The Washington Monthly

Coffee is the drug that changed my life. Without its brain-perking effects, it's doubtful that I could have passed astronomy in college, read The Wealth of Nations cover to cover, or made a favorable first impression on my girlfriend's parents despite suffering from a colossal hangover. In fact, this very review would be immeasurably harder to write were it not for the steaming cup of milk-tinged joe to my laptop's left.

But I seem to have derived less benefit from… more

In his insightful and important essay "Taking Liberty" (Washington Monthly, April 2005), William Galston, one of contemporary America's leading social and political thinkers, is right to insist that liberty should be at the heart of American progressive politics. And he is right to caution against "a temptation by many, especially on the left," to redefine freedom to mean "economic fairness and social justice" with which "today's left is more comfortable. That temptation should be avoided. Because freedom… more

You don't have to dig very far into our nation's intellectual record to find strains of eugenics and genetic determinism. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, some 60,000 Americans, the so-called "unfit," many of them retarded or physically handicapped, but some of them simply afflicted with being poor, were hauled off by state and local officials and forcibly sterilized. The rationale for this sorry chapter in American history emerged from the confluence of three strands of Anglo-American thought. Fearing overpopulation,… more

A successful scam consists of two essential parts: the fraud and the getaway. An ill-gotten fortune, no matter how spectacular, isn't very useful if it can only be spent on cigarettes and candy bars at the prison commissary. So a competent con artist will figure out from square one not only how to part the suckers from their cash, but also how to disappear when the inevitable end becomes imminent.

Casual fans of flim-flam history are already aware that Charles… more

Quick. When you read "veterans hospital," what comes to mind? Maybe you recall the headlines from a dozen years ago about the three decomposed bodies found near a veterans medical center in Salem, Va. Two turned out to be the remains of patients who had wandered months before. The other body had been resting in place for more than 15 years. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) admitted that its search for the missing patients had been "cursory." Or maybe… more

It's happening in rich countries. It's happening in poor countries. It's happening among Christians, Hindus, and especially Muslims. It's a trend that has everything to do with sex, death, money, and power, yet rarely draws a headline. Everywhere in the world, people are having fewer and fewer children.

Most everyone knows that Europeans are fading in number. Yet the most dramatic declines in fertility are occurring just where you'd least expect them. Even under the tight grip of an Islamic… more

American readers of the "Lexington" column in the British newsmagazine The Economist often have the same response to its survey of a particular U.S. state or region: Many of the details are right, but the picture as a whole is not quite recognizable. American readers of The Right Nation, by The Economist's U.S. editor John Micklethwait and its Washington correspondent, Adrian Wooldridge, may have similar reaction. Micklethait and Wooldridge are intelligent, entertaining writers, and first-rate reporters. But their analysis of… more

Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, relatively few Americans had ever heard of a terrorist group called al Qaeda and its tall, bearded leader Osama bin Laden. The suicide hijackings that brought planes down that day in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania seemed to come out of nowhere. And in part because they felt taken by surprise, the vast majority of Americans cut President Bush a great deal of slack over these horrific incidents that happened on his watch. He… more

With financial ties to nearly two dozen drug and biotech companies, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff may hold some sort of record among academic clinicians for the most conflicts of interest. A psychiatrist, a prominent researcher, and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Emory University in Atlanta, Nemeroff receives funding for his academic research from Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Wyeth-Ayerst--indeed from virtually every pharmaceutical house that manufactures a drug to treat mental illness. He also serves as… more

This year's presidential race underscores a curious truth about American politics today: Elected officials love to talk about "family values" and "investing in our kids," but shy away from proposing anything big or new that would actually help them. The only item in President Bush's new budget directed at parents is a call for making his temporary increase in the child tax credit (from $600 to $1,000) permanent. His Democratic challengers have offered a few modest ideas, such as universal… more