It was way back in the fall of 1961, in Sever Hall, Harvard Yard, and I was taking notes in a class on urban politics taught by Professor Edward Banfield. Tall, distinguished looking, yet approachable, he resembled an academic Gregory Peck. Earlier, at the University of Chicago, the good professor had been an intimate observer of the first Mayor Richard Read More ›
In ancient China the mandarin class ruled the country in such a complicated way that ordinary people could not begin to figure things out. Eventually the rules of the imperial court grew so tangled that the mandarins themselves couldn’t figure out what was going on. It apparently had something to do with calligraphy. What mattered was how you wrote, not Read More ›
Those economic quakes across the Pacific have had the perverse result of educating Americans to South East Asia’s significance as the most dynamic region of the developing world. According to the US-ASEAN Business Council, American exports to ASEAN could surpass trade with Japan in the next 20 years. Already ASEAN’s 450 million people constitute the world’s fourth largest trading market Read More ›
Former Democratic Gov. Richard Lamm of Colorado, who wants to be the presidential nominee of the Reform Party, has found out from Ross Perot that just because someone advocates fair campaign competition in theory doesn’t mean that he supports it in practice. In the hands of Perot, as in many others’ these days, the slogan of “reform” is nothing other Read More ›
More than half the population of the United States will be in synagogue or church this week, the holy season of Passover and Easter. Surveys report that over 100 million Americans find God in daily prayer. His healing hand is experienced in hospitals, His hope in hospices. Victims and heroes who have brushed death in accidents and war passionately praise Read More ›
The prevailing mood of the Republican presidential nominating process is still one of irritated reluctance, like that of singers being awakened to go on stage at 5 a.m.–and an audience being forced to attend the performance. This show started too early. We also are witnessing the infamous law of unintended consequences as it snaps back in the faces of the Read More ›
On a pleasant October day in 1982 the Theodore Roosevelt Association was in Washington, DC to place on permanent display in the White House the medal for the Nobel Peace Prize that TR was awarded in 1906 for mediating the Russo-Japanese War. Welcoming a commemorative luncheon group to the Roosevelt Room, President Ronald Reagan quipped that as he had earlier Read More ›
“May Cause Abdominal Cramping and Loose Stools.” That’s only part of the delightful warning label the Food and Drug Administration insists that Procter & Gamble place prominently on potato chip and tortilla chip products prepared with its new fat-substitute, Olean. The FDA did not accede to the Center for Science in the Public Interest this winter when the Naderite group Read More ›
The truth is that the Seattle municipal elections now ending are most notable for their relative lack of rancor and underhanded tactics. Attempts at creating scandals have been half-hearted and fizzled fast. The ad-homonym attacks have been rare and pitifully unimaginative, the exposure of political correctness gaffes almost nonexistent. And we call ourselves a world-class city! For people in the Read More ›
We are all supposed to be concerned that television’s Ted Koppel left the Republican convention early and is not even going to appear in Chicago for the Democrats’ show. At San Diego, the big three networks saw their ratings plummet and they ascribe this failure to Republicans scripting their extravaganza so tightly that no “story” (also known as “bad news”) Read More ›