URL: http://www.nytimes.com SUBJECT

1168 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 4, 2007 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Children Of Polarization
BYLINE: By DAVID BROOKS
SECTION: Section 4; Column 1; Editorial Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 748 words
Last fall, I taught a political theory course at Duke University, as part of my lifelong quest to teach at every college I never could have gotten into out of high school. I asked my students to write a paper defining their political philosophy, because I thought it would be useful for them to organize their views into a coherent statement.

When I look back on those papers (which the students have given me permission to write about), I'm struck by the universal tone of postboomer pragmatism.

Today's college students, remember, were born around 1987. They were 2 or 3 when the Berlin Wall fell. They have come into political consciousness amid impeachment, jihad, polarization and Iraq. Many of them seem to have reacted to these hothouse clashes not by becoming embroiled in the zealotry but by quietly drifting away from that whole political mode.

In general, their writing is calm, optimistic and ironical. Most students in my class showed an aversion to broad philosophical arguments and valued the readings that were concrete and even wonky. Many wrote that they had moved lately toward the center.

Remington Kendall, for example, grew up on a struggling ranch in Idaho. His father died when he was young and his family was poor enough at times to qualify for welfare, though his mother refused it. Duke, with its affluence and its liberal attitudes, was a different universe.

Kendall arrived deeply conservative and remains offended by people who won't work hard to support themselves. But he now finds himself, as he says, cursed by centrism -- trapped between the Pat Robertsons on the right and the Democratic elites on the left, many of whom he finds personally distasteful.

He has come to admire the prairie pragmatists, like Montana's Jon Tester and Brian Schweitzer. In a long conversation with his brother Sage, who works on the ranch, Kendall decided that what the country needs is a party led by ''entrepreneurial cowboy politicians'' with a global perspective.

Jared Mueller grew up in a liberal enclave in Portland, Ore., and like Kendall is able to afford Duke thanks to financial aid.

He came to Duke with many conventional liberal attitudes, but he'd seen the failures of the schools in his neighborhood, where many of his smartest friends never made it to college. He's a big fan of school vouchers and now considers himself a moderate Democrat: ''I'm a Democrat because I think the Democratic Party is a better vehicle for the issues I care about: balancing the budget, checking President Bush's foreign policy and curtailing global warming. However, I'll switch to the Republicans in a heartbeat if I believe my ideas are better received in the G.O.P.''

For many students, the main axis of their politics is not between left and right but between idealism and realism. They have developed a suspicion of sweepingly idealistic political ventures, and are now a fascinating mixture of youthful hopefulness and antiutopian modesty.

They've been affected by the failures in Iraq (though interestingly, not a single one of them wrote about Iraq explicitly, or even wanted to grapple with the Middle East or Islamic extremism). But they've also seen government fail to deliver at home. A number wrote about the mediocrity of their local public schools. Several gave the back of their hand to the politics of multicultural grievance.

Many showed a visceral distaste for people who are overly certain or unable to see some truth in the other side. One student, Meng Zhou, quoted one of our readings from Reinhold Niebuhr: ''A too confident sense of justice always leads to injustice.'' Another, Kevin Troy, cited a passage from Max Weber's essay ''Politics as a Vocation'': ''Politics means slow, powerful drilling through hard boards, with a mixture of passion and sense of proportion.''

If my Duke students are representative, then the U.S. is about to see a generation that is practical, anti-ideological, modest and centrist (maybe to a fault).

That's probably good news for presidential candidates like Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, whose main selling point is their nuts-and-bolts ability to get things done.

But over all it's bad news for Republicans. While the G.O.P. was once thought of as the practical, businesslike party, now most of my students see the Republicans as the impractical, ideological party -- on social and science issues as well as foreign and domestic policy.

That's not the way to win the children of polarization.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (92%); POLITICAL SCIENCE (90%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (90%); POLITICAL PARTIES (89%); POLITICS (89%); US DEMOCRATIC PARTY (87%); EDUCATION (78%); PHILOSOPHY (78%); US PRESIDENTS (73%); SCHOOL VOUCHERS (72%); US REPUBLICAN PARTY (71%); INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (63%); GLOBAL WARMING (61%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (61%); PUBLIC SCHOOLS (60%); BUDGET (60%); COLLEGES & UNIVERSITIES (78%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (90%) United States Politics and Government; Age, Chronological; Colleges and Universities
ORGANIZATION: DUKE UNIVERSITY (84%)
PERSON: BRIAN SCHWEITZER (53%); JON TESTER (53%); GEORGE W BUSH (50%) David Brooks
GEOGRAPHIC: BERLIN, GERMANY (79%); PORTLAND, OR, USA (67%) MONTANA, USA (79%); OREGON, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (79%); IRAQ (79%); GERMANY (79%)
LOAD-DATE: February 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1169 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 4, 2007 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Yaphank as a 'Destination Point'
BYLINE: By VALERIE COTSALAS
SECTION: Section 11; Column 1; Real Estate Desk; IN THE REGION/Long Island; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 1007 words
THE design of a new community is beginning to emerge in western Suffolk County, as the county investigates just how many needs it can meet with one development, perhaps even including an indoor motor-sports arena.

