Archive
Primary tabs
-
-
Of Our Time: Cyberpower and Freedom
-
State of the Debate: Back to Boys' School
Tender anecdotes about elite all-boys' schools have ignited efforts to expand single-sex education to Americans from all backgrounds. But there's another side of the story.
-
The Sexual Counterrevolution
The sexual revolution brought excess as well as progress. In the aftermath of AIDS, a new puritanism threatens to repeal both.
-
The Real China Question
How to admit China and other former communist countries into the world trading club--without destroying the international economic system in the process.
-
The Chile Con
Advocates of privatizing Social Security point to Chile. But take a closer look at who's really benefiting from the Chilean system.
-
The Moynihan Enigma
Why the Senate's intellectual giant is a strangely ineffective lawmaker.
-
What Russia Teaches Us Now
Metastasizing organized crime, massive tax evasion, unregulated sales of missiles--the people of Russia and the world now have more to fear from the breakdown of the Russian state than from its power. Why liberty itself depends on competent government.
-
Family Feud
A reply to "Family Values, The Sequel," May-June 1997.
-
Popping Contributions
Last year conservatives tried and failed to destroy the effectiveness of food and drug regulation. Now they say they want only modest FDA reforms. Watch out.
-
How We Lost the Peace Dividend
After every previous war, we sent troops home and cut defense spending. The Col War is over, but real spending still runs 85 percent of the Cold War average.
-
Behind the Numbers: Capital's Gain
Contrary to the conventional view among economists, the shares of national income going to capital and labor have shifted. Capital's gain has been labor's loss.
-
Regressive Recovery
If California's present is the nation's future, then the Golden State's split-level prosperity is an ominous social indicator.
-
Lingo Jingo
The story told by the English-only movement is nonsense from beginning to end. No language was ever less in need of official protection.
-
How She Got a Job
Everyone who participates in this innovative welfare-to-work program finds steady employment. Too bad it's precisely the kind of effort that the new federal welfare law discourages.
-
-
-
Below the Beltway: Whistling Past the Trade Deficit
-
Behind the Numbers: The Privateers' Free Lunch
The flawed mathematical assumption behind privatizing Social Security.
-
The Tocqueville Files: The Other Civic America
Despite fears of civic decline, the United States remains the country with the highest rate of volunteering. The explanation may be America's web of religious affiliations.
-
Up From Bipartisanship
Support for center-right bipartisan government is both misleading and dangerous. It fails to address the problems of the economically stressed, gives them no reason to vote, and could render the Democrats irrelevant.
-
The Big Tilt
It's not just how many take part in politics; it's who. Inequality is more pronounced in America than in other democracies, and it's growing.
-
The Devil in Devolution
Turning power back to the states has gained wide support. But there's a reason for national decisions: One state's solution may aggravate another state's problems.
-
Of Our Time: Rules That Liberate
-
Special Report: The Crime Debate
-
State of the Debate: Family Values: The Sequel
The Institute for America Values has helped define recent debate about the family. But its writers have the facts wrong--the policies they encourage could actually make children's lives worse.
-
Controversy: Clean Elections Continued
-
Special Report: The Crime Debate:
-
State of the Debate: Who's Afraid of Michael Jordan?
There's no denying that blacks dominate basketball and other professional sports. But have whites rationalized black physical prowess only by equating it with mental deficiency?
-
Devil in the Details
-
The Hidden Paradox of Welfare Reform
If former welfare beneficiaries can get jobs, they'll be better off, right? Not necessarily. Because their costs will be higher, particularly for child care and health care, they may earn more yet do worse.
-
Storylines: Scandals for Dummies
-
Hoop Schemes?
-
Special Report: The Crime Debate
-
-
-
State of the Debate: The White Rage
Why has extremist violence exploded on the right? A historical look at the evolution of populist rage.
-
Seeing Through Computers
Computer literacy used to mean knowing how computers worked; now it means just knowing how to work with them. What we need are new critical reading skills for the emerging electronic culture.
-
Devil in the Details
-
How Low Can You Go?
-
Can new Labour Dance the Clinton?
-
Controversy: Why Did Clinton Win?
Will Marshall and Mark Penn debate Robert L. Borosage and Stanley B. Greenberg.
-
Of our Time: Democracy v. Dollar
-
Behind the Numbers: Spin Cycle
Supply-siders point to economic growth during the 1980s as a vindication of Reaganomics. But adjusting for the business cycle shows that the real rate of productivity growth has been the same over the past three decades.
-
Overworked and Underemployed
-
The Limits of Markets
The claim that the freest market produces the best economic and social outcome is the centerpiece of the conservative political resurgence. But without government intervention, the market can destroy a lot of things--including itself.
