Autumn 1982
Children
In Essence
Thomas S. Engeman, in Re-the Constitution view of Politics (Apr. 1982), Box B, Notre
Dame, Ind. 46556.
The secession crisis of 1861 forced Abraham Lincoln to choose whether to seize unconstitutional powers or to stand helpless as the union col- lapsed. He took the former course, raising troops and monies and sus- pending habeas corpus without congressional approval. But he was concerned the dilemma: "Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government.of necessity...
sanctioning a usually forbidden concentration of power. But balanced against each other, these two perilous powers secure America's future as a republic.
om Does "The Calculus of Representation: A Con-gressional Perspective" bv Thomas eavanagh, in western political Quarterly
Congress Serve? (Mar. 1982), 258 Orson Spenser Hall, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112.
Do members of Congress believe their primary responsibility is to their home district or to the nation as a...
IODICALS
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
ThankYou, "Harry S. Truman and the Multifarious Ex-Presidencv" bv James Gielio. in Presi-A/~Y&-dential studies Quarterly (spring 1982),
PYOcid'ow f --
'UI a -^1/ .& 1 t./i../'t.t/�£-<n/l&
Center for the Study of the Presidency, 208 East 75th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
"No former President more extended the authority and privileges of the ex-Presidency than President Truman," observes Giglio, a Sou...
refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953, Truman also established precedent for the "ex-executive privi- lege" later invoked Richard Nixon.
Truman threw most of his energies into party politics, and here the limits of his influence are most evident. He worked hard for his party's presidential candidates-Stevenson, in 1956, and Kennedy in 1960. But before their nominations, he tried in vain to rally support for his favorites-Averell Harriman and Stuart...
Richard Ned Lebow, in Political Science Quarterly (Summer 1982), 2852 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-0148.
Calculating how many weapons were needed to maintain nuclear de- terrence was a simple matter when the United States enjoyed a clear military edge over the Soviet Union. But today, writes Lebow, professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins, the issue is far more murky. And U.S. military planners may be overstating our needs.
A key consideration is the U.S. "residual" force-how...
hillside, then air strikes were launched. No attempt was made to pro- tect civilians in the area. Finally, a platoon of soldiers moved out through the scrub to try to outflank the enemy. Was the commander right to use such heavy firepower to protect the lives of his soldiers?
In both Korea and Vietnam, U.S. commanders, trying to get at a hidden foe while keeping U.S. casualties to a minimum, often ordered massive bombardments-despite the increased risk to civilians. Dubik, an Army captain, weighs...
Stephen
Human Rights B. Cohen, in American Journal of Interna-
tional Law (Apt-. 1982), 2223 �£assachu
setts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008.
Despite President Carter's personal commitment to human rights, his administration was surprisingly cautious in denying arms transfers to regimes considered to be repressive. Cohen, a Georgetown University law professor, contends that executive branch "bureaucratic warfare" during the Carter years kept military aid flowing...
Paul F.Boller, Jr., in Inter-Backed the Bomb national social Science Review (Winter
19821, 1717 Ames St., Winfield, Kans. 67156.
Did America drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 mainly to defeat Japan or to daunt its future rival, the Soviet Union?
Since the publication of Gar Alperovitz's revisionist Atomic Diplo- macy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, in 1965, the conventional wisdom among American radical intellectuals has been that the bombings were unnecessary and immoral, staged chiefly...
Peter Navarro, in Harvayd
Outthe .L&~s? Business Review (May-June 19821, Sub- scription Service Dept., P.O. Box 3000, woburn. Mass. 01888:
Since the late 19th century, regulated utility companies have helped foster American economic growth with abundant, relatively cheap elec- tricity. However, because the industry is starving for new capital, those happy days may soon be over.
Until the early 1970s, the low costs of capital and fuel allowed the industry to expand rapidly, holding down expenses...
Michael J. Piore, in Challenge (Mar.-~~;.1982), 80 Business Park D;., Armonk. N.Y. 10504.
American unions have claimed a shrinking share of the labor force since the 1960s, thanks largely to the rapid growth of new, hard-to-organize service industries. (Only 20 percent of U.S. workers were union mem- bers in 1980 versus 34 percent in 1955.) But now, writes MIT economist Piore, unions are in trouble even in their old power base, the mass- production industries.
