National Review articles from September 2002

National Review archives from September 2002

Letters.(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
September 2, 2002... --Austin Bramwell's fine review of Michael Federici's Eric Voegelin (("Eschaton Redux," July 1) says that "one wonders how exactly Voegelin resisted the Nazi influence." The answer should not be left to wonder or surmise: He resisted by all...

The Week.(commentary on current events, politics)(Column)
September 2, 2002... -- "If Iraq came across the Jordan River, I would grab a rifle and geget in the trench and fight and die," Bill Clinton told a dinner for a Jewish charity in Toronto. And what would he have said to an Iraqi audience? -- Speaking of Iraq,...

IRAQ: Decision Time.(Brief Article)
September 2, 2002... Sen. Joseph Biden, Democrat from Delaware, says that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice promised him that there would be no "October Surprise." If Rice meant merely that the administration would not time an invasion of Iraq to influence...

TAXES: Bring Back Dividends.(Brief Article)
September 2, 2002... There is a silver lining to the hysteria with which Washington has greeted the recent corporate scandals: Politically, the new investor class is now triumphant. Everyone in Congress now at least professes to be the shareholder's friend. No one...

Notes & Asides.(alternative letters, accents and characters in modern computer keyboards)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
September 2, 2002... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: Your correspondent Horst R. Brakel (N&A, July 1) lalaments that computer keyboards neglect the umlaut. Please inform him that help is at hand! Using MS Word with the Arial, CG Times, or Times New Roman font, one can...

America's Best Governor: For Republicans, a Rocky Mountain high.(Bill Owens)
September 2, 2002... 'Do you want to hear my favorite CD?" asks Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado, sitting in the passenger seat of his navy-blue Suburban. We're heading from the capitol building in Denver to an Empower America reception in Colorado Springs, and Owens...

Out of the Doldrums: What President Bush has done well, he should do across the board.
September 2, 2002... What explains the recent tentative but unmistakable upsurge of antiwar feeling on the left and center-left of American politics? Admittedly, that feeling is scattered unevenly on the left side of the spectrum -- unevenly but not quite randomly....

Clinton the Anti-Terrorist: Ah, 'the permanent campaign'.
September 2, 2002... Saxby Chambliss is a little perplexed. The Republican congressman from Georgia is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security and a key player in the congressional investigation into the roots of the September 11...

A Time for Kings?: Hashemites and others in the Arab mix.(Brief Article)
September 2, 2002... Washington is searching for a successor regime to Saddam Hussein. It is an exercise in political science. Can an even passably democratic government be devised to take the place of a dictator who has stripped his people of decency and trust in...

Smith vs. Sununu: An intra-GOP war in New Hampshire.(Rep. John E. Sununu)(Sen. Bob Smith)
September 2, 2002... Just wait: If Rep. John E. Sununu defeats two-term conservative incumbent Bob Smith in New Hampshire's Republican senatorial primary on September 10, the national media will prematurely cheer: "New England's rebel state is finally becoming more...

What Juan Diego Saw: The story of a new saint.
September 2, 2002... On July 31, Pope John Paul II appeared before more than a million cheering, weeping Catholics in Mexico City, and declared a 16th-century Indian named Juan Diego, believed to be part of one of the most famous miracles in Christian history, a...

The Stock Market Without Tears: What we said in Dow 36,000; why the critics are wrong.(Column)(Industry Overview)
September 2, 2002... The publication of Dow 36,000 has caused such a stir that it has at times seemed as if co-author James Glassman and I had written another Bell Curve. Yet Dow 36,000 merely seeks to describe why stocks are highly volatile in the short run but...

Fallout: In Kazakhstan, the human wreckage of Soviet nuclear tests.
September 2, 2002... Semey, Kazakhstan Tears glint in the eyes of Melgis Metov, a tall Kazakh who was once a tough platoon leader in the Soviet army and later an instructor in physics. Melgis is now the mainstay of a small group of seriously ill "atomic...

Salem in Newcastle: What a recent child-abuse scare in England tells us.
September 2, 2002... No subject needs the exercise of cool and critical intelligence more than that of child sexual abuse. We need to steer between the Scylla of indifference and denial, and the Charybdis of hysteria. In the present climate, Charybdis poses the...

