Hoover Institution - Hoover Digest - Hoover Digest 2000 No. 2

The Little Engine That Could
Although few in number, charter schools represent a powerful engine for reforming our entire system of public education. By Hoover fellow Chester Finn Jr. and his coauthors Bruno Manno and Gregg Vanourek.

Why Johnny Can’t Add
The U.S. Department of Education continues to endorse “fuzzy math”—proof of fuzzy thinking. By Hoover fellow Williamson M. Evers.

How Home Schooling Will Change Public Education
More than 1.2 million students are now being taught at home, more students than are enrolled in the entire New York City public school system. Hoover fellow Paul T. Hill reports on the pros and cons of learning at home—and the effects home schooling will have on public schools.

Politics

A Dime’s Worth of Difference?
Despite all the overheated election-year rhetoric, less separates our two main political parties than is often supposed. By Hoover fellow Gerald A. Dorfman.

Economics

Why Are Minimum Wages So Popular?
Think the minimum wage helps the poor? Think again. By Hoover fellow Thomas Macurdy.

How to Put Unemployment Insurance to Work
The nation’s unemployment insurance program isn’t working. Here’s how to fix it. By Hoover fellow Edward P. Lazear.

The Indispensable Institution*
Hoover fellow Milton Friedman has long argued that “you cannot have a free society without private property.” A decade after the implosion of communism, the word is finally beginning to spread. By Hoover media fellow Tom Bethell.

Health Care

Why Health Care Reform May Be Bad for Your Health
Central planning has failed everywhere else—so why do so many want to apply it to our health care system? By legal scholar Richard A. Epstein.

Saving Money by Taking Lives*
How socialized medicine is creating a “culture of euthanasia” in the welfare states of Europe. By Hoover fellow Melvyn Krauss.

Environment

What Price Pollution? Let the Market Figure It Out
Hoover fellow and Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker explains why the Kyoto Protocol, which is intended to reduce worldwide greenhouse emissions, may actually increase pollution.

Regulation

Neither Snow nor Sleet . . . Can Dampen This Monopoly
Once the federal government completes its antitrust case against Microsoft, perhaps it should set its sights on another communications industry monopoly—the United States Postal Service. By Hoover national fellow Rick Geddes.

Technology

Beware the Brave New World
You’ve got mail—and Big Brother wants to read it. Hoover fellow Charles J. Sykes explains why the government wants to be able to get into your computer.

Crime Goes High Tech
The crime stats for cyberspace are up—way up. Hoover fellow Abraham D. Sofaer explains how to battle the recent rash of cybercrime.

Defense

Covert Operations, Now More Than Ever
With its increased reliance on high-tech “smart” bombs, Washington seems to have forgotten a much less costly, more humane, and often more effective form of warfare—the covert operation. By Hoover fellow Thomas H. Henriksen.

International Relations

How to Pursue the National Interest
The United States faces a rare opportunity to promote its values around the world. A foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate George W. Bush, Hoover fellow Condoleezza Rice explains how to grasp the moment.

Let’s Get Real
In its post–Cold War role as the world’s sole superpower, the United States still has much to learn about how to use its power and influence abroad effectively. Hoover fellow John Lewis Gaddis explains why even superpowers need a coherent geopolitical strategy.

Blundering toward a Second Cold War?
The Cold War has been over for nearly a decade, yet tensions between the United States on the one hand and Russia and China on the other remain extremely high. Hoover fellow Charles Hill explains how we can avoid a second Cold War.

The New World Disorder
The bloody ethnic conflicts in Kosovo, Chechnya, and East Timor are symbols of the new world disorder, as small-scale civil wars become the new threat to international peace. By Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman.

Asia

Are “Asian Values” Really Unique?
When the Asian economies were booming, certain Asian leaders credited the region’s growth to a unique set of Asian values. When in 1997 the Asian economies crashed, many Western critics attributed the fall to . . . a unique set of Asian values. Who was right? Both were wrong. By Hoover fellow Charles Wolf Jr.

Russia

The Specter Haunting Russia*
Hoover fellow Robert Conquest explains why Russia’s past, present, and future remain dangerously intertwined. “The collapse of communism has left a heritage of ruin.”

Balkans

Winning the Balkans to Lose Them
Hoover visiting fellow Timothy Garton Ash reports from a recent trip to Kosova. He finds that although the West won the war, it risks losing the peace.

Interview

Further Reflections on a Ravaged Century
As one of the world’s foremost historians of Soviet communism, Hoover fellow Robert Conquest knows all about the dangers of government centralization. After the publication of his latest book, Reflections on a Ravaged Century, he sat down with Karl Zinsmeister to discuss the dangerous impulse toward centralization, which, Conquest reminds us, is still alive and well.

History and Culture

In God We Trust
The history books tell us that the founders of this country were heavily influenced by the principles of the Enlightenment. True enough. But the history books neglect an influence that proved even more important—religious principles. Michael Novak explains.

Still the Exceptional Nation?
As social democratic parties the world over shift toward the free market, the differences between the United States and other Western democracies are growing increasingly narrow. Does it still make sense to speak of the United States as the exceptional nation? By Hoover fellow Seymour Martin Lipset.