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It occurred me last weekend that children should not grow up without a thorough exposure to the great cartoon from 1962, “The Jetsons.” Its celebration of technology and commerce, its retro-style optimism, its hilarious dovetailing of bourgeois normalcy with gizmo-crazed futurism, its complete absence of political correctness (excluding, of

John Walker Lindh has pleaded not guilty to the charge that he conspired to kill Americans. It does seem like this religious pilgrim was caught at the wrong place, on the wrong side, at the wrong time. He was drawn to Islamic fundamentalism. For him it was the radical alternative to what he came to regard as the corrupt materialism of the West. He

In all the commentary on Patrick J. Buchanan’s new book ( The Death of the West , NY: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), has anyone discussed his silly economic fallacies and highly interventionist policy agenda? This is the conservative book of the year, the core thesis of which (the West needs higher rates of population increase to keep up with the

Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (NY: Crown Publishers, 2002) is one of those books that you buy for the index. The advance word on it was that David Brock, the author of scathing books and articles on Anita Hill and Bill Clinton in the 1990s, had turned against his own to rat out the conservative-movement slime that

Pity the businessman who hires someone just out of school! Most graduating seniors have lived a lush life in college, after living a lazy life in high school, and a goof-off life before that. Graduating seniors know all about credit cards, popular culture, web surfing, internet chat, and PC politics, but next to nothing about what used to be

I had been waiting for the neocon reaction to the spectacular new Lucas film, Star Wars, Part 2: Attack of the Clones. Here we have an aggressive allegory of the current American problem (actually a problem that dates back, perhaps, two centuries): a once-free Republic has become an increasingly evil Empire. As the Empire grows it both inspires

Newport, Rhode Island, is surely one of the most spectacular places in the United States, and, for what its amazing mansions of the Gilded Age represent, it should be considered the Mecca of American capitalist private wealth, suitable for pious pilgrimages of every sort. Visitors to European palaces return home to say the sheer scale has to be

War is coming, we’re still in recession, the public is still angry about 9-11 (hey, is all this connected?), so we must do something to rekindle a sense of joy in our own private lives. But what? What people on the home front have always done: throw themselves into the domestic arts, preferably something that is beyond the time and connects us

America returned from Thanksgiving holiday oblivious that Washington is still whipped up into frenzy about the War on Terror, the prospects for another attack on the homeland, the creation of a new homeland-security department, and the impending war. What’s odd is that these people are convinced that everyone else in the country is as hysterical

David Frum did not intend to write a send-up of the state. His goal was not to demystify the White House. But that is the effect of his chatty little book, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush (NY: Random House, 2002). It has very little substance, and no content of grave historical import. It mainly consists of goofy stories