American advocates of military or other tough action against Iran have based their case on the argument that its hard-line government’s pursuit of a nuclear program constitutes a grave threat to peace and stability worldwide. In reality, the development of …
Mr. and Ms. Left, tear down these words: Totalitarianism, Imperialism. No, I don’t mean that our voices ought not to roar against these bad, brutal things, just that we should stop using these terms. Once they had value; now they …
In a move that took even some insiders by surprise, on June 20th the UNSC lifted timber sanctions on Liberia. Days beforehand, Global Witness issued a report imploring the UNSC to keep sanctions in place, convincingly documenting the new government’s …
We have no articles in this issue about the Lebanon war. Nobody in his or her right mind would venture to do a piece now (end of August) to be read in mid-October—when there might be a stable cease-fire or …
Dropout rates and high-stakes testing receive their share of media attention, but the likely connection between the two is rarely discussed outside of education circles. Yet much recent research and anecdotal evidence suggest at least a correlation between high-stakes testing …
We’ve had a long run at something like a democratic society, one that has steadily expanded the definition of who’s “in.” We’ve done this with wisdom and luck—and because of the unrelenting pressure of “the people,” organized in one way …
Doug Anglin isn’t likely to flash across the radar screen at an Ivy League admissions office. A seventeen-year-old senior at Milton High School, a suburb outside Boston, Anglin has a B-minus average and plays soccer and baseball. But he’s done …
In 2005, China experienced more than seventy five thousand public protests in rural villages and urban factories. These bursts of discontent appear to have made a deep impression on China’s party leaders. As in nineteenth-century Europe, the specter of revolution …
In 1994, activist groups mounted a unified campaign against the World Bank and its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The two institutions were then celebrating a half-century in business, having been founded at the Bretton Woods conference near …
We may be young, but we don’t have the luxury of feeling invincible. When one ambulance ride, hospital visit, or even prescription could mean financial ruin, the young and uninsured have to live carefully. Our situation is precarious, and we …
Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v. Board of Education, by Danielle S. Allen
This Thanksgiving 2006 will witness the anniversary almost to the day ninety-seven years ago, when the immigrant shopgirls of New York’s shirtwaist factories called a general strike. This past April, and then on May Day, immigrant workers, 120 years after …
The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Simon & Schuster, 2006, 208 pp., $16.99 This lightweight book is being reviewed everywhere because of the following intensely engaging facts: Its author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was …
In March 2003, Newsweek pronounced George W. Bush’s presidency the “most resolutely ‘faith based’ in modern times.” This judgment is plausible enough to merit serious consideration but it is self-evidently true only if modern times began on January 20, 1989, …
In heaven, possibly, ideals speak for themselves. But on earth ideals require translation; they require action. If the world were logically ordered, politics would begin with ends—so Plato and Aristotle would insist. But a little experience demonstrates that the ends …
