I Mutual trust is indispensable to any democratic polity. Without it, without a sense that the political men we deal with can be assumed to be self-actuated, autonomous actors engaged in pursuing their material or ideal interests in an open …
Rosa Luxemburg by J.P. Nettl Oxford University Press, 984 pp., $20.20 By the standards of vulgar Hegelians, such as E. H. Carr, this book should never have been written. Hegelians are concerned with the history of those movements and persons …
For some years now it has been assumed that when the Peoples’ Democracies of Eastern Europe are compared, “they order things better in Yugoslavia.” One begins to doubt it. Since the beginning of 1966 a number of extraordinary sessions of …
Only rarely does a book immediately convey a sense that it will rank among the influential works of the time. Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is just such a book. It is badly written, badly organized and chaotic. …
Though I feel that the U.S. will have to withdraw all of its military forces from Vietnam if this disastrous chapter in our history is finally to be closed, I do not favor “immediate withdrawal.” There are no major political …
The Next Generation: The Prospects Ahead for the Youth of Today and Tomorrow by Donald M. Michael Vintage Press, 218 pp., $1.65 This is a curious book. Written originally as a report to an agency of the federal government, it …
The breakup of the Communist camp in the 1960s is an event of world historic importance which may well rank with such crucial turning points as the break between the Western and the Eastern Church, the Reformation, or the halting …
The French philosophes, so the schoolbooks usually say, were mighty champions of liberty; they preached the defense of freedom against the arbitrary powers of the state. Did not Diderot write, “Each century is characterized by a specific spirit. The spirit …
On Dealing with the Communist World by George F. Kennan Harper and Row, for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1964, $3.00 Winning Without War by Amitai Etzioni Doubleday, 1964, $4.95 With his customary precision, forcefulness, and expository elegance, George Kennan …
The freedom of publication, speech, and opinion that is claimed by the university professor is not in principle different from that claimed by other men in liberal society. Difficulties surrounding academic freedom in the past arose mainly from the fact …
An atrocity is an atrocity, is an atrocity. No matter whether it is committed by Russians, Nazis, Frenchmen or Americans. Unless this is kept firmly in mind one succumbs to the fallacy of believing that when we, the children of …
On the evening of October 22, 1956, groups of students converged on the Budapest Radio station requesting that it broadcast their demands: for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, and for free elections and freedom of expression. Shortly after …
The sudden emergence of new nations in Asia and Africa poses crucial problems for our age. No longer is it sufficient to applaud the demise of imperialism. We have also to discard any previous reliance on simple ideologies of progress. …
When I was asked to summarize in a few pages my general reaction to this symposium I assumed that this would be an easy task. In fact I have been trying for several hours to discern common themes to which …
Scandinavia Liberals can always be made uneasy when told the “fact” that suicide rates and other indices of social disorganization are very high in the Scandinavian countries under the welfare state. This “fact,” it turns out, just isn’t one. The …
