Mary Ann
Run Amok
Glendon, in The Responsive Community (Fall 1991), 714 Gelman Library', The George Washington Univ., Washington,
D.C. 20052.
Under the spell of philosopher John Locke and the lectures on law of Sir William Blackstone, Americans from the beginning talked about property rights as if they were absolute. In practice there was a good deal of public regulation of property. The Fifth Amendment, for example, recognized the federal government's power of eminent domain. But the ext...
Mary AnnRigZits Run Anzok Glendon, in Tlle Re.~ponsive CoN?illuni,y (Fall 1991). 714
Gelman Library, The George Washington Univ., Washington,
D.C. 20052.
Under the spell of philosopher John Locke of privacy older than the Bill of Rights" and the lectures on law of Sir William protecting the "intimate relation of hus- Blackstone, Americans from the beginning band and wife" from state interference. In talked about property rights as if they were 1972, the Court extended the right...
some of the world's- new democracies, Plattner notes. But as great a misfortune as that would be for the people involved, he argues, it would not necessarily mean the end of de- mocracy's global prestige. Even if a major- ity of the new democracies failed, the pre- sumption would still be that liberal democracy is the only form of government suitable for mature nations.
"Democracy's preeminence can be seri- ously challenged," Plattner maintains, "only an ideology with universalist...
IODICALS
anticipate the attack "not for want of the relevant materials, but because of a pleth- ora of irrelevant ones." The "noise" of ex- traneous information, in other words, drowned out the "signal" of useful clues. In reality, Kahn states, there was a dearth of intelligence materials. "Not one [diplo- matic or naval] intercept, not one datum of intelligence ever said a thing about an attack on Pearl Harbor."
Some critics, including Admiral Hus- band...
? "The ~yth of the Coming Labor Shortage" Lawrence Mishcl and Ruy A. Teixeira, in The American Prospect (Fall 1991), P.O. Box 7645, Princeton, N.J. 08543-7645.
The United States will soon face a serious sufficient supply. So concluded Workforce labor shortage, with an increasing demand 2000, the oft-quoted 1987 report done by for highly skilled workers and a greatly in- the Hudson Institute for the U.S. Labor De-
WQ WINTER 1992
14
PERIODICALS
partment. Mishel, research director of...
the year 2000.
Will the quality of America's work force be adequate? The authors of Workforce 2000 fretted about the growing number of undereducated women and minorities in the work force. "Only 15 percent of the new entrants to the labor force over the next 13 years will be native white males," they warned. Actually, say Mishel and Teixeira, about one-third of the entrants will be non-Hispanic white males, and an- other third will be non-Hispanic white fe- males. The Hudson researchers...
Andre Millard, in Business and Economic Hisloy (Fall 1991), Dept. of Economics, College of William and Mary, Williams- burg, Va. 23185.
"Well, it's all gone, but we had a hell of a good time spending it!" Thomas Edison (1847-1931) exclaimed after losing his light bulb fortune in 1900 on a disastrous plan to mine iron magnetically. Henry Ford called his friend the world's greatest inventor and worst businessman, a reputa- tion that has stuck unfairly, in the view of Millard, a professor...
1910, Thomas
A. Edison Incorporated (TAE) was making phonographs, film projectors, electric fans, and storage batteries. Edison was also an early practitioner of "vertical integra- tion": His company controlled each stage of production, from the raw materials to the finished product. To better serve his
SOCI ET17
lowed him to impose his old-fashioned tastes on TAE. Because he hated jazz, his company completely missed the great boom in popular music of the 1920s. Edi- son also hired pr...
the Na- tional Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) found that low birth weight has a much lower correlation with poverty than with heavy smoking pregnant women. Ba- bies born to mothers who smoked 15 or more cigarettes a day had an incidence of low birth weight three times greater than those born to nonsmokers.
Bearing a child out of wedlock is an- other symptom of irresponsibility, Eber- stadt notes, and it too significantly reduces an American child's chances of survival. A college-educated woman...
Norman Podhoretz, in Coii~tiiei7iaiy Date Rape? (Oct. 1991), 165 E. 56th St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
In the space of a few years, "date rape" has rape and thus to brand nearly all men as emerged as a major national concern, dis- rapists. cussed in campus seminars and on TV talk For millennia, he points out, there was shows. This, says Podhoretz, Commentary's no question about the definition of rape. It editor-in-chief, is a great victory for a femi- occurred when a man used violence or...