I have never met William Buckley, and the only place I’d care to would be on a public platform, in debate. But for some time I’ve been hearing about his attractive qualities: he is charming, witty, literate, a cultivated man …
The use of draftees to fight “little wars”—colonial repressions, police actions, counter-insurgency operations—is relatively new. Before World War II, these sorts of wars were fought by volunteer or mercenary armies, often recruited from foreign or colonial populations. The French Foreign …
This intervention is an act that must be repudiated.—Romulo Betancourt, former president of Venezuela. No matter how one looks at it—politically, morally, tactically—the American armed intervention in the Dominican Republic cries out for the sharpest condemnation. The poet Robert Lowell …
Some people have asked whether the French municipal elections of 1965 would produce another Popular Front—even if this phrase could hardly mean today what it did in 1984. More precisely, the question has been raised whether the French Socialist party, …
One of the most celebrated passages in the writings of Mark Twain describes the episode where Huckleberry Finn, in helping the runaway slave Jim to freedom, is suddenly seized with guilt and almost demoralized by the enormity of his behavior. …
With this issue DISSENT opens up a discussion of the “new leftism,” in which, as always in our pages, a wide range of opinion will be welcome and each person will speak for himself. One view is expressed below by …
For some time after Students for a Democratic Society in 1962 coined the term “participatory democracy,” it was received with more humor than respect by civil rights workers in the South. The concept has become important this past winter, for …
Now that he is dead, we must resist the temptation to idealize Malcolm X, to elevate charisma to greatness. His voice and words were cathartic, channeling into militant verbiage emotions that might otherwise have run a violently self-destructive course. But …
The murder of Malcolm X cannot be reduced to an incident in an underworld conflict over material loot or social spoils. The sophisticated and intelligent ex-con who had been rebaptized Malcolm X by the Black Muslims, was publicly killed for …
Over the ’64 Christmas holidays, 37 Negro high school students from McComb, Mississippi, were brought to New York by private funds raised by two COFO volunteers who had spent the summer teaching in the McComb “Freedom School.” The McComb kids …
LeRoi Jones has already had more attention, more production of plays, more publication, more criticism and news comment than—at any less opportune moment—he could conceivably merit. But one aspect of his work and persona seems worth further analysis, hopefully as …
The breakup of the Communist camp in the 1960s is an event of world historic importance which may well rank with such crucial turning points as the break between the Western and the Eastern Church, the Reformation, or the halting …
The counterattack has started. Purveyors of the conventional wisdom have suddenly launched an all-out assault on all those who over the last few years have called attention to the dark side of automation. Last January, within a few days of …
These remarks, unavoidably, are being written about a month before they will be read. In the interim, changes are likely to occur in the Vietnam crisis. But the fundamental facts, precipitated by years of political reaction and obtuseness, are not …
