Essays

Jean-Paul Sartre was a professional phi- losopher who also sought to preach to a mass audience. For a time at least it looked as though he had succeeded. Certainly no philosopher this century has had so direct an impact on the minds and attitudes of so many human beings, especially young peo- ple, all over the world. Existentialism was the popular philosophy of the late 1940s and 1950s. His plays were hits. His books sold in enormous quantities, some of them over two million copies in France alone....

Carolyn Webber
The art of taxation, wrote Jean-warfare and standing armies-far the Baptiste Colbert, an adviser to greatest expense of government until re-France's Louis XIV, "consists in so cent times. During this century, especially plucking the goose as to obtain the largest since World War 11, tax burdens have possible amount of feathers with the small- grown dramatically, and taxation has ac-est possible amount of hissing." quired two new uses: "stabilizing" domes-
Over...

The art of taxation, wrote Jean-warfare and standing armies-by far the Baptiste Colbert, an adviser to greatest expense of government until re-France's Louis XIV, "consists in so cent times. During this century, especially plucking the goose as to obtain the largest since World War 11, tax burdens have possible amount of feathers with the small- grown dramatically, and taxation has ac-est possible amount of hissing." quired two new uses: "stabilizing" domes-
Over the centuries,...

in America has seemed almost like a re- prise of the Boston Tea Party.
More than the people of most nations, Americans generally have chosen to rely on the most painful forms of taxation (e.g., di- rect levies on property and income), keep- ing the tribute rendered "unto Caesar" at the forefront of public attention. Not only have Americans remained deeply un-friendly to the taxman, but our debates over taxation have been vehicles for defin- ing larger conflicts-between regions and classes,...

; he focuses on the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and its Sparrows Point plant, near Baltimore, which was, for a time, the largest steel mill in the world.

L MISTER SCHWAB
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am here for a very brief and simple duty, a very delightful duty, that of welcoming Mr. Schwab to Baltimore."
In the audience before James H. Preston, mayor of Baltimore, were scores of politicians, businessmen, and other notables who had gathered at the Belvedere Hotel for a "Dinner of...

During the summer of 1870, two young British barrister-intellectuals, James Bryce and Albert V. Dicey, embarked on a voyage of discovery to the United States. Out of this trip (and two later visits) came one of the most widely read books ever written about America, Bryce's The American Commonwealth.
Bryce and Dicey were following in famous footsteps. Forty years earlier, another pair of young lawyers, Alexis de Tocqueville and his friend Gustave de Beaumont, also undertook a journey to America....

an engaging sight: a troupe of dancers displaying pictures of the guests and their hosts on their dresses. These women bear likenesses of Senegal's Leopold Sedar Senghor (wearing glasses), Ivorian president Felix Houphouet-Boigny, and their wives.
Of all of Black Africa's 40-odd nations, none is more out of step than the Ivory Coast. All five of its West African neighbors, for example, are poor, and four are military-ruled; the Ivorians can claim post- colonial Africa's chief economic "miracle"...

eign leaders who visit the Ivory Coast may be greeted in Abidjan by an engaging sight: a troupe of dancers displaying pictures of the guests and their hosts on their dresses. These women bear likenesses of Senegal's Leopold Sedar Senghor (wearing glasses), Ivorian president Felix Houphouet-Boigny, and their wives.
Of all of Black Africa's 40-odd nations, none is more out of step than the Ivory Coast. All five of its West African neighbors, for example, are poor, and four are military-ruled; the...

IFFERENT PATH
The Ivory Coast and its neighbor, Guinea, share many things, among them a common border, a tropical climate, and a colonial history that left a French veneer over an African peasant culture. The two nations won independence, without bloodshed, at roughly the me time: Guinea in 1958, the Ivory Coast two years later. Each was then run by a one-man, one-party regime. Each sought economic growth, mode&- tion, and self-esteem.
Yet Guinea failed. The Ivory Coast was the "African...

Oxford's Hugh Trevor-Roper is often cited to show what little even scholars in the West knew of the "Dark Continent" until re- cently. As Michael Crowder notes in

West Africa Under Colonial Rule
(Northwestern, 1968), European colo- nists truly believed they were civilizing "a benighted people."
In the most complete survey of the subject in English, the two-volume His-tory of West Africa (Columbia, 1972- 73) edited J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, Thurstan Shaw traces &...

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