From the archives.

20 YEARS AGO

MAY 1997

"Sometimes a tragedy can be the state's best friend. People don't like to believe in unavoidable atrocities, don't like to accept that deeply regrettable events can and will happen because the universe--or someone in it--is unpredictable, Imperfect, and unmanageable. We crave control. Vain attempts to manage the unmanageable at any cost are the strongest impetus turning citizens into supplicants, begging fora government solution to every potential problem."

BRIAN DOHERTY

"Tragic Government"

"Nearly a decade ago, the Drug Enforcement Administration's own administrative law judge, after two years of testimony, called marijuana 'one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man' and said it should be available by prescription. Since then, the federal government has blocked research on medical uses of marijuana, even while insisting that more is needed."

JACOB SULLUM

"Cannabis Catch-22"

"It became a standing joke: After the lawyers were done suing you up one side of the street, they'd sue you down the other. They'd sue when you gave a bad reference, then sue for failure to warn--failure to give a bad reference--when your old employee committed some atrocity in his new job. They'd sue when you turned away a job applicant with a violent or criminal past, or sue If you did take him and he hurt someone."

WALTER OLSON

"Occupational Hazards"

"Maybe politics should stop at the schoolhouse door, but Intelligent analysis shouldn't. Clinton's higher-education policies are harebrained and irresponsible, obviously concocted by people who care more about poll results than about what they might be doing to the nation's colleges or their students."

VIRGINIA I. POSTREL

"No Class"

25 YEARS AGO

MAY 1992

"The amount of pollution that a city pumps out initially rises with per-capita income. But after a turning point, it starts to decline steadily. Richer people are cleaner, If you just let them get rich enough."

RHONA MAHONY

"Dirty Deal?"

"But in the 1970s, cracks began to appear in the Keynesian foundation. Inflation and unemployment rose in unison, violating the Keynesian

theorem that the two variables should travel in opposite directions and undermining Keynesian policy, which was based upon adjusting fiscal and monetary policies to bring down unemployment by increasing inflation."

DANIEL J. MITCHELL

"The New Voodoo"

30 YEARS AGO

MAY 1977

"I found the country [of China] torn between its Marxist past and the lure of freedom...

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