What We Make of Pain

Table of Contents

In Essence

official estimates, some 3.5 million aliens now live in die United States illegally, and 200,000 to 300,000 more are coming each year. Mexicans and Central Americans account for more than half of the influx, but illegal immigrants also come from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and Canada. Congress tried to stem the tide eight years ago strengthening border enforcement and imposing sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. But die Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 only...

George L. Kelling and Catherine M. Coles, in The Public Interest (Summer 1994), 1112 16thSt. N.W., Ste. 530, Washington, D.C. 20036; "Graffiti" Andre Henderson, in Gouernii~g (Aug. 1994), 2300 N St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037.
Fighting "serious" crime by lengthening prison sentences, banning some semi-automatic weap- ons, and putting more cops on the beat, as Presi- dent Clinton's federal crime legislation pro- vides, is all well and good. But the more com- mon "crime"...

A. James Reichley, in Tlie
World &I (May 1994), 3400 New York Ave. N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.
First critics of Ronald Reagan's presidency dis- missed him as an affable buffoon. Then, wlien the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were lib- erated, they denied tliat the Reagan administra- tion and its budget-busting arms buildup played a crucial role. Finally, a few academics conceded that the administration's policies contributed, but denied tliat Reagan himself did. Once again, Reagan's critics...

A. James Reichley, in Tlie
World &I (May 1994), 3400 New York Ave. N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002.
First critics of Ronald Reagan's presidency dis- missed him as an affable buffoon. Then, wlien the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were lib- erated, they denied tliat the Reagan administra- tion and its budget-busting arms buildup played a crucial role. Finally, a few academics conceded that the administration's policies contributed, but denied tliat Reagan himself did. Once again, Reagan's critics...

David C. Hendrickson,in Foreign Affairs (Sept.-Oct.1994),58 E. 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Candidate Bill Clinton's message in the 1992 campaign was plain: President George Bush was neglecting the domestic welfare. He was much too preoccupied with foreign affairs. So well did the Democrat get his message across, observes Hendrickson, a political scientist at Colorado College, that an important fact was obscured: Clinton was calling for a far more ambitious for- eign policy than Bush's. He not...

Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., in Wake Forest Law Reviezu (Summer 1994), Wake Forest University, School of Law, Winston-Salem, N.C. 27109.
Opinion surveys show that Americans now have more confidence in the military than in any other

At Sea in the World

institution. The hostility toward those in uniform so evident during the Vietnam War-and in ear- lier periods of American history-has disappeared, and the "can do" military is seen as virtually the only part of government that works. A 19...

the authoritarian system in which they live; indeed, they cherish the har- mony it provides. [They] do not necessarily ad- mire or desire the unbridled individualism en- joyed civilian society." As its civilian respon- sibilities multiply, Dunlap warns, the military may start "to assume it has the right, and even the obligation, to intervene in a wide range of activities when it perceives it can advance a broadly defined notion of the national interest."

Sons of the South
"Dixie's D...

an educated elite, reverence for the law and tra- dition, political stability, and a humane free enter-prise system." Fulbright feared that LBJ's unwise venture in Vietnam was endangering America's own republican institutions. Imperialism and re- publicanism were not compatible.
'If Fulbright's philosophy was rooted in the Anglophilia and class-consciousness of Arkansas's planting aristocracy, it grew also out of the mind-set of the southern highlanders who populated the Ozark mountains,"...

"zealots" at home to ban the use of pesti- cides and biotechnology, which lift farm produc- tivity without posing significant dangers to the environment, Duesterberg says. "A far-greater . . . environmental catastrophe," he writes, "would ensue if the world's farmers cut down forests equal in size to the entire land mass of South America-which is what they would have to do to meet world food demand using only organic farming." Duesterberg's formula for the 21st century...

"zealots" at home to ban the use of pesti- cides and biotechnology, which lift farm produc- tivity without posing significant dangers to the environment, Duesterberg says. "A far-greater . . . environmental catastrophe," he writes, "would ensue if the world's farmers cut down forests equal in size to the entire land mass of South America-which is what they would have to do to meet world food demand using only organic farming." Duesterberg's formula for the 21st century...

