Feature Archive

OVER THE past decade, the EU has moved significantly to the right. In 2000, 11 EU countries had social democratic or center-left leaders--now there are only four. "The emergence of divergent and often conflicting interests and values have made it much harder to develop a new form of social democratic politics," writes Robert Taylor.

RUSSIA'S UNIMPEDED seizure of South Ossetia and Abkhazia proved disastrous for Georgia and its Western allies, demonstrating that "[the U.S. and EU] are unable to defend the...physical security of democratic Georgia," writes Michael Walzer.

THIS YEAR'S protracted primary season left many wondering if the Democratic Party could transcend its divisions in Denver. Reporting from the Pepsi Center, David Greenberg examined the 'tsuris' over unity, rubbed shoulders with Pat Buchanan, and crashed a fundraising party attended by the DNC's guests of honor--Barack and Michelle Obama.

FOR MANY, the fiscal policies of Bill Clinton were an overall success. But, according to Timothy A. Canova, "history should deal harshly with Bill Clinton. Throughout his terms, real wages stagnated, manufacturing and service jobs moved overseas...and the middle class was squeezed."

THE HARD-FOUGHT primary season has not only presented the Democratic Party with the significant challenge of unity--it has raised serious doubts about the party's nomination process. "Supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for all their differences, have...come to view [it] as seriously flawed," writes David Greenberg.

"MANY LABOR scholars find the concept of a 'postwar social contract' a little light in the socks, too intangible to be useful and too optimistic about the potential of capitalism to be desirable. Not Steve Greenhouse," writes Jack Metzgar in a review of Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze and David Kusnet's Love the Work, Hate the Job.

THE WIRE was a huge hit among critics. But was the show's gritty depiction of Baltimore urban life too bleak and hopeless? John Atlas and Peter Dreier argue with Anmol Chaddha, Sudhir Venkatesh, and William Julius Wilson.

MARK BAUERLEIN'S book The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes our Future finds that the Millennial generation is complacent and badly informed. But, writes Ilana Garon, "anybody who has been around a college in the last decade knows that Millennials still read books, write plays, and create art the old-fashioned way."

YESTERDAY, HBO aired The Black List, a documentary featuring 23 prominent black Americans as they contemplate what it means to be black in contemporary America. "The Black List could not be more timely," writes Nicolaus Mills, "at the heart of [it] is a question that has haunted Barack Obama's presidential candidacy."

SINCE THE early 1980s, an odd alliance of corporate lobbyists, neoconservatives, civil rights leaders, and activists has supported educational reforms that have "dismantle[d] our public education system," write Susan Harman and Deborah Meier in their introduction to "Reclaiming Education."

THE BIG question used to be, when did you leave the Communist Party? In this campaign season, writes Maxine Phillips, the question is, why didn't you leave your church and disavow your pastor earlier?

SHOULD FOREIGN politicians and critics participate in the promotion of democracy in countries like China and Burma? Or should liberalization and pro-democratic movements come from within? Dissent contributor Daniel A. Bell debates Dissent co-editor Michael Walzer on the role the international community should play in supporting democracy in China.

WITH THE Bush presidency nearing its end, American conservatism must now come to terms with the failures of the past eight years. "Conservatives are soul-searching," writes Kevin Mattson, in his review of David Frum's Comeback, Donald Critchlow's The Conservative Ascendancy, and Jacob Heilbrunn's They Knew They Were Right.

PHILIP GLASS'S Satyagraha is a four-hours-long, Sanskrit-sung opera dedicated to Gandhi and his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. "Glass's opera gives us a noble man and gallant struggles," writes Mitchell Cohen, "even if one feature of it--the beautifully imagined insistence that Gandhi's teachings and tactics are universal[...]--makes Gandhi's own mistake."

ATLANTIC YARDS is the largest project Frank Gehry, now seventy-eight, has ever undertaken. And if it proves to be his last large project, it will be a fitting capstone to a career utterly blind to the public, writes Charles Taylor.

WITH THE disappearance of both communism and the threat of Moscow's intervention, populist nationalism is re-emerging in countries like Hungary and Poland. "Being anticommunist did not automatically mean being a democrat," writes Shlomo Avineri.

WHILE THERE has been much debate over the question of boycotting the opening ceremony of next week's Olympics, Christopher Young argues that "Beijing 2008 is not Berlin 1936...Despite the recent events in Tibet, China is slowly emerging from an era of repression and should be further encouraged in that direction via personal contact and media spotlight."

JUST WHEN we thought the age of political correctness was over, we are forced to concede that the reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. Nothing illustrates this state of affairs more than the controversy aroused by the New Yorker's July 21 cover, writes Nicolaus Mills.

ACCORDING TO JOHN Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, "'The Lobby'", writes Leonard Fein, "explains everything Two words, three syllables, and you have the key to the whole of the special relationship: you know why America invaded Iraq, you know why Camp David II failed."

AMERICANS ARE used to voting for presidential candidates with backgrounds as lawyers, military officers, farmers, businessmen, and career politicians. With Barack Obama's candidacy, "this is the first time we've been asked to vote for someone who has been a community organizer," writes Peter Dreier.