Tilting at Windmills.

The Right Response to Terrorism * Phlebotomized Uranium Celebrity Chicken Soup * Tween Chic * Stalling at 70 mph

ON SEPTEMBER 11TH, I SHARED the heartbreak, outrage, and surge of patriotism experienced by almost every American. As the days went by, however, I began to worry that as a nation we were in danger of losing our cool at a time when keeping cool was crucial.

"In midtown, men in business suits were talking about nuking Kabul," wrote John Tierney in The New York Times. Robert Novak, a conservative columnist with excellent Republican sources, quoted a Republican senator "with good ties to the Pentagon" as saying, "we're going to bomb Afghanistan into a parking lot." If you've been to Afghanistan, you know it can't be bombed back into the stone age, because that's where it is now. Kabul has long looked like it was bombed last week. All that the bombing would accomplish, other than killing people, is to rearrange the rubble and turn friends and relatives of the victims into the terrorists of tomorrow.

To the extent we pursue a course of retaliation, the only kind that makes sense is to go after the actual terrorists themselves and the actual officials responsible for harboring them. But we should be aware that even success at getting Osama bin Laden (which I pray we enjoy) may do little about terrorism in general.

Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug lord, was to the narcotics trade what bin Laden is to terrorism. We took out Escobar and his whole gang. Unfortunately, the drug business still thrives.

The Israelis have been for half a century the world's most skillful retaliators, but all it has brought them is angrier Arabs and more retaliation in return.

I'm far from being a Biblical scholar, but I do remember the passage from Romans that says, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. It does seem to make more sense to concentrate not on revenge but on preventing terrorism in the future. If, instead of focusing on retaliation, we concentrate on prevention, the main thing we need is a radical improvement of the government agencies involved. On 60 Minutes, the Sunday after September 11th, Mike Wallace concluded his interview with three top CIA officials with this question: "Do any of you speak Arabic?" The answer came in the form of embarrassed coughs and ahems. The CIA and the FBI and the National Security Agency all need many more employees who know the languages of the Islamic people. Those telephone calls the NSA is eavesdropping on don't do us much good when, as often is the case, they don't get translated. As for the CIA, it recently came to light that one of its employees translated "depleted uranium" into "phlebotomized uranium," something that does not exist.

The CIA and State Department need to change their cultures overseas which have long been defined by an imperative this magazine has called Never Leave the Cities Where the Good Bars Are. The FAA has to stop caving in to the airlines on one safety issue after another, and the Congress has to stop giving in to whatever the airline lobbies want. In other words, government reform must stop being the lonely cause of a few and become an urgent concern of everyone.

In the view of many knowledgeable people, the greatest danger is bioterrorism, and the most likely way it will be inflicted is by private plane. As we pointed out last year, these planes are almost completely unregulated. Any cargo can be put aboard them, and any licensed pilot can fly them. Private pilots, many of whom are rich and powerful--Donald Rumsfeld is one--have fought to keep the FAA from acting.

I have been thrilled by the rebirth of patriotism that we have seen, especially the long lines of people waiting to give blood. But I have to wonder if, day in and day out, people will do what has to be done. Some early signs are not encouraging. Amy Waldman and David Cay Johnston of The New York Times, having heard about military recruiters deluged with phone calls from people who said they wanted to enlist, went to recruiting offices and asked if these people had actually come in to sign up. The answer was no. And what became of that patriotic Wall Street rally that was supposed to happen on the Monday the stock market reopened?

But let's assume these signs are not typical and the patriotism is real. If so, I hope it will be manifest in a citizenry that is determined to inform itself about the changes that are needed in government and that is willing to participate in these changes by pressuring their congressmen and by enlisting not only in the military but in the civilian agencies that are crucial to the struggle against terrorism. The educated elite, which has been so notably averse to service since the 1960s, might consider the CIA and FBI, where smart people who can learn languages fast are sorely needed.

Finally, the whole country needs to dedicate itself to understanding the world of Islam. We should not be like the repellant Fox News anchor David Asman, who treated former ambassador Edward Peck with contempt as Peck tried to help viewers understand the Islamic mind. If we're going to eradicate terrorism, we have to understand its causes in order to eliminate them.