Kinsey and the pop authorities who followed him were based on a carefully de- signed, random survey of a cross section of Americans. These "experts" interviewed only selected-and in some cases, self-selected-groups of people willing to talk about their intimate lives. "These 're- ports' are to responsible social science what alchemy is to chemistry. . . and magic to medicine," Greeley says.
The findings turned up in 1991 the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), at the University...

. In women's studies departments, for example, all differences between men and women are as- sumed to be "culturally determined," and thus subject to change. Heterosexuality is likewise regarded as a mere prejudice, a "cultural de- mand."
But, illogically, culture can also be "a rhe- torical device" to ward off criticism and change, Clausen points out, a kind of intellec- tual stop sign. Political correctness rules out virtually any negative comment about any as- pect...

. In women's studies departments, for example, all differences between men and women are as- sumed to be "culturally determined," and thus subject to change. Heterosexuality is likewise regarded as a mere prejudice, a "cultural de- mand."
But, illogically, culture can also be "a rhe- torical device" to ward off criticism and change, Clausen points out, a kind of intellec- tual stop sign. Political correctness rules out virtually any negative comment about any as- pect...

nine tracts.
Still, Jargowsky takes encouragement from declining concentrations in such areas as New York City, Newark, N.J., and Tampa-St. Pe- tersburg. The drops are the product of im- proved local economies, Jargowsky believes, and show that the vision of the black poor as totally alienated and indifferent to opportunity is wrong. If the economy is strong, many poor people will work their way out of the ghettos.

A University's Decline and Fall
'Downward Mobility: The Failure of Open Admissions a...

Tom Rosenstiel, in The New Republic (Aug. 22 & 29,1994), 1220 19th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
When the first U.S. bombs and missiles slammed into Iraq in January 1991 to begin the Persian Gulf War, three Cable News Network (CNN) correspondents, holed up in their Baghdad hotel room, provided an exclusive- and riveting-description of the attack. As the hours went by, some 11.5 million homes tuned in to the channel once ridiculed as the 'Chicken Noodle Network." Saddam Hussein's government...

25 percent. May, only 370,000 TV sets were tuned to the channel at any given time. More people watch ABC or CBS at 3 A.M. than watch the Atlanta-based cable news net- work during daylight hours.
Rosenstiel, a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, sheds no tears for CNN. The network could have revolutionized TV jour- nalism; instead it has only diminished it, he says. Although it broadcasts around the clock, its news shows are not much longer than the 22-minute network broadcasts. Much...

the industrialized world are having a similar impact in Muslim countries. Finally, just as cultural intercourse wit11 the Arab empire long ago renewed Europe's connection with its intellectual roots in classical Greece, so today the flow of Western culture and technology into the Islamic world may foster great intellectual change. And it may not take as long to happen. New ideas now travel
Are Islamic rebels on the march to pozuer in Algeria?
faster, Beedham observes, "and the people of today's...

getting rid of the free riders, the strict churches become stronger-and more attractive. "Strictness works," Iannaccone declares.
It can be carried too far, however. "Even though hundreds were willing to join the Bhagwan Rajneesh in Antelope, Oregon, few would have followed him to the Arctic Circle," Iannacone says. Many small sects wither and die because they impose excessive demands. A 1985 study of more than 400 sects found that 32 per- cent never increased their membership...

supplies in arid regions," Platt writes. In Tampa, Florida, tluee municipal golf courses consume about 560,000 gallons a day. In the United States, home to more than half of the world's 50 million golfers, about 10 percent of golf courses are now being irrigated with waste water.
Fertilizers and pesticides are another golf course hazard, Platt notes. According to the U.S.- based Journal of Pesticide Reform, 750 kilograms (about 1,653 pounds) of pesticides are sprayed on a typical course annually....