After the 1930s, unions guaranteed...
IODICALS
ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS
Piore notes that high wages are no longer managers' principal objection to unions. Indeed, many are willing to pay even more to avoid unioniza- tion and the attendant rigid job categories.
American labor unions, Piore believes, must adapt to survive. Other- wise, corporations seeking to expand and revitalize their mass produc- tion operations will be forced to relocate their plants overseas. And if, as seems more likely, small domestic markets become c...
Jordan D. Lewis, in Science (Mar. 5, 1982), 1515 Massachu- setts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
America's vaunted technological and economic superiority may be in jeopardy, thanks to shortsighted corporate leadership, excessive labor-management,strife, and an overgrowth of litigation. These sur- face defects, says Lewis, a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School of Business, suggest underlying U.S. character flaws: too much conflict, too little trust.
The United States leads in corporate R &...
for Football Ronald A. Smith, in Journal of Sport His-
tory (Winter 1981), North American Soci- ety for Sport History, 101 White Building, Pennsylvania State University, Univer- sity Park, Pa. 16802.
Scandal is nothing new to U.S. college football. At the turn of the century, students, who then ran the sport, paid players' tuitions out of game receipts and winked at excessive violence on the field. Smith, a professor of physical education at Pennsylvania State University, tells how football nearly...
40 percent that of any professor on the faculty-got word that the trustees had secretly decided to abolish the sport. Reid and four allies hatched a plan to save their game-openly condemning its brutality and recommending that it be "radi- cally changed." Harvard's president, Charles W. Eliot, was skeptical.
But Reid persisted, trying to persuade other college coaches to agree to Harvard-proposed rules changes. He predicted that without reforms, Harvard would abolish the sport and that...
Henry S. Lufler, Jr., in Educa-tion and Urban Society (Feb. 1982), Sagethe-Sqeme. Court Publications, 275 South Beverly Dr., Bev-
erly Hills, Calif. 90212.
During the 1970s, the Supreme Court considered fewer than 10 cases involving the rights of public school students. Its rulings, which gen- erally expanded student rights, are having an impact on the schools- often in indirect and unintended ways, according to Lufler, assistant dean at the University of Wisconsin's School of Education.
In 1969,...
Tina Rosenberg, in The Washing-ton Monthly (May 1982), 2712 Ontario Rd. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.
As depicted much of the press, Jerry Falwell commands the loyalties of two million members of the Moral Majority and reaches 25 million more people through his TV program, Old Time Gospel Hour. His fol- lowers are on the move in a "political holy war without precedent."
Such media alarms have been sounded often since Falwell's meteoric rise to fame in the election-year summer of 1980. T...
Big Media. But the question again is: Is bigger better?
RELIGION & P
"The Politics of American Theology Fac-
America's Liberal ulty" Everett Carl1 Ladd and G. Donald Ferree, Jr., in This World (Sum-
Theologians mer 1982), Institute for Educational Af- fairs, 210 E. 86th St., Sixth Floor, N.Y.,
N.Y. 10028.
How do Americans' religious values affect their political views? Scholars debate whether deep religious faith tends to make a person politically conservative (e.g., anti-abortion) or...
American Baptists (63 percent) and Methodists (54 percent). The strongest opponents of current U.S. military spending were Episcopalians (92 percent) and Catholics (89 percent).
On a few issues, the theologians were almost unanimous. Ninety-five percent believed that church property used for nonreligious purposes should be taxable. And 99 percent said they would oppose a constitu- tional amendment declaring Christianity the official national religion.
Churchgoing "Church Adherence in the...
160 percent between 1740 and 1776.
Ordinary colonists simply had less narrow views of Christian doctrine than their pastors had, the authors~conclude. Thus, the "in- differency" clergymen decried was simply a lack of concern for de- nominational differences. When Charles Woodmason, an Anglican priest in rural South Carolina in the 1760s, denounced the region's "infidels and Atheists," he meant that they were not Anglicans. Thriv- ing Presbyterian, Baptist, and independent churches...
Diane Johnson,
in Mosaic (Jan.-Feb. 1982), Superintend-
ent of Documents, U.S. GovernmentShrinking? Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.
