National Review articles from June 2002

National Review archives from June 2002

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
June 3, 2002... --Speaking of vulgarity as one of the characteristics of our time, I ofoffer your May 6 cover [of Yasser Arafat by Roman Genn] as an example. Ralph C. Boettcher Pittsburgh, Pa. --You'll get all kinds of screams from all the usual...

The Week.(Column)
June 3, 2002... -- So, who's the worst ex-president? A question to give you a heheadache. -- If the Bush administration's foray into Middle East peace-making isis an elaborate deception, as some clever pundits have suggested, the ruse keeps getting...

CUBA: There He Went Again.(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... Students of the long careers of Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro reacted glumly to the news that the former president would visit the dictator's island. Castro has a talent, honed over long practice, for bullying and snowing credulous guests....

Europe: A Murder and Taboos.(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... The assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn shocked Europeans, and deserves notice here. Fortuyn was a 54-year-old maverick, a professor turned journalist turned politician, who upset the cozy world of Dutch politics when his...

NEW YORK: Happy Birthday.(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... The New York Conservative Party celebrated its 40th anniversary at a resplendent party in the City at which the Vice President the United States and the Governor of New York were among the grandee guests. The Party -- the arithmetic speaks...

Notes & Asides.(Brief Article)(Column)
June 3, 2002... William F. Buckley Jr. -- Dear Bill: I delighted in your long-ago [see below] letter about vevelleity. I've never in my life put that horse in harness, and you were hitching it to an incomprehensible sentence 22 years ago! These days, like...

Death of an 'Extremist': The assassination of Pim Fortuyn should make us think hard.
June 3, 2002... Pim Fortuyn's assassination by an "environmental activist" in Holland, like the shaking of a kaleidoscope, produces dramatically different new patterns of politics. Together with September 11, it tells us that old political orthodoxies are...

Attitude Adjustment: How the Hungarians got it; who needs it now.
June 3, 2002... The battle of the Lechfeld, which was fought on a rainy Friday in August of a.d. 955, does not figure in any of those books describing the most decisive or most significant battles in world history -- books by historians like Edward Creasy or...

The Unconfirmed: War over judges, escalated.
June 3, 2002... Yes, there are a lot of important issues at stake in the fight between Senate Republicans and Democrats over the president's judicial nominees. But sometimes it's just personal. Take the case of Lawrence Block, a veteran Republican aide on the...

Governors and Drunken Sailors: Out in the states, they've spent themselves silly.(Statistical Data Included)
June 3, 2002... During the go-go 1990s, no group in America engaged in conspicuous consumption more than the nation's governors. State budgets doubled in size, as lawmakers invented new ways to dole out tax dollars. Most states now spend between $800 and...

A Fundamentalism of Their Own: With the Atheists in Boston.
June 3, 2002... On Good Friday, when others were in church, I visited an atheists' convention. Choosing to hold the gathering -- the 28th National Convention of the American Atheists -- over the Easter weekend was, their president explained, not much more than...

Come and See the Hanging!: The tapestries at the Met are a once-in-a- lifetime event.
June 3, 2002... Now for the good news. The most extravagantly praised exhibition in New York this season is not the pathological product of some "transgressive" freak but a stunning collection of Renaissance tapestries assembled from some two dozen collections...

Bigger, Better, More Beautiful: The next World Trade Center.
June 3, 2002... We need to replace the World Trade Center towers with something bigger, better, and more beautiful. Some people are nervous (some people are always nervous) -- in the age of terrorism, they say, a Manhattan skyscraper is a mere gross...

The State of Davis: California's governor is less golden, but still rich.
June 3, 2002... Once upon a time -- and not so long ago -- Gray Davis was the golden boy of the Golden State. California's Democratic governor enjoyed big budget surpluses and the goodwill of the vast majority of his 34 million constituents. At the start of...

Gay Priests and Gay Marriage: What the one issue has to do with the other.
June 3, 2002... The sex-abuse scandal currently plaguing the Catholic priesthood has already grown to the point where it poses a serious threat to the power, prestige, and credibility of the American Catholic Church. The sky, so to speak, is falling. An...

Taking the Con Out of Con. Law: The struggle over judicial interpretation.
June 3, 2002... Signs of crisis dominate the current landscape of constitutional law. Bush v. Gore may have chosen a president, but it left an open wound in the body politic. Prominent Democrats -- including Judge Abner Mikva -- have urged a senatorial...

The Long View.(Brief Article)(Column)
June 3, 2002... memo to: Bill Clinton from: NBC Research in re: Focus-group results: "Clinton in the Morning" First off, everyone here in Research loves the show! It's funny and fast-paced and has all the elements of a franchise performer in the...

