The Public Interest articles from March 2000

The Public Interest archives from March 2000

When psychotherapy replaces religion.
March 22, 2000... WHEN it comes to the moral life of children, the vocabulary of the psychologist frames virtually all public discussion. For decades now, contributions from philosophers and theologians have been muted or nonexistent. Anthropologists and...

The twilight of liberal welfare reform.
March 22, 2000... THIRTY years ago, welfare reform was a liberal issue. In the 1960s and 1970s, government planners proposed that cash welfare benefits be raised and extended to the entire low-income population. But those proposals were rejected, and since the...

The cultural revolution in health care.
March 22, 2000... THERE comes a time in any industry when the principles that have long governed its activity and operation no longer apply. A change occurs in the minds of the people who deliver the service, and though they continue to go about their work in...

Dilemmas of conservatism.
March 22, 2000... IN an election year, some outcomes are unpredictable, but one is inevitable: Conservatives will fight among themselves. They will accuse one another of having abandoned conservative ideals, admonish each other for having mistaken the essence of...

Defending suburban sprawl.
March 22, 2000... IN September 1998, Vice President Al Gore traveled to Portland, Oregon, the urban planners' Mecca, to attack suburban sprawl and support "smart growth." What he actually meant was managed growth--higher densities, mixed land uses,...

Two cheers for capitalism.
March 22, 2000... AS I read David Bosworth's splendid language, his extraordinarily balanced phrases and keen satirical wit, his lively use of striking examples coupled with enduring issues, I found that I started to ask myself, Do I know anybody like the people...

Capitalism and the human spirit.
March 22, 2000... I DOUBT that neoconservatives have (or ever had) a creed, but I am willing to commit myself to the truth of the following propositions: Economics is fundamental, and yet prior to economics is politics; prior to politics is culture; and at the...

Y2K America.
March 22, 2000... LIKE most people, I typically discount jeremiads like David Bosworth's "The Spirit of Capitalism, 2000," which describe a deep and possibly fatal corruption in American society. After all, the people I know all seem to lead sensible, quiet...

The social democratic city.
March 22, 2000... IN 1950, three years after Jackie Robinson had broken in with the Dodgers, and well before the rest of the country had begun to face up to the issue of racial integration, New York's City College (CCNY) basketball team became a symbol of urban...

The trouble with Fish.
March 22, 2000... Socrates: The rhetorician and his rhetoric will have the same relation to all the other arts: there is no need for rhetoric to know the facts at all, for it has hit upon a means of persuasion that enables it to appear, in the eyes of the...

Broken streets, broken lives.
March 22, 2000... DESPITE the dawn of political correctness, we have come along and welcome way from the days when Daniel Patrick Moynihan was excoriated as a racist and sexist for suggesting in a 1965 U.S. Department of Labor report that the rise of the...

Statesmen wanted.
March 22, 2000... THE philosopher Karl Lowith once pointed out that there be no such thing as a "Christian gentleman." What he meant was that the adjective and noun in question describe two very different ideal types. The Christian is perhaps more familiar to...

Reeducating liberalism.
March 22, 2000... STEPHEN Macedo's new book on liberalism and education is tremendous for its historical scope, philosophical seriousness, and keen attention to present-day political questions. "The core claim of this book," Macedo writes, "is that diversity...

The right choice for schools.
March 22, 2000... ONE of the many interesting facts brought forth in Joseph Viteritti's Choosing Equality: School Choice, the Constitution and Civil Society [+] is that the first comprehensive case for school vouchers was articulated by Milton Friedman in 1955....