American conservatives are not generally given to celebrating the political wisdom of English left-wing socialists, yet this has been the curious fate of George Orwell. From the very beginning of his literary success in this country, the creators of the …
To implement its provocative nuclear strategy, the Reagan administration has embarked upon an expanded plan for civil defense. This plan calls for the “temporary relocation” of people from high-risk areas to “safer” ones in periods of intense international crisis—that is, …
There are three major differences between the Lebanese War and previous Israeli wars (with the possible exception of the Sinai campaign of 1956). The first is that the Lebanese War didn’t focus on the interstate conflict between Israel and the …
In Israel, the term “Orientals” refers to Jews who immigrated from Moslem countries—mainly from North Africa and the Middle East. The Israeli state bureaucracy designates them as “those originating from Asia and Africa.” The Israeli public in general and social …
Two and a half years after its first bold initiatives, it is clear that the Mitterrand presidency has not taken France “beyond the welfare state.” The 1984 budget, announced in September 1983, shows both the durability of the welfare state …
Kazimierz Brandys is a distinguished, veteran Polish writer who, for several years before the rise of Solidarity, had been prohibited from publishing in his country by the Polish government. From 1978 onward, he kept a diary of events in Warsaw, …
The first issue of Dissent appeared 30 years ago this month. Some weeks after reading it, I went home from Brandeis University, where Irving Howe and Lewis Coser were then teaching, and told my parents that I didn’t want to …
The national elections of October 28, 1982 opened a new chapter for post-Franco Spain. After 37 years in exile and barely six years since rejoining political life at home, Spain’s Socialist party (the PSOE—Socialist Workers’ party) found itself catapulted into …
One thing is clear beyond the shadow of a doubt: the United States has the military strength to defeat Grenada. Everything else being said in defense of the invasion last fall is, at best, dubious. The claim that the invasion …
“Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city’s throat.” The monument Robert Lowell had in mind when he wrote those lines was Augustus St. Gauden’s Civil War Memorial of Colonel Robert Shaw and his black troops, but in 1984 …
Herbert Lottman’s recent book on writers, artists, and politics, from the Popular Front to the Cold War, is a lively and valuable contribution to the social-cultural history of the recent past.* No one who grew up during this period, like …
Editors: I have been much interested in your article by Michael Walzer on “Failed Totalitarianism” in the Summer 83 Dissent. It has set me to thinking that possibly we (in the U.S.) are living in a period of somewhat “Failed …
The idea—I think it’s fairly common—that a profession of liberal or social democratic politics implies a profession of faith in the innate and prior goodness of human nature strikes me as a beggarly question. And so does its obverse, that …
The release of a half-dozen prestigious reports on schooling in America has initiated, according to Secretary of Education T. H. Bell, “the greatest, most promising development since the turn of the century.” Schools are, again, big news. Diane Ravitch, a …
TREK HAMADA: From your experience in Cuba, your interviews with refugees, and your research, how would you assess the mood in Cuba today? SILVIA PEDRAZA-BAILEY: For my research on policy changes regarding the Cuban exodus, I recently read through more …
