The New Republic

READ MORE >>

Yesterday the MacArthur Foundation announced the winners of this year's “genius”  grant, awarding $500,000 to 23 writers, scientists, artists, and academics. In 1981, the first year of the fellowship, editor Michael Kinsley took to the pages of TNR to pour cold water on the snooty enterprise. Here's what he wrote:   READ MORE >>

President Reagan's inauguration was a landmark in the history of conspicuous consumption. It signaled the total rehabilitation of lavish extravagance after half a century when practices like sipping champagne in a limousine were in mild or severe disrepute. They had to pick the east coast clean to find enough limousines to satisfy the demand from people who had flown in from around the country, often in private planes, to attend more than 100 fancy parties, crowd into restaurants that charge $40 or more for a meal, and lay down their heads in triple-digit hotel rooms. The man from Ridgewell's, Washington's leading caterer, summarized the prevailing philosophy for a Washington Post party reporter: "Rather than shrimp salad, they want the whole shrimp."When I read about people living this way, I often think it would be nice to do the same, and then I think it's unfair that some people can and others can't. Everything's relative, of course, and many might have the same thoughts if, for some reason, my lifestyle were chronicled in the newspapers. To me, these two reactions seem perfectly human and perfectly connected. But to conservatives they are very different. The first thought—I would like to live like that—is called "incentive," and is considered crucial to the proper functioning of a capitalist economy. The second thought—It's unfair that some can and others can't—is called "envy," and is considered a dangerous symptom of that political infection known as "egalitarianism" or, in Irving Kristol's phrase, "infantile liberalism." READ MORE >>

To the editors: The escalated decontrol of oil may or may not give President Reagan and Energy Secretary James Edwards red faces from political embarrassment—as Rich Jaroslovsky mused in his article ("Reagan and Big Oil," TNR. May 2)— but that decision and the scuttling of federal conservation and fuel assistance programs will make a lot of New England noses frosty red this winter. READ MORE >>

READ MORE >>

    During the last week in August in 1980 a new kind of light appeared in Poland, illuminating the world scene in an unexpected way. An eerie sentence swam into my mind, the one that Winston Churchill wrote about 1914 when the pall of the parochial Irish crisis hung over the warm summer evening of the British Empire; and when the parishes of Fermanagh and Tyrone faded into the mists and squalls of Ireland, "and a strange light began immediately, but by perceptible gradations, to fall and grow upon the map of Europe." READ MORE >>

For years, the Soviet Union has worked diligently and resourcefully in the byzantine vineyards of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, tightening its grip on the political processes in South Yemen by increasing its military and economic presence. Today the Soviets appear ready to attempt to reap the fruits of their labor: reunification of South and North Yemen and the consolidation and strengthening of Soviet influence in the volatile and strategic Arabian peninsula. READ MORE >>

Shortly after President Carter announced on February 8 his proposal to register women along with men for a draft, debate over the gender of the registrants had driven all sorts of strange bedfellows into the opposition camp. READ MORE >>

  READ MORE >>

Des Moines You already know—or will shortly—who won the Republican caucuses in Iowa on January 21. Writing beforehand, I don't. But if it turns out that former CIA director George Bush has scored a fantastic upset over Ronald Reagan, or if Bush finishes a close second—which would also be a remarkable come-from-behind achievement—I think a single piece of paper might prove to have been the decisive factor. READ MORE >>