National Review back issues from December 1997:
Persecutions.(U.S. Senator rebuts immigration policy assertions in Nov. 10, 1997 article, 'Persecution Complex'; includes journalist's reply)(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Don Barnett's "Persecution Complex" [Nov. 10] contained a number of factual errors on refugee policy. Neither I nor, to my knowledge, any other member of Congress called for a 40 per cent increase in refugee numbers this year. I and other members of both parties voiced concerns with the ...
A slice of history.(Michael von Clemm, late president of Templeton College, Oxford)(Brief Article)(Obituary)(Editorial)
Dec 08, 1997; ... "Read biography," said Disraeli, "for that is life without theory." And to grasp the truth of that remark, read an obituary. Those in the U.S. press, alas, are usually perfunctory at best. But British newspapers -- notably, the London Times and the Daily Telegraph --run long, serious and ...
Sound the retreat.(Saddam Hussein bests Bill Clinton in autumn '97 wrangle over weapons inspections)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
Dec 08, 1997; ... At the end of October, Saddam Hussein suddenly objected to the presence of Americans in the UN inspection team that monitors his clandestine programs to build weapons of mass destruction. It was a phony objection: the UN Special Commission (Unscom) was not a U.S.-dominated operation but a ...
Right data.(bogus projected federal budget surplus in 2002, due only to Social Security Trust Fund transfers; Kidcare expenses likely underestimated)(Brief Article)(Column)
Dec 08, 1997; ... YES. It's almost there. The federal budget deficit fell to a 23-year low of $23 billion in FY97. The budget will move into surplus by 2002 for the first time since 1969, according to the latest projections of the Congressional Budget Office. But there's a big asterisk here: unlike the ...
Off track.(free trade/fast track loses in Congress; Republicans must decide between free trade and Patrick Buchanan)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
Dec 08, 1997 ... FACING defeat by House Democrats, President Clinton was forced to pull his proposal for "fast track," whereby Congress would agree to hold an up-or-down vote on trade agreements he negotiates. The proposal is almost certainly dead for this Congress, and probably for this Administration. The ...
Isaiah Berlin, RIP.(Oxford political philosopher)(Brief Article)(Editorial)(Obituary)
Dec 08, 1997; ... SIR Isaiah Berlin, Britain's most distinguished intellectual, has died at age 88, loaded down with honors both political and academic. Born in Riga, he came to England as a boy and for most of his academic life was at the center of power in Oxford as a fellow of All Souls College and later ...
Clinton's inscrutable China policy. (Capital Scene)(Column)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Mr. Manning, formerly a State Department advisor on Asia policy (1989 - 93), is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Przystup, formerly a member of the policy-planning staffs of the State and Defense Departments (1986 - 94), is director of the Asian Studies Center at The ...
Cuts of pork.(Clinton's inefficient use of his new line-item veto)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... WASHINGTON, D.C.THROUGHOUT last year's debate over the line-item veto, I was frequently asked by reporters whether Bill Clinton would use it to terminate Republican pork-barrel projects. I always unhesitatingly responded: I certainly hope so.Once in a blue moon in ...
Gekko.(South Korea's central planning succumbs to collapse of its won; international help not forthcoming)(Brief Article)(Column)
Dec 08, 1997; ... MARION Barry, the mayor of Washington, D.C., has put up $100,000 of his taxpayers' money so the city can compete to host the next summer Olympics. Apparently he hopes to enter himself in the crack and field events.This promises to be a most educational month or two in the ...
Globalist heart-warming: the global-warming debate heats up.
Dec 08, 1997; ... Efforts in Kyoto to reduce worldwide CO2 emissions are both unnecessary and futile -- but that does not mean they will have no effect.As world leaders prepare for their impending summit in Kyoto, Japan, where they are supposed to decide what to do about global warming, there seems ...
The CO2 problem.(global warming abatement - non-participating nations in the Kyoto Protocol emit far more than the signatories)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997 ... IN THE run-up to the Kyoto conference, it seems to have escaped nearly everyone's attention just how quantitatively overwhelming will be the CO2 emitted by the non-participating countries, and just how futile will be the industrialized nations' efforts to cut back on CO2. To understand this, ...
What rubbish?(global warming abatement - futility of current solid waste policies)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... ACCORDING to the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States generates roughly 1,560 pounds of municipal solid waste per person per year. Composition studies of municipal solid waste reveal that it consists of between 34 and 59 per cent degradable carbon. Therefore, America's ...
