The American Enterprise articles from September 2005

The American Enterprise archives from September 2005

It will come down to fortitude.(Bird's Eye)
September 1, 2005... Just imagine if George Bush had predicted to us on the morning after September 11, 2001 what actually ended up happening.... Our forces will go to faraway Afghanistan and remove the Taliban within six weeks upon arrival. Democracy will...

An eminent public issue.(Scan)
September 1, 2005... Never mind abortion, the Ten Commandments, or what Karl Rove said. In a year featuring one or two Supreme Court nominations, the issue of eminent domain draws the brightest line between Republicans and Democrats--with Democrats on the losing...

Our robed masters.(regulation on educational spending)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... In June, the Kansas Supreme Court called the Kansas legislature back into session, demanding it spend more on education. The court based its command on a provision in the Kansas constitution that requires the legislature to provide "suitable...

Humans, keep out.(Scan)(best national parks )
September 1, 2005... A few weeks ago, the National Geographic Society announced its list of the best national parks in the U.S. and Canada. Published in the Society's Traveler magazine, the list draws on a survey of 300 "expert panelists in such fields as park...

The Little Churchill awards.(Scan)
September 1, 2005... Accuracy in Academia recently presented its first "Little Churchill" awards--named not after Winston but rather Ward Churchill, the radical U. of Colorado professor who has had problems in three areas where AIA has decided to award annual...

Anti-wobble medicine.
September 1, 2005... With Gitmo being compared to the gulags, members of Congress pushing for a U.S. retreat from Iraq, and the American people going a bit wobbly in opinion polls, perhaps it's time for us to remember a few of the things that have been accomplished...

God rest Shelby Foote.(Scan)(Brief Article)(Interview)(Obituary)
September 1, 2005... Shelby Foote--a masterful writer, thrilling historian, exemplar of much that is impressive about the American South, and a delightful man--died in late June. There will never be another like him. The following is an excerpt from a TAE interview...

Foolish charity.(Scan)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Anthony Okogie, Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Nigeria's capital, told African reporters in July that the debt relief granted to his country at the insistence of "Live 8" celebrities and a variety of politicians--a total of $18 billion, or 60...

Nuclear revival.(Scan)(new facilities of nuclear power plants)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... A consortium of nine U.S. energy companies recently announced that they will file this fall for licenses to build a pair of nuclear power plants--America's first in more than two decades. The new facilities will be of a radically simpler,...

Honest Howard.(Scan)
September 1, 2005... It's easy to dismiss Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean as a loose-lipped ideologue. (Republican Senator John McCain has referred to him as "the gift that keeps on giving.") But Dean's seemingly casual remark that the GOP is...

Sidelights.
September 1, 2005... Banning panhandling in downtown Atlanta could result in terrorism, according to Joe Beasley, the Southern regional director for Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition. Should the city pass an ordinance banning panhandling it may hurt the poor,...

Are Americans stingy?(Indicators)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... There has recently been heavy debate over whether the U.S. gives enough financial support to poor nations. The discussion is distorted by the fact that most arguments take into account only the simplest measure of assistance: official...

Fool's-gold fuel.(Indicators)
September 1, 2005... A Cornell professor of ecology and a Berkeley environmental engineer recently did a careful calculation of how much energy it requires--in tractor time, fertilizer, processing, and transport--to make the "alternative" fuel ethanol from...

Media priorities.(Indicators)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... The Medal of Honor, America's highest decoration for selfless valor, has been awarded only three times in the past three decades. On April 4 of this year, Army Sergeant First Class Paul Smith, a 33-year-old married man with two children, earned...

Michelle Malkin: as a book author, newspaper columnist, television commentator, and blogger, this young first-generation American has used a pull-no-punches style to criticize U.S. immigration and war-on-terror policies.(Interview)
September 1, 2005... Born to Filipino parents in Pennsylvania, Michelle Malkin began her journalism career in 1992 as an editorial writer at the Los Angeles Daily News, followed by a stint at the Seattle Times, and then a move to Washington, D.C. A nationally...