Peter Shaw, in The Seiufli~eeReviezu (Spring 1994), University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn. 37383.
It is more than passing strange: The academics who so strenuously object to the "canon" of the great works of Western literature never get down to cases. "Canon-busters" such as Barbara Foley, author of Radical Representations (1993) and Paul Lauter, author of Canons and Context (19911, do not challenge the standing of Hamlet, say, or any other particular revered work. In- stead,...

Peter Shaw, in The Seiufli~eeReviezu (Spring 1994), University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn. 37383.
It is more than passing strange: The academics who so strenuously object to the "canon" of the great works of Western literature never get down to cases. "Canon-busters" such as Barbara Foley, author of Radical Representations (1993) and Paul Lauter, author of Canons and Context (19911, do not challenge the standing of Hamlet, say, or any other particular revered work. In- stead,...

the European Union's denial of market access to East Euro- pean nations-were certain to push millions of disgruntled workers and pensioners to the left, he notes. But why did they turn to the ex-com-munist Left and not to the new social-demo- cratic parties that emerged from the anti-com- munist opposition?
A dispirited populace and a tenacious com- munist nomenklaturahelped to make the come- back possible, but the biggest factor, Karatnycky argues, was that "anti-commu- nists lost their moral...

Angelo M. Codevilla, in Commentary (Aug. 1994), 165East 56th St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
After industrialist Silvio Berlusconi's rightist coalition swept Italy's parliamentary elections last March, many European politicians and much of the prestige press in- America began warning of the return of Mussolini-style fas- cism. Codevilla, a c ell ow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, contends that there is no need to worry.
True, he says, the National Alliance, one of the three roughly...

war, mismanagement, corruption, Western sanctions, diplomatic isolation,oil-market fluctuations, and natural disasters-is in shambles, with unemployment officially around 15 percent, in- flation at 18 percent, and unoffi- cial estimates of both far higher.
Iran's borders are unstable, it has only a few friends left in the world (notably, Syria and Paki- stan), and worst of all, the Great Satan, a.k.a. the United States, is now the lone superpower on the planet and the chief military power in the...

Book Reviews

BLOOD AND BELONGING: Journeys into the New Nationalism
By Michael Ignatieff.
Farrar, Strauss. 263 pp. $21
THE FUTURE OF GERMAN DEMOCRACY.
Ed. by Robert Gerald Livingston and Volkmar
Sander. Continuum. 168 pp. $19.95
CIVIL WARS: From L.A. to Bosnia. By Hans
Magnus Enzensberger. New Press. 144 pp. $18

DICTATORSHIP OF VIRTUE: Multiculturalism and tlie Battle for America's Future
By Richard Bernstein.
Knopf. 367 pp. $25

Essays

Evgeny Rein

Selected and Introduced by Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky

virtually all of humankind yet felt
each individual in an absolutely private way.

What We Make of Pain

BY DAVID

Jeremy Bentham-the great-grandfather of modern utilitarian thougl~t~offers

a
useful jolt to normal opinion in his claim

that pain, far from constituting merely an unwelcome occasion to race for the medicine cabinet, holds sway over individual lives much as a sovereign power governs a state. Pain, that is, rules us not only when it appears in full regalia, displaying its power...

Jeremy Bentham—the great-grandfather of modern utilitarian thought—offers
a useful jolt to normal opinion in his claim that pain, far from constituting merely an unwelcome occasion to race for the medicine cabinet, holds sway over individual lives much as a sovereign power governs a state. Pain, that is, rules us not only when it appears in full regalia, displaying its power like a king at a banquet, but also when it remains behind the scenes, more or less invisible, its pres...

DAVID B. MORRIS

Throughout history, people have called for medical practitioners to assist in the deaths of patients suffering from intractable pain as a result of advanced dis- ease. But while many doctors themselves have advocated such assistance, including those of ancient Greece, Western medical practice has generally cleaved to the view of Hippocrates, who argued firmly against phy- sicians' "giving a deadly drug to any patient."

Not that the Hippocratic view has reigned unchallenged. Today i...

