April 2004
In This Issue
Michael J. Sandel, “The Case Against Perfection”; P. J. O'Rourke, “The Enthusiasts”; Jeffrey Rosen, “John Ashcroft's Permanent Campaign”; Jonathan Rauch, “A More Perfect Union”; Benjamin Schwarz, “Clearer Than the Truth”; Tish Durkin, “The Buffness Deficit”; fiction by Christopher Buckley; and much more.
Articles
77 North Washington Street
Me And My Moguls
A portraitist who has mastered the art of the suck-up putdown
Royal Pain
Further adventures of Rick Renard. A short story
Second Coming
Ralph Reed, now born again as a political strategist, has moved on from doing God's work to doing George W. Bush's
Reactionary Prophet
Edmund Burke understood before anyone else that revolutions devour their young—and turn into their opposites
The Valley Of The King
Beyond a crack in the Afghan mountains lies a lost world, the hunting grounds of King Mohammed Zahir Shah
Letters to the editor
Primary Considerations
If the first presidential primary were held in the "most representative" state, which one would that be?
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
Our author finds Jeffrey Masson's “divertingly amateurish” style likely to broaden the audience for the animal-rights movement in a way that Peter Singer and Matthew Scully never could
Domesticated Goddess
"Dying is an art," said Sylvia Plath. But so is living, and she excelled at both—not that her biographers, with one wise and big-hearted exception, have noticed
New & Noteworthy
What to read this month
The Enthusiasts
A report from deep in the grass roots
Primary Sources
The kind of body count Americans can tolerate; the aggrieved boyfriend as terrorist; why the "dirty bomb" threat is real; finally—the truth about bullies and their victims
A More Perfect Union
How the Founding Fathers would have handled gay marriage
John Ashcroft’s Permanent Campaign
In the liberal imagination Attorney General John Ashcroft is an authoritarian and a religious zealot, bent on sacrificing liberty to achieve the illusion of safety from terror. But those who see Ashcroft as a zealot are missing Ashcroft the canny politician—a man beholden to both his polls and his God
The Case Against Perfection
What's wrong with designer children, bionic athletes, and genetic engineering
Clearer Than the Truth
Duplicity in foreign affairs has sometimes served the national interest. But the case of Iraq is different
Ten Tax Scofflaws
True to his Words
A year ago this month Michael Kelly, a former editor in chief of The Atlantic, died in Iraq while on assignment for the magazine. A collection of Kelly's writings, Things Worth Fighting For, will be published in April by the Penguin Press. The editor of that volume remembers his colleague and friend as a writer and as a man
Word Court
The Buffness Deficit
What Iraq needs is a homegrown professional police force. What is has is something else: think Police Academy meets The Dirty Dozen
