Did Americans behave better back then? Remember September 11? Or rather, remember how it was supposed to change us all, and for the better? Among all the predictions was one that held that it would lead to “the end of irony,” the sort of earnest prognostication that is bound to seem ironic in retrospect. Yet an even more civic-minded call came from Robert D. Putnam, who let us know that this was our chance to get back to the spirit of World War II. Dr. Putnam is the Harvard professor who blazed his way up the bestseller lists in 1995 Read More

Lindh was hardly the first. “Rat!” screamed the tabloid headlines when John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” was hauled out of a prison basement in Afghanistan and into the public limelight. Media commentators had a field day projecting their obsessions onto Mr. Lindh. The conservative critic Shelby Steele attributed his defection to “a certain cultural liberalism” to be found in California, and one right-wing pundit called for his execution “in order to physically intimidate liberals.” The New York Times pointedly contrasted Lindh’s childhood with that of John Spann, the young CIA agent killed in Afghanistan and raised in Georgia. This Read More

The trouble with military tribunals. Secret military tribunals, from which there is no appeal, imbued with the power to order secret executions of non-citizens.  Suspension of habeas corpus for suspected terrorists.  The abrogation of attorney client confidentiality.  War has often brought about dramatic changes in the American mood, some of them magnificent, others not so pretty. Many people, this writer included, ardently support the current war against terrorism, but are not willing to suspend our most cherished civil liberties, no matter what the current mood. Rather, some of us, from all across the political spectrum, conservative and liberal alike, believe Read More

Our first fight against international terrorists. The mission now confronting our nation—to transport a military force to a distant, hostile, Islamic country, subdue a brazen terrorist network, and put an end to the random slaughter and harassment of American citizens—may seem a daunting one. If it is any consolation, though, we have done it before. And if it will be any help in the months and years ahead, we should also know that the last such effort was rife with blunders, delays, and confusion of both purpose and means—as well as stirring feats of heroism and perseverance. Attacks on the Read More

We’ve seen it (almost) all before. One standing rule at American Heritage is to be sure not to focus too much on New York City. It’s a good rule, for we New Yorkers have a tendency to think we are always at the center of the world, in case you haven’t noticed. We also love to insist that we have seen it all before. Then came September 11, 2001. Those of us who live and work here had to admit that yes, for once we would have been happy to forgo all the attention and remain one more untroubled spot Read More

  Why baseball doesn’t play by the rules of business.   As baseball’s pennant races approach their climax, we all can look forward to that furious, no-holds-barred competition that enlivens nearly every season of our national pastime. I’m referring, of course, to the battle between owners and players over the game’s Basic Agreement. The history of baseball’s labor struggles has always stood the traditional roles of labor and management on their heads. The main goal of the players’ union has simply been to secure for its members what has always been guaranteed to every other American this side of slavery Read More

Zounds! Once again, the innocent citizens of Gotham City have been rescued from the clutches of modern art by their mild-mannered mayor, Rudy Giuliani. Read More

Our seemingly interminable argument about education now seems to have boiled down to the debate over school vouchers—both left and right having more-or-less accepted the idea Read More

  Congress is trying to legislate the history of what happened on the eve of Pearl Harbor? What is history? Is it something we decide on the best available evidence, weighing and culling the many varied accounts of the past? Or is it, instead, something to be decreed and imposed on us, decided by what some politicians say or maybe a judge somewhere? These questions may seem banal or obvious, but they have become very real —ever since the U.S. Congress recently decided to write the main tenet of a conspiracy theory into an official bill. The amendment in question Read More