Winter 1984
New Year
In Essence
WilliamA Close Election Schneider, in National Journal (Oct. 29,
1983), 1730 M St. N.W., Washington, D.C.
In 1984 20036.
The presidential election season is upon us again, and given the fates of recent incumbents-Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, who lost to Ronald Reagan-it would be premature to bet on a Reagan victory.
Indeed, reports Schneider, an American Enterprise Institute political scientist, the race now looks like a toss-up. The much-heralded "new Republican majority" that...
Mark Greenbera and Rachel Flick. in
Commissions Journal of ~ontem~orary
Studies (Fall1983), Transaction Periodicals Consor- tium, Dept. 541, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903.
A new type of presidentially appointed commission is taking over jobs that America's top elected officials should be doing, and the change is symptomatic of a malfunction in the U.S. political system. So argue Greenberg and Flick, Senate and White House aides, respectively.
The first presidential commission...
Sheldon S. Wolin,
in democracy (Fall 1983), 43 West 61st St., Grassroo ts ? New York, N.Y. 10023.
"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the wast." wrote Thomas Jefferson, voicing the optimism that would fuel liberal- ism in America for most of this nation's history. The banner of "pro- gress," however, has been seized conservatives, writes Wolin, a Princeton political scientist.
While Ronald Reagan cheers up his countrymen with visions of a boom- ing...
the end of the 19th century, Wolin says, political "liberation" had been achieved in the West (with the exception of blacks and a few other "anomalies") and enshrined in new constitutions, legislatures, and civil liberties. Progress gradually came to mean just scientific and economic advance; demands for more political rights (e.g., "participatory democracy") were viewed as threats to material progress.
Thus, the idea of "progress" embraced present-day conservatives,...
1838, bitter feuds had pulled them apart.
Nicaragua has since suffered internal strife under a succession of dictators, Harrison says, while democratic Costa Rica has fared rela- tively well. One reason: Costa Rica was so poor that Spanish coloniz- ers never fully established the oppressive oligarchical plantation system that dominated Nicaragua.
Frequent direct U.S. intervention in Nicaragua (most recently, the presence of U.S. Marines between 1912 and 1933) stirred strong anti- Yanqui sentiment.
Today,...
Richard L. Garwin, in Interna-tional security (Fall 1983), The MIT Press Submarines (Journals), 28 Carleton St., Cambridge. Mass. 02142; "The Invisible Force" John Tierney, in Science 83 (Nov. 1983),
P.O. Box 10790, Des Moines, Iowa 50340.
Two legs of the U.S. strategic "triad"-land-based ICBMs and B-52 bombers-are shakier today than they once were. But the 34 U.S. Posei- don and Trident submarines will remain a virtually invulnerable deter- rent for a long time to come.
While...
Richard L. Garwin, in Interna-tional security (Fall 1983), The MIT Press Submarines (Journals), 28 Carleton St., Cambridge. Mass. 02142; "The Invisible Force" John Tierney, in Science 83 (Nov. 1983),
P.O. Box 10790, Des Moines, Iowa 50340.
Two legs of the U.S. strategic "triad"-land-based ICBMs and B-52 bombers-are shakier today than they once were. But the 34 U.S. Posei- don and Trident submarines will remain a virtually invulnerable deter- rent for a long time to come.
While...
"great captains," and fighting "was very much an art." Hence, many reformers advocate a "maneuver" strategy, based on simple but reli- able weapons, small but agile forces, and, above all, the creative genius of field commanders.
Modern armies are so large and face each other across such broad fronts that simply keeping them supplied and moving requires bureau- cratic coordination. The Prussians pioneered military bureaucracy with the creation of a general staff in...
IODICALS
ECONOMICS, LABOR, & BUSINESS
imports equaled only 10 percent of the nation's gross national prod- uct. But today, up to 70 percent of all U.S. manufactured goods- computers, tractors, and steel-face competition from abroad. And 17 percent of the nation's total industrial and agricultural output is destined for foreign markets.
Classical free-trade doctrine, with its stress on assuring that consum- ers have access to the cheapest wares in the world, made sense when in- ternational c...
America's most politically active corporations and trade associations. The national industrial policy agency (modeled on Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry) that Reich favors would surely also be influenced politics, but wouldn't it make more sense, he asks, to rationalize America's industrial policy?
