IN THE July 18, 2011, ISSUE
The Battle from Waterloo
Waterloo, Iowa — Near the cornfields, her parents danced. On hot summer nights in the Sixties, when things were good and the kids were young, David and Jean Amble would ...
Magazine
Also In This Issue
Articles
Imaginary Isolationism
John McCain watched the first big Republican presidential-primary debate, and he didn’t like what he saw. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) was saying that America had no vital interest in ...
No Taxation without Representation
Hey, Grover Norquist — I have a message from Mason and Emma, two adorable little newborn Americans still in diapers: “Pay your own goddamned taxes.”
Mr. Norquist, the president of Americans ...
What’s Step 2?
Conservatives know that gun control is a futile endeavor. But even we gun nuts typically support some basic measures to keep weapons out of the wrong hands — for example, ...
An Environmental Reformation
When Gregg Easterbrook’s voluminous book A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism was published in 1995, it received the predictable reaction from the environmental community: outrage. ...
Mad as Hell
The vicissitudes of the marketplace are, as everyone knows, not easily calculable. Who, for example, would have foreseen that a pamphlet written by a 93-year-old man, and published by a ...
Smoke Alarm
Here is an image for you: The gray pall of a middle-aged woman on her deathbed, her hairless head the synecdoche of a body racked by tumors. She is all ...
Features
The Battle from Waterloo
Waterloo, Iowa — Near the cornfields, her parents danced. On hot summer nights in the Sixties, when things were good and the kids were young, David and Jean Amble would ...
Haves and Have-Mores
Is health care a normal economic good, subject to limitations and tradeoffs? Economist Paul Krugman says that it is: “We have to do something about health care costs, which means ...
Books, Arts & Manners
Opening to the East
Pres. Richard Nixon entered office with a grand plan to reshuffle the geopolitical deck. China had top billing in his designs, and an opening to Beijing was within reach. Nixon ...
Was Malthus Right?
‘We live in an age in which humanity is the fashion.” So Sir John Hawkins (he had the misfortune to write the other biography of Dr. Johnson) lamented in 1787. ...
Managing War
As Cicero observed in his Fifth Philippic, “money forms the sinews of war.” Of course, money is never limitless, and wars have foundered on this fact. Any strategy that ignores ...
A Composer’s Hour
Every now and then, I’ll interview a musician, and I’ll often ask, “Who are the living composers you admire or respect? Is there anyone worth listening to today?” Usually, the ...
Cruel, Cruel Summer
When Christopher Nolan’s Inception made a fortune at the box office last summer, while the usual lineup of sequels, remakes, reboots, and superhero vehicles failed to live up to expectations, ...
Ex Libris
Miss Straggler, just graduated from high school and with time on her hands, came home the other day with two boxes of secondhand books on the back seat of the ...
Sections
Letters
Mystery Mnemonic
In his column in the June 6 issue, Richard Brookhiser mentions what he says is a mnemonic: “Some men have many stones, but we have lots of hair.” Please, ...
The Week
‐ Rich Lowry’s wedding to Vanessa Palo went off without a hitch, and the two are now on honeymoon. So the trend of beautiful young brides jilting old magazine editors ...
For AARP Strategy Group Only
CLOSE HOLD DOCUMENT
Focus Group Results
AARP Medicare and Entitlement Reform Messaging Strategy
Present:
MODERATOR
MALE, AGE 19
MALE, AGE 22
MALE, AGE 27
FEMALE, AGE 8
FEMALE, AGE 25
FEMALE, AGE 29
MODERATOR: Welcome, everyone, and thanks for coming. As ...
To Save the Dead-Eyed Child?
While the dead-eyed child squirms in your hands, piteously begging to be freed, the voice in your head gives you a choice: kill it, or save it. You suspect there ...
Poetry
BLUE SKIES, 8:46
That I can safely watch them safely graze
Might seem like little. Still, it feels like much
Beside this fenced-in field this day of days.
The distant bay and — close ...
Debtor Demographics
The other day, Abdul Qadir Fitrat, the governor of Afghanistan’s central bank, fled the country. The only wonder is that there aren’t more fleeing. Not Afghans; central bankers. I mean, ...