IN THE December 7, 2009, ISSUE
Jihad, Inc.
As we struggle to come to terms with the Fort Hood massacre, the first thing to do — if we want to prevent such terrorism from becoming a regular event ...
Also In This Issue
Articles
PC Unto Death
Twenty years ago I was confronted by a patient who dressed in battle fatigues with a German flag sewn onto his sleeve — not a healthy sign, I thought. He ...
Steele Trap?
‘Michael is new. He’s had a learning curve.” Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican party, rendered that judgment about Michael Steele, the chairman of the national party, last ...
Overloaded and Sinking
In June 2005, after months of fierce debate over Social Security reform, the chairman of the National Governors Association (NGA) issued a sobering prediction. “Long before Social Security goes bankrupt,” ...
‘It’s Like a Budget Number’
‘The very first law in advertising,” one critic of the $787 billion stimulus bill wrote, “is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.” In selling that bill, ...
Rise of an Epithet
To “teabag” or not to “teabag”: That is not the most pressing question of these times, but it is a question to consider. Routinely, conservative protesters in the “tea party” ...
Features
Jihad, Inc.
As we struggle to come to terms with the Fort Hood massacre, the first thing to do — if we want to prevent such terrorism from becoming a regular event ...
Energy Tea
For conservatives, the populist question is front and center once again.
It began last year with divergent reactions among conservative elites to John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running ...
Conserving Liberalism?
That conservatism rejects much of contemporary liberalism is clear enough. Yet many conservatives speak favorably of “liberal democracy” and its defense. Indeed, they sometimes seem to speak this way more ...
Books, Arts & Manners
Revolutionary Road
When Arthur Laffer left Stanford University in 1967, he was on a swiftly rising professional trajectory. He finished his dissertation and received his Ph.D. in 1972, but, between 1969 and ...
Secret Service
The period since the collapse of the Soviet Union has not been kind to the dozens of Americans accused of collaboration with Soviet intelligence during the 1930s and 1940s. Each ...
Bloodless Saga
Almost everyone is interested in murder, in theory if not in practice, and literature would be quite at a loss without it. Suppose, for example, that Hamlet’s father had died ...
The Mobility Agenda
Back in the heady days of July 2007 — shortly after the White House celebrated National Homeownership Month, and before the term “subprime mortgage” became ubiquitous in our political discourse ...
FILM: The War Against the Fox
This is the autumn, apparently, for our hippest filmmakers to get in touch not only with their inner child, but with their inner puppeteer as well. First it was Spike ...
Out of Their Tree
His farm is off a dead-end road that runs up into the hills; it sits in a natural amphitheater, like a giant NASCAR stadium built by the Romans and worn ...
Sections
Letters
Editorial Audit
In the “Week” section of the November 23 issue, the paragraph about the new-homebuyers credit is quite misleading. If one looks at the testimony of IRS Deputy Commissioner for ...
The Week
‐ Apparently he confused the emperor of Japan with Andy Stern.
‐ Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, arrived on the scene with the force of a three-megaton explosion. It’s not a ...
The Long View
November 18, 2010
LARRY KING: From Apalachicola, Florida! Hello!
CALLER: Hello, Larry. I’d like to ask the sheik . . .
LARRY KING: Do we call you “Sheik”? What’s the protocol here? And ...
Poetry
THE LATE JANE AUSTEN’S NIECE EVENTUALLY DESTROYS THE MANUSCRIPT OF HER OWN NOVEL
The paper cringes in the heat;
The ashes flake off sheet by sheet.
The oldest child in her worn dress
Is ...
Gray Mountain State
As longtime readers know, the Demographic Deathwatch is not a novelty dance craze but a recurring feature of this column. But it’s not just for Europe, Russia, China, and Japan ...