National Review articles from October 2001

National Review archives from October 2001

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
October 1, 2001... MORE TORT HELL I wrote the articles that Jay Nordlinger dismissed as "challengeable (at best) substantively . . ." in his Aug. 20 piece, "Welcome to 'Tort Hell.'" Had he asked, I would have gladly answered any questions about my research....

Special Section: At War.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... . . . Few wars begin like their predecessors. The wars of the last century opened with thrusts into Belgium or Poland, a surprise attack on battleships, a lurch in Kuwait, a steadily accreting campaign of jungle murder. This war began with four...

Special Section: At War - Why They Hate Us: Sources of terror in the Arab world.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... They danced in the streets of the West Bank towns and in Gaza when they heard the news. They danced in parts of Lebanon. In Baghdad, state television played a song called "Down with America" as the World Trade Center towers collapsed. To these...

Special Section: At War - Eight Thoughts on Mass Murder: The grim truths.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... 1. You don't win wars by defending yourself. You win them by attacking the enemy. People say, "This is war," and they're right. But if our policy is merely defense and counterattack, this war can't possibly be won. The U.S. must take the...

Special Section: At War - War, not 'Crimes': Time for a paradigm shift.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... 'Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts." So spoke President Bush in his address to the nation soon after the catastrophic events of September 11. I agree with the president's...

Special Section: At War - What Are We Made Of?: The guts to resist evil.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... The United States finally entered the First World War because of the nation's lingering outrage over a few hundred floating bodies from the sunken ocean liner Lusitania, which was torpedoed during Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare. More...

Special Section: At War - No Surrender: The option to 'empire'.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... One thing that can safely be predicted in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks is a revival of the old "republic or empire" debate. Patrick Buchanan's 1999 essay "Is Cataclysmic Terror Ahead?" is being widely recirculated. Sample: On...

Special Section: At War - City Desk: Our Day of Infamy.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... And there appeared a great wonder in Heaven. The day of infamy was a perfect September day in New York. The city had been stifling under a mask of late summer humidity; the night before it had broken in a torrential thunderstorm; an inch of...

Special Section: At War - Peace, False and True: The necessity of war.
October 1, 2001... Before his election in November 1992, Bill Clinton spoke of the Middle East peace process as if it were a cooing infant: "I think that we have to give this peace process a chance to work. We have to nourish it; we have to support it; we have to...

The Week.(Column)
October 1, 2001... --The Rev. Adrian Condit, Gary Condit's father, told his local newspaper that "Satan had a big-time role" in his son's troubles. Let's just call Satan an unindicted co-conspirator. --More bad economic news. Unemployment has spiked up and...

Mexico: Holy Toledo!(American visit of Mexican President Vicente Fox)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... President Vicente Fox of Mexico came to the United States like a campaigning politician, as indeed he was. Mindful that many Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, are not yet rooted in this country, and are still potential voters in his, he...

The U.N. Conference: The Elders of Durban.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... The United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance-to give it the full Ciceronian drumroll-was a strangely peg-legged affair. The delegates strode into Durban, South Africa, intending...

Culture Watch: The Rev. Thug.(Al Sharpton)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... The 22-year-old pop singer and actress Aaliyah died in the Bahamas when her plane crashed, after her entourage overloaded it with equipment. Her fans were stricken, and her funeral on Manhattan's Upper East Side featured a horse-drawn hearse, a...

Notes and Asides.(Column)
October 1, 2001... --Dear Mr. Buckley: I have been an avid reader of Notes & Asides for years. As one married to a foreigner (Japanese), I have seen up close the difficulties so many people have with the English language (to be honest, I have just as many with...

Leakproof?: At the Bush White House, mum's the word.
October 1, 2001... On August 26, the Washington Post ran a front-page story headlined "Bush Plan Could Cut Federal Workers; President Proposes Buyouts, Merit Pay, More Competition." In his weekly radio address the day before, George W. Bush unveiled what might be...

Tax Cut and Spend: The profligate ways of congressional Republicans.(Statistical Data Included)
October 1, 2001... In recent weeks President Bush has been crowing that he has trapped spendthrift Capitol Hill Democrats inside the Social Security lock box. The White House theory is that because the Democrats have now pledged never to take another dime from...

Visible Hand(outs): Ending corporate welfare as we know it.
October 1, 2001... Six years ago, there seemed to be only one point of common ground in Washington. The newly elected Republican Congress was at odds with a Democratic White House on everything from school lunches to Medicare. Newt Gingrich tried to associate the...