In January, Suffolk officials asked developers to submit proposals for 255 acres of county-owned land in Yaphank, a midisland hamlet about 60 miles from Manhattan.

The request for proposals follows a two-year period of public meetings and discussions with residents and developers, held to help the county find out what town and county residents want and would accept for the site. Any development is also subject to the Town of Brookhaven's zoning regulations.

The county is asking developers to come up with broad plans that would include at least 1,000 homes for sale or rent on up to 131 acres, 80 percent of them priced below market rates; 60 acres of parkland and playing fields nearby; an industrial park on 48 acres, perhaps for alternative energy and wireless technology companies among others; a National Hockey League-sized ice rink; and an 8,000-seat stadium complex with shops and restaurants, a promenade and easy access to the nearby Long Island Expressway and to the Long Island Rail Road station on the site.

''We wanted to create a destination point for Suffolk County families,'' said Steve Levy, the county supervisor.

Western Suffolk suffers from a second-county complex when it comes to entertainment and recreation, Mr. Levy said. ''Culturally, you've got to go to the Westbury Music Fair in Nassau to see world-class entertainment,'' he said. ''We don't have a Nassau Coliseum. We don't have a place to watch championship basketball or football games,'' as New York City and northern New Jersey have.

But one suggested feature of the Suffolk development would be the only one of its kind on Long Island: a huge indoor track for A.T.V.'s -- all-terrain vehicles -- and dirt bikes, which many suburbanites associate with loud throttling engines ripping through the peaceful suburban calm.

''We have a big need for more recreational outlets for motor-sports enthusiasts,'' Mr. Levy said, noting that the indoor arena would be distant from the new homes and parkland and would have its own access road.

The Yaphank A.T.V. facility would be as large as 330,000 square feet under one roof on a 30-acre site, according to Thomas A. Isles, the Suffolk planning commissioner. It would include motor-sport-related shops, a gym and restaurants, and it would be modeled after a similar indoor off-road motorcycle track that opened last summer in Windsor, Conn., Mr. Isles said.

That racing venue, Mototown USA, has three indoor tracks, three floors with 120,000 square feet of shopping, and adjacent parking for 900 vehicles, according to its Web site.

On Long Island, three- or four-wheeled A.T.V.'s are currently heard or seen in a variety of places where they are prohibited: on local streets; on a strip of Long Island Power Authority-owned land below power lines; deep among the trees on a public park trail; or on any other vacant spot with hills and room to ride.

There are 8,629 all-terrain vehicles and off-road motorcycles registered in Suffolk and 3,733 in Nassau, according to the State Department of Motor Vehicles.

But there may be two or three times that number based on sales on Long Island, according to Tom Riker, a spokesman for the Long Island Off-Road Vehicle Association, which claims 1,000 members. Mr. Riker, who has been riding A.T.V.'s on Long Island for 39 years, said that until 1991, a rider could get a permit to ride in certain parks or on United States Navy-owned property.

As more homes were built and more people complained about the noise and voiced concern over erosion of parkland, Mr. Riker said, the permits process stopped. ''The bottom line is there are no longer any trails on Long Island for you to legally ride,'' he said.

Mr. Riker was one of 13 members of a task force formed by the Suffolk County Legislature to recommend sites for A.T.V. riders. In 2005 the task force reported back with 22 outdoor sites on the East End, as well as in mid-Suffolk County areas where it was believed A.T.V.'s would not disturb neighbors, Mr. Riker said. He did not name the areas, but said they were distant from residential zones and were not environmentally sensitive.

An indoor track, however, was not one of the recommendations, he added. ''I don't know where this indoor idea came from,'' Mr. Riker said. While he praised Mr. Levy for ''acknowledging that something needs to be done,'' he said an indoor track wouldn't solve the problem.

''This is not going to cater to the family that's looking for outdoor recreation, which is most of the people in our club,'' Mr. Riker said. ''This is going to cater to racers.''

