National Review articles from July 2002

National Review archives from July 2002

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
July 1, 2002... --In The Long View of June 3, a remark is made about Carmen McRae, =93who rarely makes television appearances." Actually, after her death on Nov. 10, 1994, the great singer stopped making any appearances whatsoever, although I personally...

The Week.(policy issues)(Column)
July 1, 2002... -- The French nabbed an al-Qaeda operative who was planning to demolish a a French cathedral. No need to send one to the Milwaukee archdiocese, where the Church does the job itself. -- Abdullah al-Muhajir, the al-Qaeda terrorist formally...

At War: Homeland Sideshow.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Comparing his action to Harry Truman's creation of the National Security Council and consolidation of the military at the dawn of the Cold War, President Bush proposed a new cabinet department, the Department of Homeland Security, better to...

AIRPORT SECURITY: The Case for Discrimination.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Edgardo Cureg was about to catch a Continental Airlines flight home on New Year's Eve when he ran into a former professor of his. Cureg lent the professor his cell phone and, once on board, went to the professor's seat to retrieve it. Another...

The CATHOLIC CHURCH: A Call to Repentance.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... The American Catholic bishops met in Dallas on June 13-14 to consider the priest sex-abuse scandals. Their draft statement was all that was available to NR at press time, and, like many such statements, it was a mixed bag. The Church...

Notes & Asides.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: In your obituary for Ernest van den Haag (April 2222), it is noted that a favorite activity of his was to invite friends to a French restaurant with the understanding that they would pay the check. That's new meaning...

Our Ally, Our Problem: Pakistan is an exceptionally hard case -- here's what to do.
July 1, 2002... As the Bush administration moves into the next phases of the war against terrorism, it will need to confront a profoundly difficult problem: Pakistan is at the same time an indispensable partner in that war and a principal and continuing source...

Remember the Caroline!: The doctrine of 'anticipatory self-defense' -- more relevant than ever.
July 1, 2002... As night fell on December 29, 1837, a small British force crossed the Niagara River from Canada into New York. Their mission was to destroy the American steamboat Caroline, which had been carrying supplies to a group of Canadian insurgents. The...

Clone Wars, Part II: Other fronts, other battles.
July 1, 2002... If the science of cloning is advancing rapidly, the politics of it are changing almost as fast. We've come a long way from the debates of the summer of 2001. Then the question was whether the federal government should fund research on stem...

Video Poker, Flushed: Or, the rotting of a 'fruit machine'.
July 1, 2002... These are bad days for the most highly developed members of Georgia's gambling community. By order of the state's highest court, video poker -- a.k.a. the "crack cocaine of gambling" -- is about to vanish like a mud puddle beneath the pitiless...

Rock On: The strange and telling struggle over Gibraltar.
July 1, 2002... Gibraltar is one of the last outposts of the British Empire, and the Tony Blair government is proposing to decolonize it. Not by handing independence to the natives, though, as has been the practice everywhere else in the modern age, but by...

The People's Queen: But not the intelligentsia's. Who will win?(intelligentsia's opposition to British monarchy)
July 1, 2002... The monarchy is Britain's peculiar institution, at least in the sense that it is headed for abolition, though more by attrition than by civil war. This does not mean that it is unpopular, far from it: The Queen's Golden Jubilee was celebrated...

The Itch to Serve: And how one 40-year-old scratched it.(serving in a military auxiliary)
July 1, 2002... There are a lot of 40-year-old soldiers in the movies: Tom Hanks, for example, in Saving Private Ryan. But that's about as close to the military as most guys my age have ever gotten. I'm 40 years old. Over the course of my life, no matter what...

A Better Bureau: How to fix the FBI.
July 1, 2002... The shocked and dismayed tone of the media coverage and the congressional reaction to the FBI's missteps in handling pre-9/11 terror clues makes it seem as though one day a bunch of agents, unbeknownst to everyone, got together and decided that...

