For most of my politically conscious life,the idea of social transformation has been the great taboo of American politics. From the smug 1950s to the post-Reagan era, in which a bloodied and cowed left has come to regard a kinder, …
AS BILL CLINTON looked me straight in the eye, tightened his jaw, and denied having sex with “that woman,” I had a fantasy: suppose, on that historic 60 Minutes episode in 1992, he had said, “Yes, I had an affair …
Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis by Eli Zaretsky Knopf, 2004, 429 pp., $30.00 That psychoanalysis has lost its once formidable authority is clear; the question remains whether its insights have been surpassed or merely …
Plans for a Postwar Iraq
I oppose the Bush administration’s drive to war on Iraq, though not without continuing internal argument. Should Saddam Hussein fail to comply with the Security Council’s resolution, I would have to rethink my position. In the event of a popular …
Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
I voted for Ralph Nader for several intertwined reasons. At a time when both major parties and the culture’s conventional wisdom uncritically embrace corporate power and free-market ideology, I felt it was important to support a nationally visible challenge to …
My Love Affair With America: The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative by Norman Podhoretz Free Press, 2000, 248 pp., $25 In a recent issue of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz pronounces American Pastoral Philip Roth’s best novel, while confessing his uncertainty …
When Marshall Berman laments the decline of critical culture in America, he omits the implied and crucial qualifier: democratic. For there is no shortage of critical culture on the right, where free-market radicals inveigh against the remnants of state power …
No social movement can thrive without the energy of the emerging generation, and from this perspective the Columbine High School shooting was awful in more than the obvious way. Amid the anguish, indignation, hysteria, and political posturing that followed the …
As Bill Clinton looked me straight in the eye, tightened his jaw, and denied having sex with “that woman,” I had a fantasy: suppose, on that historic 60 Minutes episode in 1992, he had said, “Yes, I had an affair …
Libertarianism: A Primer by David Boaz Free Press, 1997. 314 pp. $23.00. What It Means to Be a Libertarian: A Personal Libertarianism by Charles Murray Broadway Books, 1997. 178 pp. $20.00. Those of us who call ourselves left libertarians feel …
1. She’s loud! She’s angry! She’s on a speed trip! She’s an egomaniac! She wears red lipstick! She interrupts! She’s a dirty fighter! She calls names! She’s on her twenty-first minute of fame! She defends Woody Allen! She loves her …
Feminism Without Illusions by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. University of North Carolina Press, 1991. 348 pp. $24.95. During the earliest skirmishes between the women’s liberation movement and its New Left progenitors, one of the charges that flew our way, along with “man-hater” …
