Independent Review articles from June 2002

Independent Review archives from June 2002

Science as a market process.
June 22, 2002... To allocate resources in the pursuit of chosen ends is an economic matter: a matter of costs and benefits, of investments, risks, and payoffs--above all, a matter of choices and trade-offs. The allocation of cognitive resources in the pursuit...

Terrorism, interest-group politics, and public policy: curtailing criminal modes of political speech.(Statistical Data Included)
June 22, 2002... Terrorist incidents have occurred in the United States and around the world for centuries. Tax revolters, anarchists, war protesters, and other critics of government policy have often used violence to send messages to the policymakers...

The common law right to earn a living.
June 22, 2002... The monopolizer engrosseth to himself what should be free to every man. --Sir Edward Coke (1) At the common law," wrote William Blackstone, "every man might use what trade he pleased" ([1765] 1979, 1:415). This seemingly innocuous...

A matter of small consequence: U.S. foreign policy and the tragedy of East Timor.
June 22, 2002... When East Timor resurfaced as a journalistic destination, most Americans were hard put to find it on a map. Later, when the Clinton administration took official notice, some were wont to label the U.S. interest yet another example of a...

Conservatives are liberal, and liberals are conservative--on the environment. (Controversy).
June 22, 2002... Conservatives and liberals differ on a host of issues: abortion, the death penalty, welfare, school choice, and gun control, among others. Yet beneath these particular differences are two fundamental differences: beliefs about tradition and...

Private property rights, not ideologies, are the crux. (Controversy).
June 22, 2002... Stephen M. Colarelli offers a provocative argument. He claims that conservatives and liberals tend to be true to their principles except when it comes to the environment, at which point they switch sides. With respect to environmental matters,...

Is the concept of race illegitimate? (Reflections).
June 22, 2002... Americans are obsessed with race--or, at any rate, academic Americans are. Is disproportionate representation evidence of discrimination by race, or is it evidence of natural differences between the races? Should we abandon standardized tests,...

Make everybody rich. (Advice).
June 22, 2002... Any inventory of the world's current problem areas probably includes several of the following: war, the environment, education, health, crime, women's rights, unemployment, the oppression of the poor, racism, xenophobia, restrictions on...

Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do about It: a Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs.
June 22, 2002... By James P. Gray Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. Pp. x, 272. $19.95. Judge James P. Gray, a California trial court judge since 1983, has come to believe that the war on drugs is an abject failure both on its own terms...

Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public.
June 22, 2002... By Terry Moe Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2001. Pp. 350. $29.95 cloth, $22.95 paper. In a timely work, Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public, Terry Moe considers a number of public-opinion mysteries and largely neglected...

Communism: a History.
June 22, 2002... By Richard Pipes New York: Modern Library, 2001. Pp. 175. $19.95 cloth. On perhaps the tenth night that I lay in bed quietly reading Communism: A History by Richard Pipes, my wife asked me why it was taking so long to read such a short...

It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States.
June 22, 2002... By Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. Pp. 379. $26.95 cloth, $14.95 paper. For conservatives and libertarians, reading a work that makes serious claims about the absence of socialism in the United States is a...

Pity the poor Japanese. (Etceteras ...).
June 22, 2002... All but the very young can still remember the days when the Japanese economy struck fear in the hearts of many Americans. After restoring Japan's war-shattered infrastructure, the Japanese embarked on the most rapid economic growth any large...