National Review articles from April 2001

National Review archives from April 2001

For the Record.(News Briefs)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... President Bush on his budget, in Washington Post: "The other point that we need to look at, in which there's some consternation, is the size of discretionary spending. And as you notice in hearing my talks, you'll hear me talk a lot about...

The Week.(News Briefs)
April 2, 2001... Jack Kemp on a fellow pundit: "Listening to Mario Cuomo identify what a Republican should do is like listening to Evel Knievel talk about the space program." Did you catch Sen. Robert Byrd on television? Who says all those old crackers...

Tax Cuts: Objections Overruled.(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... Liberals are making three chief arguments against President Bush's tax cut: that it is unaffordable, that it is unfair, and that it would not do much to stimulate our slumping economy. The first two charges are unpersuasive, and the third,...

The Census: Minority Report.(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... The 2000 census, its numbers crunched at last, shows that Hispanics have drawn practically even with blacks as an American minority. In 1990, there were 30 million blacks in America and 22.4 million Hispanics. Now, there are 36.4 million blacks...

Notes & Asides.(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... Dear Bill: You and friend Brown ["Notes & Asides," Feb. 5] are both wrong. The Nicomachean Ethics was not written by Aristotle, but by another man with the same name. And how do we know that the other man did not have a ghostwriter? Or...

Ganging Up on the Tax Cut - A curious coalition against Bush.
April 2, 2001... According to its mission statement, the purpose of the National Parent- Teacher Association is three-fold: to "support and speak on behalf of children and youth in the schools," to "assist parents in developing the skills they need to raise and...

Rumbles Right and . . . Right - Conservative worries about W.(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... How smitten are conservatives with George W. Bush? One famously unsparing activist, Paul Weyrich, recently told the New York Times, "I personally love this president." Conservatives have been quite happy with the administration's center-right...

Head of Its Class(es) - A new politics for the GOP.
April 2, 2001... Growing up in '50s Britain, I became addicted to the instructive works of Stephen Potter-Lifemanship, One-upmanship, etc.-which gave satirical advice on how to triumph in the little social battles of everyday life in a class society. The fact...

'A Threat to Our Domestic Institutions' - High times for a racial ambulance chaser.
April 2, 2001... These are glory days for Mary Frances Berry. After years of neglect, the head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is back in the news. The voting mess in Florida last November is one of the best things ever to happen to her. Thanks to her...

Containing Saddam - No time to go wobbly.
April 2, 2001... The containment of Iraq has underpinned the stability of the Middle East these last ten years. The world can be grateful that the United Nations imposed sanctions, braked Iraq's military expenditure by blocking its petro-dollars (except for...

Sweatshop Chic - The know-nothings find a cause.(how sweatshops eventually lead to improved economic conditions)
April 2, 2001... The lefty ideal used to be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." But with the end of the Cold War, pragmatism has conquered, and the goal is now slightly less ambitious: to make labor "sweat-free." Work's okay,...

The Latest at Fonda U. - Of boys & girls & Barbarella.(why Jane Fonda donated $12.5 million to Harvard Graduate School of Education)
April 2, 2001... In the style of Dwight Eisenhower's well-known valedictory warning to the American people, the editors of this magazine some months ago spoke of the rising danger of a "celebrity-activist complex." A perfect illustration of what we meant...

The M Factor - How modesty works for W.
April 2, 2001... The new Bush regime is aggressively modest. Gone is the "Blue Goose," the huge royal podium. Gone are the strains of "Hail to the Chief," and the ruffles and flourishes. Bush moves around without a large retinue. He defers to the people he...

Minding the 'Golden Door' - Toward a restrictionism that can succeed.(creating an immigration policy that benefits all)
April 2, 2001... Remember the immigration debate of the '90s? Just a few years ago, immigration was a major issue in national politics. No longer. Back then, Congress was on the verge of cutting immigration levels. Now it's considering raising them. In the...

Missile Defense: The Time Is Now - Stop talking and start building.(new missile defense system needs to be planned)
April 2, 2001... Genuflect first, ask questions later. Or so goes the reasoning at the State Department, the part of government most likely to keep missile defense-finally on the cusp of reality-from ever happening. A February 2 "secret" memorandum from...

The Long View.(memo outlines rules for employees of the White House)(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... The White House Washington, D.C. MEMORANDUM To: All White House personnel From: Andrew Card, Chief of Staff RE: Some additional workplace regulations The President has asked me to thank all of you for making our...

