Winter 1993
To Build a Nation
In Essence
Colleen A. Sheehan, in The William and Mary And Virtue Quarterly (Oct. 1992), Box 8781, Williamsburg, Va. 23187-
878 1.
Scholars in recent years have been vigorously debating the intellectual origins of the Found- ing Fathers' ideas. Did they derive mainly from the liberal philosophy of John Locke, the classi- cal republicanism of Plato and his heirs, the modern republicanism of Machiavelli, or other intellectual sources? The conventional view of James Madison (1751-1836), the "father" o...
op- ponents of the Constitution and resolutely fought off the draft's defenders (including Madison)."
It is true, Wills acknowledges, that Madison put rotation in his first draft of the Constitu- tion-but only as part of his initial effort to cut state legislatures completely out of the federal election system. Madison had been frustrated in the Continental Congress by the way in which the state legislatures tied the hands of the delegates they sent. His Virginia Plan pro- posed that the people...
'citizen legislators' and amateur administrators." That commentator's name? George Will.
Court Politics "The Supreme Court and Political Eras: A Perspective on Judi- cial Power in a Democratic Polity" John B. Taylor, in The Review of Politics (Summer 1992), ~kiv. of ~otre~ame,
P.O. Box B, Notre Dame, Ind. 46556.
Does the Supreme Court, as Mr. Dooley said, follow "th' iliction returns," or does it, as Jus- tice Robert H. Jackson complained in 1941, the very year he assumed...
'citizen legislators' and amateur administrators." That commentator's name? George Will.
Court Politics "The Supreme Court and Political Eras: A Perspective on Judi- cial Power in a Democratic Polity" John B. Taylor, in The Review of Politics (Summer 1992), ~kiv. of ~otre~ame,
P.O. Box B, Notre Dame, Ind. 46556.
Does the Supreme Court, as Mr. Dooley said, follow "th' iliction returns," or does it, as Jus- tice Robert H. Jackson complained in 1941, the very year he assumed...
some softer, albeit authoritar- ian, regime-like that, pre- cisely, of Singapore."
Unlike Japan, China seems
inclined to translate its eco- Human rights remains a hot issue dividing the United States and nomic gains into international China, but both nations want to avoid any disruption of relations.
influence. Despite the disap- pearance of the Soviet threat, Beijing has in- creased its official military budget 52 per-cent since 1989. It has exported nuclear technology to Iran and Pakistan,...
Thomas K. McCraw, in The American Scholar (Summer 1992), 181 1 Q St. N.W., Washing- OfNotions ton, D.C. 20009.
Communism has failed, capitalism has won, hour. Yet McCraw, a Harvard historian, doubts and Adam Smith (1723-90) is the hero of the that Smith's laissez-faire version of capitalism is the wave of the future.
Smith had a profound aver- sion to any form of collective action, McCraw notes. For him, individuals and markets were "natural," but institu- tions and organizational h...
Michael E. Porter, in Harvard Business Review
(Sept.-Oct. 19921, Boston, Mass. 02163.
Critics of America's economic performance Porter, who directed an extensive research have been saying for years that US. business is project sponsored the Council on Competi- too oriented toward the short term. Harvard's tiveness and the Harvard Business School,
WQ WINTER 1993 139
PERIODICALS
agrees and thinks he can explain the myopia.
The problem stems partly from the fact that publicly traded U.S. firms...
still only that. "The presence of knowledgeable major owners, bankers, customers, and suppli- ers on corporate boards has diminished," Por- ter notes. Nearly three-fourths of the directors of the largest U.S. corporations are outsiders, with little knowledge about or stake in the com- panies they oversee.
Lack of information about their businesses also hinders top corporate managers. Many
U.S. firms in recent decades have opted for a decentralized organizational structure involv- ing...
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), an English-edu-cated Indian intellectual who spent the last half of his life in the United States. "The Coomaraswamian museum would showcase objects not as exemplars of eternal aesthetic values but as manifestations of a particular civi- lization's particular philosophical worldview or religious sensibility. It would, in short, resem- ble a museum of anthropology or comparative religion." Truth, not sensation, is the proper goal of art, after all, and...
