The Public Interest articles from September 1997

The Public Interest archives from September 1997

World population implosion?
September 22, 1997... Over the past several years, some of the world's best demographers have begun a dramatic reassessment of the world's demographic future. They are now seriously proposing the possibility that the world's population rather than continuing to...

The crisis in scholarly publishing.
September 22, 1997... Until one day last February, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what is now generally called "the crisis of the monograph" - that is, the drying up of resources for intensive studies of small but worthwhile subjects in favor of...

Fathers and welfare reform.
September 22, 1997... America is embarking upon a dramatic new course in the way it provides assistance to our nation's poorest families and their children. Recently enacted federal welfare reforms have altered both the purpose and the form of the nation's principal...

The failure of drug education.
September 22, 1997... The role of the federal government in preventing adolescent drug use was a central issue of the 1996 presidential campaign. Bob Dole criticized the Clinton administration for slashing the staff of the Office of National Drug Control Policy...

In pursuit of criminal justice.
September 22, 1997... Despite evidence suggesting that much of American public policy closely - perhaps too closely - mirrors public desires (for example, Social Security, Medicare, and the federal college-loan program), this is hardly the case in how we punish...

Public housing as a "poorhouse."
September 22, 1997... Few events in recent U.S. policy history have had the resonance of the 1972 demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis. By tearing down the 33 11-story buildings, once home to 10,000 residents, the government acknowledged, perhaps...

School choice builds community.
September 22, 1997... School choice poses a fundamental challenge to the age-old concept of neighborhood schools. So, unsurprisingly, it has been surrounded by intense controversy. Despite this, school choice is spreading. Back in 1987, Minnesota became the first...

Determinants of Economic Growth.
September 22, 1997... IRWIN M. STELZER Computers are the opiate of the economist masses. Because it is now so cheap to "crunch" huge volumes of data, economists can devise elaborate equations and plug in millions of numbers with ease. They can also produce...

What It Means to Be a Libertarian.
September 22, 1997... FAREED ZAKARIA Most libertarians don't like their name. "It's a clunky neologism with too many syllables," admits David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute. Charles Murray agrees. It's "etymologically" imperfect, he says in his new book on...

For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War.
September 22, 1997... On the second day of the battle of Gettysburg, three Confederate brigades launched an attack on a gap in the Union line on Cemetary Ridge. Union General Winfield Scott Hancock rode up to the spot and saw to his horror that the Southern soldiers...

From Parchment to Power.
September 22, 1997... WILLIAM A. GALSTON In From Parchment to Power,(*) the eminent constitutional scholar Robert Goldwin has given us the first full narrative of the creation and adoption of the Bill of Rights. I take Goldwin's full subject to be not only this...

What Money Can't Buy.
September 22, 1997... DOUGLAS J. BESHAROV & MARK H. LOPEZ Parents matter. That's the message of Susan Mayer's new book, What Money Can't Buy. The University of Chicago sociologist's sophisticated and often ingenious analyses lead her to conclude that parents'...

Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage and Feminism.
September 22, 1997... DIANA SCHAUB Speaking of the burgeoning feminist movement, Henry James's tough-minded female doctor in The Bostonians (1886) says: "Well, what it amounts to is just that women want to have a better time. That's what it comes to in the end."...

Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood.
September 22, 1997... Clearly, it will not be supplied by Naomi Wolf, whose new book, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood,(**) shows her to be still in quest of"a better time." The book is an evocative recounting of the sexual coming of age of Wolf and...

Reassessing the Sixties.
September 22, 1997... DIANA WEST Newt Gingrich plays an odd role in Reassessing the Sixties,(*) a new collection of essays edited by Stephen Macedo presenting a mix of viewpoints on women, universities, and race. For his declaration of war - not just war, but...

Beyond the Melting Pot.
September 22, 1997... MARK F. BERNSTEIN An Anglo-Saxon," Mr. Dooley remarked almost a century ago, "is a German that's forgot who was his parents." Some 65 years later another Irishman, Daniel Patrick Moyrtihan, observed with Nathan Glazer in Beyond the Melting Pot...