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Sisterhood and the SEALs

Sat, 28 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Heather Mac Donald - May. 28 (Opinion) - It was just a matter of time before the successful Navy SEAL operation against Osama bin Laden on May 1 provoked a complaint that SEAL teams are all-male.

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The Silicon Lining

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Guy Sorman - Jun. 03 (Special Report) - California’s innovative high-tech firms keep creating wealth, but will bad state policies drive them out?

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America’s Food Revolution

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Jerry Weinberger - Sep. 20 (Special Report) - The U.S. has revolutionized its culinary culture over the last 40-odd years. No longer is it the developed world’s worst food nation; in fact, it’s perhaps the best. And it’s largely thanks to the (currently disputed) genius of America’s entrepreneurial capitalism.

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Obsessive Housing Disorder by Steven Malanga, City Journal Spring 2009

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Steven Malanga - May. 09 (Investigative Report) - Almost everything that the Times accused the Bush administration of doing has been pursued many times by earlier administrations, both Democratic and Republican—and often with calamitous results.

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The (Really) Moderate Muslims of Kosovo

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

City Journal - By Michael J. Totten - Dec. 21 (Special Report) - Kosovo’s brand of Islam may be the most liberal in the world. I saw no more women there wearing conservative Islamic clothing—one or two per day at most—than I’ve seen in Manhattan. There is no gender apartheid even in Kosovo’s villages. Alcohol flows freely in restaurants, cafés, and bars, where you’ll see as many young women in sexy outfits as you’d find in any Western European country. Aside from the minarets on the skyline, there is no visible evidence that Kosovo is a Muslim-majority country at all.

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The Humanities Move Off Campus

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

City Journal - By Victor Davis Hanson - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - Until recently, classical education served as the foundation of the wider liberal arts curriculum, which in turn defined the mission of the traditional university. Classical learning dedicated itself to turning out literate citizens who could read and write well, express themselves, and make sense of the confusion of the present by drawing on the wisdom of the past. Students grounded in the classics appreciated the history of their civilization and understood the rights and responsibilities of their unique citizenship. Universities, then, acted as cultural custodians, helping students understand our present values in the context of a 2,500-year tradition that began with the ancient Greeks.

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Taxachusetts No More?

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Daniel J. Flynn - Nov. 01 (News Analysis) - Thanks to the tenacity of Carla Howell of the Committee for Small Government, voters may be able to eliminate Massachusetts’s income levy through Question 1 of a ballot referendum. In 2002, a similar ballot question asking for the repeal of the income tax earned 45 percent support. Today, with jobs and residents fleeing the economically limping Bay State, the political climate for eliminating the income tax is even more hospitable. Backers also hope that the repeal would force Massachusetts to practice tough fiscal discipline—the income tax constitutes more than 40 percent of state revenue.

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The Audacity of Humility

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Katherine Ernst - Oct. 30 (Opinion) - Such phrases are MIA from Obama transcripts. In fact, he drops the “when I’m president” line so often that his electoral win might as well be a foregone conclusion. (As it is, the New York Times reports that former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta is already whipping up Obama’s inaugural address.)

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We Don't Need Another War on Poverty

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Steven Malanga - Oct. 28 (Opinion) - The original War on Poverty, launched by the Johnson administration in the mid-sixties, was based on the assumption that Washington had to rescue American cities from precipitous—indeed, catastrophic—decline. It’s important to remember that the cities themselves helped propel that decline. Political machines had long run the cities, and they imposed increasingly high taxes and throttling regulations on employers and often entrusted key government agencies, including police departments, to patronage appointees.

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Sarah Palin rally

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By John Leo - Oct. 10 (News Analysis) - Dana Milbank of the Washington Post often writes with a good deal of attitude, and his Tuesday column was no exception. In his report on Sarah Palin’s campaign speech in Clearwater, Florida, laced with mocking Palinisms (“darn right,” “betcha”), he wrote that “the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed, if not unhinged.” The “unhinging,” in Milbank’s assessment, came when Palin charged that Obama still has some explaining to do about his relationship with 1960s Weatherman bomber William Ayers. Milbank also wrote that Palin blamed Katie Couric for her “less-than-successful” CBS interview. Other newspapers reported a more light-hearted Palin response to the dismal interview. The Tampa Tribune, for example, reported that she said: “I shoulda told them I was just trying to keep Tina Fey in business.”