-
State of the Debate: Indelible Colors
A book by two political theorists argues that new, cultural definitions of race can be as insidious as the old, biological ones.
-
The Shaming Sham
Conservatives, and even a few liberals, insist that moral shaming isn't as bad as government censorship. Don't believe them, warns a conservative writer.
-
Bedside Manna
Marcus Welby was a myth; doctors have always cared about money. But the for-profit managed care industry makes no pretense: It's offering physicians money to make decisions that are plainly not in the interests of patients.
-
A Global Warning
Less developed countries are spewing dangerous emissions that will lead to global warming. But it will take money to change that--money that the wealthier, more developed nations are reluctant to spend.
-
-
-
Breaching the Great Wall
China's neomercantalism harms America's economic interests. A mutually beneficial relationship will take more assertive trade policies.
-
Is There a Social Security Crisis?
-
How Low Can You Go?
-
Of Our Time: The Clinton Presidency, Take Three
-
Who Governs Globalism?
For at least a generation the U.S. has propped up the global economy by absorbing the world's surplus of goods. That's not good for the U.S. or its trading partners.
-
Why Boomers Don't Spell Bust
We could afford the dependent baby boomer generation once--during its childhood. We can do it again when the boomers retire.
-
Dead Center
The centrist politics of the election produced a shrunken electorate and mandate. Are there fresh sources of progressive energy at the grass roots?
-
Clean Elections, How To
Public frustration with political influence peddling hasn't been this high since Watergate, and thanks to Maine we finally have an example of how to do reform right.
-
State of the Debate: Tough Guys
William Bennett, John DiIulio, and John Walters say it's time liberals faced the hard facts about crime. Maybe they should heed their own advice.
-
Below the Beltway: Goo-Goos Versus Populists
-
The New China Lobby
Who bought American indulgence of China? Surprise--multinational corporations that fly the U.S. flag.
-
Behind the Numbers: The Misdiagnosis of Eurosclerosis
Champions of the U.S. economic system say that Europe's generous social protections cause high unemployment. But it's the global economy that's driving up joblessness in Europe--just as it increases income inequality in the United States.
-
Are Black Diplomas Worth Less?
Relative to whites, minorities have made impressive gains in education attainment. Why are they still falling behind economically?
-
When Preferences Disappear
Proposition 209 signals the end of gender and racial favoritism in California, but it may also be the beginning of affirmative action by other means.
-
State of the Debate: Quayle Hunting
Dan and Marilyn Quayle send--uh, try to send--a message on family values.
-
Welfare as We Might Know It
Why I resigned in protest over President Clinton's signing of welfare reform--and what can still be done to repair it.
-
-
-
Eyes on the Street: Community Policing in Chicago
It's now the favorite remedy for urban crime, but a visit to the front lines in Chicago suggests how hard it is to make community policing work.
-
Will Class Trump Gender?: The New Assault on Feminism
"Goodbye, feminism," say some critics who insist that women can prosper as rugged individualists. Funny thing, the new antifeminists sound a lot like the old laissez-faire conservatives.
-
Multimedia and Multiple Intelligences
New multimedia technology could do a lot for children if educators recognize diverse intelligences that schools traditionally haven't favored.
-
The Great Social Security Scare
Advocates of privatization are using the financial stress of the baby boomers' retirement to undo the advances that Social Security has brought. Relieving the financial pressures, however, has become a phony excuse for privatization.
-
A Secure System
A former commissioner of Social Security explains how to save it.
-
Liberty, Community, and the National Idea
Is a renewed emphasis on the value of community the answer to our political woes? Not if it's defined in purely local terms.
-
How Low Can You Go?
-
Yes, Union
Labor's message to liberals: Rumors of our irrelevance have been much exaggerated.
-
Devil in the Details
-
The Balanced Budget Trap
Absolute budget balance has become orthodoxy; a constitutional amendment to enforce it may pass Congress even if Democrats win the elections. but look at the costs.
-
Of Our Time: A Liberal Dunkirk?
-
The Aging Opportunity: America's Elderly as a Civic Resource
The aging of American society is almost always seen as a problem, but the elderly may be our only growing natural resource -- provided we create new ways to mobilize their civic energies.
-
Of Economists and Liberals
A reply to Robert Kuttner, "Peddling Krugman," September-October 1996.
-
The Other Edmund Wilson
Today there is no shortage of writing about literature or of literature about writing. But there used to be writing that was about both.
-
Conceding Success
Several recent studies show that two major undertakings of progressive government -- environmental regulation and public education -- have been far more successful than widely believed.
-