Senate Sayonaras: Some bulls leave. What's next?(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... The U.S. Senate will convene on January 3, 2003, without its most prominent and effective social and economic conservatives. Ever since Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm announced their intent to retire at the end of their current terms, Hill...

Maternal Madness . . .or sheer iniquity? Mothers who kill.(Andrea Yates)
October 1, 2001... macbeth: How does your patient, doctor? doctor: Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies That keep her from her rest. Was Andrea Pia Yates sick when, on the morning of June 20, shortly after her...

Our Splendid Cuss: The likable Phil Gramm.
October 1, 2001... As if it weren't bad enough that Jesse Helms is leaving, Phil Gramm, too, is "moving on," to use a recently popular phrase. Thus are we right types losing our two favorite, and most stalwart, senators. Each is judged irreplaceable,...

Losing the Soul of the GOP: Republicans make a rotten peace with race preferences.(in-depth look at affirmative action)
October 1, 2001... We learned recently that the Bush administration will defend a government contracting program that is an explicit system of preferences and quotas, based on race. I'm not the least surprised. Why? Because as governor of Texas and as a...

A Grand Tour.(Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe-Toward the Revival of Higher Education)(Review)
October 1, 2001... Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe-Toward the Revival of Higher Education, by Jeffrey Hart (Yale, 271 pp., $26.95) The author is especially well known to the readers of this journal, having served as a senior editor for over 30 years....

Hence, Loathed Melancholy.(The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression)(Review)
October 1, 2001... The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, by Andrew Solomon (Scribner, 569 pp., $28) The readers of the future may dub our time the Age of Mental Illness. Our writers are not more tortured than those of previous generations, but they are...

Back to Bataan.(Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission)(Review)
October 1, 2001... Ghost Soldiers: The Forgotten Epic Story of World War II's Most Dramatic Mission, by Hampton Sides (Doubleday, 342 pp., $24.95) On January 28, 1945, 121 U.S. Army Rangers went behind enemy lines to raid Camp Cabanatuan, deep in the...

A Guy's Guy.(The Mike Hammer Collection)
October 1, 2001... The Mike Hammer Collection, 2 vols., by Mickey Spillane, Vol. 1: I, the Jury, My Gun Is Quick, Vengeance Is Mine (New American Library, 513 pp., $15), and Vol. 2: One Lonely Night, The Big Kill, Kiss Me, Deadly (517 pp., $15). You remember...

Faith No More?(Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought)(Review)
October 1, 2001... Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Boyer (Basic, 375 pp., $27.50) Your college professors probably told you that belief in God is little more than a useful fantasy: It meets the need some people...

Little Reds Book.(Communism: A Brief History)(Review)
October 1, 2001... Communism: A Brief History, by Richard Pipes (Modern Library, 176 pp., $19.95) A skeptical generation is convinced that the Cold War was nothing more than a traditional power struggle, and that the West's pretensions in calling itself "the...

Mob Rule.(Fighting the Mafia and Renewing Sicilian Culture)(Review)
October 1, 2001... Fighting the Mafia and Renewing Sicilian Culture, by Leoluca Orlando (Encounter, 222 pp., $25.95) In May 1992, the heavily armored motorcade of Giovanni Falcone, a courageous prosecutor who had helped push the Sicilian Mafia to the verge...

Shelf Life.(Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind)(Review)
October 1, 2001... Frank Furness (1839-1912) might be called the grandfather of modern American architecture: He taught Louis Sullivan, who in turn taught Frank Lloyd Wright. In Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind (Norton, 273 pp., $45), Michael J....

On the Right - Hollings vs. Thurmond.(Fritz Hollings says Strom Thurmond too old)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... NEW YORK, AUGUST 31 Strom thurmond played an obtrusive role in my life. At age 17, waiting at home to be drafted into the army, I used to go with senior members to the Sarsfield Club. I didn't drink yet, but those who did partied there,...

On the Right - Mare's-Nest in Durban.(United Nations World Conference on Racism)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 4 The tangle in Durban reflects the centripetalization of problems and sorrows and dilemmas in faraway places when the U.N. comes to town. The problem of U.S. involvement. -In 1973, I was a delegate to the...

On the Right - The Grief of Senator Daschle.(budget surplus issues)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2001... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 7 Senator tom daschle, looking as if he were struggling to avert his gaze from the sack of Rome, tells us on television two or three times every day that he cannot stand the mere thought of it, that Candidate Bush would...

