The following is a summary of the December, 2003 issue of the St. Croix Review:

      In the editorial Angus MacDonald draws upon the written accounts of a female Iranian professor who relates the plight of women living under the ayatollas. Angus MacDonald ponders the larger question—what is the nature of the Islam that confronts us? 

      In our correspondence section David Smith has a few words to offer concerning the French.

      In Herbert London’s four articles he proposes a plan for Iraqi reconstruction to ease the burden on U.S. taxpayers in “Money for Oil Discounts: A Deal the President Overlooks,” he goes over the need for the Japanese government to modify its posture in “Japan’s Missile Defense,” he discusses the powerful effect China’s low wages are having of its neighbors, and their response in “The Chinese Vacuum Cleaner Sucking Global Investments,” and he describes the lowering of standards for high school graduation in New York in “The Wizard of Oz in Albany.”

      Allan C. Brownfeld, in “Religion and Public Life: Where Should the Line Be Drawn?” considers the written words of scholars and statesmen over the course of American history that concern the public expression of religion.

      In Doug Tice’s two articles he quotes prominent liberals in “Bush Inspires Hate”—and More Than a Little Silliness,” and the debate in Minnesota over new standards in the teaching of history in “Commissioner Yecke, Tear Down This Wall (of Ignorance)!” 

      John D’Aloia Jr. writes of his discovery of a great British writer of the Victorian age, G. K. Chesterton.

      Arnold Beichman recounts how journalists and academics compromised the truth, ignoring the deaths of millions, indulging Communist totalitarianism during the twentieth century, in “Durantyism: Journalism’s Bubonic Plague.”   

      In the first of a series of four articles on the subject entitled, “What Is Libertarianism and Why Is It Important—A Christian Critique” the British author, Philip Vander Elst, puts foward the essential principles of Libertarianism. He also describes two of most influential founders of the modern movement, Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, and their famous writings.

      Martin Harris writes, in “When A. H. Greenspan Talks, Markets (Don’t) Listen,” that Fed policy has been to induce a mild rate of inflation, for the purpose of making it easier to repay debt, but the capacity of the Fed to effect change is now limited

      Murray Weidenbaum discusses the economic challenges the present, as well as the future, administration will face, in “The Serious Policy Issues Facing the United States.”

      Thomas Martin points out the irony apparent in the way two events (the removal of the Ten Commandments from a court building, and the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech) were reported in August, in “On the Freedom of Religion in America.”

      In part II of “Three Righteous Men: Fry, Perlasca, and Sugihara” Peter Egill Brownfeld tells how Giorgio Perlasca rescued Jewish refugees from Nazi death camps.

      In “The Supreme Court—The Founders’ Biggest Mistake,” Elizabeth Wright writes that a usurpation of power by the highest court substitutes majority rule with governance by an oligarchy.