Autumn 1991
What Happened to the American Establishment?
In Essence
BrentRights From Tarter, in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (JulyThe Start 1991), Virginia Historical Society, P.O. BOX 7311, Richmond,
Va. 23221-031 1.
Two centuries ago, on Dec. 15, 1791, Vir- ginia became the 1 lth and final state to ratify the Bill of Rights. Today, Virginia's George Mason (1725-92), the principal au- thor of the state's famous Declaration of Rights and its Constitution of 1776, is hailed as one of the fathers of the Bill of Rights. As a delegate to the Constitutional...
Con- gress to the State Legislatures. . .but of important & substantial Amendments, I have not the least Hope." This father of the Bill of Rights went to his grave three years later without ever having given the Con- stitution his blessing.
"Voter Turnout" Raymond E.Wolfinger and "Electoral Par-
Voting Booth Blues ticipation: Summing UP a Decade" bv Carole Jean Uhlaner in society (July-Aug. 1961), ~ut~ers-The State University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903.
When Americans...
Uhlaner's own report of a dramatic in- crease in registration (from 39 to 59 per- cent) and voter turnout (from 28 to 59 per- cent) among Mexican-Americans. Uhlaner credits aggressive registration drives. these measures, Mexican-Americans now participate in politics more actively than blacks do. More than ever, blacks seem a constituency in search of a party.
Keeping Secrets "The Fight to Know" by Peter Montgomery and Peter Overby, in Common Cause Magazine (July-Aug. 1991), 2030 M St....
Uhlaner's own report of a dramatic in- crease in registration (from 39 to 59 per- cent) and voter turnout (from 28 to 59 per- cent) among Mexican-Americans. Uhlaner credits aggressive registration drives. these measures, Mexican-Americans now participate in politics more actively than blacks do. More than ever, blacks seem a constituency in search of a party.
Keeping Secrets "The Fight to Know" by Peter Montgomery and Peter Overby, in Common Cause Magazine (July-Aug. 1991), 2030 M St....
PERIODICALS
ing off now in search of President George Bush's New World Order, he argues, the United States should abandon internation- alism and start thinking in terms of "purely national interests."
U.S. foreign policy since World War 11, in Tonelson's view, has had the utopian purpose of transforming the world "into a nlace where the forces that drive nations to clash in the first place no longer exist." Internationalism, he says, has encouraged Americans "to think...
PERIODICALS
good reason, the historian notes: "They were . . . provocative, vulnerable, and practically useless." The original decision to deploy the missiles had been made in 1957, after the launching of the Soviet Sputnik aroused Europe's fears about the depth of US. commitment to its defense. But the Jupiters were not actually de- ployed until after Kennedy took office in
1961. While he was inclined to cancel de- ployment, his advisers feared that after the tense June summit meetin...
Sid- ney L. Carroll, in Challenge (May-June 1991), 80 Business Park The Wealth Dr., Arrnonk, N.Y. 10504.
A mere one percent of all Americans own nearly one-third of the nation's wealth- $3.7 trillion in 1986. Roughly one-half of their considerable fortunes were inherited. And much of that inherited wealth is not put to imaginative use. On the contrary, asserts Carroll, an economist at the Uni- versity of Tennessee, Knoxville, massive inherited fortunes are typically locked away in estate trusts,...
Sid- ney L. Carroll, in Challenge (May-June 1991), 80 Business Park The Wealth Dr., Arrnonk, N.Y. 10504.
A mere one percent of all Americans own nearly one-third of the nation's wealth- $3.7 trillion in 1986. Roughly one-half of their considerable fortunes were inherited. And much of that inherited wealth is not put to imaginative use. On the contrary, asserts Carroll, an economist at the Uni- versity of Tennessee, Knoxville, massive inherited fortunes are typically locked away in estate trusts,...
PERIODICALS
derer. Much of what's wrong, he says, is rooted in the courts' adversarial nature, which necessitates "a bristling array of constitutional safeguards and procedural rules" to protect the accused. Maechling argues for radical reform: taking a leaf from the so-called inquisitorial criminal- justice process used everywhere in Europe except Great Britain and Ireland.
The European approach relies on "ob- jective methods of inquiry rather than . . . pit-bull confrontations," s...
PERIODICALS
to answer questions, although the jury, un- like a U.S. panel, may draw a negative in- ference. The defense counsel may cross- examine witnesses and make legal arguments, but "cannot disrupt the pro- ceedings with delaying tactics and frivo- lous objections on points of procedure."