Married to the Mob.(AFL-CIO and liberalism)(Cover Story)
Dec 08, 1997; ... 'Can you imagine? Planned Parenthood." Jimmy Hoffa Jr. is eating a thick 10-ounce cheeseburger at Carl's Chop House in a run-down section of Detroit just blocks from his Teamster offices, lamenting the prior affiliation of Bill Hamilton, a top aide to Teamster president Ron Carey. "This guy ...
Hide and seek: America's impressive record of catching terrorists is helping keep their activities to a minumum.
Dec 08, 1997; ... IT was shortly before 8 A.M. on January 25, 1993, the height of the morning rush hour. At the entrance to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., as traffic was waiting at the stop light to make a left turn into the agency complex, a man got out of his car with a Chinese-made AK-47 ...
Rotten apples: when it comes to teaching teachers how to teach, America's schools of education are failing miserably.
Dec 08, 1997; ... WHEN administrators in the Connetquot school district on New York's Long Island decided earlier this year to hire more teachers for their schools, they began their selection process by requiring that the would-be teachers -- all of them graduates of education schools -- demonstrate the ...
As the bell curves: is 'The Bell Curve' the stealth public-policy book of the 1990s?
Dec 08, 1997; ... DS: Three years after publication of The Bell Curve, I find myself endlessly reading news stories about great national controversies in which all the participants do their best to ignore the data you and Dick Herrnstein laid on the table. Three recent examples:1) the row over ...
The Vice President.(satire - hypothetical letter from Al Gore on defeating Saddam Hussein and Dick Gephardt)(Brief Article)(Column)
Dec 08, 1997 ... When a despotic bully rattles his sword, there's only one thing to do: strike and strike hard. This guy has been a problem for us since day one, and I said it then and I'll say it now: To heck with diplomacy -- let's rock-and-roll.That's how you handle the Gephardts of this world, ...
Fascism a la Francaise.(pre-Vichy France)(Books, Arts & Manners)(Column)
Dec 08, 1997; ... IT WAS a splendid myth. France, defeated on the battlefield but unbowed in spirit, fought on magnificently in the Resistance against the Nazi beast and played a major role in its own Liberation. As one man, the French fought the German conqueror bitterly, bleeding him white, until France's ...
God and the American Writer.
Dec 08, 1997; ... LET us begin by praising Alfred Kazin. Now in his eighties, he has lived long with books, and literature matters greatly to him. All that he has written since On Native Ground (1942) testifies to that. Today, if you drop in on an English-literature class, you are likely to hear a lecture on ...
Wobegon Boy.
Dec 08, 1997; ... THOMAS Jefferson's ideal of democratic virtue, the yeoman farmer, is alive and well and living in Lake Wobegon. Jefferson argued that the Republic could not long survive without the common-sense morality of small landholders, whose moderation and literally down-to-earth attitude provides the ...
Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law.
Dec 08, 1997; ... IN the 1930s and '40s, advocates of "legal realism" argued that there were no objective principles constraining judges' decisions. A few decades later, in the 1970s, theorists of "critical legal studies" used this what-the-judge-had-for-breakfast argument -- they called it "indeterminacy" ...
The Wings of the Dove.
Dec 08, 1997; ... I HAVE always had problems with Henry James. Good Henry James strikes me as inferior Marcel Proust, and bad Henry James as not worth pursuing down its labyrinthine ways. But our concern here is with James on film. There the high points were the rather free adaptation of Washington Square as ...
Beaumarchais.
Dec 08, 1997; ... Uncomprehending reviews may have harmed Beaumarchais, Edouard Molino's charming film about the adventures of the creator of Figaro, which he co-wrote with Jean-Claude Brisville, leaning on an unfinished manuscript by the great Sacha Guitry. I have no idea exactly who contributed what, or how ...
Paris, apartment-style.(Travel)
Dec 08, 1997; ... I AWAKE to a pleasing gurgle from the coffee machine and the tantalizing aroma of a fresh croissant heating up. A cool breeze blows across the dining room through tall French windows. This spring, on a two-and-a-half-week visit to Paris, my sister Jane and I had rented an apartment on the ...
Scrambled justice.(rebuke of the judge who freed Louise Woodward)(On The Right)(Column)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... It's worth a moment to reflect on the idea of justice gone wild. What comes to mind is lynch justice. Or "vigilante" justice. As an exercise, assume that the jury had freed Louise and that a crowd of angry reactors, pledging the protection of innocents, had stormed into her jail and strung ...
