On March 16 the AFL-CIO filed a remarkable petition with the U.S. government asking that the U.S. trade representative take action to promote the human rights of China’s factory workers. The petition charged that China’s brutal repression of internationally recognized …
JANUARY 2001 Jan. 20-On the day of George W. Bush’s inauguration, Chief of Staff Andrew Card issues a sixty-day moratorium halting all new health, safety, and environmental regulations issued in the final days of the Clinton administration. Jan. 23-On the …
How should Democrats think about health care reform now? And what should Democrats do about it? The simplicity with which one can pose such questions is misleading. Health care reform is a topic marked by much ideological cant, ferocious interest …
One of the most laudatory reviews of The Golden Notebook when it first appeared in 1963 was by this magazine’s founding editor, Irving Howe. Writing in the New Republic, Howe praised Lessing’s abilities as a novelist: “Precise and nuanced dialogue …
Rigged Rules and Double Standards: Trade, Globalization, and the Fight Against Poverty
“We are of Muslim culture. We oppose misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and the political use of Islam. We reassert a living secularism.” Ed. Note: Dissent does not usually publish manifestos, but when we learned of the remarkable one below, we decided …
Here is a thought experiment for the left. It requires a bit of historical imagination, something for which the left is known. Its political implications are weighty. So weighty, I think, that the answer-your answer, Comrade Reader-to the question I …
Paul Starr’s The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications
The recent French debate about laïcité (secularism or secularity), which was expressed revealingly in the passage of a law that bans the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in schools, surprises many foreign observers. In fact, the word laïcité does not …
I went to Israel to talk, and I talked a lot, but I did my best to listen, too. On my first day, I sat in a Jerusalem café with Z, a comparative literature student, who told me that just …
The fiftieth anniversary celebration of Brown v. Board of Education leads uncomfortably to a South Carolina country town named Summerton. With a population of barely one thousand, Summerton seems too culturally unimpressive a place to have ever participated in a …
Sheila and David Rothman’s The Pursuit of Perfection: The Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement, David Healy’s Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression, and Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness from The President’s Council on Bioethics
What hurts more? Torture in Abu Ghraib prison by Saddam Hussein’s thugs or torture in Abu Ghraib by American brutes? Torture to sustain a vicious dictatorship or torture in the name of democracy? A torture victim might be excused for …
As the election media wars heat up, both Democrats and Republicans are looking for an edge, whether it means finding an ad that will appeal to swing voters like the “NASCAR dads” or figuring out how to get more of …
The Republicans, I rejoice to report, are an unhappy family these days. They even bear some resemblances to the Democrats during the Vietnam era. Their base, to be sure, is not shattering: it remains foursquare behind George W. Bush. But …