Katherine BOO, in The Washington The News, Monthly (Nov. 1992), 1611 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Washington, With Feeling D.C. 20009, and "MO Knows" Leslie Kaufrnan, in Washing-
ton Journalism Review (Oct. 1992), 4716 Pontiac St., Ste. 310, College Park. Md. 20740-2493.
Washington correspondent Maureen Dowd is a talented and amusing wordsmith. During the Democratic primaries last year, Senator Robert Kerrey (D.-Neb.) emerged from her word pro- cessor with "large blue eyes and a light-bulb s...
Katherine BOO, in The Washington The News, Monthly (Nov. 1992), 1611 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Washington, With Feeling D.C. 20009, and "MO Knows" Leslie Kaufrnan, in Washing-
ton Journalism Review (Oct. 1992), 4716 Pontiac St., Ste. 310, College Park. Md. 20740-2493.
Washington correspondent Maureen Dowd is a talented and amusing wordsmith. During the Democratic primaries last year, Senator Robert Kerrey (D.-Neb.) emerged from her word pro- cessor with "large blue eyes and a light-bulb s...
two rival corporations, are a mixed lot. That very diversity, Clausen argues, suggests that the stereotype of the tabloid reader-"a gullible, semiliterate gum-chewer of lower-class origins and pathological tastesn-is just "a figment of the educated imagination, en- couraged the mainstream press to empha- size its superiority." If tabloid readers were that dumb, they would not be reading at all.
-
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
What do the 3.8 million mostly female read- ers of the Nat...
1650 and Puritan govern- ments were highly democratic. "As the doc- trine of popular sovereignty gradually spread to most of the English colonies, it shaped Ameri- can mores, embedding the 'spirit of liberty' deep within the American character."
the 1830s, Tocqueville observed, that spirit of freedom had overcome the "spirit of religion" within Christianity itself. Orthodoxy became far less important, zealotry gave way to toleration, and the miraculous and other- worldly aspects...
Jared Diamond, in Discover (Oct.One-Way Plagues 1992), 500 S. Buena Vista St., Burbank, Calif. 91521.
Less than 200 years after Christopher Colum- rise of agriculture and then of cities, in both the bus set foot in the New World, the native Amer- Old World and the New, provided the "crowd ican population of some 20 million had de- diseases" with a welcome mat. The rise of farm- clined perhaps 95 percent. The main killers ing and cities also put humans in close contact were not swords...
Jared Diamond, in Discover (Oct.One-Way Plagues 1992), 500 S. Buena Vista St., Burbank, Calif. 91521.
Less than 200 years after Christopher Colum- rise of agriculture and then of cities, in both the bus set foot in the New World, the native Amer- Old World and the New, provided the "crowd ican population of some 20 million had de- diseases" with a welcome mat. The rise of farm- clined perhaps 95 percent. The main killers ing and cities also put humans in close contact were not swords...
Anke A.
Ehrhardt of Columbia and June M. Reinisch of the Kinsey Institute, Kimura says, have found that these girls "grow up to be more tomboyish and aggressive than their unaffected sisters." Sheri A. Berenbaum of the University of Chi- cago and Melissa Hines of UCJA found that when such girls are given a choice of toys, they opt for cars and trucks, "the more typically masculine toys.'
Kimura believes that the apparent sex differ- ences "arose because they proved evolution-...
Carol Troyen, in The American Art Journal (Vol.Regained XXIII, No. 1, 1991), 40 W. 57th St., 5th fl., New York, N.Y. 10019.
In 1851, the New York-based American Art- Union held one of its most influential exhi- bitions. Three of the show's paintings were so powerful and accomplished that they became much-imitated models of a pastoral form of landscape painting, according to Troyen, an as- sociate curator at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. In a nation beset growing sectional and economic tensions,...
