National Review articles from September 2003

National Review archives from September 2003

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2003... --Many things might have made a difference in the outcome of the Center for Individual Rights cases challenging preferences at the University of Michigan, but surely not the fact that CIR didn't attack the claim of the educational benefits of...

Notes & Asides.(Wright Brothers' Centennial world air-speed record flight; English usage)
September 1, 2003... -- Dear Bill: We went around the world together on the Concorde 14 years ago, and I wanted you and your friends to know of my upcoming Wright Brothers' Centennial world air-speed record flight, "Around the World over Both the Earth's Poles,"...

Arnold's Wild State: For California and for conservatives, populism has its ups and downs.
September 1, 2003... Eastern elites thought California had gone around the bend when it sent ex- actor Ronald Reagan to the governor's mansion in 1966. The New York Times, in a rare editorial endorsement for a California election, attacked Reagan and implored...

No Quagmire: How to avoid one this time.(US exit from Iraq)
September 1, 2003... If Iraq is a replay of Vietnam, it is running on fast-forward. The media are reporting that the U.S. is failing to provide basic public services to the Iraqis, including public safety, and that resistance to the U.S. presence is mounting. That...

Stopping the Saudis: Is this administration willing? Apparently not.
September 1, 2003... The Bush administration's decision to withhold portions of the Joint Inquiry Report into 9/11-the sections that reportedly deal with Riyadh's support for terrorism-is perhaps its most serious political misstep to date. It provides an opening...

Money Melee: What Milton Friedman said-and why he's right.
September 1, 2003... Forty-four years ago, at the end of the brief book A Program for Monetary Stability, the legendary Chicago economist Milton Friedman offered a rather tentative proposal. He said it might be best if the Federal Reserve gave up trying to...

The Boobs of the Beeb: A media monopoly that only gets worse.(British Broadcasting Corporation Ltd.)
September 1, 2003... In the days when I traveled into the remoter parts of Africa, I would often be surprised by a villager who would proceed to inform me of the latest events in the next country but three. There had been an attempted coup there, and my informant...

Color in Coaching: How racial games are played in the NFL.(National Football League)
September 1, 2003... It's a bizarre tale, and a very American tale. In fact, in 2003, it's practically unsurprising: Race is on the rampage, bedeviling the country in manifold ways. In the last week of July, the National Football League fined Matt Millen,...

The Awful Specter of Yet Another Term: Conservatives need a friend in Pennsylvania.(Arlen Specter)
September 1, 2003... 'I'll go straight to the point," said Arlen Specter, shortly after sitting down to dinner with Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation in March. "I've got a primary and I'm being hit from the right. I want your support." The...

Annals of Bush-Hating: Have you seen what's out there? And do the media care?
September 1, 2003... Are you aware of the murderous history of George W. Bush-indeed, of the entire Bush family? Are you aware of the president's Nazi sympathies? His crimes against humanity? And do you know, by the way, that George W. Bush is a certifiable moron?...

An Empire Like No Other: The British experience was unique; America will write its own chapters.
September 1, 2003... Here on my desk I have a 1924 atlas of the world that belonged to my grandfather, an Englishman. Its actual title is: The British Empire Universities Up-to-date Atlas-guide to the British Commonwealth of Nations and Foreign Countries. The book...

The Long View.(Iraq occupation humor)
September 1, 2003... CENTCOM IRAQ SURVEILLANCE INTERCEPTS 08/01/03 INTERCEPT ONE LOCATION: MOSUL OUTSKIRTS SOURCE: MOBILE CELLULAR TELEPHONE SURVEILLANCE TIME: 17:38 Unidentified Younger Male #1: ". with extra cheese, maybe some mushrooms if you...

Some Victory.(Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, by William Saletan (California, 327 pp., $29.95) Will Saletan, a writer for Slate and a friend of mine, has written a thoughtful and engaging book on the politics of abortion. His...