Catching the Visa Express: The awful program that allows Saudis to skip into the U.S.(program allowing residents of Saudi Arabia to get US visas at travel agencies)
July 1, 2002... Three Saudis who were among the last of the 9/11 homicide hijackers to enter this country didn't visit a U.S. embassy or consulate to get their visas; they went to a travel agent, to whom they submitted only a short, two-page form and a photo....

With Friends Like . . . Whom?: The sorry search for non-European allies.
July 1, 2002... One side effect of the Right's current disillusionment with "the Europeans" as unreliable, wimpish, anti-Semitic, and anti-American is a search for new allies. Some conservatives would be perfectly content to do without allies entirely, using...

The Long View.(satire on Chandra Levy investivation)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Match Wits with Inspector Jones of the Washington, D.C., Police! Excerpts from "The Case of the Missing Intern" Chapter One: A Mysterious Noise Inspector Jones sat bolt upright in bed. "What the devil is that noise?" he asked...

Spoiled Sports.(Tilting the Playing Field: Schools, Sports, Sex, and Title IX)
July 1, 2002... Tilting the Playing Field: Schools, Sports, Sex, and Title IX, by Jessica Gavora (Encounter, 181 pp., $24.95) When Brandi Chastain stripped down to her sports bra after helping the U.S. team win the women's World Cup soccer championship, it...

Eschaton Redux.(Eric Voegelin: The Restoration of Order)
July 1, 2002... Eric Voegelin: The Restoration of Order, by Michael P. Federici (ISI, 250 pp., $24.95) Today's challenge: Try, nonchalantly, to work into an everyday conversation the phrase "immanentization of the eschaton." Obscure to the point of...

The Left's Lion.(Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World)
July 1, 2002... Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World, by Eric Foner (Hill and Wang, 256 pp., $24) Eric Foner of Columbia University is one of our nation's most acclaimed historians. A past president of both the American Historical...

Myth-Making on Taxes.(The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice)
July 1, 2002... The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice, by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel (Oxford, 272 pp., $25) Any modern society must perform two tasks simultaneously: It must secure a free and stable social order, and it must distribute fairly among...

Island Bazaar.(New York City street fairs)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... It is the season of yard and tag sales, when you slam on the brakes to stop at the table set with rusty silverware, Darth Vader masks, assorted dinner plates (the only ones that were once costly all now chipped), and a cardboard box full of...

Shelf Life.(Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-First Century ; Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity; Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism; Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation But Missed the History Books)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Women are human beings, and should therefore have the same rights and freedoms as all other human beings: This was the fundamental insight of the early generations of feminist pioneers. In recent years, feminism has taken a disastrously wrong...

On the Right.(Woody Allen At Cannes Film Festival; Egypt-US relations; sex abuse by priests)(Column)
July 1, 2002... See Woody Run NEW YORK, MAY 31 Random thoughts and sentences of President Bush are the objects of great (and studied) fun by critics. It is rumored that there is a website that collects these. The not-well-concealed motive here is to...

The Misanthrope's Corner.(William Hazlitt's essay "On the Pleasure of Hating")(Brief Article)(Column)
July 1, 2002... I haven't checked what are laughably called college curricula lately, but it's a sure bet that English departments, if they still exist, do not require students to read the works of William Hazlitt. Not only is he white, male, and dead, but he...

Letters.
July 15, 2002... -- After reading Jonah Goldberg's "Ozzy Without Harriet" (June 1717), I watched The Osbournes for the first time, and it wasn't the anti-drug campaign that Mr. Goldberg describes. MTV is making serious drug abuse something to laugh about,...

The Week.(President Bush encourages the Palestinians to change leadership)(this and other items are discussed)
July 15, 2002... -- Abby wins! -- In a speech notable for its frankness, President Bush has told the PaPalestinians that they are victims of their own disastrous leadership. A man corrupt in every sense, Yasser Arafat has committed his people to terror and...

