Summer 1986
The Philippines
In Essence
Michael Mandelbaum, and "Lost Opportunities" Charles William Maynes, in Foreign Affairs (Soecial Issue 1985). 58 East 68th St.. New ~ork,N.Y. 10021.
Five years into Ronald Reagan's presidency, some observers have begun to suspect that the popular Chief Executive is just plain lucky.
Among them is Mandelbaum, research director of the Lehrman Insti- tute in Manhattan. Owing as much to good fortune as to good politics, the Reagan administration has pursued what he calls "the most successful...
Michael Mandelbaum, and "Lost Opportunities" Charles William Maynes, in Foreign Affairs (Soecial Issue 1985). 58 East 68th St.. New ~ork,N.Y. 10021.
Five years into Ronald Reagan's presidency, some observers have begun to suspect that the popular Chief Executive is just plain lucky.
Among them is Mandelbaum, research director of the Lehrman Insti- tute in Manhattan. Owing as much to good fortune as to good politics, the Reagan administration has pursued what he calls "the most successful...
William J. Breman, Jr., in The Pennsylvania Gazette (Feb. 1986), Univ. of Pa., 3533 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.
Justice Brennan, known for forging majorities during the Supreme Court's liberal era under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953-69), has become a mi-nority voice under Warren Burger.
During the last five years, the 80-year-old Brennan has often publicized
WQ SUMMER 1986
10
PERIODICALS
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
his opposition to the High Court majority's view of the death p...
judges on a panel deliver individual rulings), adopted the practice of issuing the Court's judg- ment in a single, presumably unanimous, opinion. Not surprisingly, Mar- shall's innovation did not please his fellow justices. 1805, the Court allowed formal dissents back into the official proceedings.
To Breman, the salient virtue of a dissenting opinion is its capacity to "ripen" into a majority opinion-no matter how long such maturation may take. In the case of Justice John Harlan's objection...
deaths or retirement.
Races for such open House seats are scarce-and desirable, since they give local politicians the best chance to advance themselves. The past two decades have seen fierce competition among men for such opportunities. Women (despite their greater number in the U.S. population) are no match. Of the 19 who competed against men for party nominations in open-seat primaries from 1964 to 1970, 12 won. Yet, when 91 women ran for such open-seat nominations during 1974-80, only 21 won....
deaths or retirement.
Races for such open House seats are scarce-and desirable, since they give local politicians the best chance to advance themselves. The past two decades have seen fierce competition among men for such opportunities. Women (despite their greater number in the U.S. population) are no match. Of the 19 who competed against men for party nominations in open-seat primaries from 1964 to 1970, 12 won. Yet, when 91 women ran for such open-seat nominations during 1974-80, only 21 won....
Mark Falcoff, in Foreign Affairs(Spring 1986), 58 East 68th St., New York, N.Y. 10021.
Once a key source of raw materials, notably copper, Chile is now important to the United States mostly for ideological reasons. So says Falcoff, a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
American liberals, he notes, tend to view Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship as yet another evil result of meddling the Central Intelligence Agency in the Third World. Conservatives, after a brief infatu- ation...
limiting Pinochet's control.
Above all, says Falcoff, Washington must act before Chile reaches "the point of no return."
"Dateline Holland: NATO's Pyrrhic Victory" by
Maarten Huygen, in Foreign Policy (Spring
1986), 11 ~&ont Circle N.w., washington,
D.C. 20036.
When Holland finally agreed last November to allow 48 U.S. cruise mis- siles on its territory, other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organi- zation (NATO) hailed the decision as a sign of the 37-year-old...
Peter F. Drucker, in The Pub-lic Interest (Winter 1986), 10 East 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
Corporate "raiders" have become the bad boys of Wall Street. Since 1980, they have forced unwanted corporate mergers on 400 to 500 companies, or "targets," including Gulf, Union Oil, and the Bendix Corporation.
During these "hostile takeovers," a "raiderv-either another company or an individual speculator-acquires a majority share of the target compa- ny's stock offering...
a 'white knight" corporation invited in the target company), it can still turn a profit by selling back, at a higher price, the shares it bought.