Did Jiang teach us anything?(Jiang Zemin; US justified in pressuring China on human rights)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... "Mr. President, President Clinton said in his exchange with you that on the matter of human rights you were on the dark side of history. What is your comment on that?"Mr. Jiang's reply was anticipated by anyone who reads the press thoughtfully. He would say three things, in ...
Is marijuana fear a myth?(case for de-criminalization of marijuana)(On The Right)(Column)
Dec 08, 1997; ... NEW YORK, OCTOBER 14The broadsides are everywhere. The President warns against those who are "soft" on drugs. Steve Forbes writes of "an insidious effort . . . to legalize drugs. Medical marijuana is the stealth legalizers' Trojan Horse." It is refreshing that State Senator John ...
Marijuana Myths/Marijuana Facts.
Dec 08, 1997; ... The broadsides are everywhere. The President warns against those who are "soft" on drugs. Steve Forbes writes of "an insidious effort . . . to legalize drugs. Medical marijuana is the stealth legalizers' Trojan Horse." It is refreshing that State Senator John Vasconcellos in California is ...
The Misanthrope's Corner.(child-worship in America; witch-hunting child abuse)(Column)(Brief Article)
Dec 08, 1997; ... Miss King is the author of The Florence King Reader and other books.BRACE yourselves, this is an upbeat column. The Virginia gubernatorial election and the reaction to the verdict in the "Au Pair Murder Trial" put a song in my heart.As you know, our new Republican ...
Right data.(poor worse off under Pres Clinton's administration)(Column)(Brief Article)
Dec 22, 1997; ... WHAT a difference a decade makes. During the 1980s each uptick in the share of national income going to the wealthy was maligned as the work of Republican economic policies. Today no one seems to notice. In 1996 the richest 20 per cent of U.S. households received a record 49 per cent of ...
Scofflaw.(Janet Reno's failure to name independent counsel to investigate campaign finance tactics of Bill Clinton and Al Gore)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
Dec 22, 1997 ... FIRST Janet Reno became the only attorney general to endorse the independent-counsel statute. Now she is the first one blatantly to disregard its provisions. In a decision everyone has seen coming for weeks, Miss Reno has announced she will not ask for an independent counsel to investigate ...
Baht fever.(International Monetary Fund economic policy; Thailand's currency crisis)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
Dec 22, 1997 ... IF Republican grandees like George Shultz, William Simon, and Walter Wriston are calling for an end to the International Monetary Fund as we know it, then it is clearly an issue whose time has come. The IMF has become a global force for hardship, austerity, and economic failure. Wherever the ...
End in sight.(affirmative action)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
Dec 22, 1997 ... THE forces supporting racial preferences are buckling and crumbling, like Germans on the Western Front in 1917.Early in November, Houston voters rejected Proposition A, an anti-preference referendum that a liberal Democratic mayor had recast in the most unattractive language ...
How not to save American jobs.
Dec 22, 1997; ... Mr. Borjas is professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. This article draws upon work reported in "How Much Do Immigration and Trade Affect Labor Market Outcomes?" written jointly with Richard B. Freeman and Lawrence F. Katz and published in ...
Lost highway.(transportation spending)
Dec 22, 1997; ... WASHINGTON, D.C.AT 1:30 in the morning on May 22, freshman Republican Kay Granger of Texas trudged wearily down the long hallway of the Russell House Office Building to a meeting with Bud Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation Committee. The House was debating a ...
Bread & circuses.(Family Research Council hed Gary Bauer's political ambitions)(Brief Article)(Column)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Last month the Kansas City Star carried a hot story without quite realizing it. It reported that Gary Bauer was "sounding decidedly presidential" in a speech to supporters of a local Christian school. That was merely the latest Bauer sighting. The Economist in May had called Bauer "the most ...
Angst und drang: germany's productive sector has a limited capability to subsidize the non-productive.
Dec 22, 1997; ... Mr. Murdock is an MSNBC columnist and an Adjunct Fellow with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in Fairfax, Va.PANKER, GermanyAn eighteenth-century swing set graces the lawn of the estate where Prince Moritz of Hesse lives with his family and a stately pair of black ...
The origin of conservatism.
Dec 22, 1997; ... The Origin of Conservatism Evolutionary theories suggest that conservative politics are necessary to govern a fallen man.TODAY a revolution is remaking the social sciences. For the last two decades, theorists in psychology, economics, anthropology, and linguistics have begun to ...
