“It is not a correct deduction from the Principles of Economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest.” Thus John Maynard Keynes in an essay written in 1926 whose title Robert Kuttner has borrowed for this stunning excoriation …
Justice William Brennan’s retirement from the Supreme Court was “exciting news” for Beverly LaHaye, president of Concerned Women for America, an organization boasting a God-given mandate to protect American families from feminists and other “liberal humanists.” Chief among Brennan’s sins, …
Adel Darwish is a London-based investigative journalist—a correspondent for the Independent and a regular contributor to the Economist—who has specialized in ferreting out European arms exports to Saddam Hussein. With “Gregory Alexander,” a pseudonymous British defense journalist, former army officer, …
This conversation on President Bush’s “bold new plan” for American education was conducted between Brian Morton, asking questions, and our co-editor Deborah Meier, who has gained nationwide praise as founder and director of the Central Park East public schools in …
In the last days of the Gulf War, a newscast on National Public Radio reported that trucks and other transport flown into the Kuwaiti theater had come from Eastern European countries. That would be news in itself. But the further …
The momentous events of 1989 and the unification of Germany recast the long-standing debate about Germany’s role in a changing Europe. Virtually all the English-language newsweeklies ran cover stories on the new “German question,” and academic experts weighed in on …
The debate about Martin Heidegger’s affiliation with National Socialism has been particularly fierce in France because—especially since the decline of Marxism in the late 1970s—Heidegger, the most influential German philosopher of the twentieth century, has played a crucial role for …
Kitty Kelley doesn’t need defenders. The controversy surrounding her Nancy Reagan: An Unauthorized Biography has made her rich (or at least famous) for life. But as the controversy fades from the headlines, we need to take a second look at …
It is now more than three years since I sent a report from Israel to Dissent. That article was composed under the impact of the intifada, then (late January 1988) still in its earliest stages. As a historian, I suffer …
Since the early 1980s, no charge has been pressed so relentlessly—and effectively—against the Democratic party and the American left as that of being captive to “special interests.” Like other buzzwords—choice, family, opportunity, and (most recently) “politically correct” —the phrase “special …
What have we accomplished? We liberated Kuwait from a brutal aggressor; we kept Saddam Hussein in power; we killed at least a hundred thousand Iraqis and destroyed the infrastructure of the country. We permitted Hussein to murder the Kurds to …
By rights, I ought to “recuse” myself from reviewing this book. As acknowledged in its introduction, I read an early draft of the manuscript several years before its publication, and offered such advice as I could. Though it isn’t common …
That rights are controversial for women is neither a new nor an obvious idea. Although some of us would be quick to attribute only to men the view that women do not need equal rights, this would be misleading. How …
My aim in this essay is to defend a complex, imprecise, and, at crucial points, uncertain account of society and politics. I have no hope of theoretical simplicity, not at this historical moment when so many stable oppositions of political …
In Waiting for Lefty, the radical play of the 1930s, Clifford Odets’s characters suffer not only from poverty but also from disintegrating families and a decline of individual honor. The audiences, caught up in a felt connection between their own …
