years ago, just after Mass at St. Sebastians, our local parish, when my wife and I got the unmistakable sense that our new hometown of Santa Paula, California, is a different kind of place. Standing out on the...

Nuclear plus: start with uranium, add a pinch of solar, and you have a recipe for energy success.
May 1, 2006... I recently took a fact-finding tour through the upper Midwest and Rocky Mountain region--America's rapidly emerging energy capital. My first stop was the Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, Nebraska. Nuclear plants aren't easy to get into...

Don't impose foreign law on Americans.(Transcript: Words worth repeating)
May 1, 2006... Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently delivered these remarks at the American Enterprise Institute: I'm talking today about the use of foreign law in American judicial opinions, and most of what I have to say is unfavorable, so I...

The making of a cadet.(In Real Life: First-person America)
May 1, 2006... TARKIO, MISSOURI -- It's a picture in most family scrapbooks: Dad and son at Parent's Weekend during freshman year of college, dad spreading a bit around the middle and graying at the edges, son taller and thinner, mom snapping the shot to...

Eye of the beholder.(Geopolitics: Diplomacy is the police in grand costume--Napoleon)
May 1, 2006... War-torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you envision either place to some degree depends on...

Partial-news distortion.(Beat the Press: The hand that rules the press ... rules the country--Judge Learned Hand )
May 1, 2006... On the evening of February 21,2006 we got another reminder that the talking heads of the establishment media all read from the same script. "We turn now to the Supreme Court," began Elizabeth Vargas on ABC. "The justices will consider...

The taming of Rogue Island.(Flashback: To know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child--Cicero )
May 1, 2006... In 1787, a rhymester at Connecticut Magazine saluted his eastern neighbors: Hail, realm of rogues, renowned for fraud and guile, All hail, ye knaveries of you little isle.... The wiser race, the snares of law to ...

The new nativism.(Forward Observer: Politics meets economics)
May 1, 2006... Guess what these developments have Gin common? * Immigration is quickly becoming the number-one issue of the 2006 Congressional campaign. * CAFTA, an innocuous trade agreement with five Central American countries and the Dominican...

Sino-California.(Enterprising: Business as an act of creation)
May 1, 2006... Between 1990 and 2000, Southern California s San Gabriel Valley (an area just east of Los Angeles that often hatches trends which later spread across the nation) absorbed a large wave of Chinese immigrants. The only U.S. locality which got more...

Why Tony Soprano must die.(the Tube)
May 1, 2006... Television... that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night--Ray Bradbury Tony Soprano must die. There's really no other way the brilliant HBO series can end. Consider the options: 1) He goes into the Witness...

Birkenstock conservatives.(Crunchy Cons )(Book review)
May 1, 2006... Crunchy Cons By Rod Dreher Crown Forum, 272 pages, $24 A "Crunchy Con" I'm not. Rod Dreher's book of the same title is a passionate lament against much of what passes for contemporary conservatism. His book title, and attempt to promote a...

Literant.(Menace in Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's, Too)(While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West From Within)
May 1, 2006... Let me be perfectly upfront about something. For a conservative, hyper-patriotic American, I have certain Europhile tendencies. I drive a Swedish car, wear British shoes, and shoot Austrian pistols. I like to drink a nice glass of Cotes du...

Our shrinking underclass.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)
May 1, 2006... Paul Jargowsky and Isabel Sawhill, "The Decline of the Underclass," The Brookings Institution, January 2006 (brookings.org) Hurricane Katrina served as a stark reminder of the existence and consequences of entrenched poverty in America....

China vs. Japan.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Minxin Pei and Michael Swaine, "Simmering Fire in Asia: Averting Sino-Japanese Strategac Conflict," Carnege Endowment for International Peace, November 2005 (carnegieendowment.org) The relationship between Japan and China has recently been...

Right question, wrong answer.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Jagadeesh Gokhale and Michael Tanner, "KidSave: Real Problem, Wrong Solution" Cato Institute, January 2006 (cato.org) There is growing bipartisan support for some sort of federally funded grant specifically for children. One possible plan...

Energy close to home.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)
May 1, 2006... Roger Noriega, "Two Visions of Energy in the Americas," AEI Latin American Outlook, February 2006 (aei.org) The U.S. could ease its dependence on Middle Eastern oil by looking to nations in the Western Hemisphere that possess rich energy...

Hidden tax costs.(the Digest: Summaries of important new research)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... Wendy Warcholik, Scott Moody, and Scott Hodge, "The Rising Cost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax," The Tax Foundation, January 2006 (taxfoundation.org) While Americans can expect to pay roughly $1.2 trillion in federal income taxes...

A prayerful nation.(Opinion Pulse)
May 1, 2006... It should come as no surprise that a deeply religious nation finds prayer to be a source of comfort in difficult times. In a Marcia poll, 87 percent said they had prayed for those affected by the war in Iraq. After Hurricane Katrina, a...

The mail.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2006... I enjoyed very much the writing in the April cover story "Good Sex" by Jennifer Morse. TAE has consistently exceeded my expectations for quality of writing and timeliness of content. I sincerely applaud you for delivering a magazine without...