Stealing Darwin.(Review)
April 2, 2001... A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation, by Peter Singer (Yale, 70 pp., $9.95) Writings on an Ethical Life, by Peter Singer (Ecco, 361 pp., $27.50) Why are conservatives afraid of Darwinian biology? When I recently asked...

Hitler's Historian.(Review)
April 2, 2001... Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, by Richard J. Evans (Basic, 318 pp., $27) National character may have more to do with historical writing than some historians would care to admit. Consider England. English...

To Hell and Back with Jessye.(varied performances of Jessye Norman)
April 2, 2001... Jessye Norman is one of the most important singers of our times, a star of every stage for some thirty years now. She is also something of a public figure, even beyond music. Norman-the pride of Augusta, Georgia- has garnered practically every...

Unfortunate Travelers.(Review)
April 2, 2001... The history of French literature features endless arguments about melange des genres: whether two different genres can be mixed successfully. If the new movie The Mexican had been available to the anti-mixers, what hay they could have made with...

Book Shelf.(Review)
April 2, 2001... 'Turn it over, and turn it over, because everything is in it." The rabbi at Richard Elliott Friedman's bar mitzvah inscribed these words in the young man's Torah, and they represent the challenge of three millennia to scholars and lay people...

On the Right - Let's Drink to It.(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 27 To what? Anything. In the current Alumni Magazine from Yale, a 20-year- old sophomore (Miss Kara Lowentheil does not herself drink) says of her classmates that "they're very funny, very bright, very interesting,...

On the Right - Israeli Bully Boy?(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... NEW YORK, MARCH 6 The retiring ambassador to France, Mr. Felix Rohatyn, wrote recently an op-ed urging that the United States repeal its capital-punishment laws. The reasons for it begin, he said, with the disgrace attached to civilized...

On the Right - Xenophobia on The Wing?(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... NEW YORK, MARCH 9 On almost the same day, 1) Iowa declared English to be the state's official language; 2) Drake University, Iowa's largest private college, announced that it would cease offering modern languages in its curriculum; and 3)...

Misanthrope's Corner.(Brief Article)
April 2, 2001... I had never even heard of Dale Earnhardt until he crashed into eternity, but now here I am writing a column about him. What a country! The outpouring of grief began at once, but this time there were some telling differences. The emotional...

For the Record.(Brief Article)(Column)
April 16, 2001... Heritage Foundation president Edwin J. Feulner on Bush administration, in New York Times: "More Reaganite than the Reagan administration." . . . Paul Weyrich of Free Congress Foundation: "I've been through five Republican administrations, and...

The Week.
April 16, 2001... --Word is that Hillary Clinton has joined a Senate prayer group. Better count the Bibles. --Democrats are accusing President Bush of "talking down the economy" in order to sell his tax cuts. The idea is that his remarks about economic...

Taxes: Rebate and Switch.(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... After weeks of flailing, Democrats have found a criticism of President Bush's tax plan that works. It does too little, they say, to stimulate a slumping economy. They're right. Bush's tax cuts would be phased in quite slowly, so most of the...

Public Policy: Faith and Freedom.(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... The dispute over the president's plan to help religious charities is being portrayed, in the press, as a racial one, with white evangelicals suspicious of the government and black churches more favorably disposed. John DiIulio, director of the...

Campaign-Finance Reform: Incumbent Protection Racket.(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... If campaign-finance reform is the solution, what's the problem? It used to be candidates' spending, which was supposedly out of control, promoting a corrupting race for cash. But while earlier reform bills featured limits on candidates'...

Asia: Facing Down the Bully.(US relations with Taiwan, China)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... Is the Bush administration willing to face down the bully-boy of Asia? Following China's buildup of ballistic missiles opposite Taiwan, the government of the island nation has asked to buy four destroyers of the Arleigh Burke class (like the...

Notes and Asides.(Letter to the Editor)
April 16, 2001... Dear Mr. Buckley: I respectfully note that you misused the word "uxorious" in your column entitled "Pardon Clinton !#*!," which appeared in the Feb. 5 issue. "Uxorious" applies to a man who is excessively fond of his wife, but in your column...

Measures Against Malaise: How to keep the good times rolling.
April 16, 2001... A growing number of observers say that we're in for a prolonged period of tough economic sledding: The NASDAQ has wiped away $4 trillion of wealth, and the rest of the stock market is being hammered as well; consumers and corporations are up to...

