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The Hoover Institution’s library and tower will be closed on Tuesday morning, February 14, 2012, due to electrical work. The Hoover archives will be open during the process. The library and tower will reopen at 11:30 am on February 14, 2012. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Hoover Digest 2001 No. 2

April 30, 2001

How Can We Fix Our Public Schools? By Making Them Private

The widening gap between the cognitive elite and unskilled workers is threatening to transform America, in effect dividing the Republic into two nations, one in the first world, the other in the third. How can we prevent such a division? Only by providing good schools for all our children—which in turn means making our public schools private. Nobel laureate and Hoover fellow Milton Friedman explains.

April 30, 2001

Failing Grades

How race and ethnicity still affect party allegiance. By Hoover media fellow Michael Barone.

April 30, 2001

School Choice: The Evidence Comes In

Critics of school choice have long asserted that it would lead the best and brightest students to desert public schools, confronting such schools with an even worse crisis than the one they already face. Milwaukee has had a voucher program for 10 years. The result? Milwaukee’s test scores are up—way up. By Hoover public affairs fellow Hanna Skandera and Hoover associate director Richard Sousa.

April 30, 2001

The Private Can Be Public

Businesses have always played an important role in public schools, whether publishing textbooks or managing payrolls. Now businesses are offering to manage entire schools on behalf of public school boards, hiring principals and teachers—and taking responsibility for the results. Will the profit motive benefit kids? The answer, according to Hoover fellow John E. Chubb, is yes.

April 30, 2001

Private Property, Freedom, and the Rule of Law

Juxtapose the history of England with that of Russia. What emerges? The importance of private property. By Richard Pipes.

April 30, 2001

The Dollar Club

In countries throughout the world, the dollar has long served as an unofficial currency. Now quite a few of those countries are deciding to make the greenback official. Here’s why. By Hoover fellow Robert J. Barro.

April 30, 2001

Stalemate in the Drug War

Under Plan Colombia, the United States will provide the government of Colombia with nearly $1 billion to use in fighting the drug trade. Yet if the war on drugs has already proven a dismal failure here at home, why should we expect it to succeed anywhere else? Hoover fellow William Ratliff reports from Bogotá.

April 30, 2001

Saving Souls—and Cities

How much worse would our inner cities be today were it not for black churches? Much worse. By John J. DiIulio Jr., director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

April 30, 2001

E Pluribus Unum—Sooner or Later

How race and ethnicity still affect party allegiance. By Hoover media fellow Michael Barone.

April 30, 2001

The Battle for Color-Blind Public Policy

According to Hoover media fellow Robert Zelnick, the government should end racial preferences as a matter of principle. "The ultimate political question," writes Zelnick, "is whether whites and Asians in this democracy have the same constitutional rights as blacks, Hispanics, and other favored groups."

April 30, 2001

The Greening of U.S. Foreign Policy

The environmental movement has managed to place its agenda smack in the middle of American foreign policy. This is not good news. By Hoover fellow Terry L. Anderson.

April 30, 2001

How Not to Protect Wildlife

Under the Endangered Species Act, once a species is listed as endangered, it is more likely to go extinct than to recover. If only the act itself would become extinct. By Ike C. Sugg.

April 30, 2001

Fueling High-Tech Industries

Hoover fellow Paul M. Romer argues that our universities place far too much emphasis on preparing students for careers in academia and far too little on preparing them for careers in the private sector. He proposes a remedy.

April 30, 2001

Keeping Secrets in the Digital Age

To prevent the transfer abroad of sensitive technology, the United States has imposed drastic export controls. They don’t work. Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz offers a more sensible approach.

April 30, 2001

Strategies of Containment, Past and Future

Our policy of containment helped win the Cold War. Does the policy have any relevance today? By Hoover fellow John Lewis Gaddis.

April 30, 2001

NATO Ten Years from Now

The Europeans want a bigger share in running NATO—and a smaller U.S. presence on their continent. Hoover fellow Peter Duignan explains why nothing would serve our interests better.

April 30, 2001

Confronting the Post–Post–Cold War World

The geopolitical vacuum of the immediate post–Cold War years is quickly being filled, with the United States now facing a neoimperializing Russia, an ascendant China, an emerging India, a restive European Union, and a rising—and often militant—Islam. By Hoover fellow Thomas H. Henriksen.

April 30, 2001

The Europeanization of the United States

Why some bad ideas simply refuse to die. By Hoover fellow Charles Hill.

April 30, 2001

Moscow, Misreading Bush

Vladimir Putin and his inner circle quietly rooted for George W. Bush last November, assuming that a Bush administration would overlook Russia’s human rights record. Now it’s time for the Bush administration to set the Russians straight. By Hoover fellow Michael McFaul.

April 30, 2001

And Now: The British Election

This year’s British general election looks as though it will be a replay of the American presidential election—the 1996 election, that is. By Hoover fellow Gerald A. Dorfman.

April 30, 2001

Incroyable!

Incredible but true: tales from Canada’s language wars. By Hoover fellow Arnold Beichman.

April 30, 2001

Friedman on the Surplus

What should the Bush administration do with the surplus? Give it back to the American people, of course. In an interview with Hoover fellow Peter Robinson, Hoover fellow and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman explains why he is "in favor of any tax cut, under any circumstances, in any way, in any form whatsoever."

April 30, 2001

A Personal Odyssey

In this excerpt from his new book, Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell reflects on his early years. A memoir by the man the Washington Post recently called "our most valuable public intellectual."

April 30, 2001

How Reagan Did It

What made Reagan Reagan. By Hoover fellow Peter Robinson.

April 30, 2001

Reagan, in His Own Hand

From 1975 to 1979, Ronald Reagan wrote more than 600 radio addresses in his own hand, planning every plank in what would become his presidential platform. Herewith, a sampling of classic Reagan, compiled by Hoover fellows Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson.

April 30, 2001

Mount Reagan

One speechwriter’s experience with "the largest and most magnificent American of the second half of the twentieth century." By Hoover fellow Peter Robinson.