A major trend seems to be at work in American politics. The consensus of support for the Vietnam War is well an the way to disintegration. For the first time, if the polls can be trusted, a majority of the …
It was a pleasure to read Lawrence W. Hyman’s statement: “It is not a moral direction that we must look for in literature but a disturbance” (“Literature and Political Action,” DISSENT, July—August 1967). Hyman provides an exciting way for handling …
Flying back to Detroit, it dawned on me that in these riotous times you can go home again. I was prepared for lots of deja vu. From chaos to chaos, what’s a twentyfour-year interval? In my home town, where I …
Frank Riessman has been conducting a vendetta against Saul Alinsky for some time: first an article in Transaction and now one in Dissent (“The Myth of Saul Alinsky,” July—August 1967). Riessman’s articles are objectionable because he represents them as scholarship although …
In the fall of 1963 Homer Bigart came to eastern Kentucky and wrote an article for the New York Times that described the ragged, undernourished people with whom he talked, and the flimsy shacks in which they lived. He told …
This long-awaited volume by the Chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations is intensely disappointing. It provides an eloquent but rambling sample of the Senator’s rhetoric on a number of subjects. Unfortunately, it gives no answer to the two …
There is a great deal of ferment in the housing field at present, but not much action. Rhetoric has far outrun (and in a sense diverts attention from) any corresponding commitment to allocate resources. The housing problem is shaking down …
There has been no dearth of commentaries on the Vietnam War and on the crisis into which it has plunged this country. The very proliferation of writings is a measure of the depth of this crisis: no comparable output accompanied, …
The democratic Left must help finish the creation of the world. The world—and I borrow here from Peter Worsley’s imaginative way of speaking—is scarcely begun. The globe has, of course, existed for eons, and humans project their various histories more …
Is it correct to speak of “race rebellion,” or “Negro rebellion”? Are America’s Negroes on the verge of revolution? More than one newspaper and television commentator has already begun to draw comparisons between the ghetto uprisings and the French, Russian, …
The intervention of nations into the affairs of others is one of history’s inevitabilities. Interests collide and interlock; states want to change the conduct of others. What is interesting—and perilously relevant—is why they do it, what means they use, and …
The destiny of Ghana has been a paradoxical one. The country the British have praised for having produced capable, honest administrators and technicians was suffering from mismanagement, corruption, and plain and obvious administrative malfunctioning on the eve of the February …
Our nation is in crisis. We fight a stalemated war 10,000 miles from our shores; there is no immediate prospect for peace. We lace despair and disruption in our cities; there is no immediate prospect for solution…. The deprived, whether …
“The teachers, they say it’s inside us, that’s where all the trouble is and the mean words, they come from people with bad hearts; but it’s outside, too, because they’re all the time around, the people shouting at us, and …
Let me supplement the discussion begun in the July-August issue of DISSENT concerning the Arab-Israeli war. I shall deal with two topics: a certain style of criticism that has appeared against Israel, and the difficulties of rapprochement. On the whole, …