Horror Show.(Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History!)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History!, by Joe Bob Briggs (Universe, 256 pp., $24.95) The title is reassuringly lurid and the cover comfortingly nasty, but, on opening this book, anxious readers may worry that Joe Bob...

The Kids Aren't Alright.(Day Care Deception: What the Child Care Establishment Isn't Telling Us)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Day Care Deception: What the Child Care Establishment Isn't Telling Us, by Brian C. Robertson (Encounter, 280 pp., $25.95) The debate over day care is not over; in fact, it never happened. Convincing evidence has demonstrated that day care...

Focus on Evil.(Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators, by Riccardo Orizio (Walker & Co., 224 pp., $24) Richard Nixon, in the throes of Watergate, received a telegram from Ugandan dictator Idi Amin: "If your country does not understand you,...

Tidal Wave.(Mexifornia: A State of Becoming)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, by Victor Davis Hanson (Encounter, 150 pp., $21.95) Victor Davis Hanson is a man of many parts. For five grim years he and his brothers did their best to make a profit growing grapes to dry and sell to...

Shelf Life: The Reagan Way.(How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life)(Book Review)
September 1, 2003... Of the making of books about Ronald Reagan there is indeed no end, but the very newest one offers genuinely surprising delights. How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life (ReganBooks, 263 pp., $24.95) offers reflections on Reagan by Peter Robinson, who...

City Desk: A Village Voice.(folk singer Dave Van Ronk)
September 1, 2003... When Uday and Qusay passed over, one's thoughts turned to appropriate eulogists: Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Steyn, Christopher Hitchens. My thoughts turned to an old song about a crooked cop, "Duncan and Brady." In stanza one we meet Brady,...

On the Right.(Liberia; 'The Kennedy Curse'; gay marriage)(Column)
September 1, 2003... Unscrambling Liberia NEW YORK, JULY 22 The Liberia squeeze serves political purposes for those who labor to accumulate faults in Mr. Bush's leadership. But some of these are conflicting. Certainly the Democrats will need to straighten...

What's Right.(family ritual of jumping off bridge)
September 1, 2003... A Great Leap Forward Baysville is a crossroads village in the Ontario lake country, about three hours northeast of the city of Toronto. It's a pretty place, with a few shops, an ice-cream store, a rustic restaurant, a row of quaint old...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
September 15, 2003... --I enjoyed Jay Nordlinger's "Take Your Boxes and . . ." (Aug. 11) and look forward to the problem that will soon face racialist bureaucrats once more of us start giving confusing answers! Luckily, there is a great legal resource to which...

The Week.
September 15, 2003... -- She's rich from oil money. She pays no taxes. She takes her cues from tobacco lobbyists. Maybe we should endorse Arianna Huffington? -- There have been several pieces of good news for Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor of...

Editorial: IRAQ: A Bearable Burden.
September 15, 2003... The Bush administration's Iraq policy faces substantial obstacles: simmering unrest, factional disputes, impatience, distrust. And that's just in Washington, D.C. In the aftermath of the United Nations bombing in Baghdad, Bush faces increasing...

Notes & Asides.
September 15, 2003... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: W. H. von Dreele is so prolific that one might tend to take his witty verse for granted or skim right over it. But the eight lines of rhymed, perfectly metered tetrameter on Bush's European trip (June 30) are really...

The Once-a-Decade Crisis: California can get well -- and stay well -- with sensible, though politically difficult, reforms.
September 15, 2003... 'What do we do now?" That was the question on the lips of Ronald Reagan's inner circle the day after he won his first landslide election as governor of California in 1966. In 2003, people aren't waiting for the election to turn their thoughts...

Catch the Vibe: Chuck, Arnold, me, and everyone else.
September 15, 2003... Charlton Heston is one of the world's great squinters. Years ago, as a very young television writer, I found myself on the receiving end of one of his most squinched-up expressions. We were at some charity event, I think. I can't remember...