'Soli Deo Gloria': Not your average music camp.(The MasterWorks Festival, Winona Lake, Indiana)
September 2, 2002... In America, of course, there's a summer camp for everything, and everyone. Vegan canoeing and computing? No problem. There's a great variety of music camps, too, from swanky ones like Tanglewood and Aspen to Bob's Bugle Bash, down by the creek....

The Long View.(Humor)(Brief Article)
September 2, 2002... Transcript from Larry King Live, June 23, 2004 larry king: "Wichita, Kansas, you're on the air with Martha Stewart, hello!" wichita: "Hi, Larry! Hi, Martha!" martha stewart: "Hello there." larry king: "What's your question,...

Florida Refought.('Bush v. Gore: The Question of Legitimacy')
September 2, 2002... Bush v. Gore: The Question of Legitimacy, edited by Bruce Ackerman (Yale, 256 pp., $26.95) A year and a half ago, a close presidential election was the biggest political story anyone could imagine. Bush's victory in the Supreme Court sent...

Not Our Kind, Dear.('Snobbery: The American Version')
September 2, 2002... Snobbery: The American Version, by Joseph Epstein (Houghton Mifflin, 274 pp., $25) They are thorough chaps, the staff at National Review. Before they sent me this book for review, they telephoned, asked if I might be interested, and sent...

The Mad Doctors.(The Road to Malpsychia: Humanistic Psychology and Our Discontents)
September 2, 2002... The Road to Malpsychia: Humanistic Psychology and Our Discontents, by Joyce Milton (Encounter, 310 pp., $26.95) If you want to understand the cultural revolution that took place in the 1960s, this book is a good place to start. Joyce Milton...

The Song Is Ended.(analysis of pop music today)
September 2, 2002... On a fine summer day the inhabitants of the Wiltshire valley where I live gathered in a neighbor's garden to celebrate the Queen's jubilee. There was beer, barbecue, flags -- and, of course, the singing of our three national anthems: Welsh,...

A City That Barks.(proliferation of dogs in New York)(Brief Article)
September 2, 2002... Dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs. New Yorkers live in the midst of dogs. My apartment building has about 500 inhabitants, and one-tenth of them are dogs. Why do they proliferate so? Cats some time ago passed dogs as America's most popular pet....

On the Right.(Iraq; Israel)(Column)
September 2, 2002... Palestine: Essays in Democracy NEW YORK, JULY 26 It has been a month since President Bush announced that Arafat needed to be removed before the United States could acknowledge Palestine as a nascent state. The president entered a few...

The Misanthrope's Corner.(TV news 'crawl')(Brief Article)(Column)
September 2, 2002... To say that someone "keeps up with current events" is inherently flattering, a compliment denoting seriousness, civic responsibility, and all the other right stuff. An honor student enclosed in a good citizen wrapped in a home owner, you might...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
September 16, 2002... -- As Sen. Bob Smith's former press secretary, I can't say I was susurprised to see Bernadette Malone's anti-Smith article ("Smith vs. Sununu," Sept. 2) in NR. Your wonkish and establishment-type magazine never really understood what makes...

The Week.(Column)
September 16, 2002... -- Hosni Mubarak, president-for-life of Egypt, called Ariel Sharon a "fatso," saying, "I hear he eats an entire lamb for dinner." Well, actually, if you read the Arab press, you know that Sharon really bloats himself on the blood of Arab...

At war: Closing the Case.(Brief Article)
September 16, 2002... For weeks, both supporters and opponents of war with Iraq have urged that the administration "make the case" for the military action it is presumed to favor. From the opponents, the demand was mostly disingenuous: No case can be made that would...

CULTURE WATCH: Lesson Plans.(Brief Article)
September 16, 2002... The National Education Association is under fire for its advice to teachers on how to spend the anniversary of September 11. The critics say that the NEA's lesson plans are too relativistic and insufficiently patriotic. Students would hear a...

A Bull Market: In Regulations.(Brief Article)
September 16, 2002... It's accepted wisdom in Washington that giving regulatory agencies like the SEC enormous new enforcement authority will placate fidgety investors and help reverse this year's stock-market slide. But the accepted wisdom is highly suspect, if not...

