The Public Interest articles from September 1995

The Public Interest archives from September 1995

Looking back to 1965.(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... There never has been an uneventful year in American history. How could there be? This nation, continental in scope and creedal in nature, is congenitally restless and constantly improvising. But rarely has there been a year eventful in the way...

A social conservative credo.(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... It is an axiom of the conservative revolution sweeping Washington that the growth in size and power of the welfare state is a primary cause of the decline of society,' mediating institutions-voluntary associations, local government, church,...

The professionalization of reform II.(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... THIRTY years ago, in the first article of the first issue of The Public Interest, I published some observations on "The Professionalization of Reform," which 30 years later can be read, selectively, without overmuch embarrasement. The essay...

Capitalism and morality.(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... Twenty-five years ago, the two founding editors of this magazine published important essays on the cultural and moral status of capitalism.(*) Irving Kristol worried that the most intelligent contemporary defenders of capitalism were now mostly...

Black and white after thirty years. (interracial relations)(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... There is nothing that concentrates the mind on an issue more sharply than discovering one has been wrong about it. Twenty years ago, in an article in The Public Interest, I dealt with the subject of the continuing concentration of blacks in...

American conservatism 1945-1995.(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... The Public Interest was born well before the term "neoconservative" was invented, and will - I trust - be alive and active when the term is of only historical interest. That time may even be now, as the distinction between conservative and...

Individualism before multiculturalism.(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... Since the Founding, America has struggled to incorporate the descendants of African slaves into an estate of full and equal citizenship. One hundred thirty-two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, this process, though well advanced,...

'The Other America' revisited. (Michael Harrington's book on poverty)(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... LET'S start with an old puzzle. Did Humpty-Dumpty remain seated on a perilous wall because he was naturally too stout to move elsewhere? Or did he remain seated there because society, unable to find anything for him to do, filled his belly...

The partial restoration of traditional society.(Thirtieth Anniversary Issue)
September 22, 1995... DURING work on The Bell Curve, Richard Herrnstein and I were struck by the way in which the 1950s saw portentous developments that no one noticed at the time. We were focusing especially on the transformation in the top universities, which...