Iraqis show ink-stained fingers after voting in the January 2005 elections. Photo: Jim Goodwin (US Army) The editors of Dissent posed the following question to several respondents: Iraq has provoked the bitterest debate about American foreign policy since Vietnam. One …
Baghdad: Although there are arguably many different kinds of democracies in the world, an Arab one has yet to be established. Iraq is not the first attempt; elections organized largely domestically have been a regular, if not frequent, occurrence in …
Kay Trimberger and I are not far apart politically. We share a feminist perspective. We agree that “irreversible changes” have occurred to marriage and family life, and we agree that family change does not equate to moral decay. We agree …
This is the story of two economists—John Kenneth Galbraith, who died last year at age ninety-seven, and Paul Krugman, who at fifty-four is in his prime as an economist and a columnist for the New York Times. Like Galbraith, Krugman …
When the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in October 2006 that gay and lesbian couples must be guaranteed the same rights and benefits as heterosexual couples, the legislature saw only two possibilities: establishing civil unions or legalizing same-sex marriages. They …
As someone who supported the war in Iraq, I am often asked these days—in some cases tauntingly and with a touch of Schadenfreude—if I have changed my mind. Even when asked politely, the question is vexing and, in any case, …
In the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem. Photo by David Marcus Can philosophy save the Middle East? This, I learn from a friend upon arriving in Israel in February of 2006, is the thesis of Sari Nusseibeh, not only a prominent …
A response to Arlene Skolnick’s article, Beyond the ‘M’ Word: The Tangled Web of Politics and Marriage in the Fall 2006 issue.
Is it possible to oppose the death penalty and still be in favor of killing tyrants? That is, I think, my own position, but the botched execution of Saddam Hussein, which looked more like savage revenge than impartial justice, made …
In 2004 the International Labor Office (ILO) published a voluminous though mistitled report called “Economic Security for a Better World.” This is in fact a treatise about the economic insecurity that has been afflicting the world’s working people for the …
I have bad news from Paris for James B. Rule: the French love America and love to hate it. They whip the Republican administration only to give freer rein to their lust for everything that comes from the United States. …
Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is desirable. But is it vitally necessary or just desirable? Is it doable, and, if so, at what cost? Answers to those questions will explain why I think we should try to prevent, but …
The preferred response of the Bush administration.
Call this a reckless claim, but I know I made the main point of my article clear—that is, Dissent magazine’s editors and writers in the 1950s didn’t criticize the liberals for not being socialists; they criticized liberals for not defending …
Sheri Berman’s The Primacy of Politics Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century