IN THE June 11, 2012, ISSUE
Four Kinds of Dreadful
One day before the G8 summit, there was a “leak” from the office of German chancellor Angela Merkel that revealed some of the thinking behind how Germany wants to resolve ...
Also In This Issue
Articles
Canadian Crackdown
A considered and empathetic opposition to same-sex marriage has nothing to do with phobia or hatred, but that doesn’t stop Christians, conservatives, and anybody else who doesn’t take the fashionable line ...
Tea-Party Prequel
The three-plus years of the Obama administration have been something of a roller coaster for the Republican party and the broader conservative movement. On one hand there was Scott Brown’s ...
Taxpayers Take the Puck
The Phoenix Coyotes are having the best season of their short history. In April, they finished atop the National Hockey League’s Pacific Division. In the postseason, they beat the Chicago ...
Getting Irreligion
There was a time when American politicians could condemn godless heathens almost anywhere in the country and expect nothing but lusty applause. Now, however, there are large swathes of the ...
Many Boots, Many Faces
Oslo, Norway — Virtually every cause under the sun gets a hearing at the Oslo Freedom Forum, sooner or later. The Freedom Forum is an annual human-rights conference, held here ...
Diverse Like Me
Once, not too long ago, when I was hiring writers for a television show, a network executive called me up.
“We’re really hoping you’ll keep diversity in mind when you make ...
Features
Four Kinds of Dreadful
One day before the G8 summit, there was a “leak” from the office of German chancellor Angela Merkel that revealed some of the thinking behind how Germany wants to resolve ...
Monetary Regime Change
Twice in the last century, economic turmoil revealed the failure of a monetary regime and forced the West to abandon it for another. During the Great Depression of the 1930s ...
Scandal Street
There are two kinds of scandal on Wall Street: making money and losing money. Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) cited “record profits from 2004 to 2007” in explaining his investigation ...
Books, Arts & Manners
Tame Tyrant
During the spring television season, my wife and I became strangely fascinated by the Manhattan real-estate agent Fredrik Eklund, who is featured prominently in Million Dollar Listing: New York, one ...
In the Know
‘You are in the seat the cardinal sat in when we had dinner here.” We were three, expecting a fourth. The fourth would be a lady, so we had already ...
Stark Beauties
It would be a fine cosmic joke if Philip Larkin were eventually remembered as a great religious poet. Yet it may happen. William Blake said of John Milton that he ...
The Odd Couple
Both the subtitle of Richard Aldous’s book — “The Difficult Relationship” — and its foreword proclaim it to be an exercise in historical revisionism. Justifying this, he quotes Sir Nicholas ...
The Scholar
Bernard Lewis is far and away the single most influential commentator in the English language on the Muslim world past and present. In the course of a long lifetime, he ...
Running Deep
The problem awaiting any author seeking to define introversion is that, in essence, it is about not needing, and not particularly liking, people. This is a felony in America, so ...
Sections
From the Palo Alto, Calif., Craigslist
MISSED CONNECTION: W4M
Hi! Saw you walking into Caffe del Doge with a messenger bag from Facebook. Do you work there?? So cool!! Can’t wait for the IPO next week!! Wondering ...
To Boldly Politick
It’s one thing to read that scientists are working on teleportation devices. It’s quite another to learn they not only got one to work but beamed something 143 kilometers between ...
Poetry
Time and the River
Time and the river have always
their place in life
as the essential things
never to be brought home
in triumph or in sorrow;
never lost as they can
never be possessed;
and if ...
Eutopia, Limited
As the advanced social-democratic Big Government state sinks under a multi-trillion-dollar debt avalanche, the conventional wisdom remains all too conventional, and disinclined even to mount an argument. So much “progressive” ...
Letters
A Childish Question
In “The Empty Playground and the Welfare State” (May 28), Ramesh Ponnuru proposes increasing the child tax credit. Much of the argument is compelling, but I found one ...
The Week
‐ A prisoner took 40 percent of the vote in a Democratic presidential primary against Obama. We see the makings of a John Edwards comeback.
‐ President Obama has renewed his ...