The Public Interest articles from June 2004

The Public Interest archives from June 2004

The liberal case against gay marriage.
June 22, 2004... THE issue of gay marriage brings to a head, like few other issues of our time, a central conflict between two moral positions that interact like seismic plates beneath the surface of contemporary American political life. It is commonly thought...

What I learned at AEI.(Conservative Policy Dilemmas)(American Enterprise Institute)
June 22, 2004... THE official topic of today's discussion is: "Should conservatives support same-sex marriage?" The unofficial subtitle, at least of my talk, is: "Everything I Know About Gay Marriage, I Learned at the American Enterprise Institute." Though I'm...

What marriage is.(Conservative Policy Dilemmas)
June 22, 2004... COMMON sense suggests it is better for homosexually oriented persons to settle into permanent relationships than to have multiple partners. But can such relationships become marriages? I do not believe that they can. Jonathan Rauch makes the...

Marriage-lite.(Conservative Policy Dilemmas)
June 22, 2004... JONATHAN Rauch persuasively demonstrates, central to everything else, that those of us who are not proponents of gay marriage do not have the option of hoping the issue will go away. As Rauch puts it, we have reached a bend in the river. Major...

The politics and realities of Medicare.
June 22, 2004... TRYING to understand the economics of Medicare is a difficult business, but nearly everyone agrees that things do not look good. In March 2004, the Medicare Board of Trustees issued its annual report on the financial health of Medicare Part A,...

Bioethics and the Constitution.
June 22, 2004... WHEN I mentioned the topic of my essay to a man well-versed in these matters, he suggested that I respond to the question of the relation between bioethics and the Constitution as Justice Antonin Scalia might. As Supreme Court watchers know,...

The homeland security bureaucracy.
June 22, 2004... WHEN a nation seeking to protect itself finds diplomacy, war, and foreign intelligence gathering insufficient, it can undertake three other types of activities to defend itself. It can control the movement of potential terrorists entering the...

Why talk radio is conservative.
June 22, 2004... On March 31, 2004, the latest venture in liberal talk radio was officially launched. A left-wing radio network called Air America began broadcasting a full day's worth of programming on radio stations in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and...

The economics of obesity.(Research Report)(Illustration)
June 22, 2004... HARDLY a day goes by that we do not read about the dire consequences of the increase in obesity. In March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that obesity will overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable deaths in...

Welcome to the omnipticon.(Review)
June 22, 2004... PRIVACY has become an increasingly urgent issue for many Americans after September 11. The USA PATRIOT Act expanded the domestic surveillance powers of policing agencies and considerably enhanced their authority to track and monitor...

Lessons for leaders.(Review)(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... WHEN it comes to dispensing knowledge to leaders, it would be hard to find a better source than Carnes Lord. Few political theorists possess his experience as a practitioner of statecraft; fewer still who are currently slugging it out in...

The paradise spell.(Review)(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... YOU can tell that David Brooks gets around America. Here he is observing workaholics (himself?) coming down the aisle boarding a plane: They've got hand-free wires clipped to their shirt; they're trying to shimmy out of their suit...

All that trash.(Review)(Book Review)
June 22, 2004... ALMOST 20 years ago, Allan Bloom pointed out in The Closing of the American Mind that few of us would make room on the living-room sofa for a guest who discussed or enacted the sexual raunch, incessant violence and just plain, dumb nastiness...