Archives Homepage

Essays | Summer 1993
The Real Trade Question

its Republican predecessors, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the larger General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Talk of an interna- tional trade war, the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s, was thick in the

more than 200 years ago Adam Smith and later elaborated by David Ricardo. It says, with blinding simplicity, that the best way for all to prosper is for each region to produce the goods it can manufacture most cheaply and efficiently and to trade them w...

In Essence | Summer 1993
Why Did Soviet Communism Fall?

Japan and then World War I- set off the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, respectively, so they led to change in this case. The U.S. defense buildup and hardline policies of the Reagan administration during the early 1980s, Sestanovich argues, prompted the Krem- lin to rethink its policies. "showing that past policies had led nowhere, Western toughness al-tered the internal power balance of Soviet poli- tics in favor of fundamental change." Then, af- ter Gorbachev embarked on change,...

In Essence | Summer 1993
Parchment Barriers?

Oscar Handlin, in The American Scholar (Spring 1993), 1811 Q St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.
Americans revel in their rights. Every educated American knows what the First Amendment says and even children know what it means to "take the Fifth." But nobody seems to know the Ninth Amendment, observes Handlin, the noted Harvard historian. They should, he argues, for it holds the key to a different, and wholly supe- rior, notion of rights from what we know today.
The Ninth Amendment states:...

In Essence | Summer 1993
The New Gay Politics

Oscar Handlin, in The American Scholar (Spring 1993), 1811 Q St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.
Americans revel in their rights. Every educated American knows what the First Amendment says and even children know what it means to "take the Fifth." But nobody seems to know the Ninth Amendment, observes Handlin, the noted Harvard historian. They should, he argues, for it holds the key to a different, and wholly supe- rior, notion of rights from what we know today.
The Ninth Amendment states:...

In Essence | Summer 1993
Vietnam: Who Served and Who Did Not?

the state be brought to an as a morally legitimate way of life, until outraged parents objected. end. That means, in his view, ending the ban on homosexuals in theWhlitary and allowing people of the same of equality, while leaving all the inequality of
sex to marry. "These two measures . . . represent emotion and passion to the private sphere, a politics that . . . makes a clear, public statement where they belong."
FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE

Vietnam: Who Served and Who Did Not?
A S...

In Essence | Summer 1993
The Balkan War's Shallow, Deadly Roots

~illiarnPfaff, in ForeignAffairs (Summer 1993),58 E. 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Many in the West believe that war in the Balkans stems from ancient and immutable hatreds, and that barbarism issomehow a natural state of affairs in that comer of the world. This fatalistic view has served to rationalize Western inaction in the former Yugoslavia, notes Pfaff, a columnist and author. Indeed, some of the combatants do see them- selves as avenging ancient wrongs, starting with the Battle of Kosovo...

In Essence | Summer 1993
How I Learned To Love the Deficit

Robert Eisner, in The Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (April 1993), Norton's Woods, 136 Irving St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
The sense of alarm over the nation's mounting national debt is now so widespread that it is re- freshing to read the occasional dissenter. One of these is Eisner, an economist at Northwestern University, past president of the American Eco- nomics Association, and a long-time critic of what might be called the "sky is falling" school of economics.
To...

In Essence | Summer 1993
A New Golden Age?

Robert Eisner, in The Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (April 1993), Norton's Woods, 136 Irving St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
The sense of alarm over the nation's mounting national debt is now so widespread that it is re- freshing to read the occasional dissenter. One of these is Eisner, an economist at Northwestern University, past president of the American Eco- nomics Association, and a longtime critic of what might be called the "sky is falling" school of economics.
To...

In Essence | Summer 1993
Two Parentsf Onef or None?

?
A Survey of Recent Articles
social scientists have gathered masses of evidence that confirm what was once con- sidered common sense about families, writes Barbara Defoe Whitehead in the Atlantic (April1993):Children in single-parent families

132 WQ SUMMER 1993
are more likely to be poor, to have emotional or behavioral problems, to drop out of high school, to become pregnant as teenagers, to abuse drugs, to get in trouble with the law, and to be victims of physical or sexual abuse.
And n...

In Essence | Summer 1993
The Mystique That Wasn't

iew (Feb. 1993). Over the past two centuries, since the Industrial Revolution began, there has been a shift away from the family as the basic unit of social organization. "As . . . many of its functions have moved outside the household [e.g., to the workplace], child rearing has moved increasingly out of the household as well. Con- structed social organization, in the form of the school, the nursery school, and the daycare cen- ter, [has] taken over many components of child rearing." These...

Pages