Drawing on the European approach, Maechling recommends reversing the Su- preme Court rulings that make evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amend- ment's prohibition against unreasonable...
this question: If soar. The number of Americans under 65 the cost of health care can be controlled without any medical insurance at all stands through centralized purchasing of a stand- at 37 million. The two problems, notes the ard product, why not lower the costs of Brookings Institution's Henry J. Aaron in other necessities, such as food and housing, the Brookings Review (Summer 1991), are in the same way?" Canada's system is not related, and any effort to solve just one is without problems:...
their se- niors that while they will encounter 'plenty of bumps on the road," as a black general put it, they must surmount them, for the benefit of those who follow.
"Media Goes Wilding in Palm Beach" Katha Pollitt, in TheNaming the Victim Nation (June 24, 1991), 72 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10011.
After Senator Edward M. Kennedy's nephew, William Kennedy Smith, was ac- cused of raping a Palm Beach woman last March, the news media's longstanding practice of preserving t...
a gang of youths in 1989.
Gartner and others argued that naming rape victims will help to eventually re-move the social stigma against rape vic- tims. The contention, Pollitt observes, rests on a dubious assumption. "Why would society blame rape victims less if it knew who they were?" The issue of nam- ing the victim, she says, cannot be di- vorced from blaming the victim.
The news media's coverage of the Palm Beach case, Pollitt says, underlines the fact that rape is treated differently...
Bernard Knox, in Humanities (July-Aug. 1991), National Endowment for the Hu- Of Sophistry inanities, 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. N.w., Washington, D.C.
20506.
Plato (427-347 B.c.) gave the Sophists a bad name, and it has persisted to this day. The denigration was quite undeserved, ob- serves Knox, a classics professor emeritus at Yale University. In fact, he says, the Sophists, who taught rhetoric in Athens during the fifth century B.c., were "the first professors of the humanities," and...
Timothy Goodman, in The American Enterprise (July-Aug. 1991), American Enterprise Protestant Ethic Inst., 1 150 17th st. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Protestant evangelicalism has made great inroads in traditionally Catholic Latin America. Evangelicals-most of them Pentecostals, who practice faith healing and speaking in tongues-have grown from 15 million in 1960 to over 40 million. More than half of them live in Brazil, mak- ing up nearly one-fifth of its 150 million people. Sociologist Peter...
Timothy Goodman, in The American Enterprise (July-Aug. 1991), American Enterprise Protestant Ethic Inst., 1 150 17th st. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Protestant evangelicalism has made great inroads in traditionally Catholic Latin America. Evangelicals-most of them Pentecostals, who practice faith healing and speaking in tongues-have grown from 15 million in 1960 to over 40 million. More than half of them live in Brazil, mak- ing up nearly one-fifth of its 150 million people. Sociologist Peter...
the fact that scien- tists in conversation are crisp and clear about their work. The same scientists, writing in a journal, produce a nightmare of incorn- prehensibility. Various explanations have been proposed, but I think the real problem may be structural: Scientific writing now de- mands a passive, abstract literary form.
In conversation, the scientist provides in-
' formation in the way we ordinarily expect to receive it: as a narrative. "We had an unan- swered question in our 'field....
Herb Brody, in Technology Review (July 1991), Building W59, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
It was the bright world of tomorrow. Solar
u
cells and nuclear fusion were to provide pollution-free electricity, automobiles were to run on batteries. factories were to rely extensively on robots, and videotex terminals were to be important fixtures in American homes. But the technological fu-ture envisioned just a few years ago has failed to arrive, notes Brody, a senior edi- tor of Technology Review. I...
Herb Brody, in Technology Review (July 1991), Building W59, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
It was the bright world of tomorrow. Solar
u
cells and nuclear fusion were to provide pollution-free electricity, automobiles were to run on batteries. factories were to rely extensively on robots, and videotex terminals were to be important fixtures in American homes. But the technological fu-ture envisioned just a few years ago has failed to arrive, notes Brody, a senior edi- tor of Technology Review. I...
1966, the total had reached 778, and now it stands at 2,000. This vast increase in quantity, Stephan maintains, has resulted in a discernible decrease in quality.
"The average quality of people going into science in the '70s and early '80s," Stephan claims, "was not as high as in the '50s and '60s in terms of motivation, abil- ity, and interest in science." In the 1970s, according to studies Stephan and Sharon G. Levin of the University of Mis- souri, recent Ph.D.'s in particle...
means of fees or taxes.