"Industrial Policy: A Dissent" by CharlesIf It Ain't Broke, L. Schultze, in The Brookings Review (Fall Don't Fix It 1983), 1775 ~assachusetts Ave. N.W.,
Washington, D.C....
$40 billion in 1979.
Industrial policy's promoters are wrong not only about the United States, Schultze says, but about Japan as well. They attribute Japan's postwar economic "miracle" to deft coordination of industry Tokyo's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). But if that is so, Schultze says, MITI has lost its touch: Japan's gross national product grew at a vigorous 9.9 percent annual rate from 1960 to 1973 but has averaged only 3.5 percent since.
In fact, writes Schultze,...
"Higher Education's Future" Herbert
Going to College L. Smith, in American Demographics
(Sept. 1983), P.O. Box 68, Ithaca, N.Y.
May Get Easier 14850.
As the tail end of the Baby-Boom generation nears its 30s, U.S. college presidents are bracing themselves for declining enrollments and years of financial belt-tightening. But things may not turn out all that badly, according to Smith, an Indiana University sociologist.
On the face of it, he concedes, the future for American inst...
James Q. Wilson, in The Atlantic (Oct. 1983), Box 2547, Boul- der, Colo. 80322.
Psychologists perplexed violent or overly aggressive children have come up with a host of theories to explain their behavior-faulty genes, broken homes, and the Oedipal complex. But more and more evidence points to a simpler view, writes Wilson, a Harvard political scientist: "Incompetent" parents raise bad kids.
The notion that families might be responsible for growing delin- quency was unpopular among social...
Sher-Superstars' win Rosen, in The American Scholar
(Autumn 1983), 181 1 Q St. N.W., Wash- Fat Salaries ington, D.C. 20009.
Are top baseball players, television news anchors, or rock singers worth the millions of dollars they can earn each year? Yes, argues Rosen, a University of Chicago economist.
Just a few decades ago, such figures were simply "stars." Today, they are called "superstars," an apt inflation in nomenclature, says Rosen, given the vastly expanded audiences...
John Rob-
In One Ear, inson and Mark Levy, in The Washington
Out the Other Journalism Review (Oct. 1983), 2233 Wis-
consin Ave. N.W., Suite 442, Washington,
D.C. 20007.
The national news media seem to have an annoying penchant for beat- ing stories to death-for example, Nancy Reagan's china. But accord- ing to Robinson and Levy, researcher and journalism professor, respectively, at the University of Maryland, journalists should stick with some stories much longer than they do now.
Last May...
R. Jeffrey Smith,
in The Columbia Journalism Review
For Nothing (Sept.-Oct. 1983), 200 Alton PI., Marion,
Ohio 43302.
One morning last March, a Washington Post headline announced: EPA FIASCO: THE SYSTEM WORKS! The "system" was the check on bu- reaucratic malfeasance imposed a vigilant press. But Smith, a Science magazine writer, doubts that such journalistic self-congratulations are in order.
Actually, he argues, reporters (especially those in Washington) ig- nored red flags at the...
PERIODICALS
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
Is "What Are Philosophers For?" byPhilt~~~phy Richard Rorty, in The Center Magazine (Sept.-Oct. 1983), Center for the Study of Philosophers Do Democratic Institutions, P.O. Box 4068,
Santa Barbara, Cal. 93103.
Few contemporary philosophers grapple with political and social is- sues in the way that Plato, John Locke, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau did. Where, one might ask, have all the sages gone?
"Only a Philistine would ask such a question," a...
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PERIODICALS
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
Is "What Are Philosophers For?" byPhilt~~~phy Richard Rorty, in The Center Magazine (Sept.-Oct. 1983), Center for the Study of Philosophers Do Democratic Institutions, P.O. Box 4068,
Santa Barbara, Cal. 93103.
Few contemporary philosophers grapple with political and social is- sues in the way that Plato, John Locke, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau did. Where, one might ask, have all the sages gone?
"Only a Philistine would ask such a q...
Shirley Robin
Letwin, in Policy Review (Fall 1983), The
Heritage ~oundation, 214 MassachusettsJudges Decide Ave. N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.
