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In Essence | Spring 1988
The Cap of Freedom

Yvonne Korshak, in

Smithsonian Studies in American Art (Fall
1987), 16-00 Pollitt Dr., Fair Lawn, N.J. 07410.
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee com- posed of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson to design a seal for the new United States. The three men differed in their ideas. Franklin suggested a depiction of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, Adams proposed Hercules poised between Vice and Virtue, and Jefferson argued for the Israelites in the w...

In Essence | Spring 1988
Hugo the Politician

French workingmen, writes Korshak, became the "quintessential French liberty cap." During the Revolution the symbol proliferated-on plaques, furniture, tea sets, and atop the Declara- tion of the Rights of Man.
Unlike the first American coins, which eliminated the cap, the French versions maintained it. Today it remains a powerful symbol for the state on French coins and postage stamps. In the United States, says Korshak, the cap's "radical meaning" faded simply being forgotten....

In Essence | Spring 1988
Kiwi Success

wi Success "New Zealand's Economy: Learning to Fly" in
The Economist (Nov. 21, 1987), 25 St. James
St., London SWlA lHG, United Kingdom.
New Zealand's economy has been failing ever since 1950, when the British Empire began to recede. But the market-oriented policies of Labour Prime Minister David Lange, argues a staff-written Economist report, may be halting New Zealand's long economic decline.
During the early 1980s, New Zealand was "one of the most regulated and distorted...

In Essence | Spring 1988
The Kurdish Way
In Essence | Spring 1988
Deregulating Japan

Mustafa Barzani. Barzani's son continues to battle Iraq, but now with support from Iran and Libya.
Since the Iran-Iraq war began in 1980, the Kurds have continued their violent campaigns in three nations.
Home to five Kurdish partisan armies, northern Iraq is "a cauldron of Kurdish separatism." Two groups of 10,000 guerrillas oppose the Iraqis, taking advantage of the army's preoccupation with the war to the south, and threatening the highway and oil pipeline to Turkey. Three armies...

In Essence | Spring 1988
Neocolonial Triumph

Michael C. Reed, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (June 1987), 32 East 57th St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
The overthrow of governments is common in much of Africa. Yet in the small West African country of Gabon, French neocolonialism has helped ensure that only two men have ruled this nation of perhaps one million since its independence in 1960. Gabon's very identity, notes Reed, a doc- toral candidate at the University of Washington, Seattle, "is inseparable from France."
Gabon's...

In Essence | Spring 1988
Soviets in Space
In Essence | Spring 1988
An End to Militance?

the early 1990s. And an extensive exploration of Mars is planned, including the landing of an unmanned rov- ing vehicle (with a 500-kilometer range) on the "Red Planet' in 1994 or 1996; a possible manned flight is anticipated at about the same time.
"We do not intend to slacken our efforts," Soviet leader Wail Gorbachev said in a 1986 speech at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, "and lose leading positions in space exploration."
tmce? "The New Industrial Relations: British...

Essays | Spring 1988
Meeting Mr. Eliot

LECTIONS

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Few writers have elicited more admiration or more antipathy than Thomas Steams Eliot (1888-1965). Many critics and fellow poets have assailed him as a stodgy traditionalist who denied any possibility of great modem verse. Just as many have hailed him for defining the modem poetic "sensibility." Here, on the centennial of his birth, Frank McComell reintroduces the Missouri-born expatriate who once said of himself, "How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!"

by Fr...

Essays | Spring 1988
The Joys and Sorrows of Being a Word Snob

"Ballpark figure" is a nice, fairly new phrase meaning "rough approxima- tion" (such as the estimates of attendance at a ball game). But it seems that America has entered the era of ballpark language where words are used approximately;they mean only roughly what we think they mean. So observes Joseph Epstein, singling out for disdain educators, heiresses, bu- reaucrats, TV anchormen, ecologists, and social scientists-among the many "quasi-semi-demi-ostensibly educated"...

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