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Report from Tbilisi

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Michael J. Totten - Aug. 20 (News Report) - Russia's invasion of Georgia has unleashed a refugee crisis all over the country and especially in its capital. Every school here in Tbilisi is jammed with civilians who fled aerial bombardment and shootings by the Russian military--or massacres, looting, and arson by irregular Cossack paramilitary units swarming across the border. Russia has seized and effectively annexed two breakaway Georgian provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It has also invaded the region of Gori, which unlike them had been under Georgia's control. Gori is in the center of the country, just an hour's drive from Tbilisi; 90 percent of its citizens have fled, and the tiny remainder live amid a violent mayhem overseen by Russian occupation forces that, despite Moscow's claims to the contrary, are not yet withdrawing. On Monday, I visited one of the schools transformed into refugee housing in the center of Tbilisi and spoke to four women--Lia, Nana, Diana, and Maya--who had fled with their children from a cluster of small villages just outside the city of Gori. "We left the cattle," Lia said. "We left the house. We left everything and came on foot because to stay there was impossible." Diana's account: "They are burning the houses. From most of the houses they are taking everything. They are stealing everything, even such things as toothbrushes and toilets. They are taking the toilets. Imagine. They are taking broken refrigerators." And Nana: "We are so heartbroken. I don't know what to say or even think. Our whole lives we were working to save something, and one day we lost everything. Now I have to start everything from the very beginning."

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A Confusion of Tongues

Sun, 25 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Theodore Dalrymple - May. 25 (Special Report) - Problems with interpreting the law are not the only, or even the most important, ones that arise in an ever more diverse society. A feeling of unease is widespread, even among the longer-resident immigrants themselves, that Britain has lost its distinctive character: or rather, that the loss of a distinctive character is now its most distinctive character. The country that those immigrants came to, or thought they were coming to, no longer exists. It has changed beyond all recognition--far beyond and more radically than the inevitable change that has accompanied human existence since the dawn of civilization. A sense of continuity has been lost, disconcerting in a country with an unwritten constitution founded upon continuity.

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Bizarre Bedfellows for Barack

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

City Journal - By Fred Siegel - Feb. 05 (Opinion) - Obama's achievements in reaching out to moderate voters are largely proleptic: words aren't deeds. And while he has few concrete achievements to his name, he does have a voting record that hardly suggests an ability to rise above Left and Right. In 2005, his first year in the Senate, the man who made a specialty of voting "present" in the Illinois State Senate refused--despite repeated entreaties--to join a bipartisan agreement among 14 senators not to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees. After his first two years in the Senate, National Journal's analysis of roll call votes found that he was more liberal than 86 percent of his colleagues, and his voting record has only grown more liberal since then. The liberal Americans for Democratic Action now gives him a 97.5 percent rating, while National Journal ranks him the most liberal member of the Senate. By comparison, Hillary Clinton, who occasionally votes with the GOP, ranks 16th. Obama is such a down-the-line partisan that, according to Congressional Quarterly, he voted more often with the Democrats than did the party's majority leader, Harry Reid.

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A SLAPP Against Freedom

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:48:45 -0700

City Journal - By Judith Miller - Oct. 11 (Special Report) - The case shows that while anti-SLAPP legislation makes it somewhat easier, cheaper, and faster for those accused of libel to fight back, "it doesn't solve the problem entirely," said Jeff Hermes, a lawyer for the Boston Herald. "Media companies are not covered by our state's statute, and defendants in such cases still need to prepare a full defense."

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The Most Dangerous City

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:28:21 -0700

City Journal - By Nicole Gelinas - Aug. 28 (Special Report) - To understand how New Orleans is doing two years later, consider a few recent stories. This past weekend, seven family members and friends were enjoying a quiet evening outside their home in a tranquil neighborhood on the city's east side, which was badly flooded by Katrina. Then, according to New Orleans police, gunmen forced them into their house, robbed them, and shot them all, killing two. It was the neighborhood's second such crime in two weeks. Previously, gunmen had murdered a couple, Anjelique Vu and Luong Nguyen, leaving their infant and toddler unharmed.