"Courts are mere instruments of the law," declared Chief Justice John Marshall in 1824, "and can will nothing." After a long allegiance to ju- dicial activism, Anglo-American legal theorists appear to be returning to something like Marshall's traditional "rule of law" jurisprudence. But appearances, warns Letwin, a British...
Janet Raloff, in Science News,
(Aug. 20 & Sept. 10, 1983), 1719 N St.
N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
For some people, violent behavior could be a matter of chemistry.
William Walsh, a chemical analyst at the Argonne National Labora- tory near Chicago, has been studying the crime-chemistry link in his spare time for 17 years, reports Raloff, a Science News editor.
Last spring, Walsh released the results of a five-year-long study com- paring concentrations of metallic "trace elementsu-calcium,...
stricter standards, the doubts linger.
Meanwhile, Walsh is pushing ahead with his work. At his new Health Research Institute near Chicago, he is beginning to treat delinquent boys for trace element abnormalities. No results yet.
If they are confirmed, notes Raloff, Walsh's findings would raise a host of ethical questions. Can the chemically imbalanced be held ac- countable for their crimes? Should a young child be tested for chemical hints of criminality? What if his test were positive?
"The...
1836, with the es- tablishment of the U.S. Patent Office, the screening requirement had been reinstated and the foundations of today's system were laid.
The question of what can be patented has also fallen to the courts. The peddling of "patent medicines" during the early 19th century led to a judicial ban on patents for "mischievous" creations. In 1822, a fed- eral court ruled that "mere abstractions" could not be patented. In 1978, the Supreme Court cited the 1822...
the aster and, within one minute, merges with the sperm nucleus. Almost imme- diately, the first steps toward creation of an embryo get underway.
Fertilization, the Schattens say, is "the riskiest of all biological pro- cesses." Small wonder then, that the egg has developed such aggressive mechanisms to ensure its success. No longer will it be possible to view fertilization as a solo act.
RESOURCES & ENVIRONMENT
"Auchter's Record at OSHA Leaves Labor
at OS Outraged, Business Sat...
about 1,000 from 1980. Construction site inspections, however, were up from 28,000 to 31,000.
President Reagan's OSHA may not have broken much ground, Wines notes, but it probably hasn't lost much. Since the agency was created in 1970, job-related deaths have declined slowly, but workdays lost due to injury or illness have increased. That trend has not changed.
"The Trouble with Fusion" Lawrence Fusion Energy: M. Lidsky, in Technology Review (Oct.
1983), ~oom 10-140, ~assachusetts Insti-False...
Jasia Reichardt, in Art International (July-Aug. 1983), Via Maraini, 17-A, Lugano, Switzerland (CH-6900).
Colombian artist Fernando Botero's idiosyncratic paintings of fat peo- ple have won him a measure of fame in recent years. Yet the artist's ob- session with inflated figures remains a mystery.
Since his first "fat mode" painting in the mid-1950s. Botero's work has centered on depictions of overblown "bishops, generals, tarts, aunts, and ordinary citizens" from his native...
Carl E. Schorske, in The Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Oct. 1983), Norton's Woods, 136 Irving St., Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
At the turn of the century, two composers who would help to revolu- tionize classical music rose to prominence on opposite sides of the At- lantic. In their backgrounds, Charles Ives (1874-1954) and Gustav Mahler (1 860-1 91 1) could hardly have been more different, writes Schorske, a Princeton historian, yet each injected a strong note of popu- lism...
Martin Ma- lia, in The New York Review of Books (Sept. 29, 1983), Subscription Service
Not Out Dept., P.O. Box 940, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.
Among many Westerners, the December 1981 outlawing of the independent trade union Solidarity General Wojciech Jaruzelski's Soviet-backed regime raised fears that Poland will never be Poland. A look at Solidarity in the context of the nation's history, suggests Martin Malia, a Berkeley professor of Russian history, is more encouraging.
Poland has lived under...
Martin Ma- lia, in The New York Review of Books (Sept. 29, 1983), Subscription Service
Not Out Dept., P.O. Box 940, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.
Among many Westerners, the December 1981 outlawing of the independent trade union Solidarity General Wojciech Jaruzelski's Soviet-backed regime raised fears that Poland will never be Poland. A look at Solidarity in the context of the nation's history, suggests Martin Malia, a Berkeley professor of Russian history, is more encouraging.