Beware the 'Lockbox': A way into . . . yes, socialism.(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... Are we being "lockboxed" into economic serfdom? The famous "lockbox" has acquired an exalted status unequaled by virtually any public policy in recent memory. Left and Right disagree about almost everything, but every prudent man and woman in...

Disbarred!: Bush throws the ABA out.(George W. Bush, American Bar Association)
April 16, 2001... 'There's constant chatter about it," says one Senate aide. "There's a real expectation about it," says another. "We think it will happen by the end of June," says a third. The "it" to which so many on Capitol Hill are referring these days...

Zing Along with Mitch: The Reaganite new budget chief.
April 16, 2001... In the 19th century, the Secretary of War occupied a three-room suite on the second floor of what is now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. But since 1939, the ornate quarters have...

Don't Box Me In: An end to racial checkoffs.(Column)
April 16, 2001... A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with a group of supporters following a lecture. One of those in attendance was a delightful woman who applauded my efforts to achieve a colorblind government. She strongly urged me to stay the course,...

Guilt and Guts: The American political arena as vegetarian restaurant.
April 16, 2001... In the spring of 1992, the day after the Los Angeles riots, I went down to South Central L.A. with a group of friends to help clean up. In our jeans and hiking boots and T-shirts emblazoned with progressive slogans, we spent the day piling...

Is This All We Can Be?: The military culture and its cheapening.
April 16, 2001... You may have seen the following TV spot: A soldier is running alone across the desert, carrying a backpack but no rifle. Helicopters swoop overhead. A squad of soldiers runs past, moving in the direction opposite that of the lone runner....

Lefty Nation?: What the trends portend.
April 16, 2001... About a year ago, John Judis, a left-liberal journalist at The New Republic, wrote an article arguing that a new Democratic majority was aborning and that the election of George W. Bush as president would only "delay this trend." It seemed...

'Bang': Guns, rap, and silence.(violence in rap music)
April 16, 2001... A lot of people were interested in the Sean "Puffy" Combs trial: fans of rap music; celebrity-watchers; connoisseurs of popular culture. But one group of people showed no interest whatsoever: gun-control activists. This was rather strange-a dog...

What's in a (Team) Name?: The war against Indian symbols.
April 16, 2001... Call it a case of March Madness. As the NCAA's basketball tournament prepared to get under way, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights signaled its intention to condemn the University of Illinois and its top-seeded team, the Fighting Illini....

Professor Moneybags: When academics get rich . . . the agony!
April 16, 2001... The image of the impecunious professor dies hard, but many of today's college teachers and administrators are in fact living rather well. Academic conferences, once dominated by disheveled, sorry-looking folk, are now frequently a high-class...

The Long View.(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... to: luv2daytrayd@aol.com from: direct-e-invest@investimatic.com subject: MAKE MONEY NOW!!!!! Don't be scared by market volatility!!!! You can make $$$$$$ trading out-of-favor stocks!!! to: luv2daytrayd@aol.com from:...

Bleeding Florida.(Review)
April 16, 2001... Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency, by Jake Tapper (Little, Brown, 514 pp., $24.95) Bush v. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary, edited by E. J. Dionne Jr. and William Kristol (Brookings, 344 pp., $15.95) The Florida...

Dynastic Overdrive.(Review)
April 16, 2001... Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph P. Kennedy, edited by Amanda Smith (Viking, 764 pp., $39.95) After Eleanor Roosevelt's funeral at Hyde Park in 1962, the mourners gathered at her son John's house. Arthur Schlesinger-who had flown...

She'll Always Have Paris.(Review)
April 16, 2001... String of Pearls: On the News Beat in New York and Paris, by Priscilla L. Buckley (St. Martin's, 183 pp., $21.95) I've been a friend and colleague of Priscilla Buckley for decades. This will not prevent me from telling the truth about her...

Bitter Pill.(Review)
April 16, 2001... PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine, by Sally Satel (Basic, 285 pp., $27) Psychiatric patients literally running the asylum, university professors calling for socialism as a public-health measure, respected journals...

Flip Sides.(personal account: cleaning out a record collection)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... The trouble began when my wife and I went to a thrift shop for books on Crosby Street. It is one of several thrift shops in the city run by Housing Works, a charity for homeless AIDS patients, and like most gay enterprises, it is attractive and...

Dangerous Game.(Review)
April 16, 2001... The French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud has had a checkered career. His first film, Black and White in Color (1976), about inept colonial warfare between the French and Germans in 1915 West Africa, was an absolute gem. Ranging from drolly...