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Why Study War?

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:00:34 -0700

City Journal - By Victor Davis Hanson - Aug. 20 (Opinion) - It's no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military history--understood broadly as the investigation of why one side wins and another loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship, technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the roles of discipline, bravery, national will, and culture in determining a conflict's outcome and its consequences--had already become unfashionable on campus. Today, universities are even less receptive to the subject. This state of affairs is profoundly troubling, for democratic citizenship requires knowledge of war--and now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than ever. I

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Delusions of Honesty

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:25:02 -0700

City Journal - By Theodore Dalrymple - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - When Tony Blair announced his resignation after ten years as prime minister of the United Kingdom, his voice choked with emotion and he nearly shed a tear. He asked his audience to believe that he had always done what he thought was right. He would have been nearer the mark had he said that he always thought that what was right was whatever he had done. Throughout his years in office, he kept inviolable his belief in the existence of a purely beneficent essence of himself, a belief so strong that no quantity of untruthfulness, shady dealings, unscrupulousness, or constitutional impropriety could undermine or destroy it. Having come into the world marked by Original Virtue, Blair was also a natural-born preacher.

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On the Front Line in the War on Terrorism

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:42:32 -0700

City Journal - By Judith Miller - Aug. 14 (Special Report) - Three time zones, 3,000 miles, and a cultural galaxy apart, New York and Los Angeles face a common threat: along with Washington, D.C., they're the chief American targets of Islamic terror. And both cities boast top cops, sometime rivals--the cities are fiercely competitive--who know that ensuring that a dog doesn't bark will determine their legacies. After investing millions of dollars in homeland security, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly of New York and Chief William J. Bratton of L.A. can both claim counterterror successes. What can we learn from their approaches? And will they be able to continue preventing terrorist attacks in their cities?

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The Coming Urban Terror

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:39:35 -0700

City Journal - By John Robb - Aug. 13 (Special Report) - Over the last few years, small groups' ability to conduct terrorism has shown radical improvements in productivity--their capacity to inflict economic, physical, and moral damage. These groups, motivated by everything from gang membership to religious extremism, have taken advantage of easy access to our global superinfrastructure, revenues from growing illicit commercial flows, and ubiquitously available new technologies to cross the threshold necessary to become terrible threats. September 11, 2001, marked their arrival at that threshold. Unfortunately, the improvements in lethality that we have already seen are just the beginning. The arc of productivity growth that lets small groups terrorize at ever-higher levels of death and disruption stretches as far as the eye can see. Eventually, one man may even be able to wield the destructive power that only nation-states possess today. It is a perverse twist of history that this new threat arrives at the same moment that wars between states are receding into the past. Thanks to global interdependence, state-against-state warfare is far less likely than it used to be, and viable only against disconnected or powerless states. But the underlying processes of globalization have made us exceedingly vulnerable to nonstate enemies. The mechanisms of power and control that states once exerted will continue to weaken as global interconnectivity increases. Small groups of terrorists can already attack deep within any state, riding on the highways of interconnectivity, unconcerned about our porous borders and our nation-state militaries. These terrorists' likeliest point of origin, and their likeliest destination, is the city.

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What Really Buys Happiness?

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0700

City Journal - By Arthur C. Brooks - Aug. 06 (Special Report) - The United States is a rich nation getting richer. According to the U.S. Census, between 1993 and 2003 the average inflation-adjusted income in the top quintile of American earners increased 22 percent. But prosperity didn't end with the top earners: those in the middle quintile saw their incomes rise 17 percent, on average, while the bottom quintile enjoyed a 13 percent increase. This isn't a short-term phenomenon, either. In the 30 years leading up to 2003, top-quintile earners saw their real incomes increase by two-thirds, versus a quarter for those in the middle quintile and a fifth among the bottom earners. Reason to celebrate? Not according to those who worry about rising income inequality--the fact that the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer. The National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey (GSS) indicates that in 1973, the average family in the top quintile earned about ten times what the average bottom-quintile family earned. By 2003, that difference had grown to almost 15 times.

