National Review articles from March 2002

National Review archives from March 2002

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
March 11, 2002... -- Almost any measure of outrage at priests who commit crimes against children has been given approbation by Our Lord. Nonetheless, it must be pointed out that the headline "The Sins of the Fathers" and the picture you chose for your Feb. 11...

The Week.(Column)
March 11, 2002... -- To all who love jihad, and the murder of Israelis, the Palestinian suicide bomberess is a heroine, compared, in some quarters, to the Virgin Mary. One wonders: What do Vatican Arabists make of that? -- The Bush administration has chosen...

CAMPAIGN FINANCE - Veto.
March 11, 2002... President bush is reportedly about to commit a cynical and opportunistic act unworthy of his young presidency: signing a disaster of a campaign-finance-reform bill. The bill, as it seems likely to emerge from Congress, is perfect veto bait...

OBITUARY - Vernon Walters, R.I.P.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 11, 2002... The Quiet Man departed this world at Good Samaritan Medical Center, the cause of death, as he'd have wished, unstated. On hearing of his unobtrusive death in Palm Beach, friends and admirers took it for granted that the Good Samaritan hospital...

Obituary - Richard Grenier, R.I.P.(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 11, 2002... Through the most important decade of the 20th century, Richard Grenier was the most important film critic in the world. If that sounds a slightly grudging encomium for a writer of great range and variety, what should be added is that he made...

Notes & Asides.(Brief Article)(Column)
March 11, 2002... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: I noticed in your Dec. 31 issue that W. H. von Dreele committed a common but regrettable error in his poem "Daschle's Guilty Pleasure." The seventh reindeer in Clement Clarke Moore's poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," was...

Happy Days Aren't Here for Them: The Dems' bind.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... Not since the height of the Gingrich revolution in 1995 have Republicans been as strong as they are now. President Bush has been more popular for more weeks than any president since they started taking presidential-approval polls -- indeed, for...

Of Human Bondage: U.S. policy and international sex trafficking.
March 11, 2002... Every year, at least 700,000 human beings are traded for profit like so much property. In his battle against this international human trafficking, Chris Smith -- a Republican congressman from New Jersey -- has undertaken retail rescue...

Axis to Grind: Jitters in Korea over Bush's bold stance.
March 11, 2002... Seoul Three days before the arrival of President Bush, detachments of South Korean security police, complete with black uniforms, riot shields, and visors, are stationed outside public buildings throughout the South Korean capital. At some...

'I Can't Just Do Nothing': A heroine out of Cuba.
March 11, 2002... If she were any but an anti-Communist heroine, she might well be famous: the subject of documentaries, movies, songs. Her image might be on posters and T-shirts. The Nobel Committee would possibly murmur her name. Actually, to call her an...

Marks of Shame: Tattoos and what to do about them.
March 11, 2002... Rep. Lois Capps, Democrat of California, deserves some praise, however qualified: Her securing of money for the Liberty Tattoo Removal Program of San Luis Obispo County was, at least in theory, a good deed. It meant that she has a genuinely...

The Master (Nation) Builder: America has done it before; it should do it again.
March 11, 2002... Since the Vietnam War, many Americans have ridiculed the concept of "nation building." They have rejected the notion of stationing the men and women of our Armed Forces overseas. They are wrong. The purpose of the current war has been to...

The Gaggers and Gag-making: Hypocrisy among the campaign-finance reformers.
March 11, 2002... It's a common scene in Washington. Lobbyists representing powerful, well-financed special interests sit behind closed doors with members of Congress drafting legislation. Outside Washington, their dollars finance TV ad campaigns in the...

A View to a Kill: Assassination in war and peace.
March 11, 2002... After Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing the CIA to attempt to overthrow the Iraqi dictator. Bob Woodward reports in his book The Commanders that "the CIA was not to violate the ban on...

Party Guy: The barren ex-presidency of Bill Clinton.
March 11, 2002... As he began his last year in office, Bill Clinton also began a long series of farewell interviews about his presidency and his plans for life after the White House. Of course he would write a book and make a living, Clinton often said, but his...

Border Blues: They keep coming and coming, and citizens are at wits' end.(undocumented workers)
March 11, 2002... 'You want to hear about my worst day on the ranch?" asks Ruth Evelyn Cowan. "I lost 10,000 gallons of water because some Mexican broke a valve off one of my tanks trying to get a drink. Another one left a gate open and four of my cattle...

The Long View.(Brief Article)(Column)
March 11, 2002... The Candidates' Diaries Installment 1: February 2002 From Dick Gephardt's diary: . . . which I was supposed to get tweezed and bleached on Thursday, but the guy didn't come until after I did Hardball, so the week was all messed...