At War: No Ordinary Crime.(civil rights during wartime)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Free Jose Padilla! That would be the cry of the civil libertarians if they were to follow their opposition to Padilla's military detention to its logical conclusion. The fact is that the Dirty Bomb suspect, a U.S. citizen, has committed no...

The Courts: Usurpation and Abdication.(Supreme Court and The Constitution)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... The Supreme Court issued an outrageous ruling on the death penalty, but it did not inspire much outrage. It was greeted with equanimity because the policy the Court imposed was within the bounds of reasonableness. The Court ruled that the...

Health CARE: Prescription for Disappointment.(prescription drug plans)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... The current bidding war in Washington over prescription-drug benefits for seniors illustrates what's wrong with our health-care system, and our politics. Americans pay for their health care mostly indirectly, through lost wages and higher...

Notes & Asides.(Gertrude Vogt dead at 99)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... -- Old-timers in and around National Review (1955-1968) will have knknown Gertrude Vogt. She was my secretary and office manager and, like her successor, ran the shop, with her quiet, feral will. Her passion was books, and she had worked under...

Bringing the War 'Home': Go ahead: Make it a political issue.(how Democrats and Republicans are using war on terrorism in campaigns)
July 15, 2002... At the start of the war, liberals worried that President Bush and the Republicans were going to exploit the conflict for partisan or ideological ends. This fear was reasonable. The war did indeed put Republicans in a strong political position,...

A Bureaucracy with a Difference?: Hopes and fears for the 'homeland' force.(new agency devoted to domestic defense)(Statistical Data Included)
July 15, 2002... With his plan for a new conglomerate federal agency dedicated to domestic defense, President Bush has reignited an old battle -- with higher stakes than the predictable turf fights over the 22 agencies slated for new management. The president's...

The Saudi Pipeline: Petro-dollars, Palestinian terror -- and a U.S. blind eye.(Saudi Arabia's role in conflicts in Israel)
July 15, 2002... Moral clarity, it seems, is always in danger when the U.S. foreign- policy establishment gets around to addressing the issue of Saudi Arabia. Documents of indisputable authenticity, captured by Israel during its West Bank incursion earlier this...

A Fence in the Sand: From the Israelis, a last, near-desperate measure.(fence to be built along West Bank in efforts to curb suicide bombings)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... The Israelis are building a fence between themselves and the Palestinians on the West Bank. It is a last and almost desperate measure in the war they are currently fighting against terror. Trying out the gamut of possible approaches, they have...

The Anti-Big Mac Attack: Busybodies and trial lawyers set greedy eyes on food.(food may be next target in products-liability cases)
July 15, 2002... The dream scenario for the fat police can be found in the unduly unsung film So I Married an Axe Murderer, starring Mike Myers (of Austin Powers fame). Myers plays two characters at once, a Scottish conspiracy theorist and his son. The father...

On Tiptoe Through the Tulips: Why Holland is nervous -- and an alarming case for the entire West.(Pim Fortuyn and Netherlands politics and society)
July 15, 2002... Amsterdam Dildos, tulips, and waffles, all on the same block: Welcome to the Netherlands, a country renowned for the bourgeoisification of vice. I have just entered Amsterdam's red-light district in -- honest! -- an attempt to visit...

Rude Awakenings: Some effects of the Middle East wars on U.S. campuses.
July 15, 2002... When the Arab-Israeli conflict flared again, the reaction on campus was dramatic. It could have been expected to be anti-Israel, and severely so; but it was even more anti-Israel than usual. It was more anti- Semitic, too. (Sadly, these two...

Our 'Next Manifest Destiny': America should move to control space -- now, and decisively.
July 15, 2002... On the morning of September 13, 1985, Air Force Major Doug Pearson smashed through the sound barrier in his F-15. Pointed almost directly upward more than seven miles above the Pacific Ocean, he tapped a little red button on the side of his...

The Long View.(imagined interiew with Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Official Transcript: Larry King Live, June 24, 2004 larry king: "Tampa Bay! You're on with Saddam Hussein! What's your question?" caller: "Am I on?" larry king: "You're on, Tampa. What's your question?" caller: "Um...

