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Putting Liberal Democracy First  

Those of us who consider ourselves “left liberals” have expressed particular alarm about the symbolic and practical dangers posed by leaders such as Donald Trump and his supporters. To name but a few: mass rallies denouncing “the liberal media”; inciting …





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Camus on Trial  

Kamel Daoud’s Meursault, contre-enquête is complex and irreverent, scorning both colonialism and Eurocentrism as well as postcolonial dreams of national liberation and clerical authority.













Jeffrey C. Isaac Responds  

I argued in my Dissent essay that the campus antiwar left is moralistic and politically irresponsible. Steger asserts that my tone is one of “haughty confidence” and claims that I caricature the pacifism of the campus left and idealize “realist …



Rethinking the Cultural Cold War  

Frances Stonor Saunders’ The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters is a widely discussed retrospective on post—Second World War liberalism that raises important questions about the relationships between intellectuals and political power. Obsessed with …



Ends, Means, and Politics  

Politics is about ends and means—about the values that we pursue and the methods by which we pursue them. In a perfect world, there would be a perfect congruence between ends and means: our ends would always be achievable through …





Response to Liza Featherstone  

Liza Featherstone argues that United Students Against Sweatshops activists are active in other anticapitalist efforts symbolized by “Seattle,” that their anticapitalist framework furnishes them with inspiration and vision, and that their radicalism has thus empowered them. These are good points. …