Mr. Levy counters that there isn't any space for an outdoor A.T.V. park, which would require at least 50 acres. ''That is something that ultimately a private entrepreneur is going to have to deliver,'' Mr. Levy said. ''The county has very limited options as to what we can do.''

Some believe that the site planned for the facility makes sense precisely because of its location.

The 255 acres the county is seeking to develop is part of a larger county-owned parcel of 880 acres that already holds the Suffolk County Jail, which has a capacity for 600 inmates; Suffolk County Police headquarters; a nursing home; public works facilities; and the board of elections offices. On private land next to the proposed site of the A.T.V. track is the Grucci family's fireworks factory.

On such an intermingled site, having an A.T.V. facility, which would not usually jibe with a plan for housing, might be a reasonable compromise, according to planners.

''Sometimes, you need to plan for uses if there's a regional desire or need,'' said Eric Alexander, director of Vision Long Island, a nonprofit planning organization. ''It may not be consistent with a smart-growth plan or a community-based vision. It's just something that people may need.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: COUNTIES (90%); TALKS & MEETINGS (90%); SPORTS (90%); STADIUMS & ARENAS (90%); REAL ESTATE (90%); SPORTS & RECREATION (89%); MOTOR VEHICLES (87%); EXERCISE & FITNESS (86%); COUNTY GOVERNMENT (78%); LAND USE PLANNING (78%); SPORTS & RECREATION FACILITIES & VENUES (77%); ZONING (77%); RESTAURANTS (74%); COMMERCIAL RENTAL PROPERTY (73%); RETAILERS (73%); INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY (72%); URBAN RAIL SYSTEMS (66%); SPORTS & RECREATION EVENTS (89%); WINTER SPORTS (77%); BASKETBALL (72%) Renting and Leasing; Housing ; All-Terrain Vehicles (Atv)
COMPANY: LONG ISLAND RAIL ROAD CO (55%)
ORGANIZATION: EDMONTON OILERS (55%); DALLAS STARS (55%); DETROIT RED WINGS (55%); NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE (55%)
PERSON: Valerie Cotsalas
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (93%) NEW YORK, USA (93%); NEW JERSEY, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (93%) Yaphank (NY); Suffolk County (NY); Yaphank (NY)
LOAD-DATE: February 4, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: SEEKING PROPOSALS -- Suffolk County is asking developers to submit proposals for 255 acres of county-owned land that is bordered by the Grucci fireworks factory, above, and a complex that includes a county-run nursing home. (Photographs by Kirk Condyles for The New York Times)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1170 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
February 4, 2007 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

Midnight's Grandchildren
BYLINE: By BEN MACINTYRE.

Ben Macintyre is a columnist for The Times of London and has been chief of its New York, Paris and Washington bureaus.

SECTION: Section 7; Column 1; Book Review Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1310 words
In Spite of the Gods

The Strange Rise of Modern India.

By Edward Luce.

Illustrated. 383 pp. Doubleday. $26.

For roughly 400 years, educated young Englishmen have been traveling to India, staying there for a brief period and then opining expansively on the problems, contrasts and beauties of the country. In a sign, perhaps, that the complex relationship between Britain and India has finally reached some sort of equilibrium, a British journalist can now explore India and describe what he sees without sounding patronizing, nostalgic or tortured by postcolonial guilt.

For five years, Edward Luce was the Financial Times correspondent in India. ''In Spite of the Gods,'' is a series of acutely observed vignettes, held together by a single theme, and an overriding question: India will soon become a great power; what kind of great power will it be?

Luce is the best sort of foreign correspondent: amiable, courteous, curious and gently self-mocking. His admiration for India's economic miracle and its entrepreneurial elite is as genuine as his dismay at the poverty of its villages and the corruption of its politicians. He finds a country steeped in religiosity with a lingering distrust of modernity, but one that is also changing and modernizing at an astonishing rate, not because of its rich spiritual heritage, but ''in spite of the gods.''

Luce's sense of wonder runs through every word of his book. He marvels at the innovation and the chaos, the contradictions and the inequalities, the roaring but lopsided economy that has seen the number of cellphones in India leap from three million to 100 million in just five years, while ''almost 300 million Indians can never be sure where their next meal will come from.'' This is the India of gleaming billion-dollar information technology industries and wooden plows, where a million engineering graduates are trained every year but almost the same number of malnourished children die annually from contaminated water.

