Fall 2025

The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege by Damon Linker

Goma, provincial capital of North Kivu and the second-largest town in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), lies at the heart of the world’s most destructive conflict since the Second World War. In the last decade, around three million Congolese …

The editors of Dissent asked a number of distinguished commentators to respond to the following statement and questions: For a quarter of a century, Iran has been ruled by a militant theocracy. After the shah’s regime–authoritarian, brutal, and backed by …

We have been told that the August 2006 plot to attack several U.S.-bound flights departing from London’s Heathrow Airport was hatched largely by Muslim Britons. This is becoming a familiar story. Earlier this summer, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police foiled …

A criticism of Pascal Bruckner’s anti-anti-Americanism.

“Moral hazard” is a term deployed by many economists and politicians to criticize and dismantle public programs. Missing from their vocabularies is the parallel term “immoral hazard.” New Orleans’ hurricane and aftermath reveal that immoral hazards have been ignored. The …

An argument over Cold War liberalism

Published here is the speech given by Joschka Fischer, former German foreign minister (Green Party), in Tehran on August 1, 2006, to the Iranian Center for Strategic Research.

Critics, mostly though not exclusively European, who hammer away at Israeli misbehavior often show no concern about the dangers that beset Israel. Their one-sided animus verges on scandal. Criticism of Israeli behavior may be justified, but it loses credit when …

Containment or rollback? Of the Republicans, I mean—not communism in the 1950s. It is a question about the (happy) results of the midterm elections. Were they just a vote against George W. Bush or do they represent a decisive shift …

Todd Gitlin, Frances Fox Piven and Michael Walzer spoke at a City University of New York symposium on “The Vanishing American Left” in September 2006. These essays are drawn from their talks. —EDS. I don’t know about “vanishing”—we probably weren’t …

Over the last few years, and especially since the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, there have been indications across the world of a growing convergence between the forces of Islamist militancy, on the one hand, and the “anti-imperialist” …

Books discussed: The West’s Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations? by Tony Blankley; Breaking the Silence: French Women’s Voices from the Ghetto by Fadela Amara, with Sylvia Zappi,
translated and with an introduction by Helen Harden Chenut; The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam by Ayaan Hirsi Ali; While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within by Bruce Bawer; Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis
by Bat Ye’or.

Jerry Slater’s polemic is notable most of all for its exaggerations. I am indeed a supporter of Israel, and only wish that I was as eminent, authoritative, prominent, well known, and influential as he says I am—for then I would …