Maybe One
McKibben, Bill
presidency, three of them without an intervening election. This historical shallowness shows itself again when McCarthy recalls the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, which became infamous for the...
...Usually, whenever Roosevelt wasn't feeling well, a brief stay at his Hyde Park home in upstate New York would revive him...
...Years later, I was sent an album put together by someone who was at the convention, showing, on opposite pages, scenes from Prague and from Chicago, 1968," he says, referring to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia...
...Child-rearing builds character, McKibben acknowledges, so smaller families could mean more selfish parents, ironically "voting against gas taxes and demanding the right to drive [sport utility vehicles] into the overheated sunset...
...A shared childhood, with all its elements of Darwinian struggle, may be the best preparation for civic life...
...McIntire— despite being the surgeon general of the U.S...
...This experience is immediately conveyed to the U.S...
...Box 655, Mt...
...It is the only country in the area that makes itself available to the United States, in any contingency...
...American aid to Israel is a two-way street...
...There is much danger that any military aid to Arab countries, and military equipment given or sold to them, will suffer the same fate as the untold billions of dollars and priceless military secrets that were lost to our enemies in the debacle of Iran...
...It receives $3 billion every year...
...One suspects that what makes this time special ("in almost an emotional sense," as he tellingly admits) is that Bill McKibben happens to be living in it...
...During the Cold War, it was America's indispensable rampart against the inroads and expansionist ambitions of the Soviet Union...
...Walker's books, McKibben reflects, "represent a serious attempt at maturity in another way" than raising offspring...
...military analysts estimate that the U.S...
...A professed believer in "radical democracy," he fears that a more populous nation would be less free...
...His thoughts on the subject of reformers and their plans might suffice for a long magazine piece, but in a 273-page volume they are stretched so thin as to become nearly invisible...
...contributes more than $130 billion...
...Compared to the $1.8 billion yearly military aid to Israel, the U.S...
...Perhaps so—but they also represent a far greater waste of natural resources, particularly trees, than any number of children could have caused...
...get its money's worth...
...70 August 19 9 8 The American Spectator You deserve a factual look at...
...Although he worries exquisitely about man's impact on nature (pointing out, for instance, that "we've built so many reservoirs in the northern hemisphere that we've altered the planet's center of gravity enough to infinitesimally increase the speed with which it spins"), he is comparatively breezy about drastic changes to human society...
...He didn't have to convince me that gaining a sibling, with the loss of parental attention it entails, can be like "boot camp...
...The world's population, now almost six billion, is growing at the rate of "a New York City every month...
...table conversation...
...There are many other benefits that the U.S...
...That's all there is to it...
...Only a fraction of the aid given stays in Israel...
...Navy, a position that carried with it the wartime rank of Vice Admiral—was not exactly at the top of his profession...
...He sat while the president ate breakfast or looked at the morning papers, which it was FDR's custom to do Death Comes to the Arch President 72 August 1998 • The American Spectator...
...Aid to Israel is America's greatest defense bargain...
...It is committed to freedom and equality, and the rule of law...
...Peter McPherson, former administrator of the Agency for International Development, estimated that every billion dollars of aid to Israel creates 60,000 to 70,000 jobs in the United States...
...Certainly the way he looked after his distinguished patient was nothing short of ludicrous...
...soldier needs to be stationed and put at risk in Israel...
...So devoted are we to consumerism, the author sadly concludes, we would sooner shrink our families than quit our prodigal habits...
...But McKibben is innocent of their crypto-racism...
...Yet the pluses of being an "only," the author admits, are marginal: no more than a few percentage points in most studies...
...birthrate, the author insists that we not take the Chinese path of coercion (though this is where the rhetoric of "reproductive freedom" ultimately leads...
...He does offer the less-than-persuasive example of the writer Alice Walker, who has described her single daughter as a "meaningful r MOVING...
...But we are already far past the size limit of the New England-style town meetings that The Dying President: Franklin D. Roosevelt 1944-1945 Robert H. Ferrell University of Missouri Press / 185 pages / $24.95 REVIEWED BY Joseph Shattan Although Robert H. Ferrell's study of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's final year is short, it packs a powerful punch...
...If only for that reason (though in fact I have a few more), I would be grateful that my parents gave me two brothers...
...This would have placed Roosevelt's pro-Soviet vice president, Henry Wallace, in charge of the country...
...McCarthy is entitled to be angry about what happened in Chicago, but it doesn't excuse ludicrous hyperbole...
...The studies he cites, showing the benefits of growing up without brothers or sisters, just confirm my suspicions: only children tend to have higher IQs, get better health care, and "score slightly better on an 'anomie index.'" It doesn't take a social scientist to figure out that the bigger the brood, the less time and inclination for storytelling, enriching field trips, and thoughtful dinnerFRANCIS X. ROCCA is managing editor of The American Spectator...
...American aid to Israel is a two-way street...
