The Public Interest articles from June 2002

The Public Interest archives from June 2002

The death and life of America's cities.
June 22, 2002... IN the wake of the events of September 11, American cities are basking in the reflected glory of New York and its courageous mayor, Rudolph Giuliani. Giuliani's ascent to the status of a national hero, "America's mayor," has eclipsed not only...

Where have all the nurses gone?
June 22, 2002... THE nursing shortage in the United States has turned into a full-blown crisis. Because fewer young people go into nursing, one-third of registered nurses in the United States are now over 50 years of age, and that proportion is expected to rise...

The problem with polling.
June 22, 2002... WOULDN'T it be wonderful to live life unencumbered by the laws of economics? Consumers could set their own prices, both guns and butter would be plentiful, and risk would have been banished like some ancient disease. This hope is obviously...

The forgotten T.R. (Reconsiderations).(Theodore Roosevelt )
June 22, 2002... EXACTLY 100 years after he became, at the age of 42, the youngest man ever to be sworn in as president of the United States, interest in Theodore Roosevelt is experiencing an unprecedented revival. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich...

Mr. Jefferson's university breaks up.(Thomas Jefferson)(University of Virginia)(privatization and finance)
June 22, 2002... THE University of Virginia is surely the most architecturally renowned campus in the country. Among Virginians, it is reverentially referred to as "Mr. Jefferson's university," and indeed that polymath president had a major hand in designing...

Making school reform work.
June 22, 2002... ACCOUNTABILITY may be the hottest word in primary and secondary education nowadays, but it is a recent arrival on the scene. As long as we trusted the existing public school system to do a satisfactory job of educating children, accountability...

The survival of moral federalism.
June 22, 2002... IN his recently released book The Implosion of American Federalism, law professor Robert Nagel openly states what many conservatives have long suspected: American federalism is dead, or at least doomed to irrelevance. The era of small...

Lipset's big question. (Review).(It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States )
June 22, 2002... SEYMOUR Martin Lipset and Gary Marks' It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States + represents Lipset's most recent and most substantial entry in his 50-year effort to understand why socialism made no great impact in the...

Liberalism and diversity. (Review).(Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political Theory and Practice? )
June 22, 2002... WILLIAM Galston, a professor at the University of Maryland and a former advisor to President Clinton, has for many years staunchly defended liberal democracy against its critics. Since most Americans, whether Republican or Democrat, are...

Postmodern religion. (Review).(Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited)
June 22, 2002... A PUZZLING aspect of religion in America today is that there is both less and more of it than 40 or 50 years ago. Gone is the recitation of the Lord's Prayer at the start of the school day. Gone are moments of silence in school and clergy-led...

The roots of inequality. (Review).(The Causes and Consequences of Increasing lnequality)
June 22, 2002... DEBATES about the poor, it seems, will always be with us. The pendulum swings between the argument that poverty results from lack of opportunity and the view that it is the fault of the poor themselves. These disagreements are well illustrated...

Misunderstanding poverty. (Review).(Understanding Poverty )
June 22, 2002... SINCE its founding in 1966, the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin at Madison has been the inner sanctum of academic research on poverty in America. Under its aegis gather most of the nation's leading...

Blacks and labor: the untold story. (Review).(Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal)
June 22, 2002... THE National Recovery Administration, or "NRA," a linchpin of Franklin Roosevelt's First Hundred Days, did not fare well in the African-American press. "Negro Removal Act," "Negroes Ruined Again," and "Negroes Robbed Again," were only a few of...

Broken windows reconsidered. (Review).(two books on crime history)
June 22, 2002... THE 1990s marked the greatest period of crime reduction in American history: Grime rates declined in 47 out of 50 states and in about 190 of the biggest 220 cities. In the popular press much credit for this turn of events has gone to a policing...