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A Grand Tax-Code Bargain

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:43:35 -0700

City Journal - By Howard Husock - Jul. 14 (Opinion) - Democrats control Congress, and one of their top priorities is reducing the number of taxpayers afflicted by the alternative minimum tax (AMT), probably by raising other taxes. But they should start paying attention to some imaginative thinkers on the left who are proposing making the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)--this generation's most important new means of helping the poor--more generous, and eliminating a wide range of "categorical" poverty programs, from housing vouchers to food stamps. Democrats could combine this sweeping change with another one: using the billions that would be saved in the categorical programs' administrative costs to help fix the AMT problem. In essence, this would be a grand compromise between social liberals and fiscal conservatives, shrinking government while still using it to reduce inequality.

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Bowling With Our Own

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 04:50:01 -0700

City Journal - By John Leo - Jun. 27 (Review) - Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, is very nervous about releasing his new research, and understandably so. His five-year study shows that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities. He fears that his work on the surprisingly negative effects of diversity will become part of the immigration debate, even though he finds that in the long run, people do forge new communities and new ties. Putnam's study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one's own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn't ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: "In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down'--that is, to pull in like a turtle."

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The Incredible Shrinking Father

Mon, 07 May 2007 10:12:52 -0700

City Journal - By Kay S. Hymowitz - May. 07 (Special Report) - Here's a Delphic riddle for our times: When is your father not your father? Answer: when he's a sperm donor. Consider a case now before the Kansas Supreme Court. An unmarried woman in her early thirties decided that she wanted a child and asked a friend to be a sperm donor. He agreed, one thing led to another, which led to a syringe of his sperm, which led to the birth of twins. The mother says that she always intended to raise the kids alone and never wanted the friend involved in their lives. The donor says that he planned to be the twins' father in name and practice. There is no written contract. What does the contemporary Solomon do? Well, in a Kansas trial court, Solomon rules that without a contract the twins have no father. The man who provided half of the children's genetic material has no more relationship to them than does the taxi driver who rushed their mother to the hospital when she went into labor. Now, assuming that the supreme court upholds the decision, the state of Kansas can celebrate adding two more fatherless children to its population, and Mom can rejoice by dressing her twins in bibs--available over the Internet--proudly announcing: my daddy's name is donor.

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The Empire of Lies: The twenty-first century will not belong to China

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:11:10 -0700

City Journal - By Guy Sorman - Apr. 30 (Special Report) - The Western press is full of stories these days on China's arrival as a superpower, some even heralding, or warning, that the future may belong to her. Western political and business delegations stream into Beijing, confident of China's economy, which continues to grow rapidly. Investment pours in. Crowning China's new status, Beijing will host the 2008 Summer Olympics. But China's success is, at least in part, a mirage. True, 200 million of her subjects, fortunate to be working for an expanding global market, increasingly enjoy a middle-class standard of living. The remaining 1 billion, however, remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services. Popular discontent simmers, especially in the countryside, where it often flares into violent confrontation with Communist Party authorities. China's economic "miracle" is rotting from within.

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The Media Cornucopia

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:20:01 -0700

City Journal - By Adam D. Thierer - Apr. 16 (Special Report) - Throughout most of history, humans lived in a state of extreme information poverty. News traveled slowly, field to field, village to village. Even with the printing press's advent, information spread at a snail's pace. Few knew how to find printed materials, assuming that they even knew how to read. Today, by contrast, we live in a world of unprecedented media abundance that once would have been the stuff of science-fiction novels. We can increasingly obtain and consume whatever media we want, wherever and whenever we want: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the bewildering variety of material available on the Internet. This media cornucopia is a wonderful development for a free society--or so you'd think. But today's media universe has fierce detractors, and nowhere more vehemently than on the left. Their criticisms seem contradictory. Some, such as Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, contend that real media choices, information sources included, remain scarce, hindering citizens from fully participating in a deliberative democracy. Others argue that we have too many media choices, making it hard to share common thoughts or feelings; democracy, community itself, again loses out. Both liberal views get the story disastrously wrong. If either prevails, what's shaping up to be America's Golden Age of media could be over soon.

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