...But what makes The Dying President so fascinating is Ferrell's evocation of the White House— a place where an incompetent doctor, an uncaring wife, and four self-seeking sons almost brought about FDR's death in 1914...
...Israel's military and political importance in the Middle East and its strategic position stabilize the entire area, including the oil fields of the Persian Gulf...
...For instance, Israeli scientists have made over 200 improvements in the F-15 alone and similar improvements, mostly in avionics, in later-generation planes...
...A recent article by Nicholas Eberstadt, which McKibben mentions but does not discuss, argues that this drop could start within ten years in the richer nations, and within fifty years overall, with the number of people on the planet peaking in 2040 at less than eight billion...
...In contrast, not one single U.S...
...McKibben's positive case for stopping at one child per couple rests on environmental grounds...
...Aid to Israel Does the U.S...
...But Dr...
...Topsoil is wearing away, rivers running dry, grain reserves getting low, fish catches dropping...
...For its "participation" in the Gulf War, Egypt was forgiven its indebtedness of $9 billion...
...The only reason to read this book is to acquaint oneself with the qualities that led McCarthy to his rendezvous with history—his stubbornness and impatience with those who see the world differently, his sober attachment to his idiosyncratic principles, and, not least important, his exalted sense of himself...
...Only somebody who has grown up without siblings can really believe that "fraternity" has any necessary connection to "liberty" or "equality...
...Doing the former would at least give us moral authority to reduce immigration —another measure necessary for holding down the size of the world's most toxic nation...
...McKibben claimsthat global warming, less than ten years ago a mere hypothesis, is now "a fact...
...Israel and Egypt are the two largest recipients of U.S...
...Just be sure to allow six weeks for your change to take effect...
...It is now a western bulwark against the aggressive intents of Iran, Iraq, and other bellicose nations that threaten the interests of the United States...
...He produced neither thermometer nor stethoscope, nor looked at the presidential tongue nor felt the pulse, and rarely asked a question...
...Israel has one of the best armies in the world...
...Enormous quantities of captured Soviet weapons and defense systems were turned over to the U.S...
...Still, the superb military installations, the air and sea lift capabilities, the equipment and food storage capacity, and the trained manpower to maintain and repair sophisticated U.S...
...What makes such alarmism hard to buy is the news that world population is soon to go down...
...Once they catch up, the black, brown, and yellow peoples will simply make up the same share of the earth's inhabitants as they did in premodern times...
...Judge for yourself...
...O Renew my subscription for one year (twelve issues—$34.95) O Payment enclosed O Bill me later O At various times TAS rents its subscriber list to other organizations...
...One Is Enough—Or Is It Too Many...
...1. Please write your new address in the space provided...
...Morris, IL 61054-8084 1-800-524-3469 ATTACH ADDRESS LABEL HERE IMPORTANT: Allow six weeks for address change...
...Presumably McKibben also disapproves of limiting welfare so as to encourage abortions or the implanting of contraceptive arm-patches...
...Israel is truly America's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East...
...The most notorious case is that of Thomas Malthus, who foretold in 1798 that humans would soon number too many to feed themselves...
...M cKibben is no more realistic about what will happen if we reach his goal...
...It is a most reliable partner in the promotion of Western strategic interests and in the stabilization of the Middle East...
...Roosevelt's health went into irreversible decline in December 1943, shortly after his return from the Teheran Conference, where he met with Stalin and Churchill to plan a new world order...
...military for analysis...
...The Chicago police behaved brutally, but they didn't invade a sovereign country with half a million troops to Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single-Child Families Bill McKibben Simon & Schuster / 254 pages / $23 REVIEWED BY Francis X. Rocca A s the oldest of three children, I was receptive to Bill McKibben's argument for single-child families...
...TAS Address Changes Made Easy...
...McKibben knows that there is nothing new about warnings that the environmental end is nigh...
...Aid to Israel is America's greatest defense bargain...
...ed States probably would have lost the Cold War even before it properly began...
...Egypt...
...Yet to prove this specialness he merely goes on reciting the atrocities man has inflicted on the planet...
...weapons...
...and with the besotted Wallace as its chief executive, the UnitjOSEPH SHATFAN, a Bradley Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, is writing a book tentatively titled Heroes of the Cold War...
...By far the largest share remains with American defense contractors...
...But this time, despite frequent weekend visits there, FDR continued to complain that he felt like a "boiled owl...
...Over 300,000 U.S...
...There is no other country in the Middle East except Israel that can be considered to have a stable government or populace friendly to the United States...
...As Ferrell describes it: He was accustomed to park his car before the White House each morning at half past eight or thereabouts, and go to the president's bedroom on the mansion's second floor "for a look-see...
...Crusaders against overpopulation typically focus on non-white, underdeveloped countries...
...Even McKibben assumes that our numbers will peak around 2050, but at lo or 11 billion if present trends continue: "Will these be the 5 billion straws that snap the camel's back...
...The only democratic country in the Middle East...
...he asks ominously...
...Jordan...