Scientists have agreed in recent years that the sun is not a placid place. It pulsates, erupts in storms, and is developing holes in its outer atmos- phere. The sun, writes Johnson, a Colorado science writer, is an "un- predictable, middle-aged star." Some astronomers now think that it may also be a shrinking star, and that contention has sparked...
a small amount. Even slight changes in the future, they argue, could affect the Earth's cli- mate. Meanwhile, astrophysicists and astronomers continue to delve into dusty archives in an attempt to resolve the question.
'Darwin and His Finches: The Evolution of a Legend" Frank J. Sulloway, in Journal of the History of Biology (Spring 1982), D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O.
Box 17, 3300aa Dordrecht, The Nether- lands.
Newton is struck by an apple, Galileo drops weights from the Tower of...
the middle of the 20th century, it was clear to scientists that the finches presented a "textbook example" of Darwin's theories. Darwin's elaborate reconstructions of specimen locations- which later scholars took to be field notes-falsely implied that Darwin himself had recognized this from the start.
-a
"Do Diets Really Work?" William ~/hyI&?f@ Bennett and Joel Gurrin, in Science 82 Doesn't Work (Mar. 1982), P.0. Box 10790, Des Moines,
Iowa 50340.
It often seems as if...
consuming an extra 2,000 calories per day, far more than was theoretically neces- sary. Evidence suggests that a metabolic speed-up is triggered after two weeks of overeating or a cumulative 20,000-calorie surplus.
The body also regulates eating. In an experiment run by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Theresa Spiegel, volunteers subsisted on a milkshake-style beverage dispensed from a reservoir they could not see. They soon began drinking just enough to get about 3,000 calories daily-the...
Inman, then director of the National Security Agency (NSA), argued in 1980 that sharing such research could hinder US. intelli-gence gathering. In a two-year test, some cryptographers are submit- ting papers to the NSA for prepublication review. But many others have refused NSA offers of financial aid, fearing censorship or classifi- cation of their discoveries.
Keeping new cryptographic knowledge secure may not even be pos- sible, Bok concludes. Voluntary controls will work only if researchers...
and Eriksson, soil scientist Svante Oden, combined all of these findings, and more, in 1967 and 1968. Somewhat flamboyantly, Oden described for the Swedish press a foul "chemical war" among the na- tions of Europe, in which pollutants of a single country could travel over 1,200 miles in the atmosphere. His reports finally aroused scores of European and North American scientists and politicians.
As of late 1981,93 stations across the United States and 50 in Canada had been set up to monitor...
Harold Orel, in The South Atlantic Quarterly (Spring 1982), Duke University Press, P.O. Box 6697, College Station, Durham, N.C. 27708.
More than 200 Kiplingisms pepper the third edition of the Oxford Dic- tionary of Quotations ("the white man's burden"; "I've taken my fun where I found it"; "A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke"). And Rudyard Kipling's fiction-The Light That Failed, Cap- tains Courageous, Kim, and much more-still sells briskly in America,...
a firm belief that expansion without a
proper sense of responsibility toward the governed was foolhardy. In
his "The Ballad of East and West," he salutes strong men whatever
their race.
Kipling was no saint: "He was never a democrat, he detested female
suffragism, he despised the very concept of mass education," notes
Orel. But his efforts to probe grief, the horrors of war, and the "irration-
ality of human existence" through fiction deserve the serious consid-
eration...
Clara and Laughter Claiborne Park. in The American Scholar
(Spring 1982), 181 1 Q St. N.W., Washing-
ton, D.C. 20009.
A self-righteous atheist flirts with a Bible salesman, who returns her interest stealing her artificial leg. An old woman feels an instant of pity for the madman who has just murdered her family; he responds by shooting her in the chest. "Most people think of [my] stories as hard, hopeless, brutal," wrote author Flannery O'Connor, a prolific writer despite her own long...
out sides"). He sought improved relations with Pakistan. He also agreed to take $2 billion in credits from the anti-communist Shah of Iran and got financial commitments from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well.
The prospect, however faint, of a Teheran-Kabul-Islamabad coalition of Muslims began to worry the Soviets. Daoud seemed unreliable. His April 1977 visit to Moscow to sign a treaty providing for more Soviet aid was marked "frankness" rather than cordiality. One year later, leftist...