Notes & Asides.(Brief Article)(Column)
September 16, 2002... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: The Rev. Andrew Greeley goes ballistic when one tetells him the following: The archdiocese of Chicago is not a democracy. Please comment. Thanks, Laurence M. Madigan New York, N.Y. Dear Mr. Madigan:...

One Year Later: The nature and means of commemoration.
September 16, 2002... September 11 aroused Americans from a deep coma induced by a long and luxurious calm. On the anniversary of the attack, we should take stock of just how much the world has changed -- before we decide upon the nature and means of commemoration....

Do Christians Bleed?: Unreported persecution in the Muslim world.
September 16, 2002... An Indonesian man with a lined, anxious face hands me a photograph from a magazine report on events in his homeland. I am looking at a photograph of the burned and decapitated corpse of a Christian man who was murdered in a Christmas Eve pogrom...

It's a War, Stupid: Understanding and misunderstanding the detainees.
September 16, 2002... Even as the terrorist attacks were taking place last September 11, President Bush made use of the extraordinary authority he has to protect Americans from enemy action. Had the heroes of United Flight 93 not prevented their hijacked plane from...

The Muslim Wave: Dealing with immigration from the Middle East.
September 16, 2002... When most people think of immigrants today, they think chiefly of those from Latin America or East Asia. But while most immigrants still come from those regions, an increasing number are coming from a less traditional source: the Middle East....

Bad List: A suspect roll of Death Row 'innocents'.
September 16, 2002... A terrible injustice was done to Ray Krone. In 1992, he was sentenced to death for the murder of Kim Ancona, a Phoenix cocktail waitress. He spent three years on Death Row before his first conviction was overturned. On retrial, he was sentenced...

Greeniacs in Jo-burg: The U.N.'s latest 'earth summit'.
September 16, 2002... 'A great tragedy is fast unfolding," intones Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and one of the most respected figures in American environmentalism. "More than 20 years ago the alarm was sounded regarding threats to the global...

Bowles's Luck: Or is it simply politics?(Erskine Bowles)
September 16, 2002... In what state attorney general Richard Blumenthal described as a "virtually unprecedented" move, the State of Connecticut sued the investment firm Forstmann Little for losing more than $100 million in pension funds of state workers. Suing over...

Like a Bandit: The curious riches of Terry McAuliffe, Democratic honcho.
September 16, 2002... On August 10, in a speech before the Democratic National Committee's summer meeting in Las Vegas, party chairman Terry McAuliffe demanded that President Bush make public records of the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation into his...

'Everything Changed': Would that the cliche were true.
September 16, 2002... In war, can there be such a thing as a victory that comes too cheap? Of course not: A victory in which not a single American life is lost should be the ideal. It's true, however, that an easy victory can sometimes have damaging consequences....

Hunting Tiger: Everyone wants a piece of him.
September 16, 2002... The pressure on Tiger Woods is mounting, and it has nothing to do with golf: It's the pressure to blacken up -- to be a social activist, a racial spokesman. Throughout his young career, Woods has resisted this, standing on individualism, and...

The Long View.(Brief Article)
September 16, 2002... MEMORANDUM to: Bill Clinton, Harry Thomason cc: L. Moonves, M. Karmazin from: CBS Research re: First 12 segments focus group results -- excerpts Dear Harry and Bill: Please find attached the focus group findings for...

Who Is Ariel Sharon?("Sharon: Israel's Warrior-Politician")
September 16, 2002... Sharon: Israel's Warrior-Politician, by Anita Miller, Jordan Miller, and Sigalit Zetouni (Academy Chicago, 400 pp., $30) Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon has the looks of a Tyrannosaurus rex. And of course a baleful bloodthirsty monster...

Faithful Reason.("A Mind's Matter: An Intellectual Autobiography")
September 16, 2002... A Mind's Matter: An Intellectual Autobiography, by Stanley L. Jaki (Eerdmans, 328 pp., $25) Since the publication of his breakthrough book, The Relevance of Physics, in 1966, Stanley Jaki has generated a body of intellectual work that is...

