Despite being born under the banner of liberalism, the nations of Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, have been plagued by authoritarian rulers, corruption, and economies dominated by privilege. If this is liberalism, it would have been unrecognizable to John Locke, Adam Smith, or James Madison. Today, as a resurgent faith in constitutional democracy and free markets sweeps the world, many Latin American leaders and intellectuals are trying to make their nations liberal in fact as well as in name. Tina Rosenberg argues that success is anything but assured.
Although G. K. Chesterton is among his compatriots. He would have one of the most quoted of been gratified by the remark of an ordinary early-20th-century English policeman who turned up at his funeral: writers, he has yet to find his "We'd all have been here if we could have fair share of late-20th-cen- got off duty. He was a grand man." tury English readers. During Since then, devoted Chestertonians his lifetime he was immensely popular, have continued reading him furiously. more popular...
Many a writer on technol- ogy has been struck in a
moment of pause be-
tween sentences or an
hour of distraction be-
tween paragraphs by the extraordinariness of ordinary things. The push-button telephone, the electronic cal- culator, and the very computer on which these words are being processed are among the more sophisticated things we use, and they awe into silence those of us who are not electrical engineers. By contrast, low- tech objects such as pins, thumb tacks, and paper clips a...
he study of history assumes
time and place, without
which a past event cannot be
understood. Both are neces-
sary, but are they sufficient?
The question arises because there are often inquiries that are clearly not couched, as the physical sciences are, in terms of timeless causes and effects but that we do not consider to be history-inquiries relating to geology, botany, and zoology, in which it is necessary to specify time and place. Such inquiries have indeed been sometimes described as...
Reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad
. -Reading the LA. Riot
A Survey of Recent Articles
The fires were still smoldering in South-Central Los Angeles last May when the debate about the riot's underlying causes commenced. At the root of the burning and killing and looting of April 29-May 3, 1992, the Bush administration maintained, were the failed Great Society pro- grams of the 1960s. On the contrary, asserts writer Mike Davis in the Nation (June...
Theodore J. Lowi, in The New York Times Magazine (Aug. 23, 1992), 229 W. 43rd St., New York,
N.Y. 10036.
When Ross Perot suddenly called off his ex- traordinary independent presidential campaign last July, his many followers were angry and disappointed. Yet the feisty Texas billionaire, asserts Lowi, a Cornell political scientist, still performed a great national service: His cam- paign (which at this writing may yet be revived) "removed all doubt about the viability of a broad-based third...
Theodore J. Lowi, in The New York Times Magazine (Aug. 23, 1992), 229 W. 43rd St., New York,
N.Y. 10036.
When Ross Perot suddenly called off his ex- traordinary independent presidential campaign last July, his many followers were angry and disappointed. Yet the feisty Texas billionaire, asserts Lowi, a Cornell political scientist, still performed a great national service: His cam- paign (which at this writing may yet be revived) "removed all doubt about the viability of a broad-based third...
IODICALS
political scientist.
Johnson was at times "a difficult boss," Bar- rett acknowledges. Indeed, according to for- mer White House Press Secretary George Reedy, LBJ was a "miserable" human being- "a bully,-sadist, lout, and egotist." Nevertheless, Barrett- says, Johnson eagerly sought out "an impressive array of advisers" who were not overly deferential. And he cloaked the advisory process in secrecy not just to satisfy the desires of his own psyche...
Charles R. Shrader, in Parameters (Autumn 1992), U.S. Army War College, Carlisle 'Friendly Fire' Barracks, Carlisle, Pa. 17013-5050.
Ofa total of 467 U.S. battle casualties in the Persian Gulf War, nearly one-fourth were caused "friendly fire." Thirty-five U.S. sol- diers were killed by U.S. weapons, and 72 were wounded. While there have been "friendly fire" casualties in all wars, modern weapons have made such losses more likely, according to Shrader, a military historian and...
William Pfaff, in The
Ethnic Nations
New Yorker (Aug. 10, 1992), 20 West 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10036.
The brutal Serbian exercise in "ethnic cleans- rope and the former Soviet Union since the col- ing" in what was Yugoslavia is only the most lapse of communism. At the root of these con- extreme manifestation of the ethnic conflicts flicts, historian-journalist Pfaff argues, is a that have broken out throughout Eastern Eu- concept of nationality radically different from
WQ AUTUMN 1...