"frankness" rather than cordiality. One year later, leftist Afghan military officers, encouraged the Soviets, seized power in Kabul. They slew Daoud and replaced him with a communist, Nur Muhammad Taraki, who soon stirred tribesmen's ire with his Marxist "modernization" efforts. [In 1979, Taraki was succeeded by another communist, Hafizullah Amin, who proved too independent for Moscow. Late in 1979, the Soviets intervened in force and replaced him.] Ambi- tious but inept, Daoud...
Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. But in each case, government waves the magi- cian's wand. And a host of other special factors-political stability, cultural traits, geography-have contributed to their success.
"1968-79-Feminism and the Italian Femiraism7 Party System: Women's Politics in a Dec- ade of Turmoil" Yasmine Ergas, in
ItaIiaI-2Style Comparative Politics (Apr. 1982), Dept. 8010, Transaction Periodicals Consor- tium, Rutgers University, New Bruns- wick, N.J. 08903.
As...
In parliamentary elections in June 1976, the Communists, still cul- tivating their "establishment" image, put up many female candidates, but almost none were radical feminists. The strategy worked. The Communists carried an unprecedented 34 percent of the votes; the Christian Democrats got 38 percent. For the feminists, it was a serious blow. Their shrinking movement turned from politics to concentrate on women and the visual arts" and similar cultural matters.
Black Africa's "The...
Book Reviews
by Robert Grant Irving
Yale, 1982
406 pp. $39.95
by T. J. Jackson Lears
Pantheon, 1981
357 pp. $18.50
by Gordon A. Craig
Putnam's, 1982
350 pp. $15.95
by F. E. Peters
Princeton, 1982
216 pp. $14.50
by Stephen Howarth
Atheneum, 1982
321 pp. $18.95
by James M. McPherson Knopf, 1982 694 pp. $29.95
by Chalmers Johnson Stanford, 1982 393 pp. $28.50
edited by Irving Howe Schocken, 1982 288 pp. $17.95 cloth, $8.95 paper
by Albert O. Hirschman Princeton, 1982, 138 pp. $14.50 cloth, $5.95 paper
by J. M. Coetzee
Penguin, 1982
156 pp. $3.95
by Jean Starobinski
translated by Barbara Bray
Univ. Press of Va., 1982
294 pp. $24.95
by Marshall Berman Simon & Schuster, 1982 383 pp. $17.50
by Curtis M. Hinsley
Smithsonian, 1981
319 pp. $19.95
edited by David McFarland Oxford, 1982 657 pp. $29.95
by Francois Delaporte translated by Arthur Goldhammer MIT, 1982 266 pp. $20
By John Berger. Pantheon,
1982.213 pp. $5.95
By Tom Dardis. Penguin, 1981.297 pp. $5.95
by Michael Walzer. Harvard, 1982. 344 pp. $6.95
Essays
Philippe Aries
In the freshness of discovery, the historian invariably (and fortunately) has difficulty detaching himself from the jumble of impressions that drew him into his adventurous quest in the first place. The passage of time diminishes the excitement but brings in return a compensation: a better view of the forest. Today, in the wake of contemporary debates about children, the family, youth-and about my own book, Centuries of Childhood (1962)-I see more clearly the broad ideas underlying...
In the freshness of discovery, the historian invariably (and fortunately) has difficulty detaching himself from the jumble of impressions that drew him into his adventurous quest in the first place. The passage of time diminishes the excitement but brings in return a compensation: a better view of the forest. Today, in the wake of contemporary debates about children, the family, youth-and about my own book, Centuries of Childhood (1962)-I see more clearly the broad ideas underlying my work.
I...
has var- ied with our ideas about it.
Today, we view children as having such unique status that we have largely cordoned them off from the rest of life. We now separate children from the world of work, strictly divide work and play, and exclude (or "shelter") children from many aspects of everyday existence. The young have their own institutions: day care centers, nursery schools, elementary schools. They are studied by childhood specialists; no group, indeed, has been so overanalyzed....
?
One reason, of course, is that children provide jobs. Jobs for more than 1.3 million elementary school teachers, for 13 million stay-at-home mothers, for the makers of the 1.3 million infant and toddler car seats sold in the United States in 1980; jobs, too, for many of the 2,768 psychologists who received their Ph.D.s that same year. The very existence of children, moreover, im- plies that the economy is in for a long run.
Children keep democracy fit. Without kids there would be no PTA. Local...
a sorrow which remains above all others."