Spreading the word: Pfizer Forum.(1997 International Conservative Congress)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Has conservatism triumphed? Is conservatism everywhere losing elections to a revitalized Left? These two questions dominated the first International Conservative Congress -- held in Washington, D.C., in September and sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, ...
Conservatism now.(1997 International Conservative Congress)
Dec 22, 1997; ... While honoring their past, conservatives must bring it into the future. Herewith, a plan.ANGLO-AMERICAN conservatism is unique in its intellectual origins. The gap between the United States and Britain across the Atlantic is infinitely smaller than the gap between Britain and ...
The Mayflower Compact. (conservative platform)(1997 International Conservative Congress)
Dec 22, 1997 ... Adopted by delegates to the first International Conservative Congress, the Mayflower Hotel, Washington, District of Columbia, September 28, 1997.FOR the first time in almost twenty years, parties of the Left either hold power or are poised to take it in all the major industrial ...
Toast to tomorrow.(1997 International Conservative Congress)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Much have we done, but much remains to do. Conservatives, forward march.Josef Stalin was never easy for American fellow-travelers to handle, though some attempted it and even found themselves defending the coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948. But it was not until Vietnam that the ...
A guiding light. (excerpt from essay by winner of Intercollegiate Studies Institute competition)(1997 International Conservative Congress)(Brief Article)
Dec 22, 1997; ... At the Congress, Lady Thatcher presented the prize to the winner in a competition for the best essay on translating principles into political practices. The competition, sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, was limited to writers under 25 years of age. The winner, chosen by a ...
The front-runner: is it George W. Bush already?(Campaign 2000)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Is it George W. Bush already?Mr. Ponnuru is NR's national reporter.'IT'S George Bush, of course it's George Bush. Why even bother to have the primaries?" joked an insider at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami in November. He was reflecting the ...
The pragmatists: switch-hitting has long been a characteristic of politicians - but never a more honored one than today.
Dec 22, 1997; ... Switch-hitting has long been a characteristic of politicians --but never a more honored one than today.Mr. Bowman is American Editor of the Times Literary Supplement.THE great Restoration statesman the Marquess of Halifax is now usually remembered with the disparaging ...
The Foster controversy.(death of Clinton administration attorney Vincent Foster)(Brief Article)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Mr. Irvine is chairman of Accuracy in Media.PROFESSOR Jacob Cohen's review of The Strange Death of Vincent Foster by Christopher Ruddy is badly out of focus ("Conspiracy Central" November 24). He confines himself to discussing peripheral oddities and ignores the evidence that has ...
Strange death.(Clinton administration attorney Vincent Foster)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Mr. Ruddy is the author of The Strange Death of Vincent Foster and a reporter with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.JACOB Cohen is not happy with The Strange Death of Vincent Foster (Free Press, 1997), if his review of my book is any indication.It is clear that Cohen has not ...
Case closed.(death of Clinton administration attorney Vincent Foster)
Dec 22, 1997; ... Mr. Cohen is a professor of American studies at Brandeis University.MR. RUDDY gives the game away in his opening gambit. He has offered no grand conspiracy theory, he says, and sets down quotations from several respectable reviewers who dutifully repeated what he cued them to say ...
The Vice President, Washington.(humorous, fictitious letter from Al Gore)(Brief Article)(Column)
Dec 22, 1997 ... I took the bull by the horns. Tipper has been after me to display signs of my warrior self, and the holidays seemed a perfect time, and so I invited Janet Reno to Thanksgiving dinner.It was awkward, of course. I knew Janet was planning to spend the weekend deciding whether to call ...
American in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible.
Dec 22, 1997; ... America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible, by Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom (Simon & Schuster, 704 pp., $32.50)The Inner City: Urban Poverty and Economic Development in the Next Century, edited by Thomas D. Boston and Catherine L. Ross (Transaction, 357 pp., ...
The Inner City: Urban Poverty and Economic Development in the Next Century.
Dec 22, 1997; ... The Inner City: Urban Poverty and Economic Development in the Next Century, edited by Thomas D. Boston and Catherine L. Ross (Transaction, 357 pp., $24.75)Liberal Racism, by Jim Sleeper (Viking, 185 pp., $21.95)Reaching beyond Race, by Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G ....
Liberal Racism.
Dec 22, 1997; ... Liberal Racism, by Jim Sleeper (Viking, 185 pp., $21.95)Reaching beyond Race, by Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines (Harvard, 185 pp., $22.95)Mr. DiIulio, who teaches political science at Princeton, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-editor (with ...
