Category: Vital Signs

Forget Back to Basics, language immersion. New (and newer and newer Math, the seven types of intelligence. Learn by Doing, the Great Books, discovery learning, arts-based education. Core Values, self-esteem, and even phonics. American parents have found a new savior for their children’s imperiled education; the computer. All across the country, parent-teacher associations and ad...

The Thomas Crown Affair Produced by Irish Dream Time and United Artists Directed by John McTiernan Screenplay by Leslie Dixon and Kurt Wimmer, original story by Alan Trustman Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer The Blair Witch Project Produced by Haxan Films Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez Screenplay by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez Released by...

With the victory of the Social Democrats in Germany, a year and more after Labour finally managed to win a British election, 11 of the 15 states in the European Union now have governments in the socialist tradition. That is surprising. Socialism is yesterday’s idea, after all, and since the Soviet collapse of 1989-90, hardly...

Russia is in crisis again. Bad debts, devalued currency, corrupt officials, a political system that verges on paralysis, competing visions of the future that allow no room for compromise—the list of problems grows longer as its components become more complex. Observers attribute the crisis to the huge difficulties connected with trying to transform a once-inert...

American Pie Produced by Universal Pictures Directed by Paul Weitz Screenplay by Adam Herz Released by Universal Pictures Summer of Sam Produced by 40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks and Touchstone Pictures Directed by Spike Lee Screenplay by Victor Colicchio and Michael Imperioli Released by Buena Vista Pictures Eyes Wide Shut Produced by Warner Bros.,...

“You are walking on water now, but you will drown in Europe.” So said British Member of Parliament and Euroskeptic leader Bill Cash to the newly installed Prime Minister Tony Blair during a parliamentary debate in May 1997. “Drowning” is a term that applies well to the heavy setback suffered by leftist parties all over...

On the last day of the school year, I sat at my desk. My students had not yet arrived, and I was considering making a decision that would affect the rest of my life. The machinery that precipitated my dilemma had been set in motion a year earlier. Having recently earned a B.A. as an...

In my mind’s eye, I have come to see a great arc radiating above the Clinton presidency, an arc of constant existential activity, a zone where effects are received but not transmitted, a curved line on which every American, with the single exception of the President of the United States, occupies a place. One of...

Suppose that you are one of five owners of a professional football team, which has just come off a losing season. You and the other disgruntled owners have gathered at a conference table to discuss plans for the next year. The five of you toss around ideas for improvement—a bigger stadium, new uniforms, more strategic...

Instinct Produced by Spyglass Entertainment and Touchstone Pictures Directed by Jon Turteltaub Screenplay by Gerald Di Pego and Daniel Quinn Released by Buena Vista Pictures Pushing Tin Produced by Art Linson Productions, 3 Miles Apart Productions Ltd., et al. Directed by Mike Newell Screenplay by Darcy Frey and Glen Charles Released by 20th Century Fox...

As every alert American has noticed, feminist leaders have jumped to the defense of President Clinton ever since he was first accused of sexually abusing a young woman who thought she was invited to see the then-governor for a talk, perhaps about a job. In doing so, they have made a remarkable reversal of the...

Only Americans would take seriously the idea that a foreign politician who presided over the demise of a once-dominant political party should serve as the model for a major U.S. presidential candidate. If a German proposed that the ruling Social Democratic Party should follow former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, or an Italian suggested that the...

I have seen this woman and her child more times than I can remember. She is the poster mother for illegal immigration. In article after article on illegal aliens in the mainstream press, sympathetic journalists describe her suffering and hardship in a land where people have too little compassion. Another such poster illegal is the...

The Third Man Produced by Alexander Korda and David O. Selznick Directed by Carol Reed Screenplay by Graham Greene Released by London Films Re-released by Rialto Pictures Forget the Dark Side. Darth Sidious? No more convincing than Bela Lugosi flitting about an Abbott and Costello travesty. For the real thing, you’ll have to visit your...

Long before the advent of “political correctness” as we have come to know (and hate) it, there was an active and ongoing campaign to outlaw “hate crimes.” This movement had its first big success in 1944, when 36 isolationists of varied backgrounds were indicted for sedition. In charging the defendants—who had nothing in common but...

Recently, the New York Times ran an article that described, at some length, California’s latest tourist attraction, a “theme park and dinner theater” called Tinseltown Studios. Located, appropriately, just a stone’s throw from Disneyland, Tinseltown is a $15 million complex that exists for the purpose of “simulating fame.” Purchase your $45 ticket (“designed to look...

