There are two sorts of polemics. The first aims at refuting an opponent’s argument; the second aims to discredit it. The first requires a more or less careful presentation and critique of a moral or political position; the second depends …
Andrei Sinyaysky and Yuli Daniel, who published fiction and essays in Western periodicals under the pennames of Abram Tertz and Nikolai Arzhak, have been sentenced to seven and five years in forced labor camps by the Russian Supreme Court. They …
The situation in Watts erupted in volcanic form because the people there knew or felt that their deep troubles were interlaced with manifest injustice. And this eruptive potential is seething just under the surface in portions of every large city …
The President’s rhetoric is fine; the implementation much less impressive. It will not, in fact, do at all. It is useful that the President, in his State of the Union and subsequent messages, acknowledged that the war in Vietnam could …
Using the metaphor of the theater for political comment has its dangers. Style may easily be mistaken for substance and aesthetic for political judgments. Since there is a widespread adaptation of the techniques of entertainment to politics, there is the …
A public relations coup has inundated the U.S. with 350,000 copies of Admiral Morison’s “legacy to his countrymen.”* Included among the testimonials for this product are: “a delight to read” (from Bruce Catton, himself a strong brand name); “I whooped …
Any new book on urban Negro problems risks being familiar, despite Kenneth Clark’s assertion that there is no comprehensive study focusing exclusively on the Negro racial ghetto. Ghetto conditions such as housing decay, illegitimacy, narcotics addiction, massive unemployment, inferior schools, …
It was Susan Sontag, I think, who first pointed up the extreme theatricality of Marat/Sade. Susan Sontag was right, Marat/Sade is theatrical. Is the play dramatic, though? About this there seems to be some question in even Miss Sontag’s mind. …
Britain has had a Labor government for more than a year, and only now does its position seem secure. Even to say that evokes an air of unreality, because the parliamentary majority is balanced on a knife-edge of three votes; …
The world knew him as a gifted musician, but to those of us who had grown up with him in the socialist youth movement, he was, above all, a figure from those vibrant years when everything seemed possible. Buoyant, large …
“We have been patient for five years with those who offered a military solution in Vietnam,” said Senator McGovern. “Now let us be equally patient in the effort to find a peaceful solution.” But the official “patience” of the U.S. …
This is an exciting book—though not at all the book its title seems to promise. “The New Radicalism” is a phrase woefully ill-suited to characterize so diverse and bizarre a cast of characters as Jane Addams, Randolph Bourne, Mabel Dodge …
Late in November a group of socialists, several of them editors of DISSENT, issued a statement concerning problems faced by the Vietnam protest movement. The signers of this statement were Michael Harrington, Bayard Rustin, Lewis Coser, Penn Kimble and Irving …
Among participants in the recent demonstrations for peace, especially the younger activists, dismay over the position of the unions on the Vietnam war has a way, at times, of spilling over into impatience, even hostility, toward the whole idea of …