Kathleen M. Foley

why do you write so much about pain? they ask me. To give it a name, I reply. And I am not sure what I mean. I try again: In October, when the leaves have fallen, from the trees, you can see farther into the forest. Now do you see? No? Well, what is your no- tion of pain? Pain is fire, a ravening, insa- tiable thing that insists upon utter domina- tion; it is the occasion when the body reas- serts itself over the mind; the universe con- tracts about the part that hurts; if the pain is not placated...

RICHARD SELZER

on two paychecks make it hard to cheer. Our authors explain zulzat is happening, and why. Paul Osterman surveys the prospects of the young. Paul Kruginan examines the impact of new technology. Thomas Muller sizes up the effects of immigration. Laura L. Nash considers the "virtual job" of the future.

PAUL OSTERMAN
e live in an age of anxiety seems truncated and unpromising. The news about jobs, and perhaps the media have cast them as an "edgy," cynical, greatest anxiety is f...

e live in an age of anxiety seems truncated and unpromising. The news about jobs, and perhaps the media have cast them as an "edgy," cynical, greatest anxiety is felt by and disheartened "Generation X," the first young people searching for generation in American history, we are con- their first employment. All the other dangers stantly told, that cannot look forward to a fu- and discontents of the world of work-from ture better than its parents had. A staple of the stagnant...

PAUL OSTERMAN

In his science-fiction novel of 1952, Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut imagined a future in which the ingenuity of engineers has allowed machines to eliminate virtually all manual labor. The social consequences of this technological creativity, in his vision, are disastrous: Most people, instead of finding gainful employment, live on the dole or are employed in pointless government make-work programs. Only the most creative and talented can find meaningful work, and their numbers steadily shrink as more and more jobs are automated out of existence.

PAUL KRUGMAN

ot since the Great Depression has the United States seen a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment to rival today's. So strong is public feeling

that it helped drive President Bill Clinton to re- verse the nation's long-held policy of welcom- ing any refugee who managed to escape from Fidel Castro's Cuba. Instead of a hero's wel- come, the Cuban boat people received inglo- rious confinement in Panama or at the U.S. na- val base in Guantanamo Bay.
Two years earlier, after the 1992Los An- geles riots, Pa...

THOMAS MULLER

LAURA L. NASH
something very odd is going on in the American corporate workplace. Em-
ployees are being told to prepare for
a radical new condition of perma- nent insecurity, a future full of sporadic lay- offs, endless efforts to upgrade job skills, and perpetually recombining work teams of insiders and "outsourcers." Continuous cor- porate "rightsizing" will dictate a "portfolio career" strategy: Since workers will no longer spend their careers with one or two...

LAURA L . NASH

Thirty-eight years old when appointed head of the Los Alamos Laboratory,
7.Robert Oppenlzeimer (1904-67) became one of the more astute strategic
thinkers about the nuclear age he helped to create. After facing charges
of disloyalty-clwrges as groundless as ones recently made in the much-publi-
cized memoirs of a former KGB general-Oppenlzeimer lost influence in the
highest circles of government. But as Robert Erwin shows, this was far less a
tragedy for the brilliant "outsider"...

ROBERT ERWIN

has separated political pliilosopliy in the English-speaking world from that of continental Europe. As is well known, this rift did not open overnight. Its origins can be traced back to the early 19th century, when distinctly national styles of plulosophical reflection first arose in Europein tlie wake of tlie French Revolution. As late as the 17th century, European thinkers shared a common language, Latin, which allowed them to communicate directly witli their con- temporaries and indirectly...

Mark Lilla

ody-snatching space pods-they re-
semble squash with a thyroid condi-
tion and hormonal imbalance-first
invaded the earth in the mid-1950s, so we're coming up on a 40th anniversary. Fall asleep near one of them, and the malevolent pod will suck the life out of you, become you, assume your appearance, erase your human- ity, and leave your former body an empty husk. The vegetables have settled in nicely, and their presence explains a lot: the capacity of politicians to keep smiling; the diction...

James Morris

Browse Our Issues