Not Quite Copernicus.("A New Kind of Science")
September 16, 2002... A New Kind of Science, by Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Media, 1,197 pp., $44.95) I consider Stephen Wolfram to be a great benefactor of humanity. The foundation for this opinion is that I am a daily user of the Mathematica software package,...

A Thinker's Progress.("Leo Strauss: The Early Writings, 1921-1932")
September 16, 2002... Leo Strauss: The Early Writings, 1921-1932, translated and edited by Michael Zank (SUNY, 238 pp., $22.95) The achievement of Leo Strauss has in recent years begun to be generally recognized even by those who did not have the privilege of...

Children of Night.(movie director M. Night Shyamalan)
September 16, 2002... Man may be in doubt whether to deem himself man or beast, but much of pop culture seems to have figured him -- or at least the male half -- out once and for all. From Maxim magazine to television's The Man Show, adult men are typically...

Books in Brief.("On Whale Island: Notes from a Place I Never Meant to Leave")(Brief Article)
September 16, 2002... On Whale Island: Notes from a Place I Never Meant to Leave, by Daniel Hays (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 240 pp., $22.95) This book is by the co-author of My Old Man and the Sea, the incomparable account of travel on a 25-foot sailboat...

On the Right.(Column)
September 16, 2002... The Waters of Waco Unavailing NEW YORK, AUGUST 13 As the presidential team meets in Waco to repristinate the face of capitalism, signs of difficulty at a cultural level are everywhere. The Wall Street Journal informs us that defense...

The Misanthrope's Corner.(Brief Article)(Column)
September 16, 2002... I've given you a peek into the files I've been throwing out, but there's still one left: my NOT file. It's where I've kept notes for what I initially thought would make good columns, but which, for one reason or another, did not work out....

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
September 30, 2002... --It was disheartening to read Roger Scruton's dismissal of rap (("The Song Is Ended," Sept. 2). He should make an unprejudiced effort to listen to Eminem. The rhythms of the rapper's speech are flexible, intricate, and ever-changing. Kam...

The Week.(Column)
September 30, 2002... -- Pat Buchanan accuses NR, as well as The Weekly Standard and CoCommentary, of urging America to "go nightsticking recalcitrant regimes according to a priority list drawn up for us by Bibi Netanyahu." As a result of our advocacy, President...

At War: Moving Targets.(Brief Article)
September 30, 2002... The immediate task before the United States is to topple the Ba'athist regime in Iraq. What are the objections? Not surprisingly, they shift over time. During the summer, one heard that the Bush administration had not made its case. In...

At War II: Closing the Case.(Brief Article)
September 30, 2002... The commemorations of 9/11 ranged from the unbearably poignant, to the dutiful. Altogether, there were too many of them. But how could anyone expect Americans, especially journalists, not to mark the anniversary of the worst attack on our...

Notes & Asides.(Column)
September 30, 2002... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: Re Mr. Magee's letter (N&A, June 3): AtAt age 86, I have had many encounters with current usage or slang. I usually find them piquant or refreshing. I like the shorthand of "9/11." It says so much, so quickly. I...

The Great Escape: The U.S. helped the bin Ladens leave the country immediately after 9/11. Why?
September 30, 2002... Bill Carter, the FBI spokesman, is adamant. "We were given full access to the individuals on that plane," he says, "and we were satisfied that we did not believe any of those individuals had anything to do with the 9/11 plots." The plane...

The Fire Last Time: What doves, and hawks, got wrong in the first Gulf War.
September 30, 2002... Advocates of a war on Iraq can be forgiven for some exasperation with the doves' demands for a debate. For one thing, these demands often serve as a substitute for their actually engaging in it by taking a clear position. For another, the hawks...

'An Aroused Citizenry': How democracies go to war.
September 30, 2002... We associate democracies with peace, and thus think that it is hard to convince thousands of free citizens to support a war. But we need not despair about getting democratic approval for the action against Iraq. Herodotus wrote that it was...

Majority Report: Can Republicans hold the House?
September 30, 2002... Since 1994, when Republicans won 54 seats and took control of the House for the first time in 40 years, their majority in that chamber has dwindled to a perilous six votes. This handful of GOP seats has meant victory in the House for virtually...