Misanthrope's Corner.(Americans hate learning, love education)(Brief Article)(Column)
October 1, 2001... No day goes by that I am not reminded of the achy-breaky emptiness of my life as a childless spinster. My sources are the endless stream of how-America-lives coverage on TV and the Family Section that no newspaper would dare go to print...

For the Record.(quotations from President Bush, and others, following the World Trade Center disaster)(Brief Article)
October 15, 2001... -- President Bush's Familiar Quotations: "We will lead the world to victory." . . . In lower Manhattan, among rescue workers: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us...

The Week.(actions by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the US Congress, and others, following the World Trade Center disaster)
October 15, 2001... -- The war, we are told, will require cold-bloodedness, deception, and the black arts. Fear not: Rep. Gary Condit (D., Calif.) has been appointed to the newly formed Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security. -- When they reopened,...

At war - Defining Victory.(the necessary words have been said, following the World Trade Center disaster; now action is needed)
October 15, 2001... Everything that can be done through words in this war has now been done. President Bush said everything that needed to be said in his speech to Congress. He honored our victims and our heroes-some of them, as we have learned, the same people....

At War II - What to Expect.(Brief Article)
October 15, 2001... What can we say about the arc of the war we have entered? President Bush has prudently withheld many strategic details. (During the Gulf War, a "reporter" in a Saturday Night Live sketch asked "General Schwarzkopf" at a briefing: "If there is...

At War III - Homeland Truths.(Brief Article)
October 15, 2001... September 11 was the day that terrorists attacked America. September 12 was the day that the New York Times and others began using the attack to argue against building a missile-defense system. Their case had a superficial appeal: This horrific...

At War IV - Hall of Shame.(Brief Article)
October 15, 2001... Every war flushes out the disaffected, the disloyal, and the plain creepy, and this one has been no exception. Early entrants in the creep sweepstakes were the Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Falwell, in an interview on Robertson's...

Notes & Asides.(Letter to the Editor)
October 15, 2001... n Dear Mr. Buckley: Now that "begging the question" and "reason why" have been cleared up, I wonder if you could help me with my own personal head-scratcher. Why is it okay to say "people of color," but not "colored people"? What's the...

'Relentlessly and Thoroughly' - The only way to respond.(expansion, and threat, of militant Islam)
October 15, 2001... Bold and uncompromising words were spoken by American (and British) leaders in the immediate response to the Manhattan Massacre. But they may be succeeded by creeping appeasement unless public opinion insists that these leaders stick to their...

An Arab Moment of Truth - Which way the Islamist fantasy?(Islam's reaction to the West)
October 15, 2001... The conflict that has now erupted has been gathering for a long time. Its roots lie deep in history. To be brief and blunt, the Muslim world has never known exactly how to respond to the West, whether to adopt its values or to reject them. A...

The Conflict at Home - How do you like your multiculturalism now?
October 15, 2001... Multiculturalists hold these truths to be self-evident: that all cultures are created equal and are endowed by their creators with equal and compatible virtues. There can thus be no fundamental conflict between cultures. The lion can truly lie...

Their Amerika - The song of the 'counter-tribalists'.
October 15, 2001... 'Who is responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center?" I was asked on Counterspin, Canada's version of Crossfire. "The men who hijacked the planes and flew them into the buildings, and those who financed and assisted them," I...

Blame America First . . . . . . or Israel-whichever.
October 15, 2001... America is guilty. America is always guilty. Even when it's attacked. So it appears, at least, to a certain type of commentator. When the Towers fell, when the Pentagon was pierced, when thousands of our countrymen were slaughtered-the America...

End Iraq - To conclude the Gulf War, ten years later.
October 15, 2001... Colin Powell helped save Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, and seems bent on saving him again. If Saddam escapes the full wrath of the U.S. war on terrorism, he will once more have Powell and the dictates of a great international coalition to...

What It Takes - Our present situation resembles Korea.
October 15, 2001... The comparisons between the events of September 11 and the attack on Pearl Harbor 60 years ago have been as numerous as they have been apt. But to appreciate fully the challenge we face, a different historical comparison may be in order-for the...

Master of His Game - Bill Clinton talks on, and talks on.
October 15, 2001... Remember Bill Clinton's search for a legacy? His anxiety about his place in history was never far from his mind, but it reached a high point during his second term, when he sometimes lamented that he had not faced any crises to test his...

Border Lines - What to do about immigration after 9/11.(World Trade Center and Pentagon Attacks, 2001)
October 15, 2001... On the day hijackers slammed their jumbo jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on a measure the pro-immigration lobby has wanted for years. It's called "245(i)," and it would have...

