The photographs of the foreign minister should not have surprised anyone. Indeed, most observers of German politics were still getting used to seeing him in three-piece suits when the pictures of Joschka Fischer lunging at a Frankfurt police officer during …
When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda by Mahmood Mamdani Princeton University Press, 2001, 364 pp., $29.95 Anyone sets out to show how genocide can become thinkable ought to have an eye on the line beyond …
As a loyal, if discontented, Dissent reader, I was only mildly surprised that you would print a pair of articles that are sullen and cautionary about a recent technological and cultural phenomenon called the Internet (“The Information Society, the New …
During the past two decades, the American media have often reported on the demise of the European welfare state. As the story goes, generous social welfare benefits, in conjunction with excessive labor market regulation, caused Europe’s unemployment woes. Having recognized …
Last fall, readers of Travel & Leisure magazine named the island of Maui the “World’s Best Island.” “Surprise, surprise,” sighed Condé Nast’s editors—this was the fourth year in a row Maui won the title. For the tourists who flock to …
Searching for America’s Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope by Peter Edelman Houghton Mifflin, 2001, 262 pp., $26 The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State by Michael B. Katz Metropolitan, 2001, 469 pp., $35 The London …
What is the proper place for the market? In the history of social and political thought, this seemingly simple question has elicited many different answers. That the answers vary so widely suggests that the question is not as simple as …
Labor movements are remarkable modern institutions. All over the world, they have fought for what Marx called “the political economy of the working class.” They have transformed exploited workers into active citizens, and Social Darwinist battlegrounds into civilized and decent …
From cabinet appointments to policy initiatives, much about environmental politics in George Bush the Younger’s administration is depressingly familiar. We’ve seen this show before, when Ronald Reagan, his secretary of the interior James Watt, and company rode into Washington intent …
Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere by Christopher Hitchens Verso, 2000, 538 pp., $25 On the fifth floor of Harvard’s Lamont Library, near the men’s room, there is an old, well-thumbed volume of Dwight Macdonald’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist. …
The right’s allergy to active government has become the dominant theme in American politics. Bill Clinton’s ability as a politician was not to challenge that theme, but to operate within it. So, by 1994, Clinton and the Democratic Congress were …
The film Thirteen Days, which deals with the Cuban missile crisis, reminds us that the danger of global nuclear annihilation does not come, mainly, from irrational adversaries and rogue states. Instead, the main threat stems from the policies and behaviors …
America needs “values.” That is the conservative harangue. But to think about values? That’s something else. They get away with sanctimony. Do I exaggerate? Return (O return!) to our “Constitution and Absolute Truth,” urges Tom DeLay, House Majority Whip. Truth …
Madison, Wisconsin, 1969: Late that spring, after the largest antiwar marches and the student strike that brought out the national guard, the graduate teaching assistants at the University of Wisconsin made labor history. They voted in favor of union representation, …
In 1997, Arthur Levine, the president of Columbia University’s Teachers College, concluded a five-year national study of undergraduate attitudes about higher education. The study was like a cold shower, one made all the more jarring by the fact that Levine …