Strobe Lite.('The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy')
July 15, 2002... The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy, by Strobe Talbott (Random House, 480 pp., $29.95) The ending of the Cold War was one of history's great surprises. Involuntarily, as though in some sort of trance, the Soviet Union...

The Old Bull.('The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate')
July 15, 2002... The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, by Robert A. Caro (Knopf, 1,167 pp., $35) Lyndon Johnson's reputation is a useful barometer of the mood of America's liberal intelligentsia. When they are depressed or on the defensive,...

The Politics of Victory.('Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime')
July 15, 2002... Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, by Eliot A. Cohen (Free Press, 272 pp., $25) Conservatives all know why the U.S. lost the Vietnam War -- meddling civilian leaders handcuffed the military and prevented it...

Southern Comfort.('The Rise of Southern Republicans')
July 15, 2002... The Rise of Southern Republicans, by Earl Black and Merle Black (Harvard, 384 pp., $29.95) During the 1988 campaign, vice-presidential nominee Dan Quayle appeared at a North Carolina-South Carolina football game in Columbia, S.C. -- the...

The Greatest.('Rediscovering George Washington')
July 15, 2002... If there ever was a man made for the movies it was George Washington. He was the action figure at the center of every major political event of his day: the move for independence, the Revolutionary War, the formation of the Constitution, the...

On the Right.(airline security, saving Amtrak, other news)(Column)
July 15, 2002... Put Your Toothpicks In the Mail NEW YORK, JUNE 11 Since the administration is engaged in radical administrative reform with a view to augmenting homeland security, a pitch should be made for the application, in airline travel, of...

The Misanthrope's Corner.(on keeping a journal)(Column)(Brief Article)
July 15, 2002... Having at last disposed of the avalanche of newspaper clippings known as my Idea Files, I am now sorting out the stack of spiral notebooks that constitute my Journal. All writers are supposed to keep a journal and include it in our literary...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
July 29, 2002... --Theodore Dalrymple's article ("The People's Queen," July 1) ususes the term "liberal intelligentsia" several times. That's not just an oxymoron, it's an insult to ordinary conservatives. In her book When Character Was King, Peggy Noonan...

The Week.(shooting al Los Angeles International Airport; Al Gore as [possible 2004 presidential candidate; Rep. J. C. Watts to retire; other current events)
July 29, 2002... -- Seen in Santa Cruz, Calif.: Professional protesters driving to ananti- logging demonstrations in cars bearing bumper stickers from causes past -- such as, "Split wood, not atoms." -- Hesham Mohamed Ali Hadayet, the owner of a limousine...

Harken: Is That a Scandal They Hear?: A ridiculous rap against Bush.(President Bush's 1990 sale of stock in Harken Energy)
July 29, 2002... On July 8, a couple of hours after President Bush held a news conference dominated by questions concerning his 1990 sale of stock in Harken Energy, Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe was blasting out e- mails to reporters...

School Choice, Not an Echo: After the Supreme Court's decision, the future of the movement.
July 29, 2002... For more than a dozen years, Clint Bolick of the Institute for Justice had dreamed of the day the Supreme Court would hand down a blockbuster verdict on school choice. He'd been litigating the issue for that long, and on the morning of June 27,...

American Inferno: Greens fiddle while forests burn.(environmentalists' policies responsible for wildfires)
July 29, 2002... Acts of God spark most forest fires, but the actions of men and their governments share responsibility for the fact that fires have in recent years reached "biblical" proportions. In this country, decades of government mismanagement of public...

Their Kampf: Hitler's book in Arab hands.
July 29, 2002... Adolf Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf is as vile as any book ever published. Written in 1923 while he was in prison as a revolutionary agitator and at that point unlikely ever to be anything else, Hitler built on the connected emotions of...

