A Better Plan than Today’s

Undoubtedly the United States needs a liberal and welcoming immigration policy, geared to the needs and interests of the nation. In this urgent new book, three astute observers argue that we have lost control of our southern border, so that the vast majority of our immigrants are now illegal Mexicans. Poor, uneducated, and unskilled, these newcomers add much less to the national wealth than they cost the taxpayers for their health care, the education of their children, and (too often) their incarceration. The Immigration Solution proposes a policy that admits skilled and educated people on the basis of what they can do for the country, not what the country can do for them. Continue reading →

Liberation and its Discontents

The sexual revolution of the 1960s made a large promise: if we just let go of our inhibitions, we’ll be happy and fulfilled. Yet sexual liberation has made us no happier and, if anything, less fulfilled. Why?

These remarkable essays, drawn from the pages of the celebrated quarterly City Journal by its editor Myron Magnet, tackle the question head-on. As Modern Sex‘s authors show in moving and often eloquent detail, sex today is increasingly mechanical and without commitment — a department of plumbing, hygiene, or athletics rather than a private sphere for the creation of human meaning. The result: legions of unhappy adults and confused teenagers deprived of their innocence, on their way not to maturity but to disillusionment. Continue reading →

A Century of Public and Private Philanthropy

A real-world investigation of one of our most urgent public issues.

A compassionate America has spent more than $5 trillion on welfare programs over three decades, but the poor haven’t vanished, and the self-destructive behavior that imprisons many in poverty has become an intergenerational inheritance.

Drawing on City Journal’s superlative reporting, What Makes Charity Work? shows in concrete and compelling detail how government assistance to the poor is doomed to failure because it treats them as victims of forces beyond their control, robs them of a sense of personal responsibility, and neglects the virtues they need to escape poverty. Continue reading →

A New Urban Paradigm for 21st-Century America

Throughout America, cities are on the rebound, thriving as they have not in generations. While successful cities have had their own special formulas for revival, they appear to have in common a clear set of principles that lead to urban health. This blueprint forms the foundation for Myron Magnet’s penetrating collection of articles drawn from the pages of City Journal, the quarterly magazine that has established a reputation for pathbreaking analytical reports on the urban scene.

The Millennial City‘s premise is a rejection of the municipal welfare ideology that led to decades of failed social and economic policies. Instead it explores new approaches to crime and its prevention; the reform of welfare to end the notion of “entitlement”; the reinvention of government to make it smaller and more effective; and new school initiatives that emphasize performance. Within these broad categories the book also takes on issues of the economy, housing, homelessness, immigrants, quality of life, and the physical environment. As Mr. Magnet points out in his introduction, more and more Americans are coming to understand that cities are not ungovernable. The Millennial City offers a good many reasons why. Continue reading →