The greatest enemy of government power in the early American republic was Thomas Jefferson. It is no wonder, then, that Jefferson has been so aggressively vilified by the partisans of political correctness. Jefferson was likewise disdained by many in the 19th and early 20th century who, quite rightly, saw his ideas as an obstacle to...

The Economist brands racism as “America’s constant curse,” and the question of race unnerves almost everybody, as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 airily outlaws discrimination in government, commerce, and schooling on grounds of race, gender, age, religion, or national origin, and the new, openly politicized White House policy on affirmative action (“mend it, don’t...

True Crime Produced by Malpaso Productions Directed by Clint Eastwood Screenplay by Andrew Klavan and Larry Gross Released by Warner Bros. The Matrix Produced by Groucho II Film Partnership and Silver Pictures Directed by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski Screenplay by Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski Released by Warner Bros. Clint Eastwood’s True Crime lives...

Eight Millimeter Produced by Columbia Pictures and Hofflund/Polone Directed by Joel Schumacher Screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker Released by Columbia Pictures October Sky Produced by Charles Gordon and Larry Franco Directed by Joe Johnston Screenplay by Lewis Colick and Homer Hicham Released by Universal Pictures Analyze This Produced by Tribeca Productions Directed by Harold Ramis...

After ethnic Albanian guerrillas initially rejected the peace settlement fashioned by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a friend of hers told Newsweek that “She’s angry at everyone—the Serbs, the Albanians and NATO.” Another Clinton administration official raged: “Here is the greatest nation on earth pleading with some nothing-balls to do something entirely in their...

The desire to know what tomorrow will bring, to know the future, is as old as the human race itself But how? Who among us has the “gift of prophecy”? The book of history might seem to offer guidance, but human expectations and prognostications often mislead. When the most brilliant generals, industrialists, scientists, and politicians...

They say you can’t fight city hall—but a group of California parents calling itself Mathematically Correct (MC) has taken on the statehouse and won the right to restore a rigorous math curriculum to public education. It is only just that the tide should begin turning in the former Golden State, which, because it boasts the...

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others have written volumes about how the Great Society destroyed the American family. But the pivotal role played by Republican appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court, in nullifying laws intended to encourage the formation of two-parent families, has gone largely unremarked. The lightning rod for change was a Connecticut statute which...

“A dog’s obeyed in office,” and the power of the welfare state to grab your money, property, health, and—through “no-fault” divorce—your children, too, is already bad enough. Now it is getting worse, via the usurpation of punitive court prerogatives by bureaucrats whose sole purpose is “revenue enhancement” and the growth of the state. The case...

By many important indicators, the American economy is soaring. Unemployment has hit a 30-year low, and productivity is on the rise. These two factors, combined with low inflation, have finally started to push up real wages for most workers. Yet below the surface, conditions are not so encouraging on the economic front and even less...

When we view the monumental seats of government, the palaces and temples of ancient and medieval civilizations, we are awed by their architectural grandeur, the art and culture to which they testify, and the sheer effort they represent. While they are indeed a part of our cultural heritage, these edifices are better understood as monuments...

The words “general welfare” have had the greatest significance in modern American life of any in the Constitution. Originally regarded by its 18th century Federalist creators as a restraint on federal power, the brake of general welfare has been transformed, retooled by the U.S. Supreme Court into a huge turbine, a supercharger that drives today’s...

“We ought to string up Clinton and Monica by their feet, just like the Italians did to Mussolini and his mistress at the end of World War II.” This comment came from a caller to Wisconsin Public Radio, on which I was a guest last fall. When I was invited to speak, I had assumed...

More guns, more murder? This central tenet of the anti-gun movement has found strong new support from the movement’s intellectual superstar. University of California law professor Franklin Zimring. In Crime is not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, Zimring and long-time collaborator Gordon Hawkins make the most persuasive case ever for guns as the fundamental...

For a brief moment in Hartford, Connecticut, on October 6, 1996, the fondest dreams of Southern conservatives seemed to have come true. Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole was debating President Clinton. Perhaps “debating” is the wrong word. In the awkward and disjointed style of discourse that now seems typical of GOP presidential candidates, Dole was...

There is a profound difference between the ancient and medieval view of children and the modern cult of the child. The Rousseauean idolatry of nature and worship of savages, popularized through a certain brand of sentimental poetry, helped to establish a picturesque ideal of the innocent, angelic child. St. Augustine was not inclined to hold...

The other day, as I was reading an article about Keats, I thought suddenly of A.D. Hope. I started imagining a time when young writers would lose interest in the romance of a vivid English youth extinguished by early death. Instead, they would learn to admire the less gifted but longer-lived Australian who ultimately wrote...