And a Thief, Too: Yasser Arafat takes what he likes.
July 29, 2002... President Bush's call to change the Palestinian leadership and to bring reform, accountability, and transparency to the Palestinian Authority should focus attention on the financial corruption of Arafat's regime. Before Bush's speech,...

Slow on Sudan: A bill stalls; has AIPAC reneged?(American Israel Public Affairs Committee fails to support Sudan Peace Act)
July 29, 2002... In June 2001, Nina Shea, the director of Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom, believed she could count on the pro-Israel lobby's support for legislation on human rights in Sudan. At the time, the American Israel Public Affairs...

One Branch Among Three: The courts should not be so powerful -- and they don't have to be.
July 29, 2002... Pity Alfred Goodwin. The judge has been vilified from coast to coast for ruling that it's unconstitutional to force schoolkids to listen to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. The words "wacko," "stupid," "ridiculous," and "just...

Getting Smart: Three steps toward a more intelligent intelligence community.
July 29, 2002... After spending three months loudly berating the intelligence community about 9/11, Congress has quietly decided to postpone any reforms until September. The most pressing and least settled issues on the national- security agenda will therefore...

Too Many: Looking today's immigration in the face.
July 29, 2002... When the history of the 1990s is written, the most important story may not be the GOP takeover of Congress, the boom economy, or the Clinton impeachment. The big story may be the decade's unprecedented level of immigration: a social phenomenon...

The Long View.(satire on financial reporting ethics)(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... The New Financial-Reporting Ethics Takes Hold SEATTLE, WA October 9, 2002 (AP) Cody and Jason Palandjian were arrested last night by agents of the FBI and charged with violations of the newly passed Federal Ethical Reporting Act. The two...

Six-Day Odyssey.(Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
July 29, 2002... Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by Michael B. Oren (Oxford, 446 pp., $30) Guess who spoke these words, and when: "The United States is the enemy. The United States is the hostile force behind Israel. The...

They Admit It!(Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies)
July 29, 2002... Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies, by Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner (New Press, 448 pp., $29.95) A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a bunch of evil white male right-wing racist Republican congressmen...

Masters of the Art.(The Traveler's Calendar: New Poems; Collected Poems: 1952-1999)
July 29, 2002... The Traveler's Calendar: New Poems, by Daniel Mark Epstein (Overlook Press, 112 pp., $24.95) Collected Poems: 1952-1999, by Robert Mezey (Arkansas, 304 pp., $22) Readers will have noticed that National Review has been publishing...

Big Deals.(singer Thomas Quasthoff; cellist Natalia Gutman)
July 29, 2002... Notable performers blow through New York all the time, but, now and then, there appears one who makes you stop and wonder. At the end of this past season, we had (at least) two such performers, one approaching famous, the other less known, but...

Ward Healers.(searching for a new doctor)(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... My internist retired after a long career, and so I embarked on the quest that New Yorkers pursue with an intensity otherwise reserved for picking a mate, or a college for a child -- the search for a doctor. I had seen my doctor since the...

Shelf Life.(Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right; Churchill's Military Histories: A Rhetorical Study ; Civilizing Sex: On Chastity and the Common Good; Why Jews Should Not Be Liberals)
July 29, 2002... 'I'm not accusing you of being a bigot. I'm accusing you of being a fool. . . . I don't know if you're a bigot. I do know you're a fool." Thus spake James Carville to conservative columnist Ann Coulter on a recent segment of CNN's Crossfire...

On the Right.(Thomas Keneally; Pres. Bush's Middle East policy; business ethics)(Column)
July 29, 2002... Opportunism NEW YORK, JUNE 21 Every now and again, interrupting the daily monsoon recording the work of the miserable priests who have labored so successfully to undermine the Catholic Church, one hears a little beep of protest....

The Misanthrope's Corner.(Ninth Circuit's ruling on Pledge of Allegiance)(Column)(Brief Article)
July 29, 2002... Slipping in under the wire seems to be a specialty of mine. I graduated from public schools in 1953; "under God" was not inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954, so I am a member of the last class to recite the old version. It's still...