As much as political parties need a myth, they need heroes whom they can look up to. Although democratic socialism takes pride in being rational, it is no exception. A leader with a human face lends personal warmth to the idea; …
Will President Reagan keep his promises? It depends on which ones you have in mind. Six days after the election an enthusiastic sup- porter of the victors, David Rockefeller, went to Argentina and exuberantly announced that at least one promise …
Beset by inflation and rising taxes, people look for simplistic formulas—”Proposition 13,” the Kemp-Roth 30-percent income-tax cut. Another such “magic” formula has been successfully peddled by business economists and quickly picked up by the media: supply-side economics (SSE). This cruel …
Persons who are not familiar with Islam may wonder at the meager support of the Islamic and Arab governments for Iran, the self-proclaimed champion of Islam, in the recent war with Iraq, the avowedly socialist state. This may seem even …
A socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture: this is how Daniel Bell tried to make the briefest possible sense of himself amid the political and cultural confusions of the moment. As ideological one-liners go, …
Historically, this is a big year for the labor movement. A century ago Samuel Gompers, aged 31, helped to create the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. That little group merged five years later with the American Federation of …
Midge Decter has become Commentary‘s specialist in baiting minorities. Some years ago she wrote a book studded with venomous attacks against liberated women. More recently she wrote about a race riot in New York City and the attendant looting in …
Ronald Reagan’s victory has let black Americans know in a clear and visceral way what civil libertarians mean when they talk, in other contexts, about “a chilling effect.” It reminds older blacks of times and attitudes they had hoped had …
Just ten years ago, Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican of South Carolina, hired his first black congressional staff member. This was widely viewed as a recognition of the changing politics of the South, the accommodation of the segregationist, Dixiecrat Republican to …
We all know about persons who are complacent: they gloss over an important flaw in the functioning of something—a human body, a marriage, an economic policy, or a society—and try hard to convince themselves and others that nothing is really …
Lois Forer’s Criminals and Victims is a triumph of clear thinking. The author is a judge in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, and she discusses law and order, the rights of defendants, the rights of victims—topics dear to the hearts …
The two replies to my piece on Lyndon LaRouche, one by Mr. LaRouche himself, the other by Lewis Coser, are on about the same intellectual level: both writers evidently prefer name-calling to reasoned argument. I must add here that Lewis …
In the last two years Lyndon LaRouche and his followers have published articles claiming that the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust never happened, that international Zionism controls part of the drug traffic in America, that the B’nai …
Editors: I am replying to the fundraising letter that I received today. Dissent is probably one of only a few causes that I support without reservation but I lack the means with which to back up my ideological support. I …
The dramatic shift of American public opinion set off by the Iranian dilemma recalls the comparably dramatic shift set off 35 years ago, when the Yalta euphoria gave way to the Polish dilemma. Robert Dallek’s magisterial book is a recreation …