YOU MAY BE CURIOUS AS TO WHY so few Wall Street big shots were on the list of casualties from the World Trade Center disaster. The reason is that the big shots have their offices in midtown so as to be closer to their Park Avenue dwellings.

I WOULD BE DRIVING ALONG and suddenly my Ford Escort's motor would cut out. This was especially disconcerting if I happened to be driving through a busy intersection or in the traffic speeding around the Washington Beltway. My mechanic, usually a very sharp fellow, made several unsuccessful attempts to fix it--after which I would go back out on the road and stall again. Finally he replaced the entire ignition system. That worked. I paid him and forgot about it. Now comes the news that over the last 20 years or so, Ford produced millions of defective ignition systems. The company knew about the problem but failed to tell either its customers or federal regulators.

Company documents show, according to Stephen Labaton and Lowell Bergman of The New York Times, "that on the same day in 1986 when the regulators closed their second investigation based on Ford's assurances that there was nothing to warrant a recall, the company's board, meeting privately, discussed the rapidly rising number of complaints about the ignition module." In an additional display of cynicism seemingly designed to confirm the Naderites' darkest suspicions about corporate America, Ford produced a string of safety "experts" who testified that "there was nothing inherently unsafe about a car shutting down on the road." A California judge, outraged by such testimony, exploded, "Take your car out on a freeway and go 70 miles an hour. Shut your engine down and tell me that's not unsafe?"

THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY OF the Left that this magazine has long advocated has become a reality. Headed by Peter Rubin, a Georgetown University law professor, the American Constitution Society is loaded with liberal luminaries like Mario Cuomo, Abner Mikva, Janet Reno, and Laurence Tribe. But they are going to need an army of smart young hard-chargers, like those recruited by the Federalists, if they are going to overturn the domination of the federal courts that resulted from Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush appointments, and from Republican foot-dragging on Clinton nominees. Liberals have fought right-wing nominees to the Supreme Court, but have not, as Joseph Califano recently pointed out in The Washington Post, been nearly as vigilant when district and circuit court judgeships were involved. And those courts--witness the Microsoft case--play crucial roles.

I HAD THOUGHT THAT BANKS were the leading innovators in coming up with new charges. But I have to acknowledge that hotels may overtake them soon. That previously free copy of USA Today may now show up on your bill as a 50-cent daily charge. But that's nothing compared to the $10- to $20-a-night "resort fee" that covers the fitness center even though you don't use it. You can also be billed for "charging privileges" even though you don't charge anything. I'm indebted to Michael Dougan and Jenny Strasburg of The San Francisco Chronicle for their examples as well as the following, my favorite: Customers of tent cabins at the Tuolumne/Meadows Lodge in Yosemite National Park are billed a $3.85 a night "energy surcharge." Sounds reasonable, you say? The only problem is that the tent cabins have no electricity.

DESEGREGATION OF SCHOOLS by social and economic class is more important than desegregation by race, Richard Kahlenberg has often argued in these pages. Now comes confirmation of his point in a Washington Post analysis of student test scores in Montgomery County, Md.: "Although poor children perform their worst when they attend schools with high concentrations of poverty, they score far higher when they are in more affluent schools."

IN THE NEW YORK AND HOLLYWOOD world of press agents for the rich and famous and those who aspire to be rich and famous, one of the great challenges is how to present your client, who is most likely a shark who wants to swim with the other sharks, as a warm and fuzzy human being. A classic technique to that end is to persuade someone who knows the client to say, "He's the very first person to bring you chicken soup on a sick day." Big Apple and Los Angeles hospital visiting rooms must be packed with dear friends clutching soup bowls.

The most recent sighting of this line is an article on Jeff Klein written by Jesse McKinley for the Style section of The New York Times. Mr. Klein may be a true prince, a sweetheart of a man, and Mr. McKinley may never have been conned by a press agent--I leave those judgments to the reader--but the chicken-soup quote is right there verbatim. Here are a few other quotes to give the flavor of the article: "People have used the term boutique too loosely," explaining why Klein prefers the term "small luxury hotel" for his City Club, "and now it's becoming cliched." "The people Mr. Klein is banking on to make the City Club a success are his friends, many of them impeccably groomed, impossibly stylish, and above all, impressively rich young women who populate the city's junior benefit committees and gossip columns ... `My friends have told me, "if we need to sit in your lobby for a week straight so that Page Six will write about it, we will,'" Klein said.

