At the very center of conservative thought lies this idea: that the present division of wealth and power corresponds to some deeper reality of human life. Conservatives don’t want to say merely that the present division is what it ought …
There are people in the world so crazy as not to realize that this is normal human existence of the kind everybody should aim at. — Nadezhda Mandelstam From the beginning, Zionists aimed at a kind of normality, and political …
Perhaps it is presumptuous for those of us who were often sharply critical of the New Left to address ourselves now to its scattered and disorganized followers. Yet among them are future friends and allies—who have begun to make criticisms …
Last summer Michael Walzer began writing some notes on the problems of “citizens politics”—that is, the kinds of local groups, some tenacious and others short-lived, that have grown up throughout the country during the last few years. Naturally enough, his …
Politics is first of all the art of minimizing and controlling violence. It is a taxing and morally dangerous art because violence itself and the threat of violence are two of its instruments. These can be put to use with …
During the first two weeks of August, along with three friends, professors like myself, I traveled in Israel, talking with people in the government, the new opposition, the army, and the universities. We were there when the cease-fire went into …
Civil disobedience is generally described as a nonrevolutionary encounter with the state. A man breaks the law, but does so in ways that do not challenge the legitimacy of the legal or political systems. He feels morally bound to disobey; …
Imagine a day in the life of a socialist citizen. He hunts in the morning, fishes in the afternoon, rears cattle in the evening, and plays the critic after dinner. Yet he is neither hunter, fisherman, shepherd, nor critic; tomorrow he …
The sheet ghastliness of the American war in Vietnam forces all of us on the Left to think again of civil disobedience. It has led some of us to plan or engage in kinds of civil disobedience far more serious …
One day, not soon, the welfare state will extend its benefits to all those men and women who are at present its occasional victims, its nominal or partial members. That day will not be the end of political history. But …
It is hard to talk about American intervention these days without talking about Vietnam. Yet Vietnam is not a typical case, in part because the Communists were and are so much stronger there than in any other country where Americans …
From opposite sides of the spectrum of American politics, Eisenhower and Rustin suggest the same general theory of moral djugment in wartime. They both suggest that only one judgment is possible. War itself (Rustin is a pacifist) , or some …
I have one major disagreement with Lew Coser’s article: this concerns his firm belief in the long-run ineffectiveness of CIA subversion in the fight against Communism. His example is a democratic union in India struggling against a Maoist union. He …
“Liberty,” Herbert Marcuse writes, “is self-determination, autonomy … But the subject of this autonomy is never the contingent, private individual as that which he actually is or happens to be; it is rather the individual. . . who is capable …
The use of draftees to fight “little wars”—colonial repressions, police actions, counter-insurgency operations—is relatively new. Before World War II, these sorts of wars were fought by volunteer or mercenary armies, often recruited from foreign or colonial populations. The French Foreign …
