RISE OF EUROPE'S LITTLE NATIONS
n idea very much afoot in Europe this solution, while it worked in certain parts
today-oiie that arouses political of Europe for a time, today proves to be a trou-
passions everywhere from Ab- bling inheritance. Not only is it ill-suited to
, khazia to Scotland-is tlie notion nation-states (to those that liave existed for of cultural and territorial autonomy. The idea centuries as well as to those that liave emerged is, in fact, a compromise between tlie old...
38 WQ WINTER 1994
he years have been kind to the
memory of Winston Churchill.
Half a century has passed since his
rousing rule of Britain during World War 11, and while he still has his critics, and against them his defenders, the controversies that attended his career are muted or stilled now. Since the war, the empire he cherished has dissolved into a host of sovereign nations, and John Bull himself has had to swallow hard and learn to be a good European. Seen against such changes, Churchill's B...
0nce the Americans had backed into independence by demanding their rights as Englishmen, what next? No one supposed they were immune to the universal passions distin- guished by Kant: for possession, for power, and for honor. To fend off anarchy and sus- tain a workable society they would have to govern and ration those passions, in the process evolving cultural norms that even those who did not benefit immediately or equally would abide by.
Many foreigners and a fair number of ultrafederalists...
Misleading to call it a move- ment, and still worse to think of it as a program, but we now have seen enough minor liter- ary eruptions to suspect that it is a cultural symptom that bears some reflection: this burst of novel-writing from people who liave lived the conceptual life, the life of method and ar- gument, who often carry leather cases, or who give public lectures and contribute essays to learned journals. In tlie past five years, some of the world's leading literary critics liave turned...
?
t's at least sometl~ing to think abo~~t, the valtle-and often t11e superiority-of what
now that the 20th century is behind us, a century that, by historian John Lukacs's reckoning, began in 1914 and ended in
1989. Thatmostvertipousof centuriesbganwitl~ a resounding bang, one that dealt a near-n~ortal blow to all the big ideals and to all t11e gods.
In fact, the only god that came through the horrors of Verdun and the Somme unscatlied was irony. Not merely unscathed, it rose within the pantl~eo~~.
After W...
the news media, look mainly at the "big picture." They worry that the nation's health-care expen- ditures in 1993 amounted to 14 percent of gross national product (GNP) and are projected the Congressional Budget Office to grow to 18 per- cent by 2000. Most Americans agree that health- care costs must be controlled, but the costs they have in mind are their own. They do not want less care; they want to pay less, or at least not more. And that, many specialists believe, is a large part of...
Charles W. Calhoun, in Presidential Studies Quarterly (Fall 1993), 208 E. 75th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Theodore Roosevelt was not the first president to see his office as a "bully pulpit." A dozen years before luin, Benjamin Harrison, elected in 1888, grasped the opportunities tl-ie presidency offered to preach to the nation. Indeed, Harkon's "exercise of the 'priestly func- tions' of the presidency," argues Call-ioun, a historian at East Carolina University, helped transform...
Charles W. Calhoun, in Presidential Studies Quarterly (Fall 1993), 208 E. 75th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Theodore Roosevelt was not the first president to see his office as a "bully pulpit." A dozen years before luin, Benjamin Harrison, elected in 1888, grasped the opportunities tl-ie presidency offered to preach to the nation. Indeed, Harkon's "exercise of the 'priestly func- tions' of the presidency," argues Call-ioun, a historian at East Carolina University, helped transform...
1910, 27 state legislatures had been pushed to petition Congress for a constitutional amendment. Two years later, the Senate finally gave in, and in 1913 the 17th Amendment be- came law after it was ratified three-fourths of the states. A 28th Amendment, the authors say, could be only a few years away.
Court Costs
'Dwarfing the Political Capacity of the People? The Relationship Between Judicial Activism & Voter Turnout, 1840-1988" by Philip A. Klinkner, in Polity (Summer 1993), Thompson H...
1910, 27 state legislatures had been pushed to petition Congress for a constitutional amendment. Two years later, the Senate finally gave in, and in 1913 the 17th Amendment be- came law after it was ratified three-fourths of the states. A 28th Amendment, the authors say, could be only a few years away.
Court Costs
'Dwarfing the Political Capacity of the People? The Relationship Between Judicial Activism & Voter Turnout, 1840-1988" by Philip A. Klinkner, in Polity (Summer 1993), Thompson H...