What has prompted this outbreak of corporate cannibalism? Drucker, who teaches management at the Claremont Graduate School, sees a con- junction of causes. --
First, owing to the cumulative effects of post-Vietnam inflation, the cost of capital has outstripped the price of goods produced. "It thus be- comes economical," observes Drucker,...
one-third (as prices soared 240 percent) and health care services by one-fourth (those costs rose by 153 percent). Americans also offset above- average prices for meat, fish, and sugar by buying more poultry, eggs, fruits, and vegetables. All told, U.S. households curtailed consumption by 12 percent. But they also saved less money. Whereas the typical household spent 76 percent of its after-tax income in 1972-73, it was paying out 84 percent by 1982-83.
In the wake of the "baby boomH-Americans...
"The Declining Well-Being of American Adoles-cents" Peter Uhlenberg and David Egge- been, in The Public Interest (Winter 19861, 10 East 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
Pointing to "leading indicators" of child welfare, social scientists and Wash- ington policy-makers predicted great progress for America's youth during the 1960s and '70s.
Indeed, the proportion of white 16- and 17-year-olds living in homes with poverty or large families or poorly educated parents-all factors...
140 percent. During that same period, the proportion of mothers in the labor force with children under 18years of age'rose from 28 percent to 57 percent; no evidence exists that fathers are filling the gap in parental supervision.
Citing a 1981 study pollster Daniel Yankelovich, the authors ob- serve that parents are clearly putting their own "self-fulfillment" ahead of their "commitment to sacrificing personal pursuits for their children's wel- fare." Until parenthood once...
Much of this "urban sprawl," notes McLeod, senior writer for Insight, stems from a growth of the U.S. population, up from 151 million in 1950 to 236 million in 1984. Another factor is economics: It is more convenient arid less expensive to set up shop on the outskirts of town. Pepsico, Texaco, IBM, and 'Xerox, for example, have all built new headquarters roughly 20 to 30 miles outside of New York City.
Urbanizing the once-tranquil world of green lawns and tract housing raises the tax...
making teachers more accountable for their work, such evaluations strengthened parents' confidence in the schools.
Cash incentives, the authors conclude, are not necessarily the key to better teaching. But making teacher evaluations common practice willben-efit the nation's educators-and, in turn, its students.
"What Antipoverty Policies Cost the Nonpoor" Robert H. Havernan, in Challenge (Jan.-Feb. 1986), 80 Business Park Dr., Arrnonk, N.Y. 10504.
The debate over Lyndon Johnson's Great...
Fred Smoller, in Presidential Studies Quarterly (Winter 1986), 208 East 75th St., New York,
N.Y. 10021.
As presented on the nightly TV network news, presidential faux pas have contributed some less-than-august images to American history: Gerald Ford stumbling out of Air Force One; Jimmy Carter fending off a "killer rabbit"; Ronald Reagan bumbling at press conferences.
The public may be amused, but Smoller, a political scientist at Chap- man College, is not. He argues that such gratuitously...
TV? Smoller suggests a look at the tactics of President Reagan, who has received even more negative TV coverage than Nixon, Ford, or Carter. taking a "con-trolled" approach to the media-using weekly radio broadcasts, televised presidential addresses-and by carefully shaping the cameras' access to himself and his key aides, Reagan has held on to his popularity and tri- umphed as the Great Communicator.
RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY
"Religion in Post-Mao China' by Merle Gold-man, in...
Robin West, in Harvard Law Review (Dec. 1985). Gannett House, Cambridge, Mass. 02138.
Should the law permit informed, consenting adults to pursue any danger- ous course of action they choose?
Some libertarian philosophers and legal scholars answer Yes. Richard Posner, a federal judge and author of The Economics of Justice (1983), argues that protection of such personal "autonomy" should be a guiding legal principle. He assumes that people will only choose to do what will 'improve their...
Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus, in Technol-ogy Review, (Jan. 1986), Massachusetts Insti- tute of Technology, Rrn. 10-140, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
A quarter century ago, researchers in "artificial intelligence" (AD-a branch of computer science attempting to reproduce the process of thought-predicted that, within two decades, computers would be able to do everything humans can do.
This breakthrough has not occurred. The Dreyfuses, professors of phi- losophy and engineering, respectively, at...
" in The Econo-
mist (Jan. 18, 1986), 25 St.James's St.,Lon-
don, SWA1A lHG, England.
Under normal circumstances, most people experience a four-dimensional world (three dimensions in space and one in time). Most students envision the building blocks of matter as little "bits," with electrons circling an atomic nucleus much as the Earth orbits the Sun.
Such notions will soon be considered obsolete. Contemporary physi- cists, like their forebears during the 1920s, are reinterpreting...
expanding the number of spatial dimensions in the Kaluza-Klein model to 10, and interpreting subatomic matter as "strings" of energy (instead of particles), many of the mathematical contradictions faded.
There are still kinks in the model. In its present form, it cannot account for all matter in the universe. But the study of string theory is becoming a booming field. Green, Schwarz, Edward Witten of Princeton, and Stephen Hawking of Cambridge are among scores of physicists trying to...
the destruction of brain cells in the substantia nigra (an area just above the spinal cord) that secrete the chemical dopamine, Parkinson's symptoms abate when the level of doparnine is raised. Since the adrenal glands (located above the kidneys) also produce dopamine, its cells are excellent candidates-for transplants.
Olson and Seiger tried adrenal-brain grafts in rats and partially re- versed Parkinson's debilitating effects. In 1982, they made the leap to humans, grafting adrenal cells into...
David Osbome, in
The Atlantic (Feb. 19861, 8 Arlington St., Bos-
ton, Mass. 02116.
Following the much-publicized energy crisis of the 1970s, many Western pundits warned that diminishing petroleum reserves might threaten future economic growth.
Such fears are unfounded, says Thomas Gold, a Comell astrophysicist. Indeed, he claims that the Earth still harbors an enormous untapped supply of oil and gas.
The prevailing geologists' theory of oil and natural gas formation, notes Osbome. a contributor...
Anthony V. Nero, Jr., in Technology Review (Jan. 19861, Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology, Rm. 10-140, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.
Few phenomena are as worrisome to Americans as radiation, commonly associated with nuclear power plants. Yet the greatest source of radiation exposure for most Americans may be the air in their own homes.
"Significant amounts of radon-a natural radioactive gas-accumulate in our houses simply because we tend to build them on the largest source of radioactivity...
Molly Nesbit, in Art in America (Feb. 1986), 980 Madison Ave., New -. York, N.Y. 10021.
In 1926, when American artist Man Ray first published a photograph Eugene Atget, an unknown French photographer, Atget insisted: "Don't put my name on it. These are simply documents I make."
Today, Atget (1856-1927) is considered to be not only a leading docu- mentary photographer of the 20th century but also a significant artist. Nesbit, a Bamard art historian, argues that the two, seemingly contradic-...
Rudolf Arnheim. in American Scientist (Ian.-Feb. 1986), 345 Whitney Ave., New ~aven, Conn. 06511.
The visual landscape ofschizophrenics lies beyond the grasp of rational people. Their "cracked" minds, commented British psychiatrist R. D. Laing in 1965, "may let in light which does not enter the intact minds of many sane people."
A half century earlier, such thoughts occurred to Hans Prinzhom, a Heidelberg psychiatrist with a background in philosophy and art history. He collected...
"No Illusions: Israel Reassesses Its Chances for Peace" Thomas L. Friedman, in The New York Times Magazine (Jan. 26, 19861, 229 West 43rd St., New York, N.Y. 10036.
June 1986 marks a milestone in Israel's history. The Israelis will have
possessed the West Bank of the River Jordan for as long as they lived
without it-19 years.
Israel took control of the West Bank after its victory over Egypt, Syria, and Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then, the fate of the captured territory...
Western diplomats and Israelis alike for an "ultimate solution." Yet their grand designs have led, so far, to no solution.