The Doomsayer.("The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization")
March 11, 2002... The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization, by Patrick J. Buchanan (St. Martin's Press, 308 pp., $25.95) The title of Patrick J. Buchanan's latest book echoes that of the...

Sex, Drugs & God.("More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction")
March 11, 2002... More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction, by Elizabeth Wurtzel (Simon & Schuster, 333 pp., $25) Elizabeth Wurtzel isn't exactly a household name, but she was briefly a phenomenon in the early-mid 1990s when her memoir Prozac Nation was...

Silly Babbitt.("Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street")
March 11, 2002... Sinclair Lewis: Rebel from Main Street, by Richard Lingeman (Random House, 656 pp., $35) The best way to jump-start a novelist's reputation -- or to kill it -- is to write his biography. Forty-one years ago, Mark Schorer performed the...

'I Do . . . for Now'.
March 11, 2002... The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony, by Pamela Paul (Villard, 296 pp., $24.95) At a recent party on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a freelance writer confided to me that she couldn't begin to understand how today's young women...

The Worse Half.
March 11, 2002... Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, by Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young (McGill-Queen's University, 360 pp., $29.95) Why do so many academics write so badly? Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young have...

Shelf Life.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... There is a rich literature documenting the nobility of public service, but much of it tilts toward statism; public-spirited conservatives and free-marketeers deserve some role models of their own. In his new book, Styles Bridges: Yankee Senator...

On the Right.
March 11, 2002... Dealing With The New Axis NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 1 That was a heady series from the administration, President Bush on Day #1 to the Congress, Secretary Rumsfeld on Day #2 to the National Defense University, and National Security Adviser...

Misanthrope's Corner.(Brief Article)
March 11, 2002... The Washington Post obituary for columnist Richard Grenier stated that he died of a heart attack while watching the State of the Union address. I was saddened by the news because I liked Grenier's writing, but not at all surprised by the...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2002... --In his cover story ("The Gaggers and Gag-making," March 11), Bradley A. Smith shows a lack of respect for the facts regarding the work of the Center for Responsive Politics. First, Mr. Smith refers to CRP as one of the...

For the Record.(Brief Article)(Column)
March 25, 2002... -- In Fox News poll, President Bush's job-approval rating at 77 percent. Bush tours DMZ in South Korea, learns that axes used by North Koreans to kill two servicemen in 1976 are displayed in Communist museum: "No wonder I think they're evil."...

The Week.(Column)
March 25, 2002... -- In a Middle East-wide poll, a full 18 percent of Arabs said they accepted that Arabs -- not the Mossad, say -- had perpetrated the attacks of Sept. 11. Well, at least it's in double digits. -- The murder of journalist Daniel Pearl was...

Notes & Asides.(Letter to the Editor)
March 25, 2002... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: Please tell the Rev. Born, whose letter about the Bronx appeared in the Jan. 28 issue, that it's no mystery to me how the "cks" elided into "x." I think it happened because of careless reading or dyslexia. With the correct...

A People's Constitution: Not just for nine Americans to read, and to follow.
March 25, 2002... Opponents of the campaign-finance bill are arguing that President Bush should veto it because it is unconstitutional. In making this case for a veto, the opponents have raised a question whose importance transcends the particular constitutional...

Arab American in Chief: (And a big Democrat, too).
March 25, 2002... About a week before the 2000 election, Al Gore found himself in a minor flap when a group of Arab Americans said that he told them he opposed moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to the capital, Jerusalem. Earlier in the year, Gore had assured...

'A Very, Very Bad Bunch': An Iranian group and its surprising American friends.
March 25, 2002... In a Senate speech after the September 11 attacks, New Jersey Democrat Robert Torricelli suggested ways in which Congress might help the federal government fight terrorism. The first change he proposed was to abolish the five-year statute of...

That Continental Army: The EU is spoiling for a fight -- or at least a military.
March 25, 2002... London It was a classic old-fashioned scoop. The March 3 Sunday Telegraph carried the texts of two official letters to Sir David Manning, foreign-affairs adviser to prime minister Tony Blair. The first letter, dated January 17 and sent from the...

When in the Rome Treaty get out: and get out now.
March 25, 2002... Bill Clinton admitted that it had "significant flaws," and knew that the Senate would never approve it. But in the final weeks of his presidency, he went ahead and signed the 1998 Rome Treaty anyway -- and now it's up to President Bush to...