At First Glance - Racial profiling, burning hotter.(World Trade Center and Pentagon Attacks, 2001)
October 15, 2001... Whether you think the present emergency rises to the level of a war or not, one thing that is fast becoming clear is that Americans at large are much more tolerant of racial profiling than they were before the terrorists struck. This fact was...

Demons Under Western Eyes - Terror in books and in our cities.(World Trade Center and Pentagon Attacks, 2001)
October 15, 2001... Incomprehensible horror sparks a frantic search for comprehension. Among the bookish, this search often takes the form of a hunt for literary parallels. Accordingly, in the aftermath of September 11, one found many invocations of Dostoevsky and...

America's 'Turn' - How things changed back.(World Trade Center and Pentagon Attacks, 2001)(Brief Article)
October 15, 2001... Until 9/11, the trick to making a blockbuster action movie was pretty straightforward: invent a flawed but heroic main character, create a bloodthirsty villain, and come up with a terrorist plot so awful, so apocalyptic, that the only...

Disarming America - A prize-winning historian and his gun myths.(Michael A. Bellesiles book on gun culture seen as academically irresponsible)
October 15, 2001... 'The power of image and myth repeatedly overwhelms reality in discussions of early American firearms," writes Michael A. Bellesiles, a professor of history at Emory University, in his book, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture....

Hating Missile Defense . . . . . . and smearing it, too: The media's favorite anti-SDI-er.(physicist Theodore A. Postol)
October 15, 2001... Around the time an antiballistic missile failed to intercept its target in a high-profile test last year, one could hardly look at newspapers or magazines without seeing a quote from America's leading missile- defense critic. "The whole thing...

In an Anti-Family Way - The work of Stephanie Coontz.(historian and author who sees marriage merely as economic)
October 15, 2001... Stephanie Coontz is on a mission: She wants to make the world safe for divorce. "We are kidding ourselves," she says, "if we think the solution to the economic difficulties of America's children lies in getting their parents back together." ...

School's Out - One man's idea of education.(Alfie Kohn's crusade against school testing)
October 15, 2001... 'When I'm doing a workshop, I like to ask teachers, 'Which is larger, 5/19 or 7/22?' Almost everyone gets this wrong, especially math teachers. The correct answer is, Who cares?" These are the words of Alfie Kohn, de facto leader of the...

Stalin's Professor - The awful, influential career of E. J. Hobsbawm.(communist and historian)
October 15, 2001... The present-day tyrant always sends out two kinds of emissaries: armed men and forgers of ideas; robust individuals and thin men with glasses and sunken chests; rowdies who beat the nation and other rowdies who give thanks for the beating in...

The Long View.(imagined business letters to Osama Bin Laden)(Brief Article)
October 15, 2001... from the bin laden mailbag . . . Dear Cardholder: As you may know, international air travel has been severely disrupted by the imminent invasion of Afghanistan by American-led allied forces. We here at American Express Platinum Travel...

The Western Edge.(Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power)(Review)
October 15, 2001... Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, by Victor Davis Hanson (Doubleday, 492 pp., $29.95) The serious academic historian ignores military history, treating it as a form of misplaced machismo, fit only for...

All in the Family.(The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family)(Review)
October 15, 2001... The Broken Hearth: Reversing the Moral Collapse of the American Family, by William J. Bennett (Doubleday, 199 pp., $22.95) Words shape thoughts as much as thoughts shape words, George Orwell maintained, and surely the phrase "single mother"...

Neither Nor.(Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year)(Review)
October 15, 2001... Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year, by Harvey Cox (Houghton Mifflin, 305 pp., $24) Harvey Cox is not afraid to reinvent himself. In 1965, the Harvard Divinity School professor published The...

All Pleasure, No Guilt.(Gerard Souzay and other classical musicians)
October 15, 2001... The world is bursting with good young violinists-of every nationality, every temperament, and each sex-and one of the best of the lot is Maxim Vengerov, a Russian. His latest album is a humdinger called Vengerov & Virtuosi (from EMI Classics)....

On the Right.(reflections on World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks)(Column)
October 15, 2001... The Target: Bin Laden NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 12 It is generally acknowledged that if there was consolation after Pearl Harbor, it was that we knew who did it. During those minutes and hours when all of America watched the skyscrapers...

The Misanthrope's Corner.(social impact of terrorist attacks)(Brief Article)(Column)
October 15, 2001... In my February 19 column, I wrote, "I can't shake my sense that the Bush presidency is star-crossed," but I never thought female intuition would be this accurate. As soon as it happened, so many commentators called it "our second Pearl...