How Do You Like It Now?: Campaign-finance reform, that is. The Democrats and their allies are still wailing.
September 15, 2003... 'The political landscape will change when this bill takes effect," said Michigan Democratic senator Carl Levin on March 20, 2002, the day the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform bill was passed. "It will be filled with more people and less...

Congress's Patriotic Act: This is a law that defends America and, yes, preserves civil liberties, dammit.
September 15, 2003... Who says you can't argue with success? In the past two years, terrorist cells in Buffalo, Detroit, Seattle, and Portland, Ore., have been dismantled; criminal charges have been brought against 225 suspected terrorists; and 132 of those suspects...

Like Drunken Sailors, Part MMCCXVIII: Congress, and the president, just can't -- won't -- stop spending.
September 15, 2003... Before Congress departed for its August recess, conservatives suffered a series of budget-policy setbacks -- each of which dramatized the sudden ascendancy of big-government Republicanism in Washington. -- All but 19 House Republicans voted...

John Howard, Hombre: A leader in the war on terror, whose neighborhood is particularly rough.
September 15, 2003... Australians are rather famous for their dislike of pretensions. And in this respect their prime minister, John Howard, represents them truly. A smallish man, whom you wouldn't necessarily look twice at, he is always busy getting on with things...

The Moral Birds and Bees: Sex and marriage, properly understood.
September 15, 2003... In the England of the Forties, when my parents were courting, terms like "moral," "decent," and "clean living" applied primarily to sexual behavior. Immorality meant sleeping around (and how innocent the word "sleeping" now sounds!); indecency...

The August of Our Discontent: Eternal lessons from a hot and hairy month.
September 15, 2003... Relatively simple breakdowns in power transmission, and accordant human lapses, plunged millions on the East Coast into darkness. The lifestyle of postmodern man in sophisticated New York was reduced -- in seconds - - to that of his 18th- or...

Special Section: Trade & Development - Bush as Trader: Ones step forward, two steps back.
September 15, 2003... As of this moment, the Bush administration's trade-policy record is a mixture of big wins for protectionism and modest advances for free trade. Which means that, so far, everything is going pretty much according to plan. On the debit side...

Special Section: Trade & Development - Euro-Protection: Free trade? On the Continent? Ha!
September 15, 2003... This month, a chartered British Airways Boeing 747 will fly from Brussels, the capital of the European Union, to Cancun, a Mexican holiday resort and the venue of the Fifth Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization. On board the jumbo...

Special Section: Trade & Development - Mercantilism Today: How a dead philosophy comes back to life.
September 15, 2003... Exports are good and imports bad, right? Wrong. All trade -- whether it is import or export, within nations or between them -- leads to economic growth, better jobs, and better health. Import barriers, by contrast, cause real economic and...

Special Section: Trade & Development - Trade, Not Aid: What Africa needs.
September 15, 2003... 'If you want something done well," goes the old saying, "do it yourself." After many years of looking to others to solve its problems, Africa is beginning to follow this advice -- or so its leaders promise. Trade, not aid, is now being promoted...

Special Section: Trade & Development - To the Benefit of Both: Why trade with the PRC?
September 15, 2003... China looms as the next big thing in trade-policy discontent. An unlikely coalition comprising the National Association of Manufacturers, union leaders, anti-trade Naderites, and conservative lawmakers critical of China's human-rights record is...

The Long View.
September 15, 2003... Transcript, Larry King Live November 12, 2003 larry king: "Were you at all surprised? I mean, did you go to bed thinking, I'm the next governor, and . . ." arnold schwarzenegger: "No, no, Larry. It was nothing like that." ...

That Old-Time Religion.("The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith")(Book Review)
September 15, 2003... The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith, by Alan Wolfe (Free Press, 309 pp., $26) 'We are all evangelicals now": This is the suggestion at the heart of this new book by Alan Wolfe, one of America's most...

