The New Criterion
(Mobile Version)

January 2012 Volume 30, Number 5  

Notes & Comments

Shall they defend the island?
Do the British still have backbone?


Features

Future tense, V: Everybody gets rich
by Kevin D. Williamson
On unwinding the welfare state.

Decline or acquiesence?
by Roger Kimball
An introduction to our symposium "Is America in Decline?," held jointly with England's Social Affairs Unit.

Pax Americana
by Keith Windschuttle
On what the world would lose with the decline and fall of the United States.

Belmont & Fishtown
by Charles Murray
On diverging classes in the United States.

Things have been worse . . . haven't they?
by Andrew C. McCarthy
On our bleak budgetary prospects.

Tocqueville on greatness & the potential for decline
by S. J. D. Green
On the political philosopher's insight into America.

America's uncertain prospects
by John O'Sullivan
On the two roads that lie open to the United States.

Selected responses
Remarks on the papers from our symposium "Is America in Decline?"


Poems

The harbor
by William Logan

The Venetian dog
by William Logan

The island
by William Virgil Davis


Theater

Unhappy hours
by Kevin D. Williamson
On Happy Hour, Iphigenia in Tauris & Private Lives.


Art

Stieglitz at the Met
by Karen Wilkin
On "Stieglitz & His Artists" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Exhibition note
by Christie Davies
On "Building the Revolution: Soviet Art & Architecture 1915–35" at the Royal Academy, London.

Exhibition note
by Mario Naves
On "Maurizio Cattelan: All" at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Musuem, New York.

Gallery chronicle
by James Panero
On “My Collection,” by Cathy Nan Quinlan, at www.thetemporarymuseum.com and by appointment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; “Re-Telling” at Nurture Art, Brooklyn; Ahram Jeong” at Momenta Art, Brooklyn & “Concrete Sound” at Norte Maar, Brooklyn.


Music

New York chronicle
by Jay Nordlinger


The Media

The nonpartisan charade
by James Bowman
On the media's growing carelessness in concealing its biases.


Books

The containment artist
by James Piereson

Omega men
by Andrew Stuttaford

Inside the God box
by Michael Novak

Divine glimmers
by Emily Esfahani Smith