It was all to be expected: a few days after 221 members of the House of Representatives voted to provide the Nicaraguan “freedom fighters” with $100 million in new aid (plus another $400 million from the CIA’s “contingency” coffers), the …
The shape and character of public space is a central issue in city planning, and it has often been central, too, in political thought, especially on the left. Radical intellectuals live in cities, think of themselves as city people, imagine …
As we move toward the 1986 elections, the prospect of a U.S.-Soviet arms control agreement has become simultaneously more visible and more of a mirage. The sense of progress has been heightened by a rapid exchange of letters and public …
We live in an interesting age in the history of ethics. Over the past century, philosophers have posited a variety of conceptual frameworks for moral thinking, including utilitarianism, intuitionism, and emotivism. Each of these meta-ethical theories has captured some important …
This article forms the first chapter of Debora Silverman’s Selling Culture. In her introduction, Silverman writes that she wishes to depict a broad “movement of aristocratic invocation in 1980s American culture, whose participants combined representatives from the worlds of the …
Inside the Philippine military camp thirty-six hours into the rebellion against Ferdinand Marcos, there is a sense of isolation and despair. Bleary-eyed rebel soldiers, unsure of the outcome of their action or its impact throughout the rest of the country, …
In the era of Reagan the women’s movement has lost its center. Social activism of all kinds is retreating, and feminism is no exception. The National Organization for Women (NOW), during the post-ERA presidency of Judy Goldsmith, suffered substantial losses …
The following interview with LASZLO RAJK was conducted by a German writer, HANS-HENNING PAETZKE. It has been slightly condensed for reasons of space. —Eds. HANS-HENNING PAETZKE: Mr. Rajk, you were born on January 26, 1949. Your father, after whom you …
This past March the Nation marked its 120th anniversary with a special issue containing articles of varying interest. One of them, alas, stood out—a racist diatribe by Gore Vidal concerning Israel, American Jews, and “fifth columnists.” It is many years …
In September 1985 Reader’s Digest published an article that paid glowing tribute to the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the AFL–CIO’s labor arm in Latin America, and to its executive director, William Doherty. “Bill Doherty’s Blue-Collar Freedom Fighters” …
The beleaguered New York City hospital workers’ union, Local 1199, shows signs of renewal. In a rare break with the power of union incumbency, the scandal-ridden regime of President Doris Turner was narrowly defeated in a late-April ballot monitored by …
Reaganomics represents a new economic policy, one that in principle seeks to curtail or abandon public service and oversight and replace it by presumably more efficient private agents. True, the stress Reaganomics places on competitiveness and profitability as regulatory mechanisms …
Robert Boyers, a professor of English at Skidmore College and editor of Salmagundi, an intellectual quarterly, offers in the first two chapters of this critical study what he calls a “fluid definition” of the political novel since 1945. He then …
Since 1973, when the government report Work in America officially proclaimed the American worker to be unhappy, unwilling and unproductive, managerial ideologues have concentrated on the development of a control strategy grounded in the liberal concept of “worker participation.” This …
George Kateb’s “Nuclear Weapons and Individual Responsibility,” (Dissent, Spring 1986) achieves an instant credibility by his open acknowledgment of what we prefer to ignore—the possibility of nuclear annihilation and the anonymity of the powers that control that possibility, impervious to …