Jasper F. Cropsey (1823-1900) and New England Scen- ery Frederic E. Church (1826-1900)-were composite images, but were very much like Kensett's in scale, composition, and theme. The three scenes, Troyen says, had a "Jefferso- nian harmony and idyllic quality," and offered "the sense of America as the new Eden." It was a reassuring vision then, for outside the Art- Union's walls, Troyen writes, "the nation was in turmoil, scarcely recovered from the crises precipitating....
Jed Perl, in The New Republic
The Best Art
(Oct. 19, 1992), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C.20036,
Is Out of Sight
Serious American artists today are in despair- though not over Senator Jesse Helms's (R.-N.C.) attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts. Rather, asserts Perl, author of Gallery Going: Four Seasons in the Art World (1991), their desperation results from the "near total collapse" of the "support system of galleries and grants and collectors and curators and...
IODICALS
"The Art Nobody Knows" Jed Perl, in The New Republic
The Best Art
(Oct. 19, 1992), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C.20036,
Is Out of Sight
Serious American artists today are in despair- though not over Senator Jesse Helms's (R.-N.C.) attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts. Rather, asserts Perl, author of Gallery Going: Four Seasons in the Art World (1991), their desperation results from the "near total collapse" of the "support system of galleries and...
the Iraqis, Iraq's the coalition. . . ," Lewis observes, "the price of oil actually fell." The power of the oil weapon is not likely to be restored, in his view. Not only are other sources of oil being found and developed, nota- bly in the former Soviet republics, but oil's environmental and political drawbacks have spurred the search for other fuels. Oil produc- ers realize that using their black gold as a weapon will only hasten the day when it will be superseded as an energy source.
Even...
Reviews of new research at public agencies and private institutions
"Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States."
Inst. of Medicine, National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20418.
294 pp. $34.95.
Editors:Joshua Lederberg, Robert E. Shope, and Stanley C. Oaks, Jr.
During the 1950s, American physicians and public-health officials concluded that progress in medicine and pub- lic health was making the con- quest of infectious i...
Book Reviews
DE GAULLE. Vol. I: The Rebel, 1899-1944.
Vol 11: The Ruler, 1945-1970. By Jean
Lacouture. Norton. 614 pp.; 640 pp. $29.95
each
A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE WEST.
Vol. I: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian
Saints. Edited by Pauline Schmitt Pantel. Trans.
by Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard. 572 pp.
$29.95
HER SHARE OF THE BLESSINGS: Women's
Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians
in the Greco-Roman World. By Ross
Shepard Kraemer. Oxford. 275 pp. $24.95
By P. N.
Furbank. Knopf. 524 pp. $30
By Ferdinand
Mount. Free Press. 282 pp. $24.95
By Noel Mostert. Knopf. 1,355 pp. $35
By Michael
D. Coe. Thames and Hudson. 304 pp. $24.95
By Maria Tatar.
Princeton. 295 pp. $24.95
By Hazel Holt. Dutton. 308 pp. $19.95
Ed. by George Monteiro. LSU Press. 107 pp.
$20
By Adam
Seligman. Free Press. 241 pp. $24.95
By Richard A. Posner.
Harvard. 458 pp. $29.95
By Philip Gleason. Johns Hopkins, 314 pp. $40
By Eugene S. Morton and Jake Page.
Random House. 275 pp. $22
Essays
Modern poetry has a reputation for being difficult. It's hard to follow, harder still to scan, and there's almost no way to memorize it. The last job is so hard it gives you the impression that modem poetry doesn't want to be remembered, doesn't want to be poetry in the traditional sense.
Bruce Seely
hat a shock it has public facilities threaten the continuation been to Americans of basic community services such as fire to discover that protection, public transportation, water steel and concrete supplies, secure prisons, and flood protec- are not forever, that tion." But it took a series of surprises and the proud bridges disasters to drive home the point. In 1984, a built during the New Deal and the inter- bridge collapse on Interstate 95 in Connect- states laid out in the...
hat a shock it has public facilities threaten the continuation been to Americans of basic community services such as fire to discover that protection, public transportation, water steel and concrete supplies, secure prisons, and flood protec- are not forever, that tion." But it took a series of surprises and the proud bridges disasters to drive home the point. In 1984, a built during the New Deal and the inter- bridge collapse on Interstate 95 in Connect- states laid out in the comfortable...
