The Relativist
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By James Hynes
Reagan Arthur, 2010
THE LIBERAL mindset has a secret appeal: the pleasure of being all things to all people can rival the evident satisfactions of dogmatic certainty. In Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter, Frank Bascombe, one of the most seductively unreliable narrators in postwar American fiction, explains his inclination to “see around the sides” of his every emotion:
If I was mad or ecstatic, I always realized I could just as easily feel or act another way if I wanted to—somber or resentful, ironi... More
The Hundred Years' War over Toxic Chemicals
In America, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. It’s a rule that’s been in place for one hundred years and still applies to compounds used every day in industry and in your home.
This may be changing at last. In April Congressman Henry Waxman, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, made regulation of toxic chemicals a priority by proposing the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Frank Lautenberg.
Under Waxman’s legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency would at last gain some real powers to control the che... More
Carter, Obama, and the Left-Center Divide
WHEN SENATOR Ted Kennedy walked onto the podium at the 1980 Democratic Convention, the crowd erupted. The senator raised his fist to the Massachusetts delegation. Then he quickly shook President Carter’s hand and walked away without lifting Carter’s arm—the traditional sign of unity at the end of a primary battle. After Kennedy left, the crowd shouted, “We want Ted!” so vigorously that he returned for an encore. At that point, it looked like Carter had to chase Kennedy down to get his attention. Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee, took close notice of what had happened. “If that’s the be... More
Arguments: Response to Andrew F. March
MY SKEPTICAL eye alights upon Andrew F. March’s fourth paragraph, where he explains that, in The Flight of the Intellectuals, I spend 100 pages recounting “the often stomach-churning history of Arab and Islamic attitudes towards Israel, Jews, Hitler, and the Holocaust.” He suggests that I have slandered Ramadan by family association with the stomach-churning history. But March devotes not one sentence to describing or summarizing what is said in those hundred pages.
Tariq Ramadan’s grandfather was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood ... More
Arguments: The Flight of the Intellectuals and Tariq Ramadan
PAUL BERMAN has written an odd book. It is not intellectual history–he rightly does not claim for himself any expertise in Islamic legal, theological and political thought, and he makes no effort to fully explicate Ramadan’s own doctrines in light of those traditions. It is not political biography–he is not telling Ramadan’s personal story except in select snippets. It is not quite political argument–he is not giving an analysis of the social and cultural situation of Muslims in the West and telling us What is to Be Done. It is not even a plea for vigilance–he insists in numerous places tha... More
Arguments: Andrew F. March and Paul Berman on The Flight of the Intellectuals and Tariq Ramadan
THIS APRIL saw the publication of Dissent editorial board member Paul Berman’s The Flight of the Intellectuals, a “searing examination into the intellectual atmosphere of the moment” examining “how some of the West’s best thinkers and journalists have fumbled badly in their effort to grapple with Islamist ideas and violence.“ In the book, Berman criticizes, among others, Tariq Ramadan, chair of Islamic Studies at Oxford, and his intellectual supporters.
In the following debate, Yale ass... More
The Right Since Obama: The Return of Market Fundamentalism
THE CRAZIES have come out of the conservative woodwork. Enraged and infuriated by the election of President Obama, bereft of any intellectual leadership or compelling figurehead, unable to stomach their declining powers in a multicultural America, conservatism has been reduced to a rump movement of alienated working class whites who can only mount bizarre “tea parties” to express their discontent.
Or so runs the conventional liberal wisdom on the conservative movement after the election of Obama. Even some leading conservatives appeared to agree. Sam Tanenhaus has recent... More
Dissent Launches a Blog
Dissent has always been an international project. Founded with the hope of finding “what in the socialist tradition remains alive and what needs to be discarded,” the magazine took its early inspiration as much from the socialism and social democracy of postwar Europe as it did from its opposition to the growing conformity of American intellectual life. “American writers had [always] reached out toward Europe,” wrote Irving Howe in A Margin of Hope, and in the 1950s, “at the end of a line...the idea of Europe gave [us] a renewed energy.”
... More
Will the Real Chinese Internet Please Stand Up?
In the new century, liberty will spread by cell phone and cable modem....We know how much the Internet has changed America....Imagine how much it could change China...[The Beijing regime] has been trying to crack down on the Internet—good luck. That’s sort of like trying to nail Jello to the wall.