Such ambivalence was charac-
teristic of the ancients, observes
Barbara Kaye Greenleaf in her popu-
lar survey, Children Through the
Ages (McGraw-Hill, 1978). The Egyp-
tians worshipped two gods who pro-
tected children: Maskonit, who
appeared at the moment of birth,
and Rainit, who insured that the in-
fant was properly nursed.
Yet, infanticide was common in such cultures. The Phoenicians, Moabites, and Ammonites engaged in child sacrifice....
y a few years ago, the United States seemed destined to enjoy endless good times. The 1950s were marred by two brief reces- sions, but unemployment averaged only 4.5 percent, inflation two percent. By 1965, the pace of annual economic growth had nearly doubled, climbing to 6.5 percent, and unemployment and inflation remained near their old levels. It seemed that Wash- ington's economic sages had hit upon a magic formula to ensure growing prosperity for all. But within a decade, chronic stagfla-...
City-state. Like Britain and Japan, the Vatican has a geography, a population, a language, and a national anthem ("Inno Pon- tifico," Gounod). In some ways, its domestic problems are those of many a larger nation: Worldwide stagflation, for exam- ple, has drained the Vatican's exchequer. Domestic political and administrative reforms, long overdue, have not always worked out as planned. What set the Vatican apart, of course, are its tiny size and its religious mission. Here, theologian...
It is the smallest independent state on earth. Its ruler, last of the absolute monarchs by divine right, is also its only permanent citizen. It boasts no natural resources. It must import all of its energy, labor, food, and building materials. It lacks a Times Square, on moral grounds, but it has its own Wall Street and Fleet Street, its own license plates, currency, postage stamps, and passports; it could charter its own airline and has run a merchant marine under its own flag. There is no government...
Dennis J. Dunn
John Paul 11, the pope from Poland, broke with precedent and shunned the imperial tiara at his consecration in 1978, but like each of his 263 predecessors he still wears two hats. As pastor of the Holy See, he guides the spiritual life of six million Oceanians, 50 million Africans, 55 million Asians, 15 1 million North Americans, 199 million Latin Americans, and 263 million Europeans. Because his vast flock, a sixth of mankind, is dis- persed across national boundaries-and because...
emi- nent clerics, art historians, and jour- nalists, the book surveys the city-state's history and organization.
The volume does have one real flaw: Bearing the Vatican's own im- primatur, it is, not surprisingly, short on analysis and self-criticism. A good antidote is Peter Nichols's The Poli- tics of the Vatican (Praeger, 1968).
Nichols, a British journalist long based in Rome, provides memorable sketches of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. When John (born Angelo Roncalli) worried at night about...
public agencies and private institutions
"Plant Closings: Public or Private Choices?"
Cato Institute, 224 Second St., S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003. 164 pp. $5.00
Editor: Richard B. McKenzie.
In recent years, Congress and more and 1975, 112 new plants began hiring than 20 states have contemplated for every 100 that closed. In the "plant closing" laws to discourage Frostbelt, only 70 percent of closed migration of industries from the plants were replaced. "Frostbelt" t...
Richard L. McCormick, presented at a seminar sponsored the Wil- son Center's Program on American Society and Politics, Feb. 3, 1982.
Michael J. ace; moderator.
Among historians, interest in the American Progressives of the early 1900s has waned. One reason, suggests McCormick, a Rutgers historian, may be a disillusionment among scholars with liberal reform movements in general-from the Progressives' ef- forts to minister to (i.e., mold in their own image) poor immigrants to later excesses of t...
ish emigre poet Czeslaw Milosz recently observed that the popular myth of America, like all such myths, "is kept alive by what it chooses not to say; it selects only the attractive elements from a complex reality." The same could be said of the work of
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur (1735-1813). His Letters from an American Farmer created a minor sensation when it first ap- peared in Europe, and passages from this book are still cited in our college texts. His panegyrics to the New...
SPECTIVES
Twenty years ago this autumn, halfway through the 1962 foot- ball season, Americans learned from their President, John F. Kennedy, that Nikita Khrushchev had secretly placed nuclear missiles in Castro's Cuba and that an unprecedented U.S. show- down with Moscow was at hand. Did this mean World War III? The stock market dropped sharply. Here and there, housewives stampeded the supermarkets to stock up on canned goods. A handful of protesters, including socialist Norman Thomas, urged the...
