Bruce Chapman

Bruce Chapman
June 1, 1998
Uncategorized
5

Is the U.S. Ready For European Political Integration?

Bruce Chapman
June 1, 1998
Uncategorized
5
If economic integration in Europe is still a novel topic for most Americans, however, political integration in Europe is truly terra incognita. Political union is the aim of the European Community, and one that many EC leaders are eager to hurry along after 1992. But the implications of a full political union have not been studied in detail by the United States, they are certain to impinge upon our NATO defense alliance, the West's role in encouraging liberalization in Eastern Europe, and chances for a military understanding with the Soviets. Political union, Western leaders would agree, must not proceed in a way that damages present defense unity. Should the Soviets think that the North Americans could be decoupled from their European partners, the domestic Soviet rationale for accommodation with the West (``If you can't beat 'em, join 'em'') would be undermined. -- One source of trouble will be neutralism. The European Community includes neutral Ireland, although the Irish are a long way from the Iron Curtain and no one minds their neutrality much, including the Irish. Read More ›
Bruce Chapman
June 1, 1998
Uncategorized
5

International Region Shares A Common Destiny

Bruce Chapman
June 1, 1998
Uncategorized
5
Once more a good idea is taking on a life of its own. The idea is "Cascadia," the concept that the Pacific Northwest of the United States and the two Western provinces of Canada are in reality one international region with a common destiny. There will be many false starts and half-steps. No body exists to convene this new entity, though the legislators of the Northwest states and Canada's Western provinces have organized the Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER) that is helping to set out much of the agenda. But even among those who are enthusiastic about greater regional cooperation - which is most of those who have thought about the subject - there is no agreement yet about certain fundamentals: -- How does regional cooperation express itself in spheres outside of government, such as education, the arts and, of course, business associations? Some of the most interesting moves for collaboration have come through business, including the creation of "PACE" (the Pacific Corridor Enterprise Council), which seeks to lower barriers to cross-border commerce. The Seattle-based nonprofit issues journal, The New Pacific, was bought out by a Vancouver group that is revising its format but expects to keep alive a regional perspective. In sports, fans (and business people) in Portland and Vancouver have rallied to the cause of saving the Seattle Mariners, while many in Seattle, as well, aspire to an eventual "regionalization" of the team. This is not just to build a stronger business base, but to make baseball a tangible example of the growing regional affinity of spirit. Read More ›
Bruce Chapman
June 1, 1998
Uncategorized
8

It’s Ba-ack! National Service 1989 — Put Brakes on the Omnibus

Bruce Chapman
June 1, 1998
Uncategorized
8

Wall Street Journal; New York; Oct 16, 1989; By ; Edition: Eastern edition Start Page: 1 ISSN: 00999660 Abstract: Why does the national-service virus keep coming back? Perhaps it is because utopian nostalgia evokes both military experience and the social gospel. If only we could get America’s wastrel youth into at least a psychic uniform we might be able to Read More ›

Bruce Chapman
April 12, 1998
Uncategorized
7

Let’s Get It Straight: The Empire Was Evil

Bruce Chapman
April 12, 1998
Uncategorized
7
LET'S be blunt: It is necessary to make it clear who was right about the Cold War. The reason is not to glorify the aging Republicans and Henry Jackson Democrats who were derided as "Cold Warriors" during the four decades between Stalin and Gorbachev, nor to kick those on the left who led peace marches and befriended Havana, Hanoi and Managua. The purposes, rather, are, first, to get the history straight, before the regnant revisionists in academia succeed in distorting it, and, secondly, to reflect on the lessons for our current foreign policy. Under the revisionist interpretation, American sacrifices of blood and treasure during the Cold War were largely a waste of both. The West's actions in the Cold War are seen as more or less morally equivalent to those of the Soviets. These remarkable programs should attract heightened interest in Washington state, home of the late Sen. Henry Jackson, a leader of Cold War "hawks," and also home to some of the most militant opponents of U.S. policy during the Cold War. But of greatest immediate interest, Seattle is home to the chief consultant and inspiration of the project, Dr. Herbert Ellison of the University of Washington. (The series was written and directed by an Englishman, Daniel Wolf, with project management provided by the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle.) Read More ›
Bruce Chapman
March 8, 1998
Uncategorized
5

