New York Times Book Review, Sunday, 19 Dec 99, p. 14. Review of Gertrude Himmelfarb's _One Nation Two Cultures_. Title of review: "The Moral Minority". The author of this review is identified as "Richard A. Posner... Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit". Posner describes Himmelfarb as a "social conservative", and writes (e.g.): "The distribution of condoms in schools may be a sensible policy, though Himmelfarb disagrees. She wants to make premarital sex dangerous in order to discourage it, and denial of condoms will do that, increasing both the pregnancy risk and the disease risk of sex.... She is onto something: the more dangerous sex is, the less of it there will be. But, as she neglects to add, a higher fraction of the reduced number of sexual encounters will result in an unwanted pregnancy or the spreading of sexually transmitted disease, so that the total number of such misfortunes may be higher. She does not explain why she thinks safe sex is more harmful than smoking, a vice she does not want to repress...." Who says the government is all bad? (I also liked Air Force Col. Jack Boyd, who died in 1997....) But I can hear the rejoinder now: "Oh? Of course! *Everybody* knows Posner is a *liberal*." [Implication: He is ipso facto unfit to be a judge.] \brad mccormick -- Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- <![%THINK;[XML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
