A particularly good issue of this always-surprising publication.

The cover story, “The myth of the oil weapon,” explains why the market is a better guarantor of a steady flow of oil to western states than military force could ever be.  “Secular Fundamentalists” offers a pitying account of a recent convention of atheists.  “The Creativity Conceit” picks up one of the magazine’s recurring themes, that Americans have no inherent advantage over people of other nationalities in intellectual work and that research and development operations are likelier to follow production facilities than production facilities are to rise up as a consequence of a concentration of R & D shops.  “There’s something about Barry” describes recent attempts by advocates of every possible shade of American political opinion to claim the late Barry Goldwater as a precursor, then argues that he was essentially a man of his time, not a prophet of any current movement.  Elsewhere in the issue, Pat Buchanan points out that Rudolph Giuliani disagrees with him on every political issue of the day; Daniel Larison argues that our government can be honest about the Armenian genocide of 1915 only if we are willing to end our alliance with Turkey, which is to say, if we are willing to renounce our single most important startegic asset in the middle east; Philip Giraldi reports on a belief, apparently widespread among his former co-workers at the CIA, that Dick Cheney is directing the US government from an underground command post attached to his house; John Laughland says nice things about Vladimir Putin; Ted Galen Carpenter analyzes the misunderstandings among the leaders of the USA, China, and Taiwan, warning that war between the US and China is quite likely as long as the US continues to interject itself into the China/ Taiwan standoff; and A C Gancarski praises Bruce Springsteen’s latest album, among other things for its echoes of Magnetic Fields’ song “Born on a Train” and Green Day’s “Wake Me When September Ends.”