Identity Crisis.("Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution")
June 3, 2002... Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, by Francis Fukuyama (Farrar Straus, 272 pp., $25) 'We should not allow theology, philosophy, or politics to interfere with the decision we make on this issue," pronounced...

McCain Strain.("Citizen McCain")
June 3, 2002... Citizen McCain, by Elizabeth Drew (Simon & Schuster, 256 pp., $23) Whatever else you think of John McCain, he is not an uninteresting political figure -- except, that is, in the hands of Elizabeth Drew in this short hagiography. Drew, of...

Homeland Defense.("What's So Great About America")
June 3, 2002... What's So Great About America, by Dinesh D'Souza (Regnery, 218 pp., $27.95) This book speaks to two different audiences, and does so with two distinct voices. The first voice addresses the general reader, a John Q. Public who has...

In the Snows and Elsewhere.
June 3, 2002... Want to hear something good? Fortunately, there's plenty of good, at the record shop. We'll do a sampling of recent releases, mainly winners. Begin with Sibelius. We're apt to know the Second or Fifth Symphony, and the little, haunting...

Beauty Spot.(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... It was 6:00 in the evening on Fifth Avenue where St. Patrick's Cathedral and Rockefeller Center glare at each other over the rush like Scylla and Charybdis -- one of the worst times and places to hail a cab. Unless a cab disgorges at your feet,...

Books in Brief.("Napoleon")(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... Napoleon, by Paul Johnson (Viking, 190 pp., $19.95) Johnson, the British historian renowned for such monumental surveys as A History of the Jews and Modern Times, narrows his focus in his most recent work, a slender biography of Napoleon....

Shelf Life.(four books on politics, society, religion)(Brief Article)
June 3, 2002... Mark Skousen is a learned economist who recently accepted the post of president of the Foundation for Economic Education. It need not be asked by what economic principles is he guided. FEE, as it is universally referred to, was founded in 1946...

On the Right.(Column)
June 3, 2002... How Much Satisfaction? NEW YORK, APRIL 26 The most recent news on classical music in broadcasting is that the market for it continues to dwindle, with the result that even such consecrated enterprises as New York's WNYC, which was...

The Misanthrope's Corner.(Brief Article)(Column)
June 3, 2002... Twenty years ago when I published a book with Viking, somebody got the fan mail mixed up and sent me Stephen King's by mistake. That has to be my most memorable experience with what the trade calls "reader response," but the Gentle Readers of...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
June 17, 2002... -- No one read Rich Lowry's interview with William F. Buckley Jr. (N(NR, May 6) with greater interest than I. Harry Elmlark, a consummate salesman, was the owner of a small syndicate, and in 1962 he landed the Buckley column with a...

The Week.(political briefs)(News Briefs)
June 17, 2002... -- In a recent interview, Vermont senator James Jeffords mentioned that ththe Senate Democrats joined in singing "Consider Yourself (at Home)," from Oliver!, when he joined their caucus. In the musical, didn't that song welcome Oliver into a...

At war: What We Know.(controversy over intelligence information regarding September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks)(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... For years, the prize for tabloid headline zip and overstatement was held by the New York Daily News: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. This May, that paper was passed by the New York Post: BUSH KNEW. The president, in other words, knew before September...

At War II: 'Time Is Not on Our Side'.(US military planning)(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... From the beginning, the comforting thing about the war on terrorism has been the assumption that the U.S. would win. How could we not, given our enormous wealth and military power, and the backwardness of al-Qaeda and the countries associated...

IMMIGRATION: Time for Realism.(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... How do Muslim terrorists get into this country? Any way they can -- and American immigration policy, and the manner in which it is enforced, give them many ways. A recent report by Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies...

Notes & Asides.(political briefs)(News Briefs)(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: I read somewhere that your great-grandfather (or grgreat-great) was once sheriff of the infamous Duval County in South Texas. Is it true? I grew up in Jim Wells County next door. Thank you, James G. Shea ...

The Man Who Won't Veto: One power that George W. Bush eschews.
June 17, 2002... In 1788, as the Founders debated whether the president of the United States should have the power to veto acts of Congress, Alexander Hamilton argued that the president should be able to reject newly passed laws -- and that the mere threat of...

Encountering Turbulence: So how goes the federal takeover of airline security?
June 17, 2002... When Congress hastily decided last November that the federal government would take responsibility for airline security, it was expected that 30,000 new federal workers would be needed to protect the flying public. Six months later that estimate...

The Over-Skeptics: With the Europeans, a little patience, a little craft.(US-Europe relations)
June 17, 2002... An early revue sketch, circa 1960, by the late Peter Cook had his famous crank, E. L. Whisty, sending prescient warning letters to various world leaders -- but always a little late in the day. "What did I tell Winston in 1940?" he would ask his...