A Very Elegant Coup.("All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror")(Book Review)
September 15, 2003... All The Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer (Wiley, 272 pp., $24.95) In the summer of 1953, the CIA and Britain's MI6 arranged a coup in Tehran. The Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh,...

Treason of the Clerks.("In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage")(Book Review)
September 15, 2003... In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage, by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (Encounter, 300 pp., $25.95) Nearly a decade ago John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, having gathered much valuable material in the archives of the defunct...

The Underwear Festival.
September 15, 2003... Salzburg, Austria The most important music festival in the world, and what do people want to talk about? The weather, of course. It's hot. Really hot. Record- breaking hot. If we were back home, in the U.S.A., everyone would be saying,...

An Alpine Idyll.
September 15, 2003... On a recent gray July morning in the Alpine village of Verbier, Switzerland, pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Christian Tetzlaff were sounding the final notes of a recital encore -- the scherzo from Brahms's Sonata in D minor -- when they were...

The Straggler: Conversion Experience.
September 15, 2003... I grew up believing there were only two kinds of luggage: trunks and suitcases. The old style of steamer trunk was still around in my salad days (the 1960s). I actually took one with me when I left home to go to college. It was a glorious...

On the Right.
September 15, 2003... Partnering with The Saudis NEW YORK, AUGUST 1 U.S.-saudi relations aren't easily parsed. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that the two countries have information about each other that they don't want publicized. In...

What's Right.
September 15, 2003... All Right Already A man is standing on the platform of the Darien, Conn., train station, reading the paper. An elderly woman joins him. She glances at him appraisingly, and then approaches to ask a question. "Excuse me, Mister, I am sorry...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
September 29, 2003... --Re John J. Miller's article "The Awful Specter of Yet Another Term" (Sept. 1): Most Pennsylvania Republicans recognize that Congressman Pat Toomey's candidacy would likely turn a safe Republican seat over to the Democrats. Pennsylvania...

The Week.(political events)
September 29, 2003... -- Schumer decides. Now what? -- The Kerry camp wants to attack Howard Dean, but not just now. Maybe they're waiting for a French okay? -- A thought for 9/11 + 2 (from Grant by Jean Edward Smith). "[S]ometime after midnight [on the...

Editorial: AT WAR: The Fight Now.(George W. Bush's Iraq policy)(Editorial)
September 29, 2003... The administration's policy on Iraq, as explained by the president's speech September 7, will change in some important details, while remaining essentially the same. The continuing theme of Bush's Iraq policy is its context. "Two years...

Notes & Asides.
September 29, 2003... -- Dear Mr. Buckley: To quote a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, "The House of Representatives, as everyone knows, is that place where the Members address each other as 'The Gentlelady [one word] from Connecticut.'" I need some help on...

Where We Stand: The situation in Iraq, and how to go forward.
September 29, 2003... What the Bush administration most needs in its Iraqi policy is not greater U.N. involvement, or more soldiers, or even an infusion of $87 billion -- but steady nerves. For it is in danger of being panicked into foolish new initiatives by the...

The Great Escape (Cont.): How did assorted bin Ladens get out of America after September 11?
September 29, 2003... Last year, on the first anniversary of September 11, there were serious, unanswered questions about the Bush administration's decision to allow members of the bin Laden family living in the United States to leave the country in the days after...

Giving, and Taking Away: A controversy at Princeton offers broad lessons.(Robertson Foundation lawsuit)
September 29, 2003... In 1961, Charles and Marie Robertson gave one of the largest gifts ever made to higher education. Today, their heirs are trying to take it back, in an unprecedented lawsuit that carries major implications for conservative philanthropy. The...

In Pol Pot Land: Ruins of varying types.(Cambodia)
September 29, 2003... When I arrived in Siem Reap, the town next door to Angkor Wat, one of the many new hotels that have sprung up there recently and that look like pagodas crossed with mirrored sunglasses, was draped with a banner announcing a conference: Gender...