Forms! Forms! Forms!: A bureaucracy's answer to trouble -- or to anything.
March 25, 2002... The shockwaves of September 11 have finally reached the British prison in which I have worked as a doctor for the last twelve years. The authorities have woken from their habitual slumbers and asked me for proof of my identity, to demonstrate...

Uncle Sam Wants Them: The young who fight, and the older who watch them.
March 25, 2002... A few years ago, Jerry Lewis -- who, in his old age, is sort of the Fritz Hollings of show-business figures -- was at a meeting with studio executives. There was some talk, apparently, of his directing a new picture. The meeting had been going...

Oh, No! That '70s Show: Against Carterism in energy policy.
March 25, 2002... Bell-bottoms are back, disco lives, and one of the hottest shows on television is a rip-off of Happy Days. And while we no longer have a southern governor in the White House, we do have a Texas governor who, like his Seventies counterpart, has...

Drilling Is Destiny: This won't hurt a bit. Really.
March 25, 2002... Last summer, Shell Oil entertained reporters at its Houston headquarters to demonstrate new oil-drilling technologies. It was an awesome performance. In a darkened "virtual reality" room, geophysicist Mark Stockwell showed how seismic data...

Gas and Gasbags or, the open road and its enemies.
March 25, 2002... Any crisis in the Middle East inevitably prompts Washington to scapegoat the automobile as a threat to national security. The dust had barely settled on lower Manhattan last fall before calls went forth -- from pundits and pols across the...

Ashcroft with Horns: This is dedicated to the one they hate.(attorney general John Ashcroft's public relations)
March 25, 2002... After Sept. 11, everything changed, they say -- and many things did. The dominant press took a new look at the administration. President Bush -- formerly a clueless frat boy -- was okay. Donald Rumsfeld -- once a Ford-era caveman -- was okay...

The Nukes We Need: Adapting our arsenal to today.
March 25, 2002... When President Bush peered across the DMZ into North Korea recently, the most important things to see were out of sight. The North Koreans have two, related proficiencies: weapons production and tunneling. They built an underground city to...

Get Tight: Now more than ever, immigration should be curtailed.
March 25, 2002... Since Sept. 11, a new consensus appears to have developed on the need for tighter immigration enforcement and border controls. Gone are the days when the Wall Street Journal repeatedly called for a constitutional amendment declaring that "there...

The Long View.(Brief Article)
March 25, 2002... *********** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE *********** The Pentagon, Washington, D.C. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced today that the proposed Office of Strategic Influence would be "shelved indefinitely." Responding to...

Third Thoughts on Divorce.('For Better or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered)
March 25, 2002... For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered, by E. Mavis Hetherington and John Kelly (Norton, 307 pp., $26.95) E. Mavis Hetherington is one of the nation's most respected research psychologists. Her new book (with writer John Kelly) has...

Sons of Adamses.
March 25, 2002... America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918, by Richard Brookhiser (Free Press, 244 pp., $25) The United States has been so democratic, and its society so fluid, that the very idea that the nation could spawn a dynasty seems positively...

Steinbeck Reconsidered.
March 25, 2002... America and Americans, and Selected Nonfiction, by John Steinbeck, edited by Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson (Viking, 400 pp., $27.95) John Steinbeck might have been the last writer of a generation for whom being an American seemed...

Sunday School for Atheists.(three books)(Young Adult Review)
March 25, 2002... The Golden Compass (351 pp.), The Subtle Knife (288 pp.), and The Amber Spyglass (480 pp.), by Philip Pullman (Del Rey, $6.99 each) It was, some said, the moment that literature for the young finally came of age. On January 22, Philip...

City Desk: On the Avenue.(Brief Article)
March 25, 2002... On Madison Avenue there is a store called Worldly Things. That name shall be the text for this day, and Madison Avenue the setting. There was a time, not long ago, when Fifth Avenue in Midtown was New York's mart and display case for...

Shelf Life.(three books)(Brief Article)
March 25, 2002... -- James v. Schall, a Jesuit priest and professor of government at Georgetown, is one of the most valuable participants in the public life of our nation's capital; against the political obsessiveness of his neighbors, he proposes a more...

On the Right.(President George W. Bush's foreign relations)
March 25, 2002... Forrest Gump Abroad? NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 19 Receiving the news, while traveling abroad, of George W.'s deportment is scandalously exhilarating. The abasements of his predecessor, in his contacts overseas, are simply gone. Mr. Clinton...

Misanthrope's Corner.(Food Network)(Brief Article)
March 25, 2002... Try this at home: Flip on the TV and check out the first words you hear before the picture comes up. They very likely will be "balsamic vinegar" or "extra-virgin olive oil." The country is obsessed with cooking. Not gourmet cooking -- the word...