On The Cover

“A Distinct Honor”
President Bush awards the National Humanities Medal to the Hoover Institution and to nine distinguished Americans for their contributions to the humanities.

Iraq

The Surge Gamble
If the more than 20,000 new troops we're sending to Iraq succeed in bringing about a new approach on the battlefield, then the surge will have been worthwhile. By Victor Davis Hanson.

Victory Is the Word
Why the United States must win in Iraq. By Shelby Steele.

Terrorism

Urgency on the Battlefield
Islamism, fascism, and communism are historical bedfellows—co-combatants against democracy in a Hundred Years War that continues today. The place of Iraq and the war on terror in a century of conflict. By Clark S. Judge.

The Economy

“The World’s Wealth” and Nonsense*
Redistribute “the world’s wealth”? Nonsense. The world doesn’t produce wealth, individuals do—and it belongs to them. By Thomas Sowell.

Education

A Beautiful Disappointment
A former true believer in No Child Left Behind is ready to give up on the law—but not on its ideals. By Michael J. Petrilli.

Milton Friedman’s Unfinished Business
Education policy has turned out to be tougher to crack than the communist bloc. What are the chances Americans will ever be free to choose their own schools? By Eric A. Hanushek.

Science

First, Do No Harm
Patent protections, pricing freedom, and the ability to market new products have given the United States the most innovative pharmaceutical industry on earth. Why we must resist new efforts to regulate Big Pharma. By Richard A. Epstein.

Taxes

The Flat Tax’s Silver Anniversary
First proposed 25 years ago, the flat tax has proven most influential in the unlikeliest of places: state capitals—and the capitals of other nations. By Alvin Rabushka.

Politics

The Midterm Revolution That Wasn’t
Set aside the easy comparisons. The Democrats’ 2006 electoral victory was a different breed entirely from the 1994 Republican triumph. By David W. Brady, Daniel M. Butler, and Jeremy C. Pope.

The Center Holds
America is not the fatally polarized nation we often imagine it to be. On most issues, the majority of red-staters and blue-staters are on the same side. By Morris P. Fiorina.

Race

Does Racism Matter?
It no longer stunts the lives of blacks, but the belief that it does remains an article of faith. By Shelby Steele.

Drug Policy

Addicted to the Drug War
The war on illegal drugs engenders corruption, terrorism, and family breakdown, weakening America while strengthening our enemies. By Robert Leeson.

California

Right Back Where We Started From
Governor Schwarzenegger has muscled his way into familiar territory: using government power to solve the health-insurance conundrum. Why he’s only making things worse. By David R. Henderson.

Let the Asian Students Succeed*
A hundred years ago, Chinese and Japanese immigration to the United States, especially to California, gave rise to talk of a “yellow peril.” Today’s hand-wringing about “too many Asians” at elite universities echoes that racist nonsense. By Thomas Sowell.

International Relations

A World Free of Nuclear Weapons
Ending the threat of nuclear arms. By George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, Sam Nunn.

Latin America

What Pinochet Did for Chile
The late strongman ruled harshly but left behind the most successful country in Latin America. By Robert A. Packenham and William Ratliff.

Kazakhstan

Forced Laughter
What's so funny about Kazakhstan? Ribald comedies like Borat aside, not much. Tales of a “hugely corrupt dictatorship.” By Timothy Garton Ash.

Libya

How I Spent My Libyan Vacation
Libya at last seems to be emerging, if fitfully, from a long sleep of unreason. A travelogue from a formerly lunatic land. By Victor Davis Hanson.

France

New Routes to the Presidency
The presidential contest presents an opportunity for something very rare in France: a genuine change. By Patrick Chamorel.

Britain

British Politics Is Exciting Again
The Tories have finally pulled even with Labour, Tony Blair has promised to step down this spring, and nobody knows what Gordon Brown, Blair’s heir apparent, will do when he finally becomes prime minister. What fun! By Gerald A. Dorfman.

History and Culture

Rumsfeld's Place in History
An early assessment of the nation’s 21st secretary of defense. By Bruce Berkowitz.

The Skeptical Democrat and the Enthusiastic Republican
How Jeane Kirkpatrick made common cause with Ronald Reagan. By Richard V. Allen.

In Memoriam: Seymour Martin Lipset, 1922–2006

A Giant among Teachers
An appreciation of the original “Political Man.” By Larry Diamond.

Complicated Questions, Elegant Answers
Marty Lipset did not believe that people had to be enlightened and sophisticated—“educated”—to function democratically. What they had to do was understand and pursue their interests. By Bill Schneider.

An Exceptional American
Marty Lipset's life work was like that of Tocqueville: explaining the United States to itself. His abiding theme was American uniqueness. By Michael Barone.

Hoover Archives

Europe Remembers Herbert Hoover, “Napoleon of Mercy”
An exhibit in Belgium celebrates the humanitarian legacy of Herbert Hoover, who did so much to prevent starvation in Europe during and after World War I. George H. Nash tells the story.

Food as a Weapon
Herbert Hoover fed not only the citizens of Belgium but also, in the hope that they would throw off the Bolsheviks, the citizens of Soviet Russia. Bertrand M. Patenaude has another remarkable story.

Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for China
The diaries of Chiang Kai-shek, now in the Hoover Archives, and the insights they offer into the long historical drama of modern China. By Tom Bethell.