In many respects, information has never been so free....[But new media] are also being exploited to undermine human progress and political rights. More
-Bill Clinton, March 8, 2000
Sri Lanka's Post-war Crisis
THE DEATH of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader Velupillai Prabhakaran on May 19 was met with jubilation within much of the majority Sinhalese community. For many, it signaled the end of over twenty-six years of war and violence and offered the possibility of an almost unprecedented era of peace in post-colonial Sri Lanka. In some Tamil enclaves, the news was received with trepidation. While many Tamils were thankful that the war was over, the elimination of the LTTE meant that now there was no one to stand up for them. Many were frightened that the government, riding a wave of ... More
In Place of a Hero (Spring, 1960)
J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) died on January 28, 2010. We are reprinting Michael Walzer’s 1960 consideration of Salinger’s fiction. - The Editors
YOUNG PEOPLE today have no spokesmen. The day of the youth league and its ideology seems to be over. Today we have the club again, and the gang, and perhaps the family. It might even be wrong to say that the young have heroes—models of courage, skill, commitment or self-sacrifice. Bright middle-class teenagers often have a developed sensitivity to each other’s problems, but are very... More
Obama's First Year: The Great Overlap and the Stall
IT IS an ancient assumption that tribulation is the threshold to deliverance. George Bush’s rule was so deeply ruinous in so many different ways and for so long that his successor’s campaign automatically lent itself to messianic hopes. It wasn’t that Barack Obama declared himself the messiah—to the contrary—but that many of his supporters tended to project onto him all their pent-up desires, while he practiced not only the politics of overlap but the politics of strategic vagueness. (“Hope.” “Change.” “Change You Can Believe In.”) It was as if in Barack Obama all the desires inter... More
What Happened to Canada's Liberals?
WHEN MICHAEL Ignatieff spoke at the Liberal Party convention in 2005, he was the country’s most buzzed-about politician since Pierre Trudeau. He was introduced as “the voice of our conscience” and seemed capable of uniting and broadening the ruling Liberal Party as well as expanding Canadian liberalism into a coherent philosophy instead of a laundry list of decades-old social programs.
But much has changed over the past five years. The Liberals now stand double-digits below the governing Conservative Party and in the November by-elections, the Conservatives unexpectedly won two seat... More
Evergreen Season
FOR MOST New Yorkers, the Christmas season starts with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. In the city’s heart, “Miracle on 34th Street” lives on.
For me, the Christmas season starts more modestly. It begins when the Christmas tree stands start showing up on the street corners. Wreaths, sprigs of holly, and a small forest of evergreens transform the otherwise drab sidewalks near my apartment. On windy days the smell of pine carries from block to block.
But for the men and occasional woman who sell the Christmas trees, it is a different story. In rain and snow, they watch t... More
The Best Argument for the Afghan War--and What's Wrong with It
FOR THOSE of us on the left, the best argument in favor of the Afghan war is not Obama’s claim that we need to stop al Qaeda from returning to its bases in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda doesn’t need to be in Afghanistan, the 9-11 plot was hatched by Saudis in Hamburg and Miami, and they can relocate to Somalia or Yemen or someplace else if they need to. (They have already relocated to Pakistan.)
The best argument is that we have an obligation to the Afghan people – especially to the feminists, secular teachers, labor organizers, health workers, democrats, all those working to bu... More
Is Obama's War in Afghanistan Just?
WELL, IT was a just war in the beginning, and it is worth remembering why. It wasn’t because the Taliban regime was “harboring” al Qaeda, as President Obama said on Tuesday night. Lots of countries harbor terrorists, and we are not going to war (and should not) with all of them. Afghanistan was different: the Taliban and al Qaeda were full partners, and because of that partnership, al Qaeda enjoyed all the benefits of sovereignty—most important, a territorial base. A military attack aimed at eliminating that base, and its political basis, was therefore justified.
I never felt much s... More
The Assassination of Dr.Tiller: The Marginality of Abortion in American Culture and Medicine
ON SUNDAY May 31, 2009, George Tiller, an abortion-providing physician in Wichita, Kansas, was assassinated in his church by an anti-abortion extremist. This event was not entirely surprising to observers of the abortion conflict in the United States. For years, Tiller had been the most high-profile and polarizing abortion provider in the country. He was reviled by the anti-abortion movement, and had endured previous attacks on his life. At the same time, Tiller was a revered figure within the close knit abortion-providing community—fondly called by his peers “Saint George”—not... More
Looking Your Fetus in the Eye: Mandatory Ultrasound and the Politics of Abortion
ONE OF the most thrilling moments for many pregnant women is the sight of the first ultrasound scan: that blurry photo in which, with some help from a friendly technician, one might recognize something like a nose, and maybe even a nose that seems to have a family resemblance.
Thirty years ago, women knew they were really pregnant—“with child”—when they felt the baby move. Nowadays they know by sight, and so do their friends and family. Ultrasound scans are passed around at lunch among co-workers, printed on Christmas cards, and made into refrigerator magnets. The ultras... More
Brightness in the Dark
Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
by Morris Dickstein
W.W. Norton & Co., 2009, 624 pp.Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits
by Linda Gordon
W.W. Norton & Co., 2009, 560 pp.FRAMED BY two shy or sleepy children, the homeless woman appears to be reflecting on her suffering. Her clothes are cheap and dingy, but the hand resting gracefully on her cheek suggests that poverty can... More
Getting Out of Afghanistan
GETTING IN is so vastly more thrilling than getting out. And never underestimate the importance of the thrill—the mania of the crusade, the liberation of vengefulness, the joy of cutting loose from messy hesitations, the sheer mindless excitement of getting in and getting it on. The thrill is the great simplifier.
In the case of Iraq, it came, we will all recall, in a roar of self-righteous vindication, anguished victimhood, and a blur of bravado; with the near-dementia of “shock and awe”; in a haze of fantastical, deceptive, and self-deceptive claims about Saddam Hussein’s da... More
