IN THE October 3, 2011, ISSUE
Swift Blind Horseman?
When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it ...
Magazine
Also In This Issue
Articles
Social Security Alert
Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have begun a lively debate about Social Security, but it’s not the one we need. Their debate mostly concerns whether it was a good idea ...
Dead Letter
It’s not news that the United States Postal Service is going bankrupt, but the reality of the situation has finally started to sink in. The New York Times reported in ...
Crime, Punishment, and Rehabilitation
People on the right tend to be enthusiastic about yoking men and women in marriage and about locking bad guys up in prison. To what extent, however, does the latter ...
The Right Kind of Tyrant
The business world is famous for its difficult bosses, to put it as mildly as possible. There are screamers and throwers and silent-treatment types — all kinds and shapes of ...
Features
Patently Absurd
In 1994, Claudio Ballard was an unemployed computer programmer with a great idea: a system to scan paper financial documents and store them on a secure server. Ballard built a ...
Innovations and Limitations
Innovation propels economies forward. It is why most Americans live long lives in relative comfort instead of toiling on a subsistence farm. Innovation usually refers to the creation of a ...
Swift Blind Horseman?
When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it ...
Books, Arts & Manners
The Missing Man
One of the most striking moments in this excellent book arrives on page 15, when Mitch Daniels notes that, in the early days of the American republic, currency often bore ...
Bless the Beasts
Some virtues are by accidents of history associated with utopianism, hostility to private property, anti-clericalism, and other core beliefs of the Left. I can scandalize a yoga instructor anywhere in ...
A Long Red Sunset
One of the hardy staples of American history is the question of what happened to American socialism. As the only industrialized nation in the world in which avowedly socialist or ...
Bush Reconsidered
The late administration of George W. Bush has found its Dr. Pangloss. In some respects, that might be a good thing.
Pangloss, of course, was the character in Candide who insisted ...
Going Viral
Some of the scariest material that Stephen King has ever written — scarier, in its way, than anything in The Shining or ’Salem’s Lot or Pet Sematary — is contained ...
Catalog Shopper
We do ever more of our shopping online, I am told. The printed book is facing extinction, I am also told. The U.S. Postal Service is in dire straits, I ...
Sections
Letters
The Ron Paul Movement Rides On
It is not surprising that with the polls ranking him third nationally, Ron Paul would finally make the cover of National Review (“Ron Paul’s Last ...
The Week
‐ Bad news for the Democrats: It turns out some of those people who cling bitterly to their religion are Orthodox Jews in Queens.
‐ The great strength of the conservative ...
Terminal Eloquence
This column was supposed to be about presidential personality problems. I should have started writing it sooner to give myself plenty of time but I was irresistibly distracted by a ...
The Twitter stream of @youthcaptain, the next leader of North Korea . . .
Girls, help me out. If a guy is powerful and connected, does it matter if he’s a little on the plump side? Asking for a friend. Please RT!
Hey! @gwynethpaltrow! I ...
Proper Aim
Ask any employer, and you’ll hear the same lament: We’d love to hire people, but we need an inexplicable modification of the tax code exquisitely calibrated to provide a tiny ...
Poetry
IN THESE PHOTOGRAPHS, MY RIVAL
. . . grips a tapered wine glass, nearly drained,
Beneath a gold band and engagement gem;
Ham-fisted, left-hand fingers round the stem,
Forefinger lifted, fattened with the strain.
The ...
Flight
At the start of the summer, I attended a graduation ceremony in Vermont, for which a bigshot speaker had been flown up from New York. “Your world is changing so ...