When the bodies of the two American diplomats murdered in the Sudan were brought home last month, a State Department official commented to the press, “I hope this outrage lets everyone know we’re not a bunch of cookie-pushers in striped pants. We’re a corps of highly competent, professional people, in a highly difficult, demanding, dangerous […]
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Busting Our Mental Blocks on Foreign Aid
During the fall of 1971 my wife and I were living in West Africa, working with Ghanaians on construction projects in the bush. Shortly before we were to head back to a more familiar life, news came that the U. S. Senate had voted to cut off foreign aid programs, apparently as a slap at […]
Posted inJanuary 1973, Magazine, Political Animal, Politics
The Screwing of the Average Taxpayer
Late this month, as Congress reconvenes, Representative Wilbur Mills will announce that tax reform season is with us again. A year or two later, after debates, studies, vetoes, and compromises, a Tax Reform Act of 1973 or 1974 will emerge, advertised no doubt as a significant step toward tax justice, a boon to the average […]
Posted inMagazine
Picking Up the TAB
Watching the performance of politicians and the press, the average man might be tempted to conclude that welfare reform is the issue no one wants to touch. Hasn’t President Nixon abandoned his Family Assistance Plan, brushing off the crocodile tears as Congress refuses to pass it? Hasn’t George McGovern found his $1,000-per-person grant a bigger […]
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Why Presidents Like to Play with Planes Instead of Houses
A review by James Fallows
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The Burn Ward
Edwards picked up the stethoscope from his desk. “Look,” he said, “You can say what you want about the Army and its problems, but I learned this much from going home: the Army treats you better dead than alive. I know,” he added quickly to keep the captain from talking. “I know, it was my […]
Posted inDecember 1970, Magazine
Gay Is Good for Us All
Oh no, not the fairies too!” said a woman watching the Gay Liberation Movement march up Sixth Avenue last June, with a quizzical, good-humored expression on her face, as though they were so many puppies. “I’m from Ohio. I think it’s funny,” said a tourist. “I’d like to kick the shit out of them,” said […]
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Tilting at Windmills
Should you still need convincing that Wall Street salaries and bonuses have been excessive, consider this fact supplied by former newspaper reporter and Wall Street executive William D. Cohan in the New York Times: “Compensation has historically consumed half or more of every dollar of revenue generated on Wall Street.” Wall Street tells us its […]
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U.S. News responds to the NORC Report
Ever since 1983 when U.S. News & World Report first published its college rankings, the magazine has striven to improve its methodology. That should be quite evident, at least, by the fact that our first college ranking listed 76 colleges based on only a reputation survey, and 17 years later we have come to a […]
Posted inMay 1969
Books: The Agony of the American Left by Christopher Lasch
Christopher Lasch’s The Agony of the American Left [Alfred A. Knopf, 224 pages, $4.95] is a useful book which attempts to deal with the intellectual and political failure of the Left in America. He begins by asking the question invariably asked by the old of the young, “What’s your plan? What’s your program?” His answer […]