"Racial Conflict in Britain' David Winder, in
@ 's The Journal of the Institute for Socioeconomic
Studies (Winter 1986), Airport Rd., White
Plains, N.Y. 10604.
Once the hub of an expanding empire, Britain today is having trouble absorbing newcomers from the Asian, African, and Caribbean territories it formerly ruled.
Last summer, frustrations over economic...
Pierre Papazian, in The Midwest Quarterly (Winter 1986), Pitts- burg State Univ., Pittsburg, Kans. 66762-5889.
In January 1973, Gourgen Yanikian assassinated the Turkish Consul and Vice-consul in Los Angeles. Yanikian claimed revenge for the massacre of roughly one million fellow Armenians (half the total Armenian population) Ottoman Turks in 1915.
Since 1973, at least 41 Turkish diplomats and officials have been slain in more than 200 attacks worldwide. The worst came in July 1983, when Armenian...
public agencies and private institutions
"Mexico in Crisis." ..
Foreign Policy Institute of the School of Advanced International Studies, 1740 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. 17 pp. $3.95. Author: Bruce Bagley
On January 3,1986, President Ronald Rea- gan and President Miguel de la Madrid of Mexico met for their fourth "Border Sum- mit," at Mexicali, Mexico. Both leaders waxed optimistic. Reagan praised de la Ma- drid's "strenuous efforts" to deal...
Book Reviews
Fellows and staff of the Wilson Center
ALEXANDER POPE: Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688 A Life and died in Twickenham in 1744. The son of Maynard Mack a linen merchant, he was a hunchbacked Norton, 1985 dwarf with tubercular bone cancer. He was 975 pp. $22.50 prone to incessant migraines, and equally prone to enrage fools, since he could not suf- fer them gladly. He was also the greatest poet of his era, one of the three or four tow- ering eminences in the history of English lit- erature,...
Maynard Mack Norton, 1985 975 pp. $22.50
Charles and Barbara Whalen Seven Locks, 1985 289 pp. $16.95
Gene Brucker
Univ. of Calif., 1986
121 pp. $13.95
Michael E. McGerr
Oxford, 1986
307 pp. $24.95
K. N. Chaudhuri
Cambridge, 1985
269 pp. $16.95
Daniel Patrick Moymhan
Harcourt, 1986
207 pp. $12.95
Robert
McAfee Brown
Yale, 1986
264 pp. $19.95
S. Schoenbaum
Folger, 1985
285 pp. $28.50
Frederick Turner
Princeton, 1985
182 pp. $26
John Noble Wilford Knopf, 1985 304 pp. $22.95
Daniel K. Kevles Knopf, 1985 426 pp. $22.95
Peter Mansfield:. Penguin,
1985. 527 pp. $6.95
Iris Mwdoch. Ark, 1985. 106 pp. $5.95
Keith Bradley
and Alan Gelb. MIT, 1986. 186 pp. $6.95
Essays
Don Juan (starring John Barryrnore), the first film ever made with synchro- nized, pre-recorded sound. The "talkies" revived the flagging ap- peal of Hollywood's products and created new stars for the young to idolize and imitate. Today's movies, seen on the screen, on TV, and, lately, on videocassettes, reach an even wider audience. Na-tional Lampoon's Animal House sparked a collegiate craze for food fights and toga parties; Star Wars gave us "the Force" and a name for President...
ty years ago, American moviegoers were dazzled by Don Juan (starring John Barryrnore), the first film ever made with synchro- nized, pre-recorded sound. The "talkies" revived the flagging ap- peal of Hollywood's products and created new stars for the young to idolize and imitate. Today's movies, seen on the screen, on TV, and, lately, on videocassettes, reach an even wider audience. Na-tional Lampoon's Animal House sparked a collegiate craze for food fights and toga parties; Star Wars...
Vampires from outer space, pirate treasure, time machines, cowboys defending homesteaders, dinosaurs, a half-naked warrior vanquishing hordes of enemies, a house that turns into the biggest popcorn machine in history.