Hahn and Stavins say they are "bullish" on the use of economic incentives but still think they will remain limited. EPA bu- reaucrats, environmentalists, and others have a great deal invested in the status quo. Even industry lobbyists in Washing- ton display a "curious resistance" to mar- ket-oriented reforms. Like their oppo- nents, their stock-in-trade is manipulation of the existing system; new rules for play- ing the game are a threat (and might,...
Paul Johnson, in National Review (June 10,
1991), 150 East 35th St., New York, N.Y. 10016.
Percy Bysshe Shelley in 182 1 called poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world." But Ludwig van Beethoven (1770- 1827) had already staked out a similar claim on behalf of a genuinely lowly group: musicians. In fact, it was Beetho- ven, according to journalist-historian Johnson, who "first established and popu- larized the notion of the artist as universal genius, as a moral figure...
Paul Johnson, in National Review (June 10,
1991), 150 East 35th St., New York, N.Y. 10016.
Percy Bysshe Shelley in 182 1 called poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world." But Ludwig van Beethoven (1770- 1827) had already staked out a similar claim on behalf of a genuinely lowly group: musicians. In fact, it was Beetho- ven, according to journalist-historian Johnson, who "first established and popu- larized the notion of the artist as universal genius, as a moral figure...
PERIODICALS
About This Mona Lisa
Fed up with "the red rant of unearned praise," novelist Stanley Elkin fires away in Art & Antiques (Summer 1991) at some "overrated masterpieces," from Hamlet to Citizen Kane. But when he comes to Leo- nardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the curmud- geonly critic almost succumbs to her fam-ously mysterious smile.
See her there in her cat-who-ate-the-canaries, her smug repose and babushka of hair like a her odd, asexual face, in where the myster...
PERIODICALS
Colley and E. Hedges, Scottish troops of the 78th Highland Regi- ment, led officers in kilts and tam-o'shanters, advance in rows, fir- ing on the retreating French. One Highlander, meanwhile, rushes to assist the wounded Peirson, who braces himself against a building near where his troops entered the square. In placing him at the edge of the scene, Saunders notes, the artists "chose reportage over drama."
Copley, by contrast (and despite at least one battlefield accoun...
he might have rec- ognized a Salinas presidency in exchange for more favorable treatment of his coali- tion in the Senate and at the state and local levels." The next year, he founded a new party, whose very name-the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)-under- scored his challenge. "The PRD's call for a revolutionary change in the way Mexico is governed," Reding observes, "has, in ef- fect, transformed every election in which it participates into a referendum on authoritarian...
those in Russia and the West who are eager to justify the Kremlin's new authoritarianism as a necessary evil," Starr says, there is "ample evidence that Rus-
sians, freed from fear, possess as much ini- tiative and capacity for independent action as do members of other developed soci- eties in Europe, Asia, and the Americas." The West, he says, should accept "at face value" the democratic movement in the Soviet Union, not "belittle it simply be- cause it has not, in...
Book Reviews
FEMINISM WITHOUT ILLUSIONS: A Critique of Individualism
By Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.
Univ. of N.C. 347 pp. $24.95
SIGNPOSTS IN A STRANGE LAND
By Walker Percy. Edited with an Introduction by
Patrick Samway.
Farrar, Straus.
428 pp. $25
LEARNING TO CURSE: Essays in Early Modem Culture
By Stephen J. Greenblatt.
Routledge.
188 pp. $25
Compiled by Yves Bonnefoy.
Trans. under the direction of Wendy Doniger. 2 volumes.
Univ. of Chicago. 1267 pp.$250
By Nicholas Boyle.
Oxford.
807 pp. $37.50
By Robert Brustein.
Hill and Wang.
336 pp. $24.95
By Gertrude Himmelfarb.
Knopf. 496 pp. $30
By Jack A.
Goldstone. Univ. of Calif.
608 pp. $34.95
By Joel Garreau.
Doubleday. 526 pp. $22.50
By Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Jr. Whittle. 91 pp. $11.95
By James S. Fishkin.
Yale. 172 pp. $1 7.95
By David J. Rothman.
Basic. 303 pp. $24.95
By Mirko D. Grmek.Trans. by Russell C. Maulitz and Jacalyn Duffin.
Princeton. 279 pp. $29.95
Essays
a group of more self-interested "movers and shakers.'