IN OUR LAST ISSUE, I LISTED A series of headlines designed to demonstrate the Bush administration's bias against regulation. Since then, there has been no letup. Consider these recent examples: "EPA Seeks To Scale Back a Clinton Pollution Initiative," "Army Corps Moves to Ease Wetlands Rules"; "Administration Defers Safeguards for Medicaid Patients," and "Under President Bush, Regulatory Rollback Has Major Impact."

Other headlines hint of disasters to come. "Gold Miners Eager For Bush To Roll Back Clinton Rules." In case you didn't read our article about the environmental horrors of gold mining, you should know that it is among the champion producers of toxic waste, using more than 2 million pounds of cyanide a year to separate gold from its ore. And it gets away with paying zero royalties to the federal government for mining gold on federal land.

LIFE HAS BECOME SO HECTIC for many families that, according to a recent article by Katherine Shaver in The Washington Post, the only opportunity many parents have for bonding with their children is in the car while driving them to and from school, stores, movies, sports, and other extra-curricular events. But according to a survey reported in an article by Jennifer Harper of The Washington Times that appeared the same day as the Post's, this bonding may prove more difficult for the mothers, 92 percent of whom are eating in the car, 72 percent doing their makeup, and 65 percent finishing off their hairstyle. Besides, they may not want the kids around. According to the psychologist Joyce Brothers, "the car has emerged as women's newest personal sanctuary" where "personal reveries" are possible "away from the clatter and clutter of work and family."

YOU MAY RECALL THAT SOME months ago we ran an item about a study of West Virginia's malpractice verdicts by The Charleston Gazette that found that runaway jury verdicts were a myth. Now comes a study of punitive damages, reported by William Glaberson of The New York Times, that comes to a similar conclusion. Comparing 6,429 cases decided by juries with 2,295 cases decided by judges, it found that juries awarded punitive damages in 121 of their cases, judges in 55 of theirs. In other words, the proportion was slightly higher in the case of judges, not drastically lower as critics of juries lead you to believe. The study also finds that the proportion of punitive to compensatory damages is roughly the same in cases decided by judges and those decided by juries. Only in seven of the 121 jury cases did the myth of the runaway jury appear to have any foundation. This is in accord with my own experience as a lawyer. I was only involved in eight trials, but in every one of them, the jury acted reasonably. See Joshua Green's article in this issue on page 34 for more on this subject.

A NEW BOOK, Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror, reminds me of one of the more bizarre episodes of the last decade, Bill Clinton's firing of Jocelyn Elders as surgeon general because she said a kind word about self-gratification. If he had followed her advice instead of taking away her job, he would have avoided impeachment, not to mention domestic discord.

But what fascinates me most about the Elders case was how few came to her defense, not even the certified Clinton-haters who usually frothed at the mouth at any action he took. My best guess as to why is that most people, even the otherwise sexually sophisticated, are embarrassed by masturbation. The tragedy is that this embarrassment keeps masturbation from being recommended as the best solution to imprudent desire which, in my view, it is. Adolescents, the group Elders was addressing, especially need to be reminded of this way out of situations where heat threatens to overcome judgment.

THE SOFT DRINK INDUSTRY HAS launched a campaign to discourage restaurant customers from drinking tap water. You may have seen The New York Times article about Coca-Cola's efforts. But other companies are also involved. For that evidence I'm indebted to Peter H. Gleick, a letter-writer to the Times who came up with this quote from Robert S. Morrison, vice chairman of Pepsi-Co: "The biggest enemy is tap water." And this from the head of Gatorade: "When we're done, tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes."

"EDITORS AT THE WORLD'S most prominent medical journals, alarmed that drug companies are exercising too much control over research results, have agreed to adopt a uniform policy that reserves the right to refuse to publish drug-company sponsored studies unless the researchers involved are guaranteed scientific independence," reports The Washington Post.