Their Men in Riyadh: Ex-U.S. ambassadors who stick with the Saudis.
June 17, 2002... It's good to be the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia -- or, more precisely, it's good to have been Washington's man in Riyadh. No other posting pays such rich dividends once one has left it, provided one is willing to become a public and private...

Into Africa . . .: and out of OPEC -- new thinking on oil.(growing importance of the Gulf of Guinea)
June 17, 2002... For decades, the U.S. has poured massive economic, military, and diplomatic resources into developing and securing oil from the Persian Gulf. This effort may have succeeded in guaranteeing (most of the time) affordable oil in the West, but that...

Ozzy Without Harriet: What The Osbournes tells us about drugs.(the anti-drug message of 'The Osbournes' television show)
June 17, 2002... Toward the end of the Clinton administration, pundits got themselves into a tizzy over the fact that the U.S. government was giving what amounted to tax write-offs to television networks for incorporating anti-drug messages into their...

A New Wrinkle: The mad craze for Botox.(latest face-lift solution)
June 17, 2002... The Academy Players Directory is a huge, multi-volume set of soft-backed books, each containing hundreds of small, passport-size head shots of pretty much every working actor in the film and television business. If you're an actor and you've...

The Impossible Position of Tom Ridge: Director of homeland security -- or something.(Office of Homeland Security)
June 17, 2002... In his speech to Congress last September, President Bush announced a little hard news: the "creation of a cabinet-level position, reporting directly to me" -- that of homeland-security director. And the man to fill it? "A distinguished...

The Muslim Next Door: Can we live with him? Can he live with us?(Muslims in European countries)
June 17, 2002... There are now 15 million Muslims resident in Europe, and Muslim immigrants form close to 10 percent of the Dutch population. This last fact has led to the sudden collapse of the cozy social-democratic consensus in a country that has until...

Rethinking Foreign Students: A question of the national interest.(9-11-01 terrorist attacks point to the need for a reevaluation of the foreign student visa program)
June 17, 2002... Many foreign leaders -- the Philippines' Corazon Aquino and Israel's Ehud Barak, to name just two -- obtained part of their education in the United States. Such training may be one of America's highest valued exports: By giving future foreign...

The Long View.(survey: F.B.I. correspondence, and events that might have been averted)
June 17, 2002... Through the years with the FBI mailbag . . . --From the division circular, Chicago office, May 16, 1924: a couple of interesting characters by the name of Leopold and Loeb, who seem at least upon first observation to be up to some kind...

Genocide on Trial.('Nuremberg: The Reckoning')
June 17, 2002... Nuremberg: The Reckoning, by William F. Buckley Jr. (Harcourt, 366 pp., $25) They were supposed to throw themselves on the pyre. That, the Roman historian Tacitus said, was ever the German way: Better to perish in the conflagration than...

The Lady's Testament.('Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World')
June 17, 2002... Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, by Margaret Thatcher (HarperCollins, 486 pp., $34.95) Margaret Thatcher belongs to that exceedingly small group of political figures whose influence has clearly improved the world, or at least...

The Fusionist.('Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement')
June 17, 2002... Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement, by Kevin J. Smant (ISI, 425 pp., $29.95) For fifty years, most American conservatives have stood for three basic propositions: that American...

A Distant Mirror.(The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain)
June 17, 2002... The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, by Maria Rosa Menocal (Little, Brown, 315 pp., $26.95) This book will provide scant comfort to two loud and voluble...

Theater of Blood.('The Road to Verdun: World War I's Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism')
June 17, 2002... The Road to Verdun: World War I's Most Momentous Battle and the Folly of Nationalism, by Ian Ousby (Doubleday, 400 pp., $30) Verdun is one among other rather inconspicuous towns in the hilly French countryside between the rivers of the...

Books in Brief.('Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle')(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle, by Stuart Isacoff (Knopf, 259 pp., $23) What do Pythagoras, Euclid, the 2nd-century b.c. Chinese thinker Huai Nan Tzu, Boethius, Giotto, Descartes, Shakespeare, Newton, Kepler,...

On the Right.(Governor George Pataki addresses New York State's Conservative Party)(this and other items are discussed)(Brief Article)
June 17, 2002... Conservative Future For Pataki NEW YORK, MAY 17 The Conservative Party of the State of New York put on a 40th birthday celebration on Thursday that was a happy affair, complete with a freshly published history of the party by George...

The Misanthrope's Corner.(cleaning files: items on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, lesbianism, etc.)(Column)
June 17, 2002... 'Killing two birds with one stone" has been the guiding principle of the well-organized person from time immemorial, but, as with so much else dating from time immemorial, it is now more or less unconstitutional. Merely using the...