...The differences are marginal: military uniforms rather than those of police, tanks instead of crowd containers, gun smoke instead of tear gas...
...For McKibben, the prime culprits in global crowding are the relatively unprolific Americans, each of whom uses "seventy times the energy of a Bangladeshi, fifty times that of a Malagasy, twenty times that of a Costa Rican...
...U.S...
...Is Saudi Arabia more stable...
...are his ideal of self-governance...
...The Malthusians have been wrong, and the optimists such as Ester Boserup and Julian Simon right, McKibben grants—until now...
...His main thesis— surely correct—is that when the American people elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt to a fourth term, he was a dying man, but they didn't know it, because Roosevelt went to great lengths to hide his heart condition, even ordering the FBI to prevent chatty cardiologists from revealing what they knew...
...equipment are instantly at hand in Israel...
...His personal physician, an eye-ear-nose-and-throat specialist named Ross T. McIntire, assured him, and the public, that it was nothing serious, just a touch of bronchitis...
...As for the bad stereotypes—that the single child is spoiled, lonely, or just plain odd—these have never jibed with my experience, and McKibben handily debunks the skewed research that has long reinforced them...
...Africans and Asians are reproducing at a faster rate than Americans and Europeans, he acknowledges, but only because the poorer regions are finally getting around to industrializing, which means the same improvements in medicine and nutrition that boosted Western populations in the last century...
...weapons systems...
...It's fair to ask whether this is a good deal for the American taxpayer...
...They are all on display here, but in McCarthy's case they expressed themselves far more memorably in his actions than they do in his words...
...Though fewer, we are in effect a lot "bigger" than our worse-off cousins...
...Israel, in the light of its experience, continually modifies U.S...
...Its navy and air force are the major deterrent forces in the eastern Mediterranean...
...military derives from Israel...
...3. Return this form to us at the address listed below...
...Israel is the only genuinely democratic state in the Middle East...
...What are the facts...
...For we live in "a special time," a phrase he repeats over and over like an incantation...
...Kuwait...
...Former President Reagan put it well: "The fall of Iran has increased Israel's value as perhaps the only remaining strategic asset in the region on which the United States can fully rely...
...Subscriber Service P.O...
...McKibben also underrates the political dangers in his proposal...
...Your tax-deductible 2A contribution allows us to publish these important messages...
...2. Attach the mailing label from your most recent issue...
...25% to 30% of its budget goes for defense, compared to 7% in the U.S...
...He points to them not as the basis for his argument, only to dispel reservations readers might have about it...
...If you prefer that your name not be rented, please check here...
...Beginning a decade after that, by one projection, "world population would shrink by roughly 25 percent with each successive generation...
...Israel effectively secures NATO's southeastern flank, without having a single American soldier stationed in its territory...
...troops in the Far East...
...Of that amount, $1.8 billion is for military aid and $1.2 billion for economic aid...
...A procession of doom sayers has followed, whose ranks McKibben surveys as he tries to distance himself from them...
...Urgent as it may be to lower the U.S...
...and less than 1% in Japan...
...It embodies the fundamental values that are in tune with those of America and that America has traditionally supported...
...it's as if we're each trailing a big Macy's parade balloon around behind us, feeding it constantly...
...Leave aside the prospect of cleaner technologies, which seem to be the post-industrial trend...
...For the author, this means increasingly unbearable stress on the planet's resources...
...Israel is the only country that has gained battlefield experience with U.S...
...Israel pays its bills...
...Yet if any policy is going to produce the result he seeks, it will take uglier forms than his proposed national "conversation...
...Only fraction of aid stays in Israel...
...strangle an emerging democracy...
...troops are stationed with NATO and over 30,000 U.S...
...We are pumping ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making the world "hotter, stormier, and less stable by the day, a planet where huge swaths of God's creation are being wiped out by the one species told to tend this particular garden...
...This historical shallowness shows itself again when McCarthy recalls the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, which became infamous for the beatings of antiwar demonstrators by police run amok...
...On the other hand, a society of only children might be more sentimental, and thus less skeptical of political rhetoric...
...Oddly, he does not even mention the obvious alternative of adopting (perhaps because he feels it has pro-life overtones...
...But like celibate priests and nuns, he suggests, those who forego more than one child can devote the energy left over to saving the world through volunteerism...
...every year to the defense of Europe and more than $30 billion to the defense of Japan, Korea, and the Far East...
...would have to spend the equivalent of $150 billion a year in the Middle East to maintain a force equivalent to Israel's...
...Name: (Please Print) Address: City: State: Zip: Date of change: VCAFRMdigression" from her literary career...
...This ad has been published and paid for by FLAME Facts and Logic about the Middle East P.O...
...It would be more in line with reality if military aid to Israel were classified as part of the defense budget, rather than as "aid...
...Box 590359 ^ San Francisco, CA FLAME is a 501(c)(3) educational institution...
Vol. 31 • August 1998 • No. 8