From 'Activist' to 'Warmonger': A handy glossary from Lucifer's latest lexicographer.(Glossary)
September 29, 2003... Back in 1911 the American misanthrope and satirist Ambrose Bierce published his Devil's Dictionary , 140 pages of scathing commentary on the folly, ugliness, and cruelty of the human race, laid out in the form of a dictionary, with...

Swallowed By Leviathan: Conservatism versus an oxymoron: 'big- government conservatism'.
September 29, 2003... "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." -- President George W. Bush, talking to union workers on Labor Day Franklin Delano Roosevelt's rhetoric was more high-flown, and less therapeutic in emphasis....

Facing up to It in California: We must leap the 'third rail' of illegal immigration.
September 29, 2003... For the last two decades the issue of massive illegal immigration has been the third rail of California politics. Most state residents -- of all backgrounds -- were against it privately, yet precious few would say so publicly. Who wished to be...

A Voice for Our Time: Those who think that Bush can't talk should think again.("We Will Prevail": President George W. Bush on War, Terrorism, and Freedom)(Excerpt)
September 29, 2003... For a man reputed to be "verbally challenged," George W. Bush has given some important speeches -- some impressive ones, too. Words matter a great deal to this president. In fact, when all is said and done, his presidency may be known for its...

The Sacramento Tales.(humor)
September 29, 2003... [John Derbyshire reports: In the course of some renovation work at England's Canterbury Cathedral, a wall broke open to reveal a hollow cavity, in which was found a parchment manuscript, since dated to the later 14th century. It appears to be...

Coming soon, Married Eye for the Single Guy.(humor)
September 29, 2003... MARRIED GUY: "Dude, what are you doing?" SINGLE GUY: "Calling my girlfriend." MARRIED GUY: "Why?" SINGLE GUY: "'Cause I said I'd call her around now and, like, she gets upset if I say I'm . . . " MARRIED GUY: "Are you...

Pandora Revisited.(War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race)(Book Review)
September 29, 2003... War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race , by Edwin Black (Four Walls Eight Windows, 592 pp., $27) Edwin Black has written what may well be the best book ever published about the American eugenics...

Miller's Centrist Tale.(The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love)(Book Review)
September 29, 2003... The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love, by Matthew Miller (PublicAffairs, 283 pp., $26) If good politics is more art than science, as Otto von Bismarck once suggested, then German...

Providence Lost -- and Found?(Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design)(Book Review)
September 29, 2003... Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design , by Francis J. Beckwith (Rowman & Littlefield, 224 pp., $24.95) As long ago as 1941, in his still-classic Darwin, Marx, Wagner:...

Barreling Around in Central Asia.(The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia)(Book Review)
September 29, 2003... The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia , by Lutz Kleveman (Atlantic Monthly, 288 pp., $24) This ambitious book is an account of the international competition for oil and influence in one of history's most turbulent regions....

Shelf Life: Bring Down the Walls.
September 29, 2003... If your heart beats with benevolence, and specifically with a high ethical commitment to raising up the poor people of the earth, you should be going to pro -globalization rallies. That's the contention of Swedish activist Johan Norberg in his...

CITY DESK: The Upper Upper West Side.(the Catskill Mountains of New York)
September 29, 2003... One of the goals of hopeful New Yorkers is to have a place outside New York, to escape periodically the crush and fret. But can they ever escape other New Yorkers? Our place is two hours from the city, in a valley on the flank of the...

On the Right.(state of education; strike at Yale University; punishment of high school student)
September 29, 2003... Educational Blues NEW YORK, AUGUST 26 There is some gloom in the land, expressing doubts as to whether the good old USA can successfully contend with all the burdens we face. At one end, there are the negative fiscal figures. The...

What's Right.(why recall California governor Gray Davis is good)
September 29, 2003... License Imagine for a moment that you are a terrorist. You have just infiltrated the United States and are hiding out in Los Angeles. What's the first thing you need now? Judging by the actual behavior of the last bunch of terrorists...