My only question is why hasn't this always been the policy? What does that say about the quality of research that has been reported in the past by such prestigious publications as The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, The Annals of Internal Medicine, and The Journal of the American Medical Association? It seems that, although nominal authors of the studies may have been medical-school professors, much of their research has been paid for by the drug companies and, in the words of the Post, "in large measure carried out, by companies with an enormous financial stake in the outcome. Company employees usually collect and analyze the data, and they often decide how it should be presented and write the reports."

Marcia Angell, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, tells the Post that in the case of large company-sponsored drug trials, all of the information collected is held by the company: "Not even the principal author sees all the data."

THE ACLU IS A WORTHY organization but sometimes it gets its knickers in a twist unnecessarily. An example is its recent attack on a Virginia law requiring a moment of silence in public schools. The law does not demand that students pray, which would give the ACLU reason to get excited. Instead, it says that the minute can be used "to meditate, pray or engage in any other silent activity." What's wrong with that? Most schools desperately need a quiet moment. My only worry is how some wise guy student will interpret "any other silent activity."

WE PROMISE NOT TO TARGET young people with our advertising. That's what the tobacco companies said in the 1998 settlement of the suit brought against them by the attorneys general of 46 states. Specifically, tobacco agreed not to place cigarette ads in a magazine with more than 15 percent of its readers under 18 years of age, or with more than 2 million readers under 18. But Big Tobacco was, as is its unhappy custom, lying. Twenty-three percent of Rolling Stone's readers are under 18. But both R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson use its pages to promote such brands as Camel and Kool. People has 2.7 million readers under 18. It publishes advertising by Newport. Sports Illustrated has 4.9 million readers under 18 and it carries advertising by R.J. Reynolds. What is being done about this outrage? So far, only one of the tobacco companies is being sued--and by only five states. And sadly, the original reporting about it was done not by a major newspaper or magazine but by The New England Journal of Medicine. The New lark Times gave the Journal story major play, but it is one of the handful of publications, including The Washington Monthly, that do not accept tobacco ads. Most magazines and newspapers remain in Big Tobacco's pocket. And it appears most of the attorneys general have lost the dedication that led them to pursue the original suit. If the settlement is to be meaningful in terms of reducing tobacco use, the states must be vigilant in enforcing it.

HOWARD DEAN ANNOUNCED that he is retiring as governor of Vermont. Maybe he should join the ranks of Democratic presidential candidates. Here's why: As a result of his programs, 92 percent of Vermont adults and 94 percent of the state's children are covered by health insurance. No other state comes near this figure. He also has a great conservation record, having set aside hundreds of thousands of acres to keep Vermont green. And he signed Vermont's ground-breaking law that permits gay marriage.

THE ADVERTISING IN MANY OF the better publications is dedicated to promoting a kind of mindless "if it's more expensive, buy it," consumerism. The entire New York fashion industry is based on encouraging faddism in which whatever was "in" last year is "out" this year. The current issue of Vogue runs 722 pages devoted to doing just that. But the much more intellectually respectable publications are involved in the same game. Just consider the message conveyed by the ads in The New Yorker and The New lark Times.

And the shopping advice by these publications is similar in tone. Take the items recommended in the Back to School edition of Ellen Tien's column in The New York Times Sunday Style section. Fall "tween" chic is defined by "blazers from Burberry's nouveau-establishment children's line" at $150; jeans from Helmut Lang at $170, boots from Hogans at $159 to $179, and Marc Jacobs Grafitti sweat-shirts for only $98. "Upscale kids are tired of No. 2 pencils, so they're upgrading," writes Tien. "Those who find Eberhard Faber too blah can get a set of Tod's natural wood logo pencils and a leather case in camel or black," for $320.

All this is far from the world in which I grew up in the 1930s. Conspicuous consumption, including spending a lot on clothes, was definitely out. In fact, sophistication was scorned. Instead, the commonsense wisdom of Will Rogers was accorded the highest esteem. Norman Rockwell, about whom Christina Larson writes in this issue on page 51, perfectly captured the national self-image of that era. It may have been guilty of ignoring the darker side of mankind, but it was gloriously free of the snobberies that hold such powerful sway over today's educated elite.