From the United States to France, from Germany to England, the post-World War II generation is now running the show. They have traded in their jeans and sneakers for political power. Thirty years ago, they rocked the boat at Berkeley, in Paris, and in Berlin; they marched against U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and supported the...

Moreno Religious persecution in Africa is particularly interesting since countries there go from one extreme to another in terms of religious tolerance. The growth of Islam is reconfiguring Africa’s religious landscape—at the cost of religious liberty. Frontline Fellowship, an evangelical group based in South Africa which operates in Sudan and other countries, provides these estimates:...

I don’t know if I was more shocked by the article itself, or by where it appeared. Though I have heard the argument that gay advocates vastly overstate the prevalence of hate crimes in order to support a far-reaching political agenda, who would have thought that such a coldly skeptical demolition of their case could...

What if the federal government spent a billion tax dollars over nearly three decades to study thoroughly the question of which teaching method best instills knowledge, sharpens cognitive skills, and enhances self-esteem in young children? And what if such a study were able to determine exactly which method best accomplishes all three? Would American parents...

Under the auspices of the United Nations, no nation is working harder to disarm American citizens than is Japan. With help from Canada and Colombia, Japan is the main engine pushing the United Nations to promote “small arms” controls which would obliterate the Second Amendment. There are three problems with Japan’s effort. First, it is...

In a state where the rock ‘n’ roll hit “Louie, Louie” was banned from the airwaves after the governor deemed it subversive, Indiana University (IU) is no stranger to controversy. One of its most famous professors was Alfred Kinsey, whose work is continued by such scholars as Leon Pettiway, author of the recent university press...

On the matter of statehood, Puerto Rico’s outstanding novelist has written . . . actually, I have no idea what he has written, because I do not read Spanish, nor do I plan to learn. Should our flag be defaced by a 51st star for Puerto Rico—which is, admittedly, more deserving of stellification than the...

“Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy” is a famous phrase, and in January 1996, Harriet Harman, Labour spokesman for health in the British House of Commons, became an object of scorn on both sides of the House by sending her 11-year-old son to a school outside the public sector, chosen by entrance examination. She was later, after 1997, a...

In the beginning was the Word. (Not the picture. Or the number.) We are now at the cusp of a movement into a new age when, for large masses of people, verbal images and verbal imagination seem gradually to be replaced by pictorial images and pictorial imagination. I shall attempt to describe one, perhaps seldom...

Since returning from a visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina arranged by The Rockford Institute to consult with the Republic of Srpska (one of Bosnia’s component states) on privatization of its socialist industries, I have given considerable thought as to what Americans (especially Texans) might learn from the recent decomposition of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was created after World War...

Saving Private Ryan Produced by Steven Spielberg Directed by Steven Spielberg Screenplay by Robert Rodat Released by Paramount and DreamWorks SKG If you visit the American cemeteries near the beaches at Normandy—there are two of them—you may pick up a booklet describing the landings of June 6, 1944, as I did over 15 years ago....

Brrrrrrrrrrrrt! Brrrrrrrrrrrrt! As the shooter sprayed his target, his gun ejected a steady stream of shiny spent brass cartridges. Millions of Americans watched this impressive demonstration on their TV screens, while the NBC reporter informed them that the legislation soon to be voted on by the House or Senate would ban “assault weapons.” In a...

Dr. Biljana Plavsic can go back to her microscope now that she has failed to win re-election as president of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska. A tenured professor at Sarajevo University, she was elected dean of the faculty of math and science in 1988. As a respected scholar and community leader, she carried, the most votes of...

After some years of ecclesiastical combat (Episcopal battlefield), I think I know why so many conservative Christians do not respond to liberalism as strongly as one would expect. They think that liberals are just cheating: that they know the rules, but like spoiled and willful children have decided to play by rules they like better....

To what extent (if at all) does natural law entail religious liberty? To put it another way, is religious liberty a natural right? An attempt to answer this question should elucidate the long and sometimes equivocal tradition of natural law. What, for example, is the proper relationship between tolerance and the truth? When does tolerance...

The oft-used term “America’s European allies” is one of the greatest oxymorons of our time. “America’s European vassals” would be more appropriate, for American policy is virtually destroying our so-called “allies,” while aiding multinational corporations. This is not unlike the Soviet bear’s treatment of its Eastern European “allies” (read: minions), only more perfidious. The American...

The Bishop’s Wife (1947) Directed by Henry Koster B&W, 109 minutes This Christmas season, turn off the multi-colored stories of red-nosed reindeer and talking snowmen, put the younger kids to bed, and rent The Bishop’s Wife, which can be found in the classics section of many video stores. The Bishop’s Wife tells the story of...