Dark Hearts: Exploiting Africa, for guilt and electoral gain.
September 30, 2002... Tony Blair, who not long ago discovered what he called a "passion for Africa," attended the recent conference on sustainable development in Johannesburg -- and came upon one of that continent's somber realities: Zimbabwe's president-for-life,...

Gas-Mask Chic: Dressing for Armageddon.(terrorism threat spurs marketing of survivalist gear)
September 30, 2002... For reasons that need, sadly, no explanation, we find ourselves living in a nervous, uneasy era, a time when every backfiring car becomes a bomb, every spilled sachet of sugar a plague. Once again, an enemy is out there, but the threat now is...

Crunchy Cons: Picking up organic vegetables in your National Review tote bag.(eclectic conservatives)
September 30, 2002... One day this summer, I told a colleague I had to leave early to pick up my weekly fresh vegetables from the organic food co-op to which my wife and I belong. "Ewgh, that's so lefty," she said. And she was right: Organic vegetables are a...

Ideologues Without Borders: A global attack on assimilation.
September 30, 2002... Melbourne, Australia The ghost of Willie Horton hangs eerily over the political debate in Australia -- though, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Horton is not yet dead but is instead on government work and still gives us the benefit of his...

Truth Teller: The nuclear scientist the Left loves to hate.(Edward Teller)(Interview)
September 30, 2002... The famous eyebrows are as bushy as they've ever been, though they've lost their color. The hair has turned white, too, and it's thinning. The eyes no longer see, except to tell the difference between day and night. Yet Edward Teller, perhaps...

The Long View.(satire on variations of 'HiIgh Noon')(Brief Article)
September 30, 2002... Movie Lovers! Now you can buy the 1952 classic "High Noon" in the version YOU prefer! It's an American favorite, and one that's even more timely today, as we face acts of terrorism at home, and battle cries abroad! Choose one, or design...

Soldiers of the State.(The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History)
September 30, 2002... The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, by Philip Bobbitt (Knopf, 919 pp., $40) Robert Stewart, second viscount Castlereagh, was the British foreign minister from 1812 to 1822. A member of the Irish peerage,...

A Proud Day.(Heart of a Soldier: A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11th)
September 30, 2002... Heart of a Soldier: A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11th, by James B. Stewart (Simon & Schuster, 321 pp., $24) Consider the last 18 months. It looks like The Great American Crack-up: A decade-long orgy of moneyed excess and...

Bell Telephone Calling.(musical DVDs from Bell Telephone Hour TV show)
September 30, 2002... When the CD came along, a lot of us were nervous: You mean we'll have to get rid of our LPs and tapes? You mean we'll have to re-buy? But the pure convenience of a CD soon won us over, even if a few of us were suspicious about that sound --...

City Desk: Towers Still.(World Trade Center Towers become icon)(Brief Article)
September 30, 2002... It has been brought to my attention that the icon for this column is inaccurate, since the skyline formed by the steam that rises from the coffee mug beside the typewriter still includes the World Trade Towers. Of course the typewriter is also...

Shelf Life.(The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now. How We'll Win; An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism; Conclave: The Politics, Personalities, and Process of the Next Papal Election; How to Beat the Democrats and Other Subversive Ideas)(Brief Article)
September 30, 2002... --Michael A. Ledeen, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and cocontributor to National Review Online, is one of America's most valuable experts on terrorism. In The War Against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened. Where We Are Now....

On the Right.(war with Iraq; anti-smoking regulations)(Column)
September 30, 2002... Iraq: How Are the Advocates Stacking Up? NEW YORK, AUGUST 23 The variety of opinions on Iraq stimulates the search for ideological affinities. A political position taken merely at random, unrelated to motherboards, doesn't sink deep...

The Misanthrope's Corner.(journalist's last column)(Brief Article)(Column)
September 30, 2002... Dear Gentle Readers: I've resolved to write this column without using the word "last" because nowadays it is tied up with that insufferable cliche, "I want to spend more time with my family." The only way to avoid it is to say what I have to...