The Public Interest articles from March 1993

The Public Interest archives from March 1993

Teaching the virtues.
March 22, 1993... SOME TIME AGO, I published an article called "Ethics without Virtue," in which I criticized the way ethics is being taught in American colleges. I pointed out that there is an overemphasis on social policy questions, with little or no attention...

Babies for sale. (New Birth Technologies call for rethinking the definition of family and individual)
March 22, 1993... CAN YOU WRITE a commercial contract for a baby? Can a man buy his own child? Who owns the frozen embryos of a dead woman; can they be willed to third parties? It has been five years since the controversial and emotional "Baby M" case was legally...

The triumph of American nationalism.
March 22, 1993... THE WORLD has now had 160 years of experience with party politics in mass democracies. During this century and a half, the achievements of governments formed by these parties have been substantial. They have provided peaceful governance for great...

Our cultural perplexities (V): television and violent crime.
March 22, 1993... CHILDREN ARE born ready to imitate adult behavior. That they can, and do, imitate an array of adult facial expressions has been demonstrated in newborns as young as a few hours old, before they are even old enough to know that they have facial...

A conservative case for judicial activism.
March 22, 1993... Conservatives sometimes remark that liberals would be less enamored of judicial activism if it were employed on behalf of conservative causes. A powerful polemical point, surely, but not one that has caused much insomnia in Cambridge. For the...

A new plan for the family.
March 22, 1993... IN 1991, the much-publicized Rockefeller Report(*) declared that "the family is and should remain society's primary institution for bringing children into the world and for supporting their growth and development throughout childhood." Nearly...

The end of welfare as we know it? (analyzing Pres Clinton's welfare policy)
March 22, 1993... ONE OF THE loudest--and most bipartisan--rounds of applause during Bill Clinton's 1993 State of the Union address came when he reiterated his promise to "end welfare as we know it." During the campaign, Clinton repeatedly said that welfare...

Are smokers rational?
March 22, 1993... SINCE CLASSICAL TIMES, economics has asked how human desires can be met in the face of material constraints. Indeed, the discipline has been extraordinarily successful in measuring and analyzing this process. But when it comes to explaining the...

The Anatomy of Thatcherism.
March 22, 1993... Dr. Shirley Robin Letwin recounts the charges of "energetic philistinism" and "abrasive vulgarity" leveled at a woman who would, to the establishment and the chattering classes, always be a greengrocer's daughter. Thatcher's admirers, fewer in...