WQ AUTUMN 1991
2,1
Max Holland
n August 1964, presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy wrote Lyndon Johnson a spare but revealing memorandum. The Republicans had just nominated Barry Goldwa- ter in San Francisco, rejecting if
not humiliating the Rockefeller-led, inter- nationalist wing of the party. Bundy sensed a golden opportunity for LBJ to court the "very first team of businessmen, bankers, et al." orphaned politically by Gol...
n August 1964, presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy wrote Lyndon Johnson a spare but revealing memorandum. The Republicans had just nominated Barry Goldwa- ter in San Francisco, rejecting if
not humiliating the Rockefeller-led, inter- nationalist wing of the party. Bundy sensed a golden opportunity for LBJ to court the "very first team of businessmen, bankers, et al." orphaned politically by Goldwater. And the key to these people, claimed Bundy, was a Wall Street lawyer, banker, and d...
n September 1939, just over a
week after Hitler's invasion of Po-
land and Britain's declaration of
war, Walter Mallory, the executive
director of the Council on Foreign
Relations, and Hamilton Fish Arm- strong, the editor of its journal, Foreign Af- fairs, went to Washington to see how the Council could help prepare America for what they expected would be another world war. Meeting with high State Depart- ment officials, they worked out an unprece- dented arrangement under which the Council w...
Baltzell, 1964), or The Higher Circles (G. William Domhoff, 1970). Today, the authors' precise in- ventories of the social institutions that were thought to sustain the ruling elite seem antique, almost comical. "A person is considered to be a member of the upper class," Domhoff wrote in introducing one such inventory, "if his sister, wife. mother, or mother-in-law attended one of the following schools or belongs to one of the following groups. . . ."
In retrospect, Baltzell...
Sometimes events overtake us. When we at the WQ first learned
about this article last spring, we were eager to bring it to our
readers. It seemed to us that James Billington's argument that the
Soviet Union was in the midst not of a revolution but of what he
calls a "fever break" was vitally important. We were not alone. In
late May, Billington, the Librarian of Congress and a leading histo-
rian of Russian culture, was invited to present his paper at the
residence of the U.S....
John Noble Wilford
History has not been the lumbus. Such, it seems, is the fate of histori- same since Christopher cal figures whose deeds reverberate Columbus. Neither has through time. he been the same The Columbus story surely confirms the throughout history. axiom that all works of history are interim
During the five cen- reports. What people did in the past is not
-
tunes since his epochal voyage of 1492, Co-preserved in amber, a moment captured lumbus has been many things to m...
History has not been the lumbus. Such, it seems, is the fate of histori- same since Christopher cal figures whose deeds reverberate Columbus. Neither has through time. he been the same The Columbus story surely confirms the throughout history. axiom that all works of history are interim
During the five cen- reports. What people did in the past is not
-
tunes since his epochal voyage of 1492, Co-preserved in amber, a moment captured lumbus has been many things to many peo- and immutable t...
COLUMBUS LABYRINTH
Historians treat it as axiomatic that each new generation, by building on past scholarship, knows more than those that went before. By this logic, we must know more about Columbus than scholars did in 1892 during the fourth Centenary. Unfortunately, that is not the case (or at least it was not 10 years ago).
Popularly, much lore that was common cur- rency about Columbus a century ago has been lost, and, in scholarship, few American histori- ans now specialize in the sorts...
ew presidents in American his- tory elicit more mixed feelings than Woodrow Wilson, And why not? His life and career were full of contradictions that have puled historians for 70 years. A victim of childhood dyslexia, he be- came an avid reader, a skilled academic, and a popular writer and lecturer. A deeply religious man, who some described as "a Presbyterian priest" with a dour view of man's imperfectability, he devoted himself to secular designs promising the triumph of reason and...
When the Soviet Union loosened its grip on Eastern Europe in 1989, observers of the region tempered euphoria with caution. Would the national and ethnic conflicts that have long plagued the region resurface now that the communist lid was off? Would the challenge of rebuilding collapsed economies prove overwhelming? As we approach the second anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, historian John Lukacs uncovers some surprising developments in the "other" Europe.
Bard College's Jerome Levy
Economics Institute, June 18-19, 1991. Authors: Susan E. Mayer and Christopher Jencks
The late 1970s and '80s are widely seen as hard times for poor families. While the aver- age American family's real in- come rose 11 percent be- tween 1979 and '89, for example, the real income of families in the bottom fifth fell by four percent. The poverty rate increased from 10.5 per- cent to 11.4 percent.
But all these figures are mis- leading, contend sociologists Mayer, of the...