Books in Brief.(Review)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform, by Bradley A. Smith (Princeton, 286 pp., $26.95) Sen. Dick Durbin called Bradley Smith a "nihilist." Commentators compared him to David Duke and the Unabomber. And then-Vice President Al...

Books in Brief - 2.(Review)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... John Paul II: A Personal Portrait of the Pope and the Man, by Raymond Flynn, with Robin Moore and James Vrabel (St. Martin's, 224 pp., $22.95) Flynn, the charming former mayor of Boston and ex-ambassador to the Vatican, tells us very...

On the Right - Hard Lessons From Traffic?(the George W. Bush administration does not seem prepared to offer any dramatic new policies in the war against drugs)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... NEW YORK, MARCH 16 The drug czar-elect in the movie Traffic has decided to look at the grit of drug trade and drug addiction first hand, to which end he forages about Tijuana and has a near overdose. Groggy from what he has seen, he...

On the Right - Feeling One's Way on Finance Reform.(political campaign finance reform debate)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... NEW YORK, MARCH 20 It isn't exactly correct that conservatives oppose any limitations on political spending on the grounds that such limitations are unconstitutional slights on the First Amendment. Oddball interpretations of the...

On the Right - Execution Days Ahead?(opinions, including that of Cardinal Avery Dulles, on capital punishment)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... NEW YORK, MARCH 23 A new play opens next week in New York on Nuremberg justice. The four defendants (including star Maximilian Schell) are judges who collaborated in the Nazi enterprise. The prosecutor meets privately with the chief...

Misanthrope's Corner.(the complications of making the transition from P.O. box to e-mail address)(Brief Article)
April 16, 2001... From time to time over the past few years, I have heard from people who wrote to congratulate me for providing a mailing address instead of an e-mail address at the bottom of this page. Their letters invariably gave off a tone composed of...

For the Record.
April 30, 2001... President Bush: "We need significant tax relief-I mean significant tax relief-and we need it now." . . . Sen. John Breaux (D., La.): "A tax cut over $1 trillion that is supported by a large majority is a huge victory for him. Whether it's $1.3...

The Week.
April 30, 2001... George W. Bush has now won Florida more times than Lawton Chiles. By a narrow margin, the Senate voted for a budget resolution that shrinks President Bush's tax cut from $1.6 trillion to $1.2 trillion. This was a defeat, but one that needs...

China - Regrets Only.(Brief Article)
April 30, 2001... As all the world knows, on April 1 an American surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter collided near Hainan, and both went down. For ten days, the government of China refused to release the 24 downed American servicemen and demanded an...

The Environment - Fighting the Faith.(Column)(Short Story)
April 30, 2001... President Bush is learning how dangerous it is to let faith-based organizations and ideas get too close to government. Not churches trying to help drug addicts, but environmentalists. The blizzard of midnight regulations that Bill Clinton...

Notes & Asides.(Letter to the Editor)
April 30, 2001... --Dear Bill: I am launching a campaign to introduce a synonymous vocabulary that will replace words that have outworn their usefulness or, in the present political scene, seem too harsh. For example, gay, which destroys a useful adjective...

Killed on Taxes: The administration is blundering.(Statistical Data Included)
April 30, 2001... The White House is gamely trying to put a positive spin on the Senate rejection of President Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut-Hey, at least we got the Democrats to agree to $1.2 trillion!-but in reality, this was a major blow to Bush's program: The...

Speedy Gonzales: Bush's fast-rising counsel.(Alberto Gonzales)
April 30, 2001... It's widely recognized that the Bush administration has more Reaganites in it than the Reagan administration itself had. Nowhere is this more true than in the administration's legal team. Never have a Justice Department and a White House...

High Society: Conservative lawyers and their wonderful 'cabal'.
April 30, 2001... Be forewarned: Democrats hope to turn "Federalist Society" into two of the dirtiest words in American politics. They will use this phrase to distort the records of judicial nominees, in a concerted effort to derail their nominations. ...

The Yuckster: Bob Dole, after politics.
April 30, 2001... When the people behind Bartlett's Familiar Quotations consider whether to put any of Bob Dole's utterances in their next edition-he has none in the current one-they'll have plenty of choices. There's the bitter line from the 1988 GOP primaries,...

Zapped Out: Adios to the Zapatistas.(Don't come back).
April 30, 2001... If you can't manage a coup d'etat, try a coup de theatre instead. That, at least, is the tactic employed by Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatistas, in Mexico. In an age when many people, dazzled by electronic and other imagery, have...