Years before President Bill
Clinton came to Wash- ington with his campaign pledge to spend an addi- tional $20 billion annu-ally on America's infra-
structure "to develop the world's best com-
munication, transportation, and environ-
mental systems," economists and others
were talking about the need to spend more
on public works. Their debate has been al-
most entirely about one question: How
much more? Usually overlooked in these
discussions is the real infrastructure di-
lemma of...
KGROUND BOOKS
THE SAGA OF AMERICAN
INFRASTRUCTURE
until fairly recently, few historians paid se- rious attention to such seemingly humble matters as sewerage, solid waste, and stormwater management. Today a growing body of public-works history sheds valuable light not only on our contemporary infrastruc- ture problems but on some of the basic forces that have shaped American life.
Much of this new scholarship followed the publication of History of Public Works in the United States, 1776-1976 (...
There was once a professor of law named John Millar. Born
in Scotland in 1735, he went
to Adam Smith's lectures on
moral philosophy and then,
finding his own religious con- victions too weak for a clerical career even by the tolerant standards of the Enlighten- ment, took to the law. In 1761 he became a professor at the University of Glasgow, where he is said to have been among the first to lecture in English rather than Latin, acquiring a reputation as an orator in his university and be...
a 45-year stand- off between lethally armed superpowers cannot help but temper the optimism that came with the ending of the Cold War. As the superpowers turn swords into plowshares, we turn our attention to a matter that looms constant behind the drama of war and peace: the intimate-and some would say hteful-connections between the state and the military. From
An arti.stf.s conception of the ancient Greek polis of Priene. In addition to the walls, promi- nent feature.^ include the stadiuin, the...
At the turn of this century, the Irish-American jour- nalist Finley Peter Dunne wrote a column of politi- cal and social satire for a Chicago newspaper. On
one occasion, he touched on the ancient
world, attributing the following observation
to his character, the sage of Halsted Street,
Mr. Dooley:
I know histhry isn't thrue, Hinnissy, be-
cause it ain't like what I see ivry day in
Halsted Sthreet. If any wan comes along
with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that'll
show me th' people fightin', g...
Un soldat de la liberte
Quand il est par elle exalt6
Vaut mieux a lui seul que cent esclaves
-Theodore Rousseau, 1793
[A soldier of liberty, exalted by her, is worth more than a hundred slaves]
In 1793, Year I of the French Republic, the town of St. Quentin in Picardy changed the name of one of its streets from rue Ste. Catherine to rue Grenadier Malfuson. Malfuson was a "soldier of liberty," one of the volun- teers of 1792, who had died in battle around Lille. To name a street af...
These are uncertain times for the armed forces of the
United States. How could
they not be? With the Cold
War over, the very founda-
tions of our thinking about national security have undergone profound changes. Short of a terrible accident, the likelihood of a nuclear war between major powers is slim. Indeed, wars among any major powers appear unlikely, though ter- rorism and internal wars triggered by eth- nic and religious animosities will be with us for some time, if not forever. More...
America has no literary capi- cesses) every ambitious talent. tal. Its great writers have It was not ever thus. In the late 19th and come from every region and early 20th centuries, some of America's often spent their adult lives greatest writers fled their own country, in in locales hardly known as part at least to get away from what they saw cultural meccas-Oxford, as its provincialism. For the literary expatri- Mississippi, or Amherst, Massachusetts, or ates of that time-Henry James, Edith...
some years ago, I received an ar- ticle from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, entitled "Banja Luka Mon Amour." It was written on the occasion of an earthquake that destroyed much of that mixed Serb, Croat, and Muslim town on the Vrbas River in northern Bosnia. Its author, Nada Curcija-Prodanovic, was a well-known translator of Serbo-Croatian folklore into English. Her article consisted mainly of childhood reminiscences, but what I re-member most was its title. It seemed to me at the time that there...
