The Public Interest articles from March 2003

The Public Interest archives from March 2003

Can we be secure and free?
March 22, 2003... They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. --Benjamin Franklin Political liberty consists in security or, at least, in the opinion one has of one's security. ...

Racial diversity reconsidered.
March 22, 2003... IN recent years, the value of diversity has been proclaimed across the entire spectrum of American opinion. Nowhere is this more true than in our educational institutions. In defending his school's embattled affirmative-action admissions...

The antipolitical philosophy of John Rawls.
March 22, 2003... AFTER the liberal philosopher John Rawls died of heart failure at the age of 81 last November, obituaries and remembrances in prominent places testified to the man's greatness as a thinker. The New York Times led the way, publishing three...

How much defense spending can we afford?
March 22, 2003... At a time when international tensions and budget deficits are both increasing rapidly, many Americans are raising a perennial question: How much military spending can the United States afford? The truth is that the country can afford to devote...

A sensible environmentalism.
March 22, 2003... THE idea of sustainable development has been around for nearly two decades, but its vagueness has kept it from being a useable guide for policy. It received its most prominent international acknowledgment at the recent U.N. Summit on...

Getting the health care debate right.
March 22, 2003... ONE question lies at the core of the ongoing debate over how to configure public health insurance for non-elderly Americans. It is a question that arises every time legislators consider budgets for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance...

Intellectual dissent and the war on terror. (Reflections).
March 22, 2003... SOMEWHERE along the line the idea took hold that, to be an intellectual, you had to be against it, whatever "it" was. The intellectual is a negator and a dissenter. It wasn't always so. In the World War II era, American intellectuals signed on...

Honor's champion.(book on liberalism)(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... WE know there can be honor among thieves, but who ever heard of honor among liberals? The word conjures up visions of liege-lords and knights-errant, of chivalry and gallantry. It bespeaks a world enchanted, both beautiful and barbaric. The...

The return of character education?(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... MY daughter's high school wears its old-fashioned values with pride. The student handbook insists on "respect, courtesy, safety and care of surroundings." Every student is required to put in 50 hours of community service over four years to...

Strauss and the social scientist. .(Leo Strauss)(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... AS Leo Strauss becomes more famous and books about him proliferate, it is important to remember, though easy to forget, that he was not the sinister godfather of the Right, nor the pied piper of so-called conservative values. During his most...

Organs for sale.(book on organ procurement)(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... THE great virtue of economists is that they see a particular dimension of social reality with great precision. The great danger is that having seen a slice of human life, they imagine themselves to have seen the whole, and they prescribe...

Abortion: when argument fails.(book on abortion law)(Book Review)
March 22, 2003... IN the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the majority interrupted its lengthy discussion of abortion jurisprudence with a bold pronouncement: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of...