Aryeh Neier’s outrage over a “diatribe against NATO’s military intervention” (“Inconvenient Facts,” Dissent, Spring 2000) is understandable: the issues are too serious for that. His essay is presented as a review of my book The New Military Humanism (NMH), which …
In 1998, Congress passed the Internet Tax Freedom Act. The law will keep Internet purchases virtually tax free until October 2001. It also created an Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce. The commission is made up of eight representatives from state …
Not since Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982 has Russia had such a prospect of political stability. Vladimir Putin’s election to the presidency this past spring consummated the first voluntary transfer of power—instead of by death or a coup—in the entire …
Growing Prosperity: The Battle for Growth with Equity in the 21st Century by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison Century Foundation, 2000, 345 pp., $25 Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison are two icons that progressive economists of my generation looked to …
A competent polemicist, David Goodhart has produced a slick diatribe against left critics of the third way in general and, in particular, my annotation of the Blair-Schroeder manifesto. He’s also reproduced in his writing the defects of the politics he’s …
The governing systems of the world economy have failed—in their missions and in their propaganda. Protests in Seattle, at Davos, and lately in Washington have crystallized the spirit of resentment, aimed at tiny elites with great power. Michel Camdessus, managing …
The Paradox of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of Public Trust by John B. Judis Pantheon, 2000, 305 pp., $26 John Judis has written a valuable book of the kind that rarely interests commercial publishers anymore. It …
Who are the nonvoters? Although they can be found in every stratum of society, there is no doubt they are disproportionately poor, less educated, black, and Hispanic—generally viewed as liberal and Democratic-leaning groups. Moreover, this bias, at least in terms …
When Americans tune inward, what do they hear in “globalizing” times? All too often that “the market” is the solution—whatever the trouble. It’s reminiscent of bad Marxism. Remember the advanced theorists who insisted: nationalize the means of production, all problems …
The Blair-Schroeder third-way manifesto published in the Spring issue (“The Third Way/Die Neue Mitte, annotated by Joanne Barkan) is not a pretty document. But it does not deserve the graffiti that Joanne Barkan splattered all over it. Or rather it …
Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II by Joshua B. Freeman The New Press, 2000, 393 pp., $35 I’m sitting here in sunny California poring over short-term rentals in downtown Manhattan. My wife stops short at a …
Hector Cuatepotzo, a waiter at the upscale Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, California, and an active member of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) union, lives in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Maria, six-year-old daughter, Ashley, and …
Near the beginning of A. S. Byatt’s novel Possession: A Romance, an obscure, despondent literary scholar, Roland Mitchell, has a thought that will preoccupy him throughout the remainder of the book. It will inspire his subsequent growth as an intellectual …
In my home state of Kentucky, basketball is our religion. We all know it and we all agree upon it, at least implicitly. Our catechism begins, “Fight, fight, blue and white.” Granted, it’s no Song of David, but the steady …
Anyone old enough to remember gas lines, Love Canal, or Three Mile Island will recall a time when the environmental movement focused mainly on domestic issues. To be sure, the idea of a fragile planet was always part of the …