Poland has lived under...
political scientist at Nigeria's University of Ife.
Qaddafi's ideological principles, outlined in his Green Book, justify Libya's adventurism in the name of Arab-Islamic unity. He rejects capi- talism as exploitative and communism as godless, and he regards to- day's individual Arab nations as relics of Western colonialism. Many of Qaddafi's aggressive moves since coming to power in 1969-backing coup attempts and rebellions in Niger, Upper Volta, Gambia, Ghana, and, most recently, Chad-can be...
1985.
The current Prime Minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, is not bound by
such a promise. But nobody in Japan was surprised that Nakasone's
first official visitor after he took office was Toshio Doko.
A Soviet "Is There an Energy Crisis in the Soviet
Union?" Jonathan Kamin, in East Eu-
il Squeeze? ropean Quarterly (Sept. 1983), 1200 Uni-
versity Ave., Boulder, Colo. 80309.
The Soviet Union possesses 59 percent of the world's known reserves of coal, 30 percent of all natural gas. It...
Book Reviews
by Joseph Page
Random, 1983
594 pp. $25
by Toshio Nishi
Hoover, 1982
367 pp. $19.95
by Irving Louis Hal-owitz
Free Press, 1983
341 pp. $19
by A. J. P. Taylor
Atheneum, 1983
278 pp. $14.95
by Stephen W. Sears
Ticknor & Fields, 1983
431 pp. $17.95
by Natalie Zemon Davis
Harvard, 1983
162 pp. $15
by Thomas Sowell
Morrow, 1983
324 pp. $15.95
by Irving Kristol
Basic, 1983
336 pp. $19.95
by Anthony Bailey
Random, 1983
332 pp. $15.95
by Helen Vendler
Harvard, 1983
330 pp. $18.50
by Elizabeth Johns
Princeton, 1984
207 pp. $42.50
by Jonathan Cott
Random, 1983
327 pp. $19.95
by Rom Harrk
Oxford, 1983
224 pp. $17.95
by Jacques Barzun
Harper, 1983
344 pp. $19.95
by David S. Landes
Harvard, 1983
482 pp. $20
Diana L. Eck. Princeton, 1983.427 pp. $10.95
The city of Banaras is more than a relic of India's ancient Hindu past. As seen Eck, a Harvard professor of religion, it is a place that preserves the past "like a pal- impsest," the older layers of civilization partially visible through more recent ad-' ditions. Founded in the sixth century B.c., Banaras was physically altered by foreign invasions lasting from the 13th to the 17th centuries. But its religious signifi- cance to Hindus has remained...
By William Broad and Nicholas Wade.
Touchstone, 1983.256 pp. $6.95
Edited by Richard B. Morris.
Princeton, 1983.251 pp. $7.95
Essays
Francis B. Johnston, circa 1899. Between the 1899 and 1979 school years,
U.S.public school enrollment grav from 15.5 million to 41.6 million.
The Wilson Quu~ter1.ylNew Year':, 1984
46
Since last spring, when the National Commission on Excellence in Education decried the "rising tide of mediocrity" in Amer- ica's schools, a succession of blue-ribbon panels has joined in the chorus of condemnation and the search for effective reforms. Americans are again re-evaluating their expensive...
The central quandary facing American teachers today is the lack of clarity regarding the purpose of the schools in which they work, the nature of the larger educational system of which those schools are but a part, and the relationship between the two. If education is more than mere schooling-and it is-then we should have been asking ourselves which educational activities truly belong outside the classroom door. Yet, increasingly dur- ing this century, and particularly in the years since World...
"A year or so before I began facing a classroom on a daily basis, I had the idea that teaching English would be a series of extended Socratic dialogues between me and mv students. . . . I would lead forth my eager, responsive . . . idealistic students from the cave of adolescent mental wistfulness into the clear light of Truth upon the verdant and lush fields of literature."
So wrote Gary Cornog in Don't Smile Until Christmas (1970). Needless to say, he was mistaken.
Teachers have...
WHAT CAN WE
LEARN FROM OTHERS?
by Val D.Rust
America is not the only country where teaching is not what it used to be.