Bell Street Pier Project A Jewel In Seattle Port Crown

Bruce Chapman
March 8, 1998
Uncategorized
5
The Port of Seattle's tax rates over the last five years have declined by 33 percent, while its revenues have increased by 34 percent. Incorrect numbers were published in Bruce Chapman's column last Friday on the port's new Bell Street project. Somehow, the Bell Street Pier, a multipurpose, $88 million creation of the Port of Seattle, has managed to go through the whole development process, right up to the interior work now under way, without raising the ire of any economic interest, environmental body or taxpayer watchdog group. But already little bands of potential users are lining up to get a hard-hat tour of a civic facility that is sure to attract international attention. Ordinary folks are beginning to ask about it, too. When a class of fifth graders from the "TOPS" program at Seward School on Capitol Hill walked down to a parking lot above the site recently, they were given a description of the project that left them reporting back like the legendary blind man who encountered an elephant. Each one had a different impression of the beast. Read More ›
Bruce Chapman
March 1, 1998
Uncategorized
6

Only A Fathead Would Ban Fat Substitute From My Junk Food

Bruce Chapman
March 1, 1998
Uncategorized
6
This confession, I realize, is hardly unusual enough to get me on the "Jenny Jones Show." Half of all adults in America and a fifth of our children are overweight, and my case is only marginal. But I probably would have ballooned up like the Michelin Man if it hadn't been for the sugar and fat substitutes that food companies considerately began inventing just as I entered middle age. Diet drinks are approaching a third of the market in some areas. You have to look hard for the sugar behind the little pink and blue packets of sugar substitutes at the latte stands; but who's looking? Now, it turns out that the good people at Procter and Gamble Co. are nearing the end of a long, expensive effort to get Food and Drug Administration approval for "olestra," a product that allows potato chips, tortilla chips and other "savory snacks" to be cooked with all the taste of the crunchy little devils we love today but with none of the fat and few of the calories. Soon enough, if the FDA agrees, olestra also can be used to prepare conscience-free french fries, peanut butter, cookies, cakes and ice cream. But the CSPI's evidence is misleading. For example, it cites a study wherein five of 17 people who used olestra products came down with "diarrhea, gas, bloating (or) nausea." Urp! That sounds bad. But CSPI doesn't mention a far bigger and longer study of 3,357 consumers that found no differences in digestive effects between the olestra snacks and regular, full-fat snacks. It also claims that potato chips made with olestra may block absorption of certain vitamins, but neglects to note that the same is true of regular potato chips, and, for that matter, milk. Read More ›
Bruce Chapman
March 1, 1998
Uncategorized
5

Clinton Risks Leading Us Into Quagmire of ‘Vietnam II’

Bruce Chapman
March 1, 1998
Uncategorized
5
Vietnam started, too, with limited purposes in service of a universal goal (containing communism, in that case.) And it ended with a goal of merely getting our prisoners home - and with years of disillusionment. President Clinton, who cut his political teeth on opposition to the war in Vietnam, has learned some of the lessons of that conflict, but not the most important one: Don't send troops into a war unless you have a way to win and get out. Yes, of course, "peace enforcement" is not war, supposedly. But it also is not mere "peacekeeping," and in Bosnia even the latter resulted in the deaths of more than 200 United Nations troops. When the president says that the United States mission "may well involve casualties," and that if U.S. troops are attacked "they will have the authority to respond immediately and . . . with overwhelming force," what then follows, if not war? In explaining to the American people and Congress why he had avoided direct intervention earlier, the president said, "I decided that American ground troops should not fight a war in Bosnia because the United States could not force peace on Bosnia's warring ethnic groups: the Serbs, Croats and Muslims." Just so. But why does he think he has "forced" that outcome now, when the Bosnian Serbs are still uncommitted and when whatever commitments are made on paper mean so little in the Balkans anyhow? There have been 34 "truces" and "cease-fires" and other "agreements" before this one, and none has held up. What enables peacekeeping is a manifest and genuine desire for peace on all sides or, even better, the defeat and disarmament of the aggressors. Is someone planning to go door to door to disarm the Bosnian Serbs? Read More ›
Bruce Chapman
March 1, 1998
Uncategorized
4