American gratitude: this past May, author Ben Stein gave the commencement address at Ithaca College. This was his advice to the bright young Americans gathered before him.
September 1, 2005... Here we are on this beautiful campus, in this beautiful part of New York, in this beautiful America. Every one of us in this place has plenty to eat (some, like me, have too much to eat), plenty to drink, and plenty of well-protected freedom...

Dark diary: a post-9/11 alternative history.
September 1, 2005... There are those who believe that people are merely a part of history, pieces of driftwood carried along by forces and currents often beyond our control. Others argue that history is shaped by individuals--that the right person in the right...

Rudy: could the savior of 9/11, and prince of New York City, become President of the U.S.?(Rudolph W. Giuliani)
September 1, 2005... New York City residents have long seen their home as a cosmopolitan dynamo in which the only constant is change. New York pre-Civil War diarist Philip Hone complained that the local ethos was "overturn, overturn, overturn." In the 1940s,...

Gitmo jive: the real abuse at Guantanamo Bay.
September 1, 2005... GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA--In the fall of 2001, the U.S. Naval Facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ("Gitmo" to those who live here) was teetering on the edge of oblivion, with a skeleton crew of fewer than 2,000 servicemembers on duty. Now a contingent...

Did the 9/11 Commission make us less safe?(Americans thinkings of the Commissions job)
September 1, 2005... Shortly before the arrival of the Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States--popularly known as The 9/11 Commission Report--a nationwide poll found that 61 percent of the American people thought the...

Our new-millennium military.(armed forces, forecast and trends)
September 1, 2005... Somewhere, a True Believer is planning to kill you. He is training with minimum food or water, in austere conditions, day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon. He doesn't worry about what workout to do. His rucksack weighs what...

What national unity?(geopolitics)
September 1, 2005... Four years after the worst attack on American soil, we are still not so sure about our policy in Afghanistan, and we are even more divided over Iraq. Hysteria mounts against the Patriot Act. We even bicker about the proposed Ground Zero museum...

Life at the New York public zoo ... er, library.(valuable city resource-New York City Public Library)
September 1, 2005... NEW YORK CITY -- Manhattanites often express envy for the life of a freelancer: the freedom, the flexibility, the chance to lounge in pajamas all day. But go into any Starbucks and you'll encounter legions of freelancers who obviously can't...

Beat the press: the hand that rules the press ... rules the country--Judge Learned Hand.
September 1, 2005... Dear Friend of Public Broadcasting, The beasts are out to bludgeon Big Bird. Will you let them? You responded generously to our "Stop the Sickos From Snuffing Out Snuffleupagus" campaign. And your donation to the "Keep the...

Nevada's fertile valley.(analyzing Las Vegas)
September 1, 2005... In 1972, architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown wrote a book called Learning From Las Vegas, which celebrated the gambling capital's architecture. Designers and builders, the authors insisted, should respond to the tastes and desires...

The view from the plantation.(Mary Chesnut)(Biography)
September 1, 2005... In the remarkable diary she kept during the Civil War, South Carolinian Mary Chesnut informs us early on that "I was a seceder, but I dreaded the future." For the next four years she records conversations, table talk ("One more year of...

Junk vs. quality energy.(Senate and the House passed energy bills, energy economics)
September 1, 2005... Both the Senate and the House passed energy bills this summer, which they hope to reconcile early this fall. All energy bills are basically shopping lists, and notwithstanding the dismal talk of disappearing supplies, the list of possible...

Some very human nature.(March of the Penguins )(Duma)(Movie Review)
September 1, 2005... Nature films have long appealed to family audiences for their innocent charm, and this summer offers two fine examples of the type: March of the Penguins and Duma, both of which provide a refuge for parents grown tired of the rude mania often...

Black and white class.(What's My Line?, game show analysis)
September 1, 2005... "What's My Line?"--America's long-time favorite guessing game--aired with no repeats from 1950 to 1967. Then it lay forgotten, a part of TV history. Until recently: The old tapes have now been revived by the Game Show Network. The program...

