Nearly twenty-five years ago I published in Dissent (Winter 1974) a theory of a left/right rhythm in democratic politics—a rhythm that over time produces a leftward drift because conservative administrations on returning to power tend not to reverse the reforms …
Michael Tomasky has some good points, but he takes them much too far. The good points are that communities deserve a high level of public safety, that police are probably more capable of helping to provide it than some people …
In 1908, in Paris, Emile Durkheim and Charles Mathieu Limousin debated which was the supreme social science: economics or sociology? In the course of the debate, Durkheim challenged the immutability of economic laws. “The value of things,” he said, “in …
Still the Promised City?: African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York by Roger Waldinger. Harvard University Press: 1996. 374 pp. $35.00. Last January a report by New York’s Department of City Planning verified what most New Yorkers already knew: …
I agree with Michael Tomasky that public safety is an essential public good, that there is no good reason for the left to cede to the right the law-and-order issue, that poor people have a special need for effective law …
Modern democracy has long drawn much of its moral energy from the idea of a career open to talents, an idea that depends on a shared conception of merit. I take it that merit is always in one sense a …
It used to be, as the New York Times has nostalgically pointed out, that our monuments came in three easy-to-choose styles. There was Egyptian obelisk (the Washington Monument), traditional classic (the Jefferson Memorial), and standard equestrian (St. Gaudens’s William Tecumseh …
Attracted by the appeal of living in the United States as a comfortable member of the community and driven by threats to make legal residency an insecure status, the number of immigrants who have been turning themselves into U.S. citizens …
Of the two Jewish movements that celebrate their centenaries this year—Zionism and the Bund—the first, founded at a glittering ceremony in Basle, Switzerland, in August 1897, can surely boast of greater historical achievements than its coeval, formed by thirteen representatives …
Once upon a time there was a very poor country, tucked away on the Adriatic Sea, called Albania. Many people assumed it was poor because it had been a hard-core communist country, depending on government to regulate corruption and economic …
“All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor,” Walt Whitman wrote in 1855. Allen Ginsberg, who was candid about his faults and about much else, died a beloved and forgiven poet. To be sure, there are those …
American discussions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have been distorted by two inter-related developments: (1) attempts by some of the most vocal supporters and critics of Clinton’s approach to China, as well as the mainstream media covering their …
CHILDREN, RACE, AND POWER: KENNETH AND MAMIE CLARK’S NORTHSIDE CENTER, by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner. University Press of Virginia, 1996. 304 pp. $29.95. A century ago this year, W.E.B. Du Bois took charge of a new series of annual …
An odd coalition of women’s rights advocates and anti-feminists are marketing a new kind of sexism. It was first sighted at the Virginia Military Institute and Citadel cases, in which some feminists and Old South traditionalists claimed that girls and …
At first glance, Zelda Bronstein seems to make a half-dozen plausible arguments in “Feminist Pundits on Hillary Clinton”: to start, feminist pundits didn’t pay enough attention to the Clinton administration’s health care reform effort; second, feminist pundits didn’t pressure Hillary …