These are the images you would have seen in some of Holly- wood's major productions of the past year-in Lifeforce, The Goo- nies, Back to the Future, Silverado, My Science Project, Rambo: First Blood Part 11, and Real Genius.
This list may remind some older Americans of the kinds...
MOVIES
HE AVANT-
If Louis B. Mayer, the Hollywood mogul, had lived until the late 1960s, he would have been startled by some of the changes in the tastes of movie-going Americans.
True, the lines would have been longest at theaters offering such easily recognizable Hollywood fare as Dr. Dolittle or Paint Your Wagon. But in the larger cities and college towns, a good many movie fans would have been elsewhere. Some would have been thronging local "art" theaters to see Ingmar Bergman's T...
"The coming of the motion picture," newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst once said, "was as important as that of the printing press."
Hearst, as was his wont, exaggerated a bit. But during its humble beginnings in a Medo Park, N.J., laboratory, nobody could have guessed what an enormous impact on Americans' fantasies, mores, and morals the motion picture would have-least of all its inventor, the re- doubtable Thomas Alva Edison.
Edison and his assistant, William D...
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The mind, wrote John Milton in Paradise Lost (1667), "can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n." Metaphor or spiritual reality, men's notions of Hell have always reflected developments within their earthly societies as well as the ruminations of philosophers and poets. Here, historian Alan Bernstein ponders the major West- em views of Hell from the ancient Hebrews to the present.
Hell today is enveloped in silence.
Among those in the West who unquestioningly accept its...
U.S. officials, after the disputed "snap" election of February 7 and massive street pro- tests. Weeks passed before he would begin to talk to newsmen in Honolulu. Marcos conceded, finally, that his days in the Mala- cafiang presidential palace were over. Speaking of Corazon Aquino, his successor, who had to deal with the problems Marcos left behind (including a $26 billion foreign debt and a Communist insurgency), the ex-President was patronizing: "Poor girl, she may have bitten off...
. Humorist Finley Peter Dunne's "Mr. Dooley" said that no one was sure if they were "islands or canned goods." One legend had President McKinley scur- rying to a globe to see where "those darned islands" were.
In reality, U.S. and European firms had established commercial houses there many decades earlier to trade for hemp. The isolation imposed by Spain continued to erode in the 19th century thanks to steamships, the Suez Canal, and the laying of submarine cables.
The...
. When independence came, in 1946, Quezon was in his grave. As forecast, Roxas was President, and he had much to ponder.
With the removal of U.S. authority, the Philippines had to for- mulate a government system that would respond not to the wishes of America but to its own needs. Filipinos had evolved a pattern of social relations pre-dating Spanish times that linked peasants and landlords in a mutually beneficial patron-client relationship. Central to it was a concept of mutual obligations known...
. He recognized his countrymen's love of fiery oratory, and he did not disappoint them.
The Filipino has lost his soul, his dignity, and his courage!" Ferdinand Marcos said. "We have ceased to value order." The gov- eminent was "in the iron grip of venality. Its treasury is barren, its resources are wasted.. .its armed forces demoralized." He would need help. "I ask for not one hero alone among you, but for many."
So began a 21-year drama that would culminate...
' national hero. He fos- tered the idea of a "Filipino" identity.
This book, published in America as The Subversive (Indiana, 1962, cloth; Norton, 1968, paper), and a previous novel, Noli Me Tangere (The Lost Eden, Greenwood, 1968), were written in Europe. There Rizal led the Propa- ganda Movement, a group of emigres who sought to "awaken the sleeping in- tellect of the Spaniard" to native ambi- tions. Biting portraits of life under Span- ish rule, the books were banned in the...
Shortly after Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's move to Vermont in 1976, a Soviet diplomat told an American television interviewer that the Nobel laureate was like the kidnapped boy in 0. Henry's story "The Ransom of Red Chief." One day, he warned, the United States would pay the Soviet Union to take its troublemaker back. So far, Washington has not made any offers, despite Solzhenitsyn's repeated denunciations of the West as weak-willed, decadent, and godless. Readers of Solzhenitsyn's novels...