Designer Trees? I Say ‘Humbug!’ to These Fashion Zombies

Bruce Chapman
March 1, 1998
Uncategorized
4
I suppose I'll make a lot of people mad and start some household fights, but I have to say it: Designer Christmas trees aren't the real thing. I'm willing to accept all varieties, sizes and shapes of Christmas trees as genuine. So long as the ornaments are many-colored, I'll go for all white lights, since the early trees had candles on them, after all. I'll even admit that some artificial trees from Thailand or China can qualify as "real;" in fact, our family has been thinking of getting one (we are always thinking of getting one). But I draw the line at self-consciously arty trees, especially those of monochromatic decorator design. You know them: the elegant ones with, maybe, all gold balls and gold ropes and bows. A two-color scheme isn't much better: the maroon and silver numbers, for example, with (yawn) all maroon ribbons and silver baubles and perhaps a silver light cleverly shining down on them from the ceiling. Such self-conscious concoctions are to real Christmas trees what robots are to human beings; they lack souls. Read More ›
Bruce Chapman
March 1, 1998
Uncategorized
15

The New Century Contrary to Calendar, 20th Century is History

Bruce Chapman
March 1, 1998
Uncategorized
15
It turns out that Jesus was really born between four and six B.C., not in the year 0, as you might expect. A sixth century monk named Dionysius Exiguus, who was given responsibility for settling a dispute over the date of Easter, miscalculated the chronology of Jesus's life and placed his birth several years late. This scholarly error, which was perpetuated in later calendars, means - if we take the middle range of the error - that we already are entering the 21st century, and, for that matter, the Third Millenium. Of course, there was some good to the 20th century, and some necessary change. For example, we probably did need a civil service to replace the political spoils system, though we later got carried away and let bureaucracies regulate away many of our freedoms. We did need civil rights protection through central government action in order, finally, to right the great wrong of slavery and to fulfill the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. But the best intellectual innovations of the 20th century were in the fields of science and technology - medicine and communications, notably. Most of the others were of lesser significance or were baneful. The 20th century brought us the scourges of fascism and communism, and it also brought us what Alexis de Tocqueville correctly foresaw as the "democratic tyrannies" of socialism and the welfare state. Specialization and expertise flourished, bringing benefits in some areas, but also contributing to the depreciation of the liberal arts. Over-emphasis on expertise also tempted leaders in one field to claim authority in others, which is always a moral usurpation. Some generalists claimed the label of science for arts and crafts that did not deserve it. This holds true for several of the "social sciences," but especially for something that grandly calls itself "political science." Even economics claimed more scientific stature than it deserved, guided by the conceit that the qualitative can always be quantified. What the experts and pseudo-experts did was separate ordinary people from their government and culture, robbing them of their authority and undermining their morale. Read More ›
Bruce Chapman
October 27, 1995
Cascadia
5

For Canada, Breaking Up is A Hard – And Wrong – Thing To Do

Bruce Chapman
October 27, 1995
Cascadia
5
Canada is a country where something terrible is always just about to happen, but never does. The terrible thing is usually the secession of Quebec. The mere possibility of a province seceding reminds a U.S. citizen of the relative stability bequeathed to our country by the Union victory in the Civil War. But hardly anything disturbs the political calm like breaking up one's country. And in Canada, that is a real possibility. Like Sisyphus, Canada seems condemned to roll the rock of Quebec up the hill of federalism, only to have it roll back down, over and over. Worse, federalist forces have to win every election that is held on the issue, while secessionists need only win once. Probably. You can't say for sure because, in Canada, referenda often settle even less than they do here. If Quebeckers next Monday vote for "sovereignty," it is still unclear what that will mean in practice. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien says it means separation, clear and simple. No more Canadian passports for Quebeckers. A division of the national debt, and no special favors thereafter. The federalists also are likely to back the Cree Indian Grand Chief, Matthew Coon Come, who wants his tribe's huge northern tracts in Quebec to remain in Canada. The chief argues that aboriginals (as native peoples are known) have the same right to secede from Quebec that Quebec demands from Canada. Read More ›