Well Done: Meat and its challengers.
April 30, 2001... From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, a roughage curtain has descended across Europe. In Italy, the number of vegetarians has grown from 1.5 million to 2.5 million in just the past year. Demand for beef has been in free fall...

Communist, Nationalist, and Dangerous: The problem of China.
April 30, 2001... The recent crisis in Hainan Island brought Chinese nationalism to the front of our minds. Specialist China-watchers have understood for some time that the events of 1989-not only the student and worker movements that were crushed in Tiananmen...

Lessons from Clinton: W. can learn.
April 30, 2001... On March 26, the New York Times published a story headlined "Some Say U.S. Lags in Blocking Foot-and-Mouth Disease at the Border." The paper reported that many experts fear the Department of Agriculture "has nothing close to the resources it...

Invasion of a Certain Kind: A big question for the West.
April 30, 2001... In February, a rusty, decrepit freighter named the East Sea ran aground on the Cote d'Azur near Saint-Tropez. Its captain and crew fled, and when police and medical teams arrived on the vessel, they found 900 people-250 men, 180 women, and 480...

Tiger Time: The wonder of an American hero.
April 30, 2001... Sometime last season, I e-mailed a friend of mine, an ex-pro golfer and a keen student of the game. "Are we ready to concede that Tiger is the best ever?" I asked. His answer was slightly ambiguous; I couldn't tell whether he was being sincere...

Voice in the Wilderness.(Review)
April 30, 2001... Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, by Rick Perlstein (Hill and Wang, 671 pp., $30) As Alan Brinkley observed in the American Historical Review in April 1994, "American conservatism has been...

The Reunion.(Review)
April 30, 2001... April 1865: The Month That Saved America, by Jay Winik (HarperCollins, 461 pp., $32.50) The most enduring image of the Civil War is probably the burning of Atlanta-as carried out not by General Sherman, but by David O. Selznick in Gone...

Lawyers, Guns, and Money.(Review)
April 30, 2001... The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000, by Niall Ferguson (Basic, 552 pp., $30) British historians in general, and at Oxford University in particular, have for years been a crew of small-scope fact-grubbers and/or...

Down but Not Out.(Review)
April 30, 2001... Dirty Havana Trilogy, by Pedro Juan Gutierrez, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Farrar, Straus, 392 pp., $25) Though it makes no reference to politics, Dirty Havana Trilogy is invaluable for an understanding of Cuba's predicament. In Pedro...

Going to the Dogs.(Review)
April 30, 2001... Spy movies don't do much for me. Most of them traffic in the sort of improbabilities and loopholes that might be acceptable in life, though not in an honest work of fiction. Yet I must also admit to not having the right puzzle-solving sort of...

Shelf Life.(Brief Article)
April 30, 2001... For the past four decades, The New York Review of Books has tirelessly championed liberal causes. It comes, therefore, as a welcome surprise that the magazine's new book-publishing imprint-New York Review Books Classics-is performing a...

The Long View.(imagined consversation between George W. Bush and Jiang Zemin)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2001... NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY TELEPHONE TRANSCRIPT 7 APRIL 2001 09:35 BEGIN EXTRACT president of the united states: You're risking a whole lot of really good stuff here, Jang. president of the people's republic of china: Sir,...

On the Right - Hillary at Yale?(protests over Hillary Clinton as commencement speaker)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2001... NEW YORK, MARCH 30 A protest movement is fomenting at Yale University, protesting the selection of Sen. Hillary Clinton as commencement speaker. The idea of the band of conservative students is not to disrupt the commencement proceedings,...

On the Right - The Sopranos' Underside.(show thrives on sensationalism despite critical success)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2001... NEW YORK, APRIL 3 I swore I'd shoot myself if I didn't write about it, "it" being The Sopranos, Episode VI, seen on Sunday, an exercise in voluptuous self- abasement. The experience (not new; I had seen most of Year One) was instructive...

On the Right - The Long View.(why the U.S. should not apologize to China for Hainan incident)(Brief Article)
April 30, 2001... On Hainan NEW YORK, APRIL 6 S cene: Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Off-the-record speaker, Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence. Background: Our pilot, Gary Powers, has been shot down flying a U-2 on a routine...

Misanthrope's Corner.(George W. Bush's faith-based initiative and other current events)(Buyers Guide)(Column)
April 30, 2001... Have you heard about the fabulous new true-life horror movie? It's called Revulsion and it's about a columnist who suddenly and inexplicably finds that she can't bring herself to read another newspaper or watch another talking-head show. The...