Luce, who is married to an Indian woman, treads carefully, most particularly when visiting the cow product research center at Nagpur. He is taken barefoot to inspect the holy cows in their stalls, past the bottles of cow urine promising to cure everything from cancer to obesity, and the cow-dung anti-dandruff shampoo. ''All of these recipes are contained in the holy texts,'' he is told. Luce's amused discomfort -- not only because he is standing up to his ankles in bovine effluent -- is extreme, but he maintains a politeness that is exquisitely British. When invited to smell the leaves of fruit trees fertilized with the enriched biomass of the sacred cow, he declares: ''This seemed very pleasant. And for all the science I know perhaps cow's urine really can cure cancer.''

Other sacred cows are treated less leniently. India's ''romantic'' reverence for the village, he notes, is not often shared by the people who actually live in Indian villages. India's verbose and status-minded diplomats receive a thorough drubbing, for caring ''more about etiquette than they do about substance.''

Luce has no patience for the more extreme Hindu nationalism, which seeks to write other identities out of India's history and helps to foment the sort of horrific violence that erupted in Gujarat in 2002, when some 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered while the police looked on (or collaborated). For Luce, Hindu fundamentalism is the way backward, yet even his angriest condemnation makes a respectful offering to the gods: ''A violent and vengeful philosophy ... it also tarnishes by association all that is good and tolerant about Hinduism.''

Meandering across this vast country, Luce meets crooks, heroes, software billionaires and rural saints. One memorable encounter is with Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of the slain Rajiv Gandhi and the woman who led the Congress Party back to power in 2004 before standing aside. When Sonia Gandhi diffidently offers tea, Luce feels as though ''Queen Elizabeth was offering to massage my feet.'' The awkwardness of this woman, who had greatness thrust upon her (only to thrust it away) is oddly moving. ''You know politics does not come easily to me,'' she says.

Other, more informal encounters are just as telling. On an overnight train journey, Luce has his ear bent by a delightful 10-year-old Sikh boy with a million questions and no intention of sleeping. Anti-corruption agents he meets describe being taken to the same newly built dam by four different routes, because the builders have claimed the cash for four separate constructions and think the officials won't notice. He is harangued by the most hard-line Islamist separatist in Kashmir, who has thoughtfully provided a single blanket for the Financial Times, New York Times and Economist correspondents to snuggle under together. ''It was my most intimate collaboration to date with journalistic competitors.''

Varied and paradoxical, India resists generalizations, and Luce knows it. Balance is all; indeed, balance out of bedlam may be the key to India's success. For every example of systemic graft, cruelty and want, there is another of imagination, candor and can-do, like the extraordinary effectiveness with which the state of Tamil Nadu tackled the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.

China looms in the background, and the ''triangular dance'' between the two rising Asian powers and the United States, Luce predicts, is sure to grow ever more intricate and intimate; in time, perhaps a very short time, ''relations between the three big powers will outweigh all other ties.'' In contrast to China, India has given greater weight to stability than efficiency, an investment that could pay huge dividends in the long run. China has built its infrastructure at a breathless pace, but India has painfully forged an independent judiciary, a free press and a vibrant pluralist society, institutional advantages that may mean ''the Indian tortoise will eventually overtake the Chinese hare.''

Indian diplomats, academics, Hindu nationalists and makers of cow-dung anti-dandruff shampoo will not enjoy this book. Most others, I suspect, will relish even the more stinging appraisals it contains, for what comes through is a whole-souled enthusiasm for the place and its possibilities, an optimism that Indian democracy will always overcome.

India is entering its golden age, but Luce offers a warning: the expectation of success has infected India's privileged classes with a ''premature spirit of triumphalism'' that could prove self-defeating, a case of counting chickens before they are eggs. ''India is not on an autopilot to greatness,'' he remarks, even though ''it would take an incompetent pilot to crash the plane.''

Following the tradition of his British predecessors, Luce ends his book with some advice for India: Improve education, strengthen liberal democracy, develop a coherent energy strategy and radically revise the transportation system before the Indian car population swells from the 40 million today to an expected 200 million by 2030 and brings the entire country to a choking standstill.

Such policy prescriptions are well aimed, and certainly well intentioned, but after the subtle interweaving of reportage and commentary that precedes it, this finger-wagging conclusion seems out of place. Luce did a stint as a speech writer for Larry Summers when Summers was United States Treasury secretary, and here, for the only time, it shows. I much preferred Luce the observant journalist to Luce the policy wonk.

A new deity is rising in India, with the ''visible cult of wealth'' in which ''brands are the new religion.'' But the French hippie who tells Luce this new religion will be absorbed and adapted in India like all the others is probably right. India has a special gift for keeping its gods in balance, in spite of modernity.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BOOK REVIEWS (91%); RELIGION (78%); BIOMASS (73%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (70%); COMPUTING & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (62%); MALNUTRITION (52%); LITERATURE (64%) Books and Literature; Reviews
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