Society articles from July 1994

Society archives from July 1994

Gender politics.
July 1, 1994... The recently published book The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell presents, a reviewer says, a large number of generally unpublicized, hard-to-find facts that are backed up with over fifty pages of source materials. The author targets some...

The American Century. (reprint of 1941 essay) (The American Century at End Point)
July 1, 1994... We Americans are unhappy. We are not happy about America. We are not happy about ourselves in relation to America. We are nervous-or gloomy - or apathetic. As we look out at the rest of the world we are confused; we don't know what to do....

Histories, futures, and manifest destiny. (The American Century at End Point)
July 1, 1994... Henry R. Luce's essay "The American Century," written in 1941, is one of the most important statements on American political ideology made in this century. I choose my words with some care since I well appreciate Peter F. Drucker's essay...

The world as a moral community. (The American Century at End Point)
July 1, 1994... The American Century indeed! Reading Henry R. Luce's 1941 ethnocentric and hubris-filled article today, some people - like 5.3 billion non-Americans and no doubt many Americans, too - are likely to be offended, if not outraged. Luce manages,...

Arabs unprepared for peace.
July 1, 1994... There is good reason to doubt that the Arab public opinion is ready for peace with Israel, concludes Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. Khashan conducted a survey of 1,000 Muslim Lebanese,...

Time warp in American politics. (The American Century at End Point)
July 1, 1994... Coming to terms with the awesome reality of time may well be mankind's foremost shared challenge. However, while time has been a universal given for humanity since "time immemorial," ways of responding to its challenge have always been...

Pluralism contra universalism. (The American Century at End Point)
July 1, 1994... The twentieth century is over. It began late, in 1914, and ended early, in 1989. In a formal sense then, the Future of the "American Century" is already closed. However, although the United States played a major role in ending the First World...

Moral choice and dialectic failure. (The American Century at End Point)
July 1, 1994... The urge to project the course of future events far outruns mere curiosity. Diviners and sorcerers of various sizes and shapes and skills have enliverted the pages of our history books; the marvel of Merlin comes to mind. Some insist that...

The puzzling case of Jimmy "the Greek." (racial differences)
July 1, 1994... As we approach the close of the twentieth century, there is a widely shared, wholesome aspiration that the United States may evolve into a nation in which not much is made of race. Unfortunately in our zeal to achieve this noble goal, we have...

The global rail revival.
July 1, 1994... Since the Second World War, the role of railroads has declined even in countries where they previously had flourished. In the worst cases, railroads ceased to be a serious option for transport of passengers or goods as cars and trucks took...

Voluntarism and health care.
July 1, 1994... There is a widespread belief that the nation's health care system is in need of major reform. Quality of care is not the primary issue, for the American health care system is envied throughout the world. Rather, the current debate is driven...

Castro's legacy. (Fidel Castro)
July 1, 1994... Why he emerged is an issue that cannot be viewed solely from the perspective of Fidel Castro, the individual. It must be seen within a broad historical context and take into consideration the dynamics of the revolutionary situation out of...

The Cuban revolution and its acolytes.
July 1, 1994... There are few Western intellectuals who are still in Fidel Castro's camp. And those who remain do not all stand alongside him for the same reasons. Some, like the German writer Gunter Grass who is not a communist militant, apparently ate...

Language in Time of Revolution.
July 1, 1994... The title is merely one of the many puzzling things about this book. Why not "A Language in a Time of Revolutions" given that the entire book is devoted to the re-vernacularization of Hebrew. Or, why not "Languages in Times of Revolution," if...

Love and Friendship.
July 1, 1994... In his important bestselling work The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom described the extent to which contemporary America's commitment to equality and relativism has yielded a paradoxically rigid "openness" walled off from access to...

Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America.
July 1, 1994... In this handsomely designed and, glory of glories, footnoted book, Patrick Allitt of Emory University examines a period in the history of the American Catholic Church of probably more radical change than occurred in any comparable era. This...

The Hidden Life of Dogs.
July 1, 1994... The relationship of dogs to people is at least as important to people as it is to dogs. Evidence of this is manifold: "dog books" are nearly as proliferate on trade publishing lists as cookbooks. Countless films from Lassie to Beethoven owe...

Supermarkets Transformed: Understanding Organizational and Technological Innovations.
July 1, 1994... When it comes to grocery stores, my experience has been very uneven. As a boy of ten to thirteen or so, I was the shopper every Saturday, and usually all afternoon, at the three scattered stores essential to supplying our family larder. A...

The Opening of the Apartheid Mind: Options for the New South Africa.
July 1, 1994... "The Historic Compromise is taking shape in South Africa." This was a bold proposition to make in the South Africa of only a year ago, a South Africa that was then riven by violence, uncertainty, polarization and apparent reckless...