I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll make you pick up your trash…
Magazine
Posted inMagazine
Returning Fire in the P.C. War
This is supposed to be the riposte to all those bestselling conservative books attacking political correctness at universities—the shelf that begins with Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, which was published in 1987 and whose title Lawrence Levine has chosen to mirror. Levine, an eminent American historian, is at his best when he’s debunking the […]
Posted inMagazine, September 1996
May the Force Be With You
Because the Republicans’ costly missile defense system probably won’t be.
Posted inMagazine
Making It, Part 2
This book sets off a psycho-physiological phenomenon called “reassurance-induced terror,” which can be defined roughly as the feeling you get when the pilot of the plane you’re riding in comes on the public address system to say that there’s nothing to worry about. Both the author, Bill Paul, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and his main […]
Posted inJuly/August 1995, Magazine
The FEMA Phoenix
Reform of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Posted inApril 1995
Paging Ward Cleaver
Perhaps the essential difference between the conservativism of the eighties and the conservativism of the nineties is that the former was mainly economic and upbeat and the latter seems to be mainly cultural and gloomy. The books that best convey the mood of Reagan conservativism are exuberant briefs for tax-cutting, like The Way the World Works and Wealth and Poverty. Now […]
Posted inMarch 1995
Usually First, Not Always Classy
The best of Clinton, the worst of Clinton: A new biography carefully traces both back to their roots
Posted inUncategorized
How Washington Tries to Strangle Even the Best Ideas
The inside story of how a bill became a law shows how the capital’s self-interested forces nearly derailed one of the most important reforms since the GI Bill.
Posted inMagazine
Very Risky Business
Last spring, when the stock market took its hair-raising ride, in one corner of Wall Street there was more than the usual anxiety. In fact, there was stockbrokers-looking-for-upper-floor-windows kind of fright. In April, clients of the giant Bankers Trust New York Inc.including Procter & Gambletook multimillion dollar losses on a kind of trading most Americans […]
Posted inJanuary 1994
Curb Violence by Targeting Violence
The first battle in America’s war at home has been won. That battle was over simply acknowledging that the war existed in the first place—that even though violence has not increased appreciably in recent years, we’ve been in a state of denial about its Vietnam-like toll. 1993 will be remembered as the year when we […]