Reaching Beyond Race.
Dec 22, 1997; ... Reaching beyond Race, by Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines (Harvard, 185 pp., $22.95)Mr. DiIulio, who teaches political science at Princeton, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-editor (with Frank Thompson) of Medicaid and the States, forthcoming from ...
Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and '40s.
Dec 22, 1997; ... Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & '40s, edited by Robert Polito (Library of America, 990 pp., $35)Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s, edited by Robert Polito (Library of America, 892 pp., $35)Mr. Teachout, the music critic of Commentary, is currently at ...
Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s.
Dec 22, 1997; ... Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s & '40s, edited by Robert Polito (Library of America, 990 pp., $35)Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1950s, edited by Robert Polito (Library of America, 892 pp., $35)Mr. Teachout, the music critic of Commentary, is currently at ...
A Certain Justice.
Dec 22, 1997; ... A Certain Justice, by P. D. James (Knopf, 400 pp., $25)Road Rage, by Ruth Rendell (Crown, 344 pp., $25)10-Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis (Putnam, 273 pp., $24.95)Murder Book, by Richard Rayner (Houghton Mifflin, 357 pp., $25)The Case Has Altered, by ...
Road Rage.
Dec 22, 1997; ... A Certain Justice, by P. D. James (Knopf, 400 pp., $25)Road Rage, by Ruth Rendell (Crown, 344 pp., $25)10-Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis (Putnam, 273 pp., $24.95)Murder Book, by Richard Rayner (Houghton Mifflin, 357 pp., $25)The Case Has Altered, by ...
10-Lb. Penalty.
Dec 22, 1997; ... A Certain Justice, by P. D. James (Knopf, 400 pp., $25)Road Rage, by Ruth Rendell (Crown, 344 pp., $25)10-Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis (Putnam, 273 pp., $24.95)Murder Book, by Richard Rayner (Houghton Mifflin, 357 pp., $25)The Case Has Altered, by ...
Murder Book.
Dec 22, 1997; ... A Certain Justice, by P. D. James (Knopf, 400 pp., $25)Road Rage, by Ruth Rendell (Crown, 344 pp., $25)10-Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis (Putnam, 273 pp., $24.95)Murder Book, by Richard Rayner (Houghton Mifflin, 357 pp., $25)The Case Has Altered, by ...
The Case Has Altered.
Dec 22, 1997; ... A Certain Justice, by P. D. James (Knopf, 400 pp., $25)Road Rage, by Ruth Rendell (Crown, 344 pp., $25)10-Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis (Putnam, 273 pp., $24.95)Murder Book, by Richard Rayner (Houghton Mifflin, 357 pp., $25)The Case Has Altered, by ...
A/K/A Jane.
Dec 22, 1997; ... A Certain Justice, by P. D. James (Knopf, 400 pp., $25)Road Rage, by Ruth Rendell (Crown, 344 pp., $25)10-Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis (Putnam, 273 pp., $24.95)Murder Book, by Richard Rayner (Houghton Mifflin, 357 pp., $25)The Case Has Altered, by ...
A Holly, Jolly Murder.
Dec 22, 1997; ... A Certain Justice, by P. D. James (Knopf, 400 pp., $25)Road Rage, by Ruth Rendell (Crown, 344 pp., $25)10-Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis (Putnam, 273 pp., $24.95)Murder Book, by Richard Rayner (Houghton Mifflin, 357 pp., $25)The Case Has Altered, by ...
The Edith Wharton Murders.
Dec 22, 1997; ... A Certain Justice, by P. D. James (Knopf, 400 pp., $25)Road Rage, by Ruth Rendell (Crown, 344 pp., $25)10-Lb. Penalty, by Dick Francis (Putnam, 273 pp., $24.95)Murder Book, by Richard Rayner (Houghton Mifflin, 357 pp., $25)The Case Has Altered, by ...
Welcome to Sarajevo.
Dec 22, 1997; ... MICHAEL Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo is a scary and moving film that may also be great. It is loosely based on Natasha's Story, the account by the British journalist Michael Nicholson of his adoption of a nine-year-old Bosnian youngster. Winterbottom and his scenarist, Frank Cottrell ...
Late discoveries.(food appreciation)(Column)(Brief Article)
Dec 22, 1997; ... MY MOTHER was an excellent cook, in the Midwestern farmhouse tradition: that is, meat and potatoes (I say meat advisedly: like many inland-raised Americans of her generation, she never really took to seafood), and wonderful baked goods -- cookies and cakes, pies and breads.There ...