. Here, Maurice Cranston reviews the man's hfe and work.
Among the philosophers of the modem world, John Locke has always been held in especially high regard in America. His influence on the Founding Fathers exceeded that of any other thinker. And the characteristically American attitude toward politics-indeed, toward life-can still be thought of as "Lockean," with its deep attachment to the rule of law, to equal rights to life, liberty, and property, to work and enterprise, to religious...
American relief groups. The developing world's poverty and hunger aroused sporadic concern in the West, but were not widely linked to population growth. Indeed, until the 1930s,
population grew faster in the West than in the poorer countries.
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The world's population, increasing more than one million hu- man beings a week, reached a total of five billion in 1986. Since the time of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), scholars and philoso- phers have worried that population growth, if u...
. Here, Harvard's Nick Eberstadt examines the diverse economic effects of the much-publicized "population explo- sion." His surprising conclusion: The size and growth rate of a poor country's population are seldom crucial to its material pros- pects. What matters most, he contends, is how well a society and its leaders cope with change.
The world's poorer nations are in the midst of an unprecedented "population revolution." The revolution is occurring not in the deliv- ery room,...
ot;The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars, and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to- overcrowded nations, since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race." So wrote the Christian theologian Tertullian during the second century A.D., when the earth's population was only about 300 million-or six percent of what it is today (five billion).
Tertullian's observation, and the book in which it appears-Garrett Hardin's
Population, Evolution and Birth Control...
Charles McC. Mathias, Jr., in Annals (July 1986), 3937 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.
Congressional campaigns may well be America's newest growth industry. Even after adjusting for inflation, between 1974 and 1984 the average cost of running for a House or Senate seat more than doubled.
Indeed, two years ago, House and Senate candidates collectively spent more than $374 million, much of it on television advertising.
To Mathias, U.S. senator (R.-Md.) and chairman of the Senate Com- mittee...
strict ceilings on overall spending and on their own personal campaign contributions.
Public financing would free politicians from many fundraising chores, says Mathias. It would also "level the playing field."
"Federalism and Competing Values in the Rea-
to the States gan Administration" Timothy J. Codan, in Publius (Winter 1986), Temple Univ., Philadel-phia, Pa. 19122.
"My administration is committed-heart and soul-to the broad principles of American federalism,"...
Robert L. Dudley and Craig R. Ducat, in The Western Political Quarterly (June 1986), 258 Orson Spencer Hall, Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112.
During the past decade, a conservative reaction to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society has taken hold in political Washington. The judiciary has not been immune, contend Dudley and Ducat, political scientists at George Mason and Northern Illinois universities, respectively.
Under Chief Justice Warren Burger (1969-86), the U.S. Supreme Court produced...
Eliot A. Cohen, in The New Republic (Sept. 1, 1986), 1220 19th
St. N.W., washington, D.C. 20036.
Republican or Democrat, hawk or dove, nearly everyone in political Wash- ington agrees that the costly U.S. armed forces need an overhaul.
The botched 1980 rescue mission in Iran and lackluster military co- ordination during the 1984 U.S. invasion of Grenada, among other things, have "convinced many observers that something is profoundly wrong," writes Cohen, who teaches at the U.S. Naval...
Helen Suzrnan, in The New York Times Mag- azine (Aug. 3, 1986), 229 West 43rd St., New York. N.Y. 10036; "The Costs of Disinvest-ment" Gavin ReUy, in Foreign Policy (Surn-mer 1986), 11Dupont Circle N.W., Washington,
D.C. 20036.
Racial violence continues to plague South Africa, claiming the lives of more than 150 blacks each month. In 1985 alone, nearly 19,000 blacks were arrested for protests. At issue is apartheid, the system of racial segrega- tion enforced by President P. W. Botha's...
Pretoria and the black African--National Congress (ANC); to release black leader Nelson Mandela from prison; to remove the military from black townships; to legalize the ANC and the Pan African Congress (a black political organi- zation); and to ban detentions without trials.
Western supporters of sanctions, Suzman says, often forget that 20 percent of South Africa's white electorate has already voted against apart- heid. Nor do they realize that, if the Botha government falls, the next regime,...