Jefferson the contradiction.(Thomas Jefferson: Author of America)(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Thomas Jefferson: Author of America By Christopher Hitchens Harper Collins, 208 pages, $19.95 In September 2004, Atlas Books joined forces with Harper Collins to produce a collection of short biographies that would pair notable authors...

Hard days at Harvard.(Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class )(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class By Ross Gregory Douthat Hyperion, 304 pages, $24.95 Harvard, I discovered early in my undergraduate career, enrolled students with a range of abilities, from the young man who could...

Whitewashing the blacklist.(Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left )(Book Review)
September 1, 2005... Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left By Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh Encounter Books, 292 pages, $25.95 "How and why," ask the authors of Red Star Over Hollywood, did so many film artists in the first...

Centralized schools.(No Child Left Behind: The Dangers of Centralized Education Policy)(policy analysis)
September 1, 2005... Lawrence Uzzell, "No Child Left Behind: The Dangers of Centralized Education Policy," Cato Institute, May 31, 2005 (cato.org) When it comes to domestic policy, the Bush administration is perhaps proudest of its achievements in education....

Keep American trade free.(ECONOMICS AND REGULATION)
September 1, 2005... Frances Smith, "CAFTA-DR; Can Free Trade Hold Up to Special Interest Siege?" Competitive Enterprise Institute, May 26, 2005 (cei.org) One of the most important advances in recent years for flee trade with developing nations is the...

The power of tradition.(culture and society)
September 1, 2005... Lee Harris, "Traditional, and Therefore Right: The Future of Tradition," Policy Review, June & July 2005 (policyreview.org) Culture wars proved disastrous both for Periclean Athens and for the French and German enlightenment eras. Sophists...

The American Empire.(NATIONAL SECURITY)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Carl Cavanagh Hodge, "America's Empire by Default," Foreign Policy Research Institute, Orbis, Winter 2005 (fpri.org) Is America's current broad view of its role in the world a violation of traditional American notions of live-and-let-live...

Cool on man-melted glaciers.
September 1, 2005... Hilmar Schmundt, "The Coming and Going of Glaciers: A New Alpine Melt Theory," Der Spiegel, May 23, 2005 (Spiegel.de) The German news magazine Der Spiegel summarizes the research of Swiss scientist Ulrich Joerin and colleagues, with a...

The limits of science.
September 1, 2005... Frederick Hess, "Science and Non-science: The Limits of Scientific Research," AEI On the Issues, May 2005 (aei.org) With the establishment of the Institute of Education Sciences and the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act,...

The war on terror: an update.(Opinion Pulse)(Brief Article)(Illustration)
September 1, 2005... A slight majority of Americans continues to express satisfaction with the way things are going for the United States in the war on terror. Concern about becoming a victim of terrorism has remained fairly steady in the past few years. Today, 38...

George W. Bush and the war on terror.(Opinion Pulse)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2005... Approval of the way President Bush is handling terrorism is down from where it was immediately after 9/11, as is confidence that his administration can protect us from another attack. Still, six in ten people continue to have confidence that...

World opinion on the war on terror.(Opinion Pulse)(Illustration)
September 1, 2005... Polls from many countries around the globe show that support for U.S. efforts to fight terrorism is flagging. The one exception in a late spring poll from Pew was Indonesia, where favorable opinion is up, probably because of U.S. contributions...

The mail.(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2005... As a representative of Young Freedom Builders, a Korean organization, I am deeply interested in the North Korea policy of President Bush's administration. it is, so to speak, a matter of life and death to Korean people. Residents of the...

Last gasp.(Cartoon)
September 1, 2005... The TERROR ALERT HAS BEEN RAISED to FUCHSIA with CHARTREUSE ACCENTS.... MARTHA STEWART's OUT of JAIL [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] OUTSOURCING BEGINS AT HOME: TAKE-OUT MENUS [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] REPAIRMEN'S PHONE NUMBERS...