There are many reasons to wish John Kennedy had dodged those rifle shots in Dallas fifty years ago this week. One that’s rarely mentioned is how his martyrdom raised expectations for future presidents that are nearly impossible to meet. Liberals, …
American politics is a famously contentious theater, especially today. But the vast majority of liberals, conservatives, and Washington journalists all seem to agree that “extremism” is appalling and should be eradicated. Yet the meaning of the term is as prey …
This past July, in the middle of a summer of political discontent, there occurred a small reason for hope. In seven American cities, thousands of men and women who toil at fast-food chain restaurants picketed in loud and energetic one-day …
Is a new, young left really on the rise? A few weeks ago, Peter Beinart wrote a long online essay which argued strongly in the affirmative. It drew a lot of attention—20,000 “likes” and almost 5,000 tweets, at last count. …
“America may have lost its stomach for military intervention,” Charles Blow wrote recently in the New York Times. At least among Obama supporters, that has become the most common explanation, hardening into cliché, for why the president’s call to punish Assad’s regime for …
Like most Americans, I’m wary about President Obama’s proposal to bomb Syria as punishment for Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons to massacre civilians in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. I’m glad, and relieved, that Obama decided to ask Congress …
The 1963 March on Washington featured just one prominent white speaker. “We will not solve education or housing or public accommodations, as long as millions of Negroes are treated as second-class economic citizens and denied jobs,” declared Walter Reuther, the …
Dissent editor Michael Kazin recently participated in a symposium on the future of the left for the Polish website Kultura Liberalna. The following is his contribution; for the others, including Zygmunt Bauman and Marcel Gauchet, visit Kultura Liberalna. We are …
Last December, at the prayer vigil in Newtown, Connecticut, Barack Obama delivered one of the best speeches of his presidency. He grieved and consoled, speaking both as a father and as the head of state. Then, pivoting to the need …
Two horrifying events occurred this spring that, at first, may seem to have nothing in common. In Bangladesh, more than a thousand garment workers died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza, a building whose owners knew it was a …
For decades, Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, has used his celebrated past to condemn the present. He has given hundreds of talks about the alleged crimes and deceits of every president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama; …
The first liberal Democratic president took office exactly 100 years ago this spring. So why aren’t contemporary liberals bestowing the same praise on Woodrow Wilson as they lavish on Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson? Granted, if he were running today, …
No group in America, aside from Latino activists, is a more steadfast champion of generous immigration reform than organized labor. That stance, declares the AFL-CIO, is “based on the simple idea that working people are strongest when we work together …
In 1970, as many as twenty million Americans took part in the first Earth Day. A cluster of young activists, inspired by liberal Senator Gaylord Nelson, put together what is still the largest demonstration in the nation’s history. Protesters listened …
With all the attention gay rights is receiving, you would think smart journalists for major newspapers would be able to provide an accurate account of how this now potent movement got going. Alas, you would be wrong. Last week, both …