In the once-homogeneous West German cities of Plettenberg and Altona, teachers must overcome barriers of language and culture much like those that complicate teaching in Florida, New York, and Texas. One of every three students in these two cities, and one out of five in Hamburg, are children of blue- collar "guestworkers"-from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Spain....
America's occasional, often alarmist reassessments of the public school system usually leave something constructive in their wake. Sometimes the benefits are concrete, such as the subsidies for science and language instruction under the Na- tional Defense Education Act of 1958. Sometimes they are psy- chological-merely a residue of healthy nationwide anxiety. There are already signs that the current wave of soul-searching will follow this pattern; that America is, once again, summoning the resolve...
BACKGROUND BOOKS
In 1776, a ship from Belfast docked in Baltimore and offered for sale "various Irish commodities, among which are schoolmasters, beef, pork, and potatoes." Such was the ignoble status of teachers in colonial America, notes Willard S. Elsbree, in The Amer- ican Teacher (American, 1939; Green- wood, 1970)) an account of the profes- sion's slow climb to respectability.
The Puritans, and later the Found- ing Fathers, held the idea of educa- tion in high regard. Nonetheless,...
Everything about totalitarianism, starting with the name, is problematic.
Whoever invented it, the name was put into currency by Be- nit0 Mussolini when he published an article in the Enciclopedia Italiana in 1932 in which he proclaimed himself a "totalitarian" and called the Italian Fascist state lo stato totalitario. That claim is widely taken by historians as more of a boast than a descrip- tion of Italian Fascist reality.
Beginning in the later 1930s, the name was picked up by...
. "For hundreds of years," wrote Graf Helmuth von Moltke in 1836, "the Danube has divided civilized and barbaric peoples, but today it brings them together." Plans for some sort of "Balkan Federation" were repeatedly proposed (and forgotten) during the 19th century. In the 1980s, cooperative ventures in the region center once more on the Danube.
The Wilson QuarterIylNew Year's 1984
118
Forbidding mountains. Gypsies. The Sarajevo assassination. Tito. Peasants dancing...
. "For hundreds of years," wrote Graf Helmuth von Moltke in 1836, "the Danube has divided civilized and barbaric peoples, but today it brings them together." Plans for some sort of "Balkan Federation" were repeatedly proposed (and forgotten) during the 19th century. In the 1980s, cooperative ventures in the region center once more on the Danube.
The Wilson QuarterIylNew Year's 1984
118
Forbidding mountains. Gypsies. The Sarajevo assassination. Tito. Peasants dancing...
"The countries with which this book deals-Yugoslavia, Romania, Bul- garia, Albania-are not major pow- ers; their resources are not of critical importance to the United States. American interests in the Balkan re- gion appear to be minimal.
"But all of us have seen half a dozen movies in which the idyllic peace and quiet of an early 20th- century American home are inter- rupted the announcement that in the Balkans an Austrian Archduke has been assassinated, an announce- ment to which...
public agencies and private institutions
"The USSR and Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s."
Praeger PublishersICenter for Strategic and International Studies, Box 465,
Hanover, Pa. 17331. 129 pp. $6.95 paper. Author: David E. Albright
During the late 1970s, the Soviet Union made substantial inroads in sub-Saharan Africa. The remainder of the 1980s, predicts Albright, who teaches at the U.S. Air War College, will bring solid but less spectacular Soviet advances.
Soviet activity in black A...
Sergio Bitar presented at a colloquium sponsored the Wilson Cen- ter's Latin American Program, July 13, 1983.
Between 1945 and 1960, the United States and its Latin American neigh- bors developed a tightly knit eco-nomic and security relationship that virtually closed the Western hemi- sphere to outsiders. That arrangement has crumbled, says Bitar, an expatri- ate Chilean businessman and govern- ment official, though the full effects have yet to be felt.
In 1960, Latin America's gross do- mestic...
"Why aren't we able to cope with the who had been thrown out of Stan-
grays?" mused a young research ford's anthropology department in
economist, sharing a sushi lunch at a February 1983.
restaurant near the Stanford cam- Mosher, according to a statement
pus. She had written her Ph.D. dis- issued by the university, was guilty
sertation on China's agriculture after of abusing his status as an anthropol-
a year of field